From: Michelle Thom <mthom>
Subject: Nat'l Dialogue Update
>From ehenderson Sat Jan 1 11:07:46 1994
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Date: Sat, 1 Jan 1994 11:07:45 -0800
From: Elizabeth Henderson <ehenderson>
Message-Id: <199401011907.LAA07480@cdp.igc.org>
To: mthom
Subject: National Dialogue
Status: R
>From ehenderson Sat Jan 1 10:55:01 1994
To: susag.news
Subject: National Dialogue
Status: RO
Report on the December 6-7, l993 Meeting of the National
Sustainable Agriculture Coordinating Council (NSACC)
by Elizabeth Henderson
From the glitz of Reno, and the conveyor belts of the
airways, I return to the quiet cold of Rose Valley Farm - not
a neon light anywhere... fields still green with cover crops
of oats, rye and clover the frosts have not yet singed. The
quest for a sustainable, regional agriculture has been taking
me to some surreal places: a seminar on the quality of
rural life at the Holiday Inn in Newark, NJ; the latest
meeting of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coordinating
Council (NSACC) at the Sundowner Hotel in Reno.
The NSACC gathering was linked to the first meeting of the
Western Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (WSAWG) - 50
delegates from Idaho, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Arizona,
Nevada and Canada. In addition to Council members, the
meeting was attended by the chairpeople of our issues
committees: soil and water conservation, marketing and
organics, trade, commmodities, and research and education.
There were also visitors from Farm Aid, who help fund NSACC
and want to coordinate some big actions in DC.
NSACC is made up of representatives of each of the SAWGs,
of the National Family Farm Coalition, the National Farmers
Union, the Organic Farmers Associations Council, some big
consumer and environmental organizations, minority farmers,
farmworkers, and alternative agriculture researchers. There
was strong feeling expressed that the churches and organized
labor are missing and an effort will be extended in those
directions. As its name implies, NSACC's function is to
coordinate, and specifically to plan a course of action which
will successfully color the l995 Farm Bill "sustainable."
There are limits to the number of people who can be on the
council, but no limits to participants in the process!
While NSACC may be accused of not yet having involved
everyone possible in the council, no one can say we fail to
squeeze the maximum meeting work into the time we spend
together. During the 28 hours in Reno, we spent 18 hours in
small and large group discussions covering reports on
everyone's work to date, plans for the December-January
workshops, decisions on apportioning funds for delegates to
the DC conference of February 26-27, the details and process
of the conference, the day before it and the day after, an
outline of our timetable from the passage of the l995 Farm
Bill back to the present, a media campaign, and elections to
the council executive committee.
First on our order of business was an introduction to our
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new staff person, Amy Little from Pine Bush, NY. Amy comes to
NSACC from many years of organizing on environmental issues
with Citizen Action and Clean Water Action. She owns and would
like someday to operate a small, organic farm. Her job will
be to coordinate the coordinating council and give leadership
to the campaign for the Farm Bill. She can be reached at: 32
North Church St., Goshen, NY 10924, 914-294-0633 (0632 - FAX)
Up to now, NSACC has had an executive committee, but no
officers. We agreed that to work effectively with our new
staff, the council needs a chair person, and decided to elect
co-chairs: Chuck Hassebrook, from the Center for Rural
Affairs and the MW SAWG, and Hal Hamilton, from the
Community Farm Alliance and the S SAWG . The executive
committee will continue to have representatives of each of the
SAWGs, a farmer and a Washington, DC representative. In
addition to the co-chairs, the executive committee will
include Doreen Stabinsky from CA., Tim Atwater from Vt.,
Melanie Adcock from the Humane Society in DC and Elizabeth
Henderson as the farmer.
Each of the SAWGs reported on their planning for the
National Dialogue workshops. At this time it looks like 40 to
50 workshops to set priorities for Farm Bill policy will be
held. The Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture is
preparing two major reports: green payments - what are they
and how will they work?; and what are the consequences of
adoption of organic and sustainable practices for the food
supply?
The workshop packets are complete and will have been
distributed by mid-December. They include a preamble, which
ties the policy options into the broader picture of a campaign
to transform the food system, the 5 areas of policy options
with background on each option and room for comments and
amendments, a facilitator's guide and report sheets, and the
NSACC mission statement. Participants in the dialogue are
asked to score options according to their willingness to work
for those options. A high score means a lot of effort. These
priorities will be assembled on a regional level and then on
the national level. The deadline for reporting scores to Amy
Little is February 14 to allow time to prepare presentations
for the national conference in DC February 26 and 27. If you
want to add policy options, send them to her by Jan. 15.
The national conference will be held at the Ramada Hotel
in Alexandria., VA. If you plan to stay at the hotel, you
should make a reservation by January 27. For Dialogue
participants, the charge will be $58 per night for a room,
which can be shared. The conference is planned for 300-350
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people. There will be a $20 registration fee which will
cover materials and lunch. The NSACC conference committee
spent several hours working out how to apportion funds and
slots and concluded with this scheme: $40,000 in NSACC funds
will be divided among the SAWGs (150 delegates), member farm
groups (NFFC, NFU, OFAC and others, 62 delegates) and national
environmental, consumer, religious, animal protection and
other organizations (65 delegates). There will be 25 slots
for resource people, mainly alternative ag. researchers.
Funding is not adequate to pay the full costs for so many
people, so each category will allocate its funds according to
need. A special travel funding committee will divide up the
money by January 15.
Delegates to the DC meeting should be people who are
committed to working on the Dialogue campaign through the l995
Farm Bill and beyond. They should also be willing to report
back to their board and to write an article for the newsletter
of the organization or group they represent.
The goal of the Feb 26-27 meeting is to emerge with a
clear sense of how we want to frame the terms of the debate
for the l995 Farm Bill and of the next steps for us all to
take. The delegates will vote on a set of top priorities
among the concepts presented in the policy options packets or
added during the workshops or from the floor of the meeting.
Detailed analysis and the drafting of legislation will come
later. There should be top priorities in each of the 5 policy
areas so that there is something for all of the members of our
broadening coalition. There will also be a second group of
concepts which need more work. The meeting process will allow
for constituency groups to reject policy concepts that they
dislike and to evaluate whether there is enough in the final
packet to earn their support. By Sunday evening, we hope to
have a rough version of a final document for endorsement or
discusssion by members. This set of cross cutting themes
(such as incentives instead of regulation) and policy
priorities will determine how NSACC allocates its resources.
A polished version of the final document should be ready
within a few weeks after the meeting.
As our experience with the Organic Foods Production Act
and the l990 Farm Bill should make clear, participating in
developing national policy is a lengthy process. This is a
rough timetable:
*Dec. '93: Start planning for massive lobbying campaign
*Jan. '94: begin building coalition of groups working on
on-going issues related to the Farm Bill
*Feb. 27, '94 - National Dialogue priorities affirmed
*Feb. '94: identify issues which need research
*Feb. - spring '94: formation of formal coalition to work
on legislation
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*June '94: clear assignments for lobbying
*Late '94: trial balloons of legislation
*Jan '95: New Congress- launch reworked versions of
legislation
*Feb. '95: Administration proposals
*Mar.- July: mobilize our lobbying. Hearings are usually
held between Mar. and May, debate over the summer and then
mark-up in a crunch just before one of the holidays. Dialogue
participants will be asked to make phone calls, write letters,
lobby with their representatives and even do fly-ins to DC.
*Late '95: Farm Bill signed (l990 bill expires in Oct.
'95.)
If you are planning to attend the Feb. 26-27 meeting, you
should arrange to arrive in DC by early Friday afternoon to
allow time to review the final packet of policy options and,
perhaps, to attend a meeting of the issues committee which
interests you the most. The conference will occupy all day
Saturday and Sunday. There will be a social gathering
Saturday evening. On Monday morning, there will be a training
on Hill lobbying, so you may want to make appointments to
visit your representatives late Monday morning or Monday
afternoon. We will try to keep you posted on other events
that will be occurring in and around these dates.