The Agriculture Improvement Act, or “Farm Bill,” is the most important legislation shaping United States food systems. Passed only twice per decade, the bill determines how we grow, distribute, and dispose of food in the U.S.

Over the next five years, the U.S. federal government will spend more than $700 billion through the Farm Bill, including in critical nutrition that supports more than 40 million people in the United States. If the 2023 Farm Bill looks like 2018 Farm Bill, it will also reinvest in the factory food system model that perpetuates needless suffering, largely through animal agriculture.

Traditional Farm Bill spending hurts nearly all of us, including:

• 10-billion-plus farmed animals in the U.S.
• 90-plus-percent of people in the U.S. who are, by fruit and vegetable consumption, nutritionally insecure
• Farmers and farm communities suffering from social, economic, and environmental injustice
• Our local rivers and streams, our global climate, and all who rely on our shared environment to flourish

Only Big Ag, millionaire landowners, and billionaire investors truly benefit from the Farm Bill’s factory-food-system approach.

Farm Bill investments should catalyze food system transformations that benefit all of us – animals, people, and the planet. The Farm Bill should spark a shift from a factory farm, industrial model of harm, extraction, and unsustainability to flourishing food system models of healing, mutuality, and true sustainability.

Public investments should build nutrition for all, sustainable farmer opportunity, and advance justice across the food system supply chain. The federal government should invest in the plant and plant-based supply chains that could one day nourish everyone. We should choose to invest taxpayer dollars in food systems that advance shared purpose rather than guarantee corporate profits.

To build a food system that works for everyone, we need to shift the Farm Bill: from Big Ag bailout to “building the good” for animals, people, and the planet.

We’re working to “Shift the Farm Bill” through three key strategies:

Connecting policymakers with community leaders and advocacy organizations to identify shared priorities, such as through our Capitol Hill roundtable on universal nutritional security and sustainable farmer opportunity, the Eva Clayton Rural Food Forum, and our Congressional Food System Staffer Appreciation Day. Together, these events brought together more than 300 advocates, activists, and decision-makers, including more than 100 federal staff and policymakers.

Supporting alternatives to the Farm Bill, like Representative Earl Blumenauer’s (OR-03) Food and Farm Act. On March 29th, we hosted a Shift the Farm Bill: A Call for Reform kickoff to introduce the 2023 Food and Farm Act, including a panel discussion with Gene Baur, national food advocates, and Rep. Blumenauer. The event will be followed by 14 satellite events to “Shift the Farm Bill” across the country, including at 11 colleges and universities. Watch the full event here!

Building pathways to shift federal food system investments through our upcoming “Food System Shift” roadmap series. These roadmaps build on our 2021 comments to the USDA on the food system, co-signed by 90+ organizations representing more than 20 million members, as well as our subsequent two years of outreach to more than 2,500 organizations. The roadmaps will provide both a holistic overview and in-depth analysis on specific shifts in investment, serving as a foundation for future collaboration with academics, journalists, practitioners, activists, and organizers working to build more just, sustainable, plant-based food systems.

By partnering with policy leaders and food-justice organizations, Farm Sanctuary is performing a critical role in bringing plant-based, systems-changing solutions into conversations around United States food and farm spending.

Sponsored by Representative Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), the Food and Farm Act of 2023 is a comprehensive alternative to the Farm Bill that focuses resources on those who need it most, fosters innovation, encourages investments that help animals, people, and the planet, and ensures access to healthy foods.

Here are just some of the important improvements over the Farm Bill:

Animal Agriculture & Welfare:

• Ends environmental quality payments to owners of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs / “factory farms”).
• Creates incentives for small- and mid-sized farmers to improve animal welfare infrastructure, standards, and protocols on their farms.
• Prevents the USDA from skirting animal welfare standards at federal agricultural research centers.
• Requires the USDA to keep and make publicly available information about entities that violate the Animal Welfare Act or the Horse Protection Act.

Conservation & Environmental Protection:

• Requires the USDA to track and report on greenhouse gas emissions from CAFOs.
• Prioritizes Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) spending on projects that demonstrably improve the quality of the environment (such as cover cropping and pollinator habitats).
• Increases funding for conservation programs.
• Ensures that more Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) funding goes towards sustainable farming practices.
• Requires all producers who receive farm subsidies to implement conservation requirements and sets goals for conservation plans such as improving water quality, reducing soil erosion, and establishing vegetation buffers between cropland and waterways.

Food Access, Assistance, & Nutrition:

• Increases fruit and vegetable consumption in schools, by making the Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables for school lunch programs permanent, expanding its application to additional states, and increasing funding for the program.
• Increases funding for “specialty crops” (fruits and vegetables) by expanding funding for the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program.
• Supports farmers markets in accepting SNAP.
• Combats “food deserts” by expanding a program that connects demand for local food in urban areas with supply from local farmers, and increasing funding to projects that enhance local supply networks and serve urban and rural food deserts.
• Creates a funding opportunity for local and regional food system infrastructure assessments and planning activities.

Justice & Opportunities for Small Farmers:

• Opens Farm Service Facility Loan funding to agricultural cooperatives.
• Increases opportunities for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers to access federal grants for conservation and local food systems.