"Pick" Your Battles: Public Interest Groups' Selection of Policy Priorities and Development of Advocacy Strategies for the United States Farm Bill
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2014
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
Every five years, Congress renegotiates the farm bill, a piece of omnibus legislation that "sets the rules" for the U.S. food system (Pollan 2007). The farm bill directly affects the types of food that are produced, food prices, hunger relief and nutrition programs for the poor, and the prevalence of farmers' markets across the country. The farm bill is composed of two main elements: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – formerly food stamps), and subsidies for the production of commodity crops, such as corn, wheat, and soy (Johnson and Monke 2014). Many environmental and public health advocates argue that these commodity subsidies have detrimental consequences for public and environmental health, because they artificially reduce the price of calorie-dense junk food and inadvertently incentivize environmentally damaging agricultural practices (Imhoff 2007; Gittner 2009; Eubanks, II 2009; Malone 1993). However, despite this belief, many environmental and public health organizations that lobby the farm bill choose not to focus on these programs, but instead to pursue smaller gains in the conservation and nutrition titles of the bill. My research was born out of a desire to understand why. My research question asks: How are public interest groups' selection of policy priorities and lobbying tactics shaped by external factors?