Time for building lobbying, grassroots muscle

01-12-2011

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, writes:

The new Congress is going to force the kind of politically tough choices that many food and agriculture system reformers would prefer to dodge.

Those of us in the advocacy world can meet, tweet or blog ad nauseam with one another, dreaming up policy ideas in support of local or organic food, more fruit and veggies in schools, wildlife habitat or clean water, but what we need to do is to build the lobbying and grassroots muscle to turn ideas into funded realities. That means taking on the subsidy lobby; for instance, taking a bite out of the $5.2 billion per year in direct payment crop subsidies going out to the wealthiest landlords and farmers in a period of record earnings for those crops.

Nothing wrong with blogging, but to paraphrase Truman Capote, that's not advocacy. That's typing.



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