232310 Farm Bill and environmental public health: An overview

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 : 4:30 PM - 4:50 PM

Roni Neff, PhD, SM , Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
The first presentation will provide a descriptive overview of the Farm Bill and five key ways it affects public health: 1) environmental health impacts; 2) nutritional impacts; 3) food security impacts; 4) food safety and infectious disease impacts; 5) impacts on rural incomes and quality of life. The presentation will then drill down into the environmental public health impacts, through description of the relevant Farm Bill programs, level of funding, and impacts. The Farm Bill provides extensive support for industrial agricultural methods with negative environmental impacts, including an indirect subsidy to industrial food animal production. The Farm Bill also supports environmentally beneficial activities, including conservation programs, organic and sustainable agriculture, and local and regional food system work. The presenter will share new "treemapping" displays to depict the relative sizes of these investments. Throughout, the presentation will highlight justice and environmental justice implications including for communities, farmers, workers, and food consumers.

Learning Areas:
Environmental health sciences
Public health or related public policy
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
1. List five key ways the Farm Bill affects public health. 2. Discuss Farm Bill support of conservation programs and Farm Bill support of agriculture with negative environmental health impacts. 3. Discuss justice and environmental justice implications.

Keywords: Policy/Policy Development, Environmental Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have performed research and policy work on farm bill issues.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.