Excerpt
IN the dream I am sitting in the hearing room of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Bob Gray, director of policy development for the American Farmland Trust, is there. So is Norm Berg, Washington representative for the Soil Conservation Society of America; Maureen Hinkle, director of agricultural policy for the National Audubon Society; Dan Weiss, chief farm bill lobbyist for the Sierra Club; and Justin Ward, agricultural policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. The room is peppered with many other members of the so-called conservation coalition also, because the committee is about to take up the conservation title of the 1985 farm bill.
A dozen or so senators are seated-make that slumped-in their chairs, wearing the exhausted, cynical look they have had almost from the outset of the farm bill debate. They have settled little in six months, and they look as though they know they will be haggling over nickles on price and income support levels right through October.
Committee staff people mill about, talking quietly with senators and lobbyists, adding to the low-level buzz in the room. A two-page handout drifts back to our contingent. On it are …
Footnotes
Ken Cook, 5104 Sherrier Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016, writes on conservation and agricultural issues.
- Copyright 1986 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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