It was bad enough that Republicans from Newt Gingrich on down derided Barack Obama as the “food stamp President” during the last campaign.

Now they’re trying to take food stamps out of the hands of the hungry.

On Wednesday, the House Ag Committee voted to cut $21 billion out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The cuts would yank food stamps away from 2 million people, and get this: 200,000 poor and hungry kids would no longer able to get free school lunches.

Deciding how America will nourish itself and sustain its farms would seem a top policy priority— yet as the US Farm Bill demonstrates, sustainably grown, healthy food and livable incomes for farmers and workers remain an afterthought in a process controlled almost entirely by agribusiness and a handful of farm-state legislators. Despite strong public opinion supporting local food, farmer’s markets, organic agriculture, food workers’ rights and access to fresh produce, agribusiness and commodity interests continue to dominate food and farming policy.

Farmworkers pick tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)This is a tough moment in the fight against poverty. 

May 1 is International Workers Day. It is a day to be reminded that “just and favorable” work conditions, “equal pay for equal work,” workplaces “free of discrimination,” and “protection against unemployment” are fundamental human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, May 1st is a day to recognize the many ways the U.S fails to enact the human right to work.

Volunteers fill bags for a school lunch program at the Cleveland Foodbank. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta.)Lost in the shuffle of last year’s big fiscal cliff deal was the deal that didn’t happen on a new farm bill.

Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you.  Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.

As Earth Week 2013 rolls around, a frenzy of land grabbing threatens our food supply, Indigenous land use practices, access to water and the future of farming. In recent years the focus on speculation in food prices caused riots in over 30 countries. However, speculative investment has turned its eye in 2013 from food commodities to farmland itself.