Before Labor Day, my 6-year old daughter went to the opening day of first grade and came back with a school lunch menu. In a model of transparency, the school provides nutritional information on those meals. An opening day lunch option – shrimp ‘poppers’ with ‘cheesy’ rice and fruit or apple sauce – provided a whopping 50 % of my daughter’s recommended allowance of fat for the day.

Perhaps this helps explain why more than 25 million children are now obese or overweight.

Unfortunately, last week’s report from the Trust for America’s Health points out that we are getting fatter!

There is a lot more that proactive Farm Bill policies could do to encourage more nutritious diets and help the environment.

Let’s start with kids – its not acceptable that today’s generation may be the first not to outlive their parents.

Congress must do more to encourage healthy eating choices in our schools. For starters school lunches – which are heavily subsidized by USDA – should look a lot more like the fruit- and vegetable-heavy food pyramid USDA pushes. Senator Menendez from New Jersey and Senator Stabenow from Michigan have already proposing giving USDA further direction do so. In particular, Senator Menendez’s bill expands support for programs that expand the connections between a healthy environment and healthy foods. Too many farmers offering to help improve the environment are turned away because USDA lacks the money to partner with them.

The Senate should also expand the Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program which provides free healthy snacks to school children. Run as a pilot under the 2002 Farm Bill, the program has been credited with getting kids excited about fruits and vegetables and improving the learning environment.

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives provided only enough funding for 35 schools per state to start new healthy snack programs. This will help less than 1 percent of the 94,000 public schools in America. The Senate should do better.

And too often, farmers are shut out from providing healthy local foods to schools in their own communities. Local farmers and children would benefit by expanding the ‘farm-to-Cafeteria’ program. This program helps schools set up purchasing arrangements with small local farms and retrofit school cafeterias to handle actual cooking as opposed to just reheating pre-packaged meals. Listen to Berkeley California school ‘lunch lady’ Ann Cooper talk about getting a healthy lunch in front of every child. Such local purchasing arrangement also helps keep local farms in business and provide open space and other benefits Americans value.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has announced that the Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program will be a priority for his Committee’s Farm Bill along with other children’s health and conservation priorities. This should include increased funding to help farmers convert to organic production, reducing the use of chemicals that end up in our rivers, lakes and bays.

There are 25 million children whose healthy future and environment depends in part upon the success of these programs.

Farm Bill conservation programs are more important than ever as farmers face increasing pressure to produce more and more corn to feed America’s growing appetite for ethanol.

Today, the Chesapeake Bay Commission – a multistate commission led by the state governments of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania – issued a new report on how rapid expansion of up to 300,000 new acres of corn production in the Chesapeake watershed could add another 5 million pounds of nitrogen pollution to the waters of the Bay. (Already in 2007, 160,000 acres of corn were planted in the watershed.) Corn is fertilized with an average of 150 lbs of nitrogen per acre. Much of this runs off into nearby water bodies because corn absorbs only 40 – 60 percent of that amount.

However, the Commission found that if cover crops were planted on these new and existing row crop acres those cover crops would reduce nitrogen flowing into the Bay by an estimated 17 million pounds. That’s a lot of nitrogen kept out of the Bay just by planting grass and other covers on winter fields!

Conservation programs like EQIP – the Environmental Quality Incentives Program – help farmers pay the costs of installing cover crops. However, two of three farmers applying for EQIP funding in the Chesapeake region and nationally are turned away because the programs lack enough funds. The Senate should expand funding for these and other conservation programs by at least $6.5 billion over 5 years to help farmers help the environment.

The report notes that cellulosic and other biofuels have even more promise for the environment of the Chesapeake.

Cellulosic biofuels and some technologies that convert animal waste to fuel have great potential to improve water quality while providing a climate-friendly fuel source for farmers and local citizens. Many Chesapeake counties are some of the top poultry producers in America.  Converting chicken waste into fuel could kill two birds with one stone – it reduces smelly waste that farmers cannot currently find enough uses for and can provide new revenue for farms. Another fuel – cow manure – is providing ‘cow power’ in Vermont.

Innovative renewable energy programs are already set up in the Farm Bill to fund the most environmentally beneficial renewable energy technologies. The Senate should fund Section 9003 and Section 9006 programs to help catalyze new energy development in the Chesapeake and nationwide.