Understanding the 2012 Farm Bill: The "Hackathon"

Comparison between government nutrition recommendations and federal agriculture subsidies in FoodTech Connect's entry in the Farm Bill Hackathon

The Farm Bill is a pretty dense document, with such complicated subsidy structures and a huge variety of programs, that it is a challenge for experts to follow and completely inaccessible to many of the people it effects the most: consumers and farmers.  The 2008 Farm Bill is very difficult to read, as Marion Nestle points out in her column in The Atlantic even for experts, and the 2012 Farm Bill shapes agricultural policy for the next five years, which also determines what kind of food Americans will be eating for the next five years.

To break apart the Farm Bill to the essentials, GRACE Communications Foundation sponsored a "Hackathon" to bring together sustainable food advocates and computer programs to create infographics and online tools to communicate the important points of the Farm Bill, and what our country (and even the world) needs from the 2012 bill.

Teams created different tools and slideshows, as entries in the Hackathon, which was also a contest to create the best powerpoints.

Watch the winning entry:

A Clean Bill of Health

View more presentations from FoodTechConnect

There are a variety of Farm Bill Hackathon slides in this slideshow, which highlighted the stark contrast between Food Want and Food Waste.

Read more at:
Food and Tech Connect
Grist.com

Best,
Kristiane