Healthy food, healthy farms… Aren’t these two things sort of granted in the modern age? Didn’t Upton Sinclair already help us realize how yucky and unhealthy the food industry was ages ago? If so, we shouldn’t need this conversation today… But we do, don’t we?

From antibiotics to crammed factory farming in the grossest conditions imaginable, our food’s journey to our tables is nothing short of vomit-inducing. In fact, most people (myself included) are either turned off meat forever or temporarily after witnessing footage from the meat industry—or even simply a movie like Fast Food Nation. We know what we eat is pretty damn disgusting, but given the choice to eat or not eat, we eat, don’t we? And given the choice to eat cheaply or to eat expensively, well, most of us opt for cheap out of necessity.

We can, of course, change these conditions. There are a number of ways to do this, from buying locally to growing our own food to passing certain legislative measures. We can ask the Senate to refrain from making cuts to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, too.

This program helps farmers maintain their lands that provide us with food. It doesn’t go to factory farms, but to American farmers working to sustainably grow food and raise livestock in cleaner, healthier conditions. The Childhood Nutrition Act—which is a great piece of legislation that helps meet the nutritional needs of children across America—was recently reinstated (as it requires to be every five years), and it will increase funding for farm-to-school programs—something our children will surely benefit from. So many schools serve mostly or all processed foods, which only adds to the unhealthiness and obesity epidemic facing kids today. In this light, the Act will help schools, farmers, and children.

Though something that our nation definitely needs, it will be taking money from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program this time around. We need to ask Congress to find funding elsewhere for the Act and to not cut the Incentives Program for farmers, who are already struggling as it is. Like America’s Farmland Trust says, “We must make sure that farmers have support for maintaining the health of farmland, which is a key ingredient in producing healthy food.” And indeed, the Farm to School Program must remain as well.

To your Senator and tell her or him that you support both of these programs and that neither should be cut for the other, please click here for information on how to call, a sample script to use, and more information.