In The New York Times this week, Michael Pollan, too, is less than buoyant, sensing that the “stake” in the American food system that Americans are clamoring for “is looking more like a toothpick.”  With dismay, he adds that “Like the House bill passed in July, the Senate product is very much a farm bill in the traditional let-them-eat-high-fructose-corn-syrup mold.”  He mentions, somewhat lamely, some of the alternative proposals that remain to be debated, but does not sound optimistic.

Carol Ness of the San Francisco Chronicle also registers disenchantment.  “I think we had a chance to make it a really great farm bill, and it turned out to be the same pork-belly politics,” she quotes disillusioned food activist Ann Cooper as saying.  “We didn’t get a food and farm bill, we got a fat bill,” said Dan Imhoff (author of Food Fight) glumly. 

Philip Brasher’s coverage for the Des Moines Register is the most equanimous, resisting judgment on either front, but does end with a sly kicker: “This bill is being written to please the folks in Wichita and Omaha, not Geneva.”  One commenter is somewhat less subtle: “I hope Harkin won’t try too hard to put lipstick on this pig.” 

There’s a summary of Farm Bill coverage on farmpolicy.com, but it is so dense that I can barely read it.  I’m sticking instead with Dan Owens’ frequent update of the debates on the dance floor at the Center for Rural America blog.  The fat lady hasn’t sung yet.  But from back here we can already see her tonsils, and they ain’t pretty.