Farm Bill Budget Visualizer

Posted by on November 07, 2011

Farm Bill Budget Visualizer

The Farm Bill Budget Visualizer, a project of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, uses interactive “treemap” technology to share information about the budget of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, aka the 2008 Farm Bill. Treemapping uses nested rectangles to display data, allowing users to “see” the federal funding received by programs within the Bill, and to examine how funding has been allocated across a range of issues from public health to commodity grain production to conservation.

The Farm Bill is a multi-faceted piece of federal legislation with broad impact across U.S. food and agriculture systems. Farm Bill programs play a central role in shaping what food is available, how it is produced, food security, environment, equity, farmer livelihoods, and rural development, and also have significant international impacts. Because it plays these roles, the Farm Bill is also, importantly, a public health bill. The Farm Bill is reauthorized approximately every five years and is up for reauthorization in 2012.

The primary goal of the Budget Visualizer is to serve as an education aid that will improve understanding of the Bill, and that will help users identify and share information about issues of concern. The Visualizer and its underlying budgetary data (not otherwise available) will also be useful to advocates, policy-makers, researchers and the media.

The Farm Bill Budget Visualizer was inspired by food system advocate, Marjorie Roswell, who created a prototype in the lead-up to the 2008 farm bill.

http://www.jhsph.edu/clf/programs/visualizer/