| We have to start asking why we still have food banks in richest country in the world? We have 50k places where people can get emergency food. Why do we spend 60 billion/yr in food assistance programs (food stamps, wic, etc.) and yet hunger and food insecurity is the same as when we first started measuring hunger in 1996? It's not much different than 10, 12, 20 yrs ago. Our programs don't do more than manage poverty. It's not enough just to make donations, or advocate for food stamps. It's important to get to the root causes. Ask state, local, fed govt to take poverty seriously and end the real cause of hunger in this country.
Q: Aren't there enough inexpensive healthy foods? No one forces poor people eat junk.
A: In the 8th ward of DC, if you're looking for a cheeseburger, fried chicken or a sandwich, you'll do pretty well. You won't find fresh veggies, you won't find affordable healthy food. The same percentage of people are poor as are obese. I call it the Urban Food Desert. 800 counties in the country are food deserts - more than 20 miles to a food store. This is the result of the abandonment of our communities by the American grocery industry. They walk away from the poorest parts of the city. Public transit also failed. It didn't connect people to the supermarkets in the 'burbs. People are forced to shop at small mom & pop stores, bodegas, etc., where the food choices are limited. You have to be really committed to eat well: go long distance, make really good decisions about how to use food dollars to buy the best food possible. If you're coming out of our public schools, you won't be prepared to buy and prepare good foods. Families that haven't learned to prepare food well will not be able to pass that info down to their children. We're not providing that info in our public programs. All the programs that provide nutrition info to low income families are underfunded.
Q: You've done excellent work on local level food policy, what can we do in our communities?
A: A lot of the action is in DC. The Farm Bill, Child Nutrition bill, etc. Better options at state and local level: All kinds of opportunities to have your voice heard, talk about how food is produced in your community. Work on how to make sure poor people in car dependent communities can get good food. Develop food policy councils - groups of local stake holders with the intent of coordinating their work in the local food system and influence policy at state and local level.
One example relating to apple cider production:
A farmer ended up with e-coli in cider, people got sick, the state over-reacted and imposed regulations that would shut down all small producers in state. A food council intervened, brought dept of agriculture together with educators to work with producers. They hired a person to be in charge of helping the small farmers to produce healthfully, saving the farms while still protecting public health.
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Judith
Small and sustainable farmer
Q: It is said that we won't be able to feed the world if everyone farms organically.
A: Rumors that organic farming will starve the world are bad science funded by industrial agriculture.
In human terms: say someone is eating nothing but terrible junk food. You say: we'll make you healthy. Here, eat just apples. That doesn't work. That's similar to the studies at the land grant universities. They took chemically saturated land, stopped using the chemicals, then a grew cover crop or used only one kind of organic fertilizer, and looked at the results and declared it doesn't work.
But that's not organics. Organic agriculture is a systematic approach. Examine the soil, examine the microbes, use livestock to fertilize, grow cover crops, rotate crops, etc. If you do this you get a very different result.
Q: Study by USDA on organic ??? (nut) orchards
A: 5 yrs into the program, finding more nuts, bigger nuts, and MUCH higher anti-oxidants. They're now cutting funding for the program. Calling it organic seems to be the issue.
Q: How do we support small farms?
A: Besides going out and financially supporting them by buying from them directly and shopping farmer's markets, we need to deal with policy. HUGE Industrial ag (Tyson, Cargill) are creating the policy, and creating huge problems in our farm policy (social justice, animal welfare, pollution). These in turn create food safety and health problems. Then they deflect the problem: mountains of manure, we'll regulate them to "protect wetlands." Then they subject ALL farms to these regs - even the tiny ones that are designed to prevent these problems to begin with. This process drives small farms out of business.
We need consumers to tell policy makers to control big ag excesses, but realize that's a broken system to begin with, make the policy that doesn't ream small farms.
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Michelle Simon
author: "Appetite for Profit"
Q: Average people: isn't it a parent's responsibility to make sure their child eats well? Why should the govt be involved in what people eat?
A: There's a national debate about why people aren't eating the right way. Why are there increasing health problem with not just adults, but with children. It has recently been recommended that we start giving cholesterol lowering drugs to children.
How did this happen? How can we fix it?
Major food cos are convincing American public policy makers not to do anything about advertising. "There's nothing to look at here."
The message is: "Parent's you need to do a better job" But that's nothing more than a deflection of criticism. PR is the name of the game.
Food industry must hook consumers while they're young. Industry undermines parental authority with their advertising and promotions. As increasing tech has given advertisers more means to target kids, kids are being given new ways to go behind their parents' backs.
So we have to HELP parents do their jobs. We don't say "Parents that's up to you" about child pornography, about cars speeding on residential roads, and so on, so why would we do that about nutrition?
Q: Why isn't "good corp citizenship" causing companies to self-regulate?
A: If you look at latest snack food offerings, you'll see "trans-fat free!" or "0 trans-fats!" because it helps their bottom line without changing anything about the healthfulness of the food.
Corporations are bound by law to make money for their shareholders [and maximize those earnings]. We can't leave it to voluntary methods because there's no moral element in corp decision making - the only goal is money.
Some results: SpongeBob is now on baby carrots, spinach, etc. It's not the answer. Need to get food marketing out of the way entirely. Let them eat when they're hungry, and give them real foods. Voluntary self-regulation won't solve the problem. Cannot and will not work.
If they start doing the voluntary self-regulation, they do it until they stop doing it. That's the way voluntary self-regulation works and has always worked.
Q: Why isn't it enough for us to act as individual consumers?
A: It's too small a portion of the population, and they're stopping with themselves "I'm shopping at a farmer's market, game over." It's not enough that the affluent can get good healthy food. Everyone has an obligation to ensure that everyone else has the SAME access to good, healthy food.
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Margaret Cohn
Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture
Q: '08 farm bill - how can we make sure it's implemented.
A: We got some important gains - program to promote farmer's markets. Got $1 mil/yr prev yrs. NOW $3/$5/$10/$10 over the next 4 yrs. Major increases in organic research and extension. To retain those gains: USDA is the implementer. The bill is the framework, USDA determines how it looks when implemented.
Conservation security program is an example - nationwide program USDA tried to prevent. So USDA schedules sign-ups at height of farming season, so farmers won't have the time to sign-up.
A new administration will help. There are mechanisms for getting information about national policy advocacy. Action alerts. [join the mailing list]
Q: Ways to influence bills
A: The distinction betw auth (farm bill every 5 yrs) and appropriations (annual). Appropriations power lies at ag subcommittee of appropriations committee. So we focus our campaign on the members of that subcommittee. A lot of what happens is done without constituent ever seeing the priorities letter coming out of subcommittee via letter to ag chair.
Once we have our program, we have to ask the subcommittee what they will give us, they give us the smallest, easiest to implement piece. If we want something more, we need Nebraskans getting back to Nebraska's legislator, etc. I want to hear back about how to do this more effectively.
Has anyone here written on state or local blogs? That's where the politicians look.
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