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Why Local Food Works (And Doesn’t)

6 Dec

When you spend as much time reading food news coverage, you start to see the same stories cycling through over and over again. Not through any fault of the food writers or activists, but from persistant misconceptions about local/organic/vegetarian issues. One of the stories that just won’t seem to die is the myth that organic sustainable agriculture can’t feed the world. But as I reported last week, local food gets a similar bad rap. So I thought I would gather together some of the information available from food policy experts to explain why local food does work as a systematic means for feeding many.

First, let’s look at the basics of demand, the backbone of any sound economic decision. The USDA reports a consistent rise in the number of farmer’s markets operating across the nation, which certainly has risen to meet demand.

Given this reality, the USDA has commissioned some recent great research as to the limitations of local food markets. Why, the research asks, if demand is increasing, does local food still account for a relatively small segment of the food market? First, the report discovers that the share of the market is growing even more exponentially than the number of markets (so the number of markets are increasing, but so is the amount of money spent per market).

The smaller trends that emerge from this report, however, are where the most promising aspects of local food systems live:

  • 81 percent of the farm selling directly to consumers are small farms (making less than $50,000 a year) — so locally spent food dollars are more likely to support a small business
  • Farms that sell locally employ an average of 13 fulltime employees for every $1 million in sales, as opposed to just 3 fulltime employees per million in a globally-producing farm. So locally spent food dollars support four times as many workers (who, given the above, are also more likely to be members of the local spending economy as well).
  • Vegetable, fruit and nut farms dominate the local food markets. Not corn farms. Or soybean operations. So a locally spent food dollar is more likely to be spent on actual food, not global commodities trading.

Finally, the USDA report also addresses the main causes of hinderance on the local food economy, all of which can be addressed, and many of which would have additional positive economic and environmental benefits. Primary among these are access issues. Local producers are hampered by a shortage of processing facilities — an issue that especially affects local meat producers who often have standards for their meat processing. But potential customers for local foods are hindered both by an absence of information networks to find the local food and of transportation to the market or farm stand.

Which means local food has the potential to expand into other local industries, to encourage investment in the local economy and to increase community connection and involvement. These are the “inefficiencies” that concern local food nonbelievers–but they are actually opportunities.

Mark Bittman’s column this week illustrates a great example of how all this potential can come together to begin to shape an entirely new way of thinking about food. Local sourcing gives us the ability to reimagine our food system — to find new models for producer and consumer communication, or to work with integrative, biodynamic growing practices. These new models of buying and selling and growing food will be the future of a world with less oil.

I think the people who assert that local food can’t possibly be a solution are the same people who say we shouldn’t invest in renewable alternative sources of energy because none of them are efficient, affordable, or high-yielding enough to replace fossil fuels. We’re dealing with a paridigm disconnect. I don’t want the industrial food system to just be replace with a locally-source food system that produces and distributes the same products in the same way anymore than I want enough solar panels to power the entire United States.

Local food activists, just as renewable energy researchers, want a new system, a decentralized, smaller-scale system that never has to utter the phrase “too big to fail.”

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Links Roundup & Vindication

2 Dec

A few of this week’s most disturbing food news stories center around issues of food relating to children. Now, I’m not a parent, so I try my best to report on these issues without offering judgment. But this year (on Jan. 14th and then again on Nov. 16th) I became an honorary auntie to a couple of brand new bundles of hope and I already feel a fierce protectiveness towards them. The idea that kiddos in this country might be drinking apple juice laced with inorganic arsenic (a known carcinogen) makes me feel pretty fiesty.

Remember the San Francisco city law mandating nutritional standards for any fast food meals marketed towards children with a toy packaged in? Well, it officially goes into effect this Monday, and McDonald’s has found a way to keep the food, keep the toy, and not suffer a loss at all — just offer the toy as an option for an extra ten cents on the meal. Not really in keeping with the spirit of the law, I think…

We now live in a world where some children are so obese that they are being removed from their parents care on the grounds of neglect. So maybe the food industry system could work a little harder to keep kids healthy, too.

Now for some more hopeful news. The Iowa State (Go Cyclones!) Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture released last week its latest research on the production efficiency of organic versus conventional agriculture and the news is good across the board.

Jocelyn Zuckerman (former Gourmet editor) has a beautiful essay at OnEarth profiling innovative, sustainable farmers in high-density, high-poverty urban areas — in Africa. That’s like the trifecta of inspiration.

And finally, a little note of personal enjoyment. Last week, I made an argument on the blog that I couldn’t make to my composition class, comparing Joe Camel and the Trix Rabbit (among other processed food company icons). This week, I received in the mail a free copy of the newest edition of a composition text I’ve used before, with an anthology of readings included in the text. The readings are organized by subject, and this is one of the ‘controversial issues’ explored:

Welcome to 2011, folks — it’s the new food order. We’ve made it into the rhetoric texts. Happy Weekend, everyone!

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Nibbles: What We Didn’t Eat This Week, Inspired by Food Day

28 Oct

This week, on October 24th in particular, the United States celebrated our first ever Food Day with events around the country including cooking classes, garden planting and awareness-building campaigns. The notion behind Food Day was to model the highly successful Earth Day campaign to help the food movement transcend social and political boundaries. Here’s to many, many more, and the development of a fully realized movement as part of the general public consciousness.

In the spirit of Food Day, then, here are some links from around the web where we can all get our food consciousness raised.

Promising (if somewhat far-off) trends for the future of food this week coming out of Maine and Chicago, where politicians (or their wives) are finally beginning to take action for food. At a Let’s Move! food desert summit in Chicago, first lady Michelle Obama made a pledge to eradicate food deserts in the U.S. by 2017. And in even bolder legislative news (I know, right?), Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree announced a bill of sweeping structural reforms that would break down existing barriers and build infrastructure for small-scale local producers.

Pingree’s legislation is particularly remarkable for its recognition that these reforms would provide a much-needed boost to local economies. An essay by Tammy Morales this week explains the connection between job creation and  small-scale food entrepreneurs. A saying about two birds and one stone comes to mind…

Similarly, Mark Bittman reposted a letter from George Faison, New York area meat wholesaler, making the case to restaurants why investing in slightly more expensive organic, sustainable products is worth it in the long run (both economically and environmentally).

Let us not forget, however, that there is still work to be done. As a follow-up to last week’s mention of the House hearings on the Interagency Working Group’s recommendations to reduce junk food marketing to children, Marion Nestle posts a breakdown of how the talks are going. And it’s looking more and more like the agency will cave, giving up bits of even its relatively toothless voluntary regulations.

So keep up the pressure on your representatives, people. I promise you, Tony the Tiger is this decade’s Joe Camel. In twenty years, it will look ridiculous that we ever allowed our children to be sold this way.

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Nibbles: What We Didn’t Eat this Week

21 Oct

This week was a tough one for me from an activist perspective. A few major things happened that brought to life connections I knew (abstractly) existed between corporate system control, climate change and the devastation of our food system. And side-by-side with those events, a few news items about those corporations clinging desperately to the old world order, refusing to acknowledge that anything has to change.

Let’s use links to walk through some of this together…

It all started when the island nation of Tuvalu ran out of water. We officially live in the post-climate change world, folks. An entire nation is currently surviving off of emergency aid water. Sure, it will be awhile before these kinds of consequences reach the soils of industrialized nations, but it’s coming.

The consequences of global climate devastation we’re already beginning to see hit our food and water supplies first, and hardest. For the full connection between food and geopolitics explained, check out Lester Brown’s great article from this summer’s Foreign Policy food issue.

Then, you can read Frederick Kaufman’s accompanying article to learn how speculative commodities trading led directly to the current food crisis, banging its head up against climate change in what will — I’m not being hyperbolic at all here — be a global disaster of magnitude.

And yet… a new report by Food & Water Watch this week demonstrates that, rather than federal subsidies, the deregulation of commodities markets leads to an overproduction of “junk food” crops.

And a consumer advocacy group filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over PepsiCo & Frito-Lay’s use of “deceptive and unfair digital marketing tactics” to promote junk food to kids in direct violation of the FTC Act.

And Monsanto is selling an 1950s-era pesticide, rife with dioxin, to farmers whose superweeds can no longer be defeated with RoundUp.

All of which makes me want to scream: A country ran out of water on our watch this week, people! This is no longer business-as-usual.

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Eating Well on Wall Street

14 Oct

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the Occupy Wall Street movement (as it has certainly become more than an individual protest now) and I find this pretty rad. I could certainly go on about just how inspiring it is to finally see my generation standing up for something, and to finally see this whole social media experiment working to some positive mobilizing effects, many many people have already written about it and have done so much more articulately than I could.

But I thought I’d use this week’s link roundup post to feature some of the great writing that’s been done connecting the food movement to the Wall Street uprising.

Civil Eats had two great posts today: one on the connection between the anti-corporate sentiments of the protests and the food movement, and another on the push for social equality in food justice alongside corporate accountability.

Similarly, Tom Philpott this week writes about the misperception that agriculture isn’t big business, and takes the Farm Action Bureau to task. It’s heartening to see smart people finally calling out Big Ag as the corporate lobbying powerhouse it is.

I wrote last week that I believe the social justice aspects of the food movement were perfectly compatible with the desire for good, artisanal food, and I see the two pieces coming together in Occupy Wall Street in a way that’s really promising for the future of the movement. The Food Committee has developed a pretty fancy makeshift kitchen in the park, full of donations, many of which are from local and/or socially-conscious businesses.

GOOD magazine has a really cool short piece on the symbolism of protest food, launching from pizza on Wall Street.

Word is, the city of New York plans to remove the protestors this weekend, at the request of the park’s private owners. We’ll see how this plays out, both on and off Wall Street. But if you were waiting to help, to contribute, to participate, now is the time. Get your activist on!

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Foodies for Affordability

3 Oct

This past winter, Scott showed me this essay from The Atlantic, a sprawling piece whose central complaint is that foodies, by caring too much about food that tastes good and is artisanal in its production, are not as morally superior as we would like to believe. Myers, a vegan and member of the Green party, suggests that true moral superiority lies only in vegetarianism, a diet whose virtue is its smaller carbon footprint and accessibility.

I didn’t agree with Myers then, and I don’t now, but I don’t want to talk here today about the problems with his assertion in favor of vegetarianism (though I will sometime). Mostly, I want to refute the growing notion that being someone who cares about food that tastes good and is well-made is incongruous with social justice.

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Recently, I mentioned Slow Food USA’s $5 Challenge. If  you missed the earlier post, the idea behind the $5 challenge was for at-home chefs to host local potlucks featuring a meal that was produced with local, sustainable food for less than $5 per person — less than the cost of the average fast food value meal.

Just the act of organizing such an event is evidence enough to suggest that people can love food and want everyone to be able to afford it. But a recent Bittman column mentions an underlying value to the style of education at play here. By asking people to open their homes and share meals, Slow Food was not simply sponsoring an act of charity, but rather one of sharing domestic knowledge. Some people know how to buy and cook real food — usually by a happy coincidence of birth, culture or household income — and how to do it without breaking the bank. Why not get a bunch of people together and show how its done.

This is a reassertion of a formative American value. Think of times past when this kind of communal domesticity was a necessity — the victory gardens of World War II, the trade and barters of the Depression-era tent cities. In the midst of the United States’ Great Recession, what could be more equal-minded than a return to the exchange of ideas and goods, than placing that exchange not in a public sphere of speculative financial trading, but in the home itself?

We’re not talking about selling $17 loaves of bread at the Orange County Farmer’s Market. We’re talking about people all over the country doing something as simple and as meaningful as opening their homes to their neighbors to share.

And the people doing the sharing are us snotty, elitist foodies.

It seems to me than it’s people who care first and foremost about food’s quality that are responsible for making the larger social connection between quality and sustainability, quality and health, quality and social justice. Without foodies, we might continue to believe the myths that local food is more expensive, or that cooking is for rich people with the time to care, or that poor people don’t have the luxury of real food.

A response to this notion that gourmands can care about both food quality and food equality might ask why we split our energy at all. Why not prioritize access and affordability to real food over anything else? Why worry at all about frivolous expenses like supporting local butcher shops or artisan cheese producers. Let’s get some damn vegetables on everyone’s table, first, whatever it takes. Microbrews later.

Why care about food that takes more time to make and tastes better, too? My answer is because people have to want to eat better to succeed at eating better. Our brains are wired to trick us into eating junk food, and we’re working against decade’s of corporate marketing. Deciding to cook again requires working against urges that have been long embedded in our bodies and our psyches.

And if your only experience with a head of lettuce comes from the wilting basket on the counter at the corner convenience store, and its been sitting there for a week and was shipped halfway across the country (or globe) before that, that lettuce is going to be gross, and you are going to buy the bag of Doritos for a side dish instead.

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At the beginning of our very first graduate workshop with him, my future thesis advisor Ben Percy passed out little slips of paper with the same Harry Crews’ quote printed on each one. They read:

“You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That’s what I’ve discovered about writing. The world doesn’t want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read — if you wait for the time, you’ll never do it. Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.” 
I’ve kept that piece of paper, in binders and tacked up on office walls and now, next to a bowl of water on my writing desk, as a reminder that, fundamentally, everything in this world worth doing takes hard work to do. Yes, I’m saying that I think even Harry Crews would have felt the way I do about being a foodie (though he surely would have despised the term foodie as much as I do).

I’ve learned that it’s worth it to take that time, but I know that I was lucky to be able to learn that lesson. I know not everyone has the schedule that I do, or the bank account I do, not everyone comes from a family that values food and family dinners the way mine did, that not everyone has a family member whose dietary needs got all of ours in check at a very young age. But we’re talking about a shift in cultural priority, and that kind of shift has to start somewhere.

It starts with me. It starts with each of us not being afraid or ashamed of caring about food, not hiding our dietary desires, and not accepting the elitist labels the corporate world wants to stick on us. Foodies are the people out there who can teach us that this is worth it, but yes, we have to do it against a current social stigma that suggests that having this kind of time is selfish, indulgent, or for rich people. That’s not the truth – that’s industry marketing. Make more time for cooking by watching less TV (and, seriously, I love tv). Cook with your family.

Foodies may have originated as people who just really preferred market bread and raw oysters, but they have evolved. Because people who value quality know that you have to value the person who produces it. They celebrate the farmer and the soil, and above all, they celebrate knowing where your food comes from and what it takes to get it on the table. If we all cared about those things, we’d have a better, smarter food system, and that system would be capable of producing food we could all afford.

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Food & Government in All the Wrong Places

23 Sep

Here are a few relevant links from around the web this week, many of which involve federal or state government involvement in food. Unfortunately, it seems that the government isn’t where it should be, and is where it shouldn’t be, which is both annoying and counter-productive.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite Carter campaign worker turned anti-light bulb activist: Michelle Bachman, who, at a campaign event in Des Moines this week, said the U.S. government should scale back regulations on meat packing plants.

I think someone probably needs to tell Bachman about the recent re-infestation of Carghill’s contaminated turkey plant, which began producing salmonella-infected turkey just weeks after being shut down for salmonella contamination and implementing new testing measures. Or about the rampant overuse of antibiotics that directly cause harm to Americans, even under existing regulations. Or about the recent GAO report that admits the USDA does not currently have the data to even adequately monitor, let alone scale back, such antibiotic use.

But yes, by all means, Ms. Bachman, use one of the most dangerous and unregulated industries as a talking point in your bigoted campaign of Social Darwinism (whoa, guess I’ve been holding that one in a bit).

And on the other hand, the U.S. PIRG has compiled a report on agricultural subsidies that conclusively demonstrates just how much money the federal government spends subsidizing junk foods (in the form of corn products) in contrast to fresh produce.

A 21-year-old Real Food Fellow in Mississippi was recently arrested and therefore was unable to participate in the Food & Freedom Rides, a new movement to raise awareness of and protest food system inequalities. Her crime? Hanging flyers in the neighborhood to promote an event.

You know what? I changed my mind. I agree with Michelle Bachman that there are some things the government should keep its hands out of. One is subsidizing childhood obesity. Another is free speech.

Otherwise, get in there and do your job, regulators. Mount up. (Yeah, I made a Warren G reference.) Happy weekend, everyone!

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Where Does Wal-Mart Fit Into the Food Revolution?

19 Sep

Wal-Mart’s made food news again this week with the donation of $1 million to Milwaukee’s urban farming mecca, Growing Power. As a result, a familiar conversation is kicking up over the role of large corporations in systematic changes to the food system.

Will Allen of Growing Power thus joins the ranks of non-profit leaders who must explain their fundraising practices, here making the argument that the food movement would do well to welcome large markets like Wal-Mart into the fold. Perhaps the most famous former supporter of such an alliance is Gary Hirschberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farms, who made such an argument in, among other places, the movie Food, Inc.

Like it or not, it seems, Wal-Mart will always be a factor. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart announced an initiative in conjunction with the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign to stock healthier foods and keep produce prices low. This chart from The Economist shows the corporation as the third-largest employer in the world (second only to the U.S. and Chinese armies), and they aren’t going anywhere.

Organic food. Local food. Urban growing. What’s not to love, right? Is Wal-Mart developing a social conscience?

My take isn’t so optimistic. I think Wal-Mart wouldn’t be as big as it is were it not for savvy CEOs, and any businessman with a pulse can see that consumers are demanding more and better food options. And while some argue that it is Wal-Mart’s sheer size that makes it a valuable ally in the food movement (almost every link above includes the phrase “big enough to make a difference,”) I’m skeptical of using growth and anti-labor bargaining as a tool for that change, simply because it’s a tool already being employed by corporations.

Call me Pollyanna, but I hope for a food (and social justice) future that eschews the ‘bigger is better’ mantra of the past. If Wall Street was too big to fail, why can’t we see Wal-Mart as too big to do good?

But I’d love to hear what you think? Are Wal-Mart’s efforts to improve its food offerings genuine? Does that even matter? Should the food movement include or exclude large corporations? Can we afford to?

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The Big Picture of Food’s Future (Links)

16 Sep

Lots of coverage this week of the USDA’s new E. coli ban, so there isn’t too much breaking-news style policy to cover in our links round-up. But I’m rather happy for the respite, as it gives us a chance to reflect on the general state of the food movement, and where we go from here. So here are some big picture question & answer links for your weekend reading pleasure.

First and foremost, here’s a quick & easy action link you should all follow right now.  Remember how last week I wrote about the food industry push-back against the voluntary request of the federal government to please stop selling junk food to kids? Well, the folks at EWG are collecting signatures on a letter that will go to 13 CEOs. You can sign here, and the spread the word to your social networks to add your voice to the (perfectly reasoned and quite polite) fray.

Now on to the future…

The food movement grandaddy, Michael Pollan (who hopefully doesn’t think that I’m calling him old), has a fantastic piece in The Nation this week on the next big challenge for the food movement, transitioning from a shift in the public consciousness to systematic, policy changes. His interesting take? Our greatest ally may be the healthcare industry, also, as we know, in need of serious reform.

And there are a few exciting activities that might help us get there. Saturday, I will be doing my own version of Slow Food USA’s $5 challenge, in which we’re tasked with preparing an awesome slow food meal for only $5 a person — less than the cost of a fast food “value” meal. Take the pledge to join in, or find a potluck near you!

Even if you don’t want to be an “official” participant, here are a few great resources — from Eating Well magazine and NPR — with tips for cooking healthy on the cheap, always useful information.

Finally — and this, I have to say, I am majorly food-nerding out over — the announcement came this week of the launch of a new day of action and awareness: Food Day. Modeled after the Earth Day campaign, Food Day will be an annual event on Oct. 24th full of information and action: policy campaign kick-offs, cooking lessons, farm tours, film nights, public or private dinners in homes or public spaces, school curricula, filmmaking contests, protests, declarations of new city priorities, and announcements of changes to institutional food-buying or vending practices.

WOW, RIGHT?! I can’t wait to be a part of this new phase of action in a movement I believe has the potential to shape our future in meaningful ways.

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Potential Pitfalls of Local Food Markets

12 Sep

We all know I’m a huge advocate of buying your food as locally as possible, for both environmental and economic reasons. On top of these quantifiable benefits, the sense of pride in your own community that comes from financially and physically investing in it is immeasurable.

But it’s important to remember that local isn’t the gold standard (or at least not the only one) when it comes to shopping for sustainable food. This is true in terms of what foods are available locally, but also of the business models and practices of the vendors selling there. A few conversations with friends recently have brought to light a few potential pitfalls to be aware of when shopping at your local food sources.

First, remember that local does not always mean sustainable in every sense of the word. As someone who spent the last three years in a town where Tyson and DeCoster Eggs were both “local food producers,” I can attest to this. Now Carghill may not have a booth at your local market, but the reality is the same. Don’t expect that just because you’re buying your food from a farmer in the area that the methods used on that farm are in keeping with your ideal.

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t buy from them. For me, as for many others, there is very rarely a perfect option when it comes to food. Here in Hays, for example, I have to choose between industrially produced organic produce, shipped in from California at my grocery store chain, or produce grown locally on a family farm in my county, that is not organically produced. Actually, I usually choose a little of both, to keep variety in my diet — this way I can get California organic kale and conventional Kansas zucchini.

But it’s important that you’re aware of the potential limitations in the availability of organic produce or humanely-raised and processed meat. Sustainable Table has a series of great questions you can ask of your local producers, if their methods aren’t apparent in booth advertising at the market, to get the info you need to feel comfortable making a purchase.

The same goes for value-added foods. You should be as careful reading labels at the farmer’s market as at the grocery store when it comes to processed or value-added foods such as honey, canned produce, deli meats or cheeses. Even a farmer that raises his hogs humanely — and even organically — may not have access to a production facility that processes his pork into deli ham without inputting nitrates (as someone I know recently learned after the ham was already in the fridge).

In many cases, even the original farmer may find this regrettable, but even in environments where local food is a flourishing industry, limitations still exist on slaughterhouses and cheese-making facilities that make “post-production” a challenge beyond the farmer’s control. In other cases, the farmer may have a different set of values, or a different definition of what constitutes healthy or sustainable processing — just as we all do, as individuals. While we might all be able to agree on the serious health consequences of nitrates, there are varied opinions even among farmers about whether it’s better to pasteurize their milk, or heat their honey, rather than selling them raw. So if those distinctions matter to you, make sure to read the label carefully, or ask the question, rather than just assume you’re on the same page because it’s a farmer you can talk to in person.

Finally, think about ethics beyond food. Yes, even at the farmer’s market, you might meet producers with world views that aren’t in keeping with yours. Scott watched a farmer at his local market turn away several customers who wanted to make produce purchases with their LINK cards (the electronic debit cards of the food stamp program) — even though this particular market does welcome food stamps, and even though Illinois is actually the state with the second highest expenditure of LINK dollars at farmer’s markets.That is to say, there was no easily identifiable reason why a producer at this market would not accept food stamps — unless he personally disagreed with the notion.

This may seem a dubious assumption to make, but it calls to mind an important point. For me, buying local, organic and otherwise sustainable food is as much a choice of social justice as it is of environmental ethics or health benefits. I buy this food because I think it’s my responsibility, as someone who believes in the necessity of sustainable food for our long-term health, to “subsidize” the burgeoning industry with my food dollars. I can afford it, and I know not everyone can yet, so I buy this way in the belief that increased demand increases supply, which equalizes affordability.

That belief stops dead in its tracks if my food dollars are spent with a producer who doesn’t participate in this cycle. That’s why I don’t buy organic produce from Wal-Mart, no matter what their selection. And it’s why it should matter to you what your farmer’s market vendors support, as well.

You don’t need to hold your producers to unreasonable standards — it doesn’t bother me, for example, to buy loaves of bread from devout religious farmers, though I don’t share their values. It would bother me to buy from someone who abuses their workers or chooses not to support local slaughterhouses when they are available. In other words, someone who isn’t helping to cycle those food dollars back through our shared local economy, to help make their sustainable food available to any who want it.

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