This is reflected in the attention urban farmers have garnered in the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other media outlets. It can be seen in the plethora of food movement documentaries like Food, Inc., Edible City, and Growing Cities. The idea of farming as a viable city activity has been further bolstered by initiatives like the White House garden. The founder of urban farming organization Growing Power, Will Allen, was even given the MacArthur “Genius” Award in 2008, in what some might pinpoint as the point of arrival for urban agriculture as a social force in the United States.

But there is an aspect of urban agriculture (UA) that is often overlooked: Economic and social class dynamics. In some places, UA is driven by money-poor populations, as a means to food self sufficiency or income generation. In other locations (like San Francisco, where I live), it seems to be predominantly a pastime, or an individually-meaningful act of political conscience, pursued mainly by the college educated and those of middle class backgrounds.

This could be a simple result of the economics of residing in San Francisco: The median monthly rent is now $3,000 and no matter how you cut it, gardening isn’t likely to pay that rent. So those who spend time gardening for free (or pursuing the woefully few and underpaid jobs in UA) are very likely either young and unencumbered, rich enough to not spend all their time hustling just to survive, or lucky enough to have one of the few cheap rent controlled apartments left.

The San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance (SFUAA), which I helped found in 2010, has increasingly been involved in the practice of changing municipal policy to support UA. In doing this work, the SFUAA has had to confront what it means to represent populations doing UA, while—whether intentionally or not—not representing other, more marginalized populations in San Francisco.

Though “food justice” motivates many in the SFUAA, the reality of our organization has been that many of SF’s poorest populations (the people most at risk of food insecurity, as well as the vicissitudes of gentrifying neighborhoods and inflating housing costs) are inadvertently left out of these policy discussions. With this in mind, the SFUAA recently adopted a position statement on gentrification and its relation to urban agriculture.

This statement (full disclosure: I did spearhead its writing) is intended to address the racial and class dynamics plaguing UA, as just one aspect of the broader food movement. It won’t necessarily solve the problems of gentrification, or of the “unbearable whiteness of organic food,” but statements like these can position food movement organizations within a context of a much broader social movement, for justice, democracy, and environmental sanity.

As head of the Organic Consumers Association Ronnie Cummins recently wrote in his piece for commondreams.org, we need to break down the silos of our diverse social movements if we intend to make substantial change in any one silo. In his words, we need to “harmonize our discourse, broaden our alliances, and bring together the myriad currents of a U.S. and global movement for survival and revival.”

I argued similarly back in 2009, asking food activists to take a more holistic approach of “political ecology” in conceiving of and addressing food sustainability issues. Now, as a leader in the SFUAA, I have to figure out how to implement this idea in practice. Beyond the writing and official adoption of our statement, we intend to follow up by communicating our values and intentions to organizations that represent the more marginalized of San Franciscans (organizations which may or may not already be involved in urban agriculture-related work or programming) with the hopes of collaborating on initiatives that suit our mutual interests. We also hope to more generally expand awareness, mutual understanding, and mutual aid between different and differing groups in our city.

It’s important that a group like ours (and, I would argue, all food movement organizations that are predominantly white, educated, or upper middle class) does not attempt to address race or class issues out of guilt. Instead, action can be built from the awareness that, as so beautifully stated by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.” Strategies and campaigns that move from this awareness will seek struggles that connect, reach accord where none was obvious, and will therefore be more likely to succeed. In addition to outward success, they will simultaneously build communities of compassion and thus “larger loyalties” that will serve justice over the long term.

UA is particularly well suited to spark these kinds of connections, since cities are where many communities intersect, by choice or by chance. Cities are less the “melting pots” that many would claim or desire, but still, they hold promise in allowing diverse communities easy physical, communicative access to each other. The dynamics of public spaces, political processes, and communities of interest that define urbanity can be called upon to push an integration of ideas, interests, and efforts to create a new, healthier, more just, and sustainable society.

To end on a concrete example: The SFUAA was recently approached by a newly-elected freshman state assemblyman, asking for a meeting to discuss potential legislative initiatives he might advance in support of urban agriculture. In discussions within the SFUAA, it was obvious that (while we do see some state-wide reforms that could aid UA work directly) we felt there were more pressing concerns facing our state, and more priority policy reforms that could aid UA indirectly (say, by raising state revenue levels in general, the kinds that might be put forth into resources for local UA projects) while also supporting the goals of other non-UA sectors whose values are in line with ours.

For example, I would like to see higher education funding levels restored if not expanded. With that expansion, often-discussed but never implemented “green job” training programs at our local community college are far more likely to get off the ground. This would result in more actual jobs for experienced UA educators, more training opportunities for UA practitioners, and a city-wide integration of ecoliteracy education and sustainability-related projects and initiatives.

Further, because community colleges are designed to be economically accessible to many, and have already entered into diverse communities of San Francisco, such a new program would reach more students than our UA community’s educational offerings tend to. This could have the effect of diversifying UA in San Francisco, and further connecting our work with the important struggles occurring beyond UA.

In the end, what matters is that we keep up a critical awareness of our work and its context. Urban agriculture may be great, and it is certainly worth the interest it has piqued. But how can that interest (and that potential greatness) be leveraged into something bigger? That, to me, is the 21st Century challenge—not only to urban agriculturists like myself, but to all communities with a stake in the better social and ecological world we are trying to bring about.

Last month urban agriculture advocates in San Francisco got another piece of legislation to celebrate. City government once again came out to support the growing of food within this dense city, this time by mandating that an “urban agriculture program” be organized. The program will help coordinate existing programs within and between city agencies that touch food production (including the Recreation and Parks Department’s community gardens, the Department of the Environment’s urban orchard work, and the Public Utilities Commission’s water-saving education efforts), as well as look into new ways to expand and improve urban agriculture opportunities (including an audit of city-owned rooftops with potential for gardens or beekeeping; the development of incentives for private landowners to lease undeveloped land to urban ag projects; and–perhaps most importantly–the creation of materials resource centers, where urban agriculturists of all sorts can find the compost, mulch, and materials needed to successfully grow more food).

As a co-coordinator for the SF Urban Agriculture Alliance, a grassroots volunteer group supporting local urban agriculture projects and their respective goals, I am happy that we not only achieved the passage of such legislation, but achieved a more difficult goal: funding for the program. In these days of austerity and endless cuts, our members’ advocacy, and the support of particular city Supervisors (in particular, David Chiu, the legislation’s sponsor, and John Avalos, chair of the Budget committee) were crucial to ensuring that the program would not just exist on paper. The budgeting process is a complex and mystifying beast, but we tamed it, and came out with $120,000 for implementation of the program in the coming fiscal year.

Although the legislation isn’t perfect (there is the possibility that the funding will largely end up going to an urban-ag-ignorant bureaucrat, paid $100,000 a year to be ineffectual), it helps us with what we need to be more successful–as individual backyard growers, as community and communal farmers, and as a city government–in growing local food for local people. And being part of the political process–warts and all–gives us more experience, and thus more efficacy to achieve the changes we hope to see.

Once the strategic plan is completed by the City Administrator’s office (by December 2012), an evaluation will determine whether this program is best housed in a particular city agency, or an NGO. My personal view is that almost every potential city agency has more liabilities than assets to manage such a program, and that an NGO with widespread, true community connections and urban agriculture experience would be better suited for the job. Unfortunately, since the demise of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG), no such NGO has emerged. So for the urban agriculture movement in San Francisco, our work is far from over. We must remain committed to holding the city accountable in accomplishing their stated goals (such as, among other important issues, supporting urban agriculture), whether from the outside or (should an NGO take on the program eventually) the inside.

Legislative success is certainly a moment to celebrate for any movement (Three Cheers!). But any progressive legislation’s success ultimately relies on a committed, passionate, strategic, and intelligent group of citizens and residents consistently engaged: working with allies in government, holding officials accountable, applying political pressure, and demanding change when it is needed.

We all know that “Every Day is Earth Day” and many environmentalists feel that their eating habits are their daily affirmation of a commitment to the planet. But what does it look like to take action for the environment, beyond the fork? There are many options, of course, but one particularly inspirational tactic manifested this past Earth Day in Albany, CA.

On April 22, a week after the International Day of Peasant Struggle, hundreds of Bay Area food sovereignty activists and community members broke the locks on a huge piece of urban agricultural land, tore up mustard weeds, and planted veggies. “Occupy the Farm” was organized as an occupy-style protest, including tent encampments and a “farmers assembly,” but with one very meaningful difference: This act of “moral obedience” (AKA civil disobedience) was the direct outgrowth of years of neighborhood organizing around the piece of land in question.

The “Gill Tract” is a 10-acre parcel that has been owned by University of California, Berkeley since 1928. The university’s founding as a land grant college made the purchase of this Class 1 agricultural land an obvious choice for experimentation, and for years much of the property was used for biological and chemical pest control research. By the late 1990s, however, the future of the site was unclear, and UC began seeking other uses.

Then came the formation of the Bay Area Coalition for Urban Agriculture (BACUA), composed of UC professors in the College of Natural Resources, food justice and sustainability organizations, and local citizens. They petitioned UC to consider a proposal to develop the site into a community-focused educational farm showcasing sustainable practices. According to their mission, “The center would conduct fundamental technical, economic, and sociological research and education into ways cities can create food systems that serve citizens and the environment well through localized, economically healthy and ecologically sustainable production and distribution.”

The UC administration completely ignored this effort (and many similar efforts: see here and here) and instead made plans to sell development rights to various interests, including Whole Foods Market and a for-profit home for the elderly. This move might be a surprise for someone under the impression that a public institution’s mandate is to serve the public, not private interests. But understanding the force of “neoliberalism” on governance in the past 40 years means that we instead can expect such acts: governments are now expected to solve societal problems with increasingly austere budgets, and to turn to entrepreneurship (like the sales or rental of their assets) to bolster those budgets. Privatization and the dismantling of public programs in favor of “public-private partnerships” are only logical outcomes of this condition. Austerity (seen in reduced state funding for UC and resulting tuition increases) combines with deregulation (which led to the most recent recession) and the consolidation of corporate power within the government to create the neoliberal framework.

“Occupy the Farm” poses an alternative framework: Food sovereignty. Instead of profit seeking as the ultimate factor in decision-making around land use, food sovereignty puts public benefit in the foreground. Instead of distant bureaucracies headed by neoliberal capitalist heroes like Richard Blum (i.e., the UC Regents), food sovereignty demands local and democratic control over our public institutions. And instead of a historically and logistically impossible division of “government” on one side and “markets” on the other, food sovereignty promotes a market that is accountable and humane because it is built up from the lives and decisions of those who are affected by it. This may all sound very theoretical, but land occupations like the effort to Take Back the Tract make these ideas real, immediate, tangible, and imaginable.

Discourses of “growth” and “development” on the world scale are mirrored in fights like the one over the Gill Tract. Like World Bank and IMF promotion of a constantly growing world economy and the supposed “trickle down” of benefits from neoliberal policies, UC apologists are likely to react to the Gill Tract takeover by arguing that selling the land is the most “reasonable” act, and one that will benefit the public…eventually.

They will demonize the protestors as much as they can, belittling their image, intent, or naiveté–much like neoliberals belittle “protectionist” or “socialist” government moves (see the Economist’s recent critique of Argentina renationalizing its previously privatized oil company). If neoliberalism myopically seeks to grow markets, its opponents push for real development: of democracy, equality, and environmental health, and yes, of markets which can coexist with these values. We could attempt, as the BACUA did, to petition those in command to support development over growth. But as the Occupy Farmers decided, waiting around for powerful people to “do the right thing” can be a fools’ errand and at times it takes people rising up in powerful acts of disobedient love to force the hand of defensive elites.

In this particular case, UC elites in question are already reeling from many recent losses of legitimacy: A massive student movement perpetually protests their fee increases and union busting; their mishandling of these protests with overly zealous police violence reaps world and official condemnation; reports on the Regents’ financial conflicts of interest breed further distrust; and the general occupy movement has put the one percent on the defensive. Combined with the thoughtful planning that went into the Earth Day action (and the clear community support for it), UC’s hands have been relatively tied, and its only retaliatory act thus far has been to shut off the new farm’s water supply. This is itself a powerful show of how an occupation can be daring, illegal, inspiring, and strategic; challenging the power of a delegitimized elite while building up power from below.

Land takeovers have been more common in parts of the global South, and Occupy the Farm was enacted in solidarity with La Via Campesina, an international peasant’s movement whose largest organizational member, the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) of Brazil, has settled over 150,000 families on land expropriated from that country’s largest landholders. The action can also be linked to the struggles of independent farmers in Honduras (who took land this past week, in a political move that ties in to their already-pressing concern for the reintroduction of their democratically elected president who was deposed in a coup 2 years ago).

The Berkeley occupation may seem anomalous for it having occurred in a first world country. People have said these kinds of actions couldn’t work here: After all, we lack the peasant population of most third world countries, and we are stricken with a deep cultural commitment to the sanctity of private property. Less than one percent of the U.S. population is full time farmers. Many Americans when they hear about the Gill Tract action will probably be incapable of seeing beyond “trespassing.”

Still, no matter how important property rights are to society, their primacy must be challenged if we are to achieve a sustainable future. With such extensive control of the global food system by profit-minded corporate conglomerates, it’s an act of faith to expect them to suddenly prioritize environmental, consumer, or worker concerns. It’s equally naïve to expect our public institutions to stand up to those corporate interests, considering how deeply vested the neoliberal ideology is, and how completely beholden elected officials are to moneyed interests.

Occupying the Farm is a valuable tactical next step for the Occupy Movement, the Food Movement, and all those who care about creating a just, sustainable, and democratic life for our children. Let’s continue to occupy the food system in creative, loving, challenging, and unexpected ways.

UPDATE: Occupy the Farm is having an open house April 28-29. More details here.

Photo: David Id

The content of “On The Future of Food” (a speech given in May of 2011 by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at Georgetown University and recently published by Rodale Press) shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the Prince or sustainable agriculture. The two have been connected since at least 1985, when HRH converted his farmland to organic, wildlife-friendly practices. In contrast to other monarchs and heads of state, the Prince has also been an advocate of sustainable practices for commercial operations and has long stood out as a critic of industrial agriculture. That he is so personally knowledgeable on the subject—as well as being in a position to influence discourse and policy at such a high level—gives him some clout to tell us what is wrong in the food system and what can be done about it.

The newly published version of his speech is a good book for someone who hasn’t yet heard: Our current industrial food system is failing us and the planet. The Prince shows the irony that “an industrialized system, deeply dependent on fossil fuels and chemical treatment, is promoted as viable, while a much less damaging one is rubbished and condemned as unfit.” He also addresses the irony of obesity and hunger, two sides of the same dysfunction. He makes the usual case for the depth of the problem and the urgency of change and shares some reasonable solutions.

These solutions include physical changes: Reducing pesticide and chemical usage, conserving water through drip irrigation, and adopting agro-ecological techniques for small, family-scale farms. The Prince also wisely advocates for re-localized production and distribution of staple crops, due to food security concerns. As organic farmers know, farm-scale solutions are pretty simple, really: Add organic matter to the soil. Avoid poisons. Water wisely. Cultivate diversity.

The more complicated aspects of the Prince’s speech relate to the social, political, and economic realms of the food system and here he hits some key points, but stops short of making truly innovative suggestions. He notes the reality that sustainable food only accounts for two to three percent of the U.S. market and that people cannot access such foods because they generally cost more. The Prince blames two factors for this: Distorting subsidies and a lack of true-cost accounting. The solution, then, would be a redirection of subsidies away from industrial methods towards sustainable methods (and I would add, supports for young and beginning farmers), along with policies that could incorporate the externalities of industrial production into the price of its products.

These suggestions are certainly worth looking at, but are not without problems. After all, direct removal of most subsidies in the U.S. would likely result in loan defaults and massive poverty for communities managing industrial-scale corn, wheat, and soy farms, which would only lead to further corporate consolidation of land. Incorporating the costs of water pollution from nitrogen runoff and health costs from diet-related disease sounds great, but those costs are very difficult to quantify and enforce. This isn’t to say that these aren’t solutions, but that behind them stand structural barriers. Corporate/financial money power dominates markets, elections, and the policymaking process. Even when environmentalism is legislated, as through certification schemes, companies will do the least for sustainability and social justice that they can, as continued attempts to water down and circumvent organic certification standards show.

As much as I appreciate that he conveys the relatively commonsensical views of agro-ecology and state subsidies for sustainability to a relatively new audience, a fundamental belief of the Prince undermines his presentation: His belief in markets. As a member of the British royal family, and as a political figure, his social position reflects the historic global spread of markets; it is hard to imagine him challenging the primacy of markets in proposing solutions to agricultural sustainability. And sure enough, the Prince lauds both the efforts of government (Michelle Obama) and corporate America (Walmart) in promoting food sustainability, regardless that these could be the major forces behind the crux of the problem.

The agricultural problems the Prince cares so much to solve are not simple, but they are all symptoms of one much deeper issue: Policies are consistently bent to the will of companies’ bottom-line mentality, causing a market that harms. Without addressing this, how are we to expect the marketizing of ecosystem services (as the Prince suggests) to protect those services? Carbon markets haven’t exactly worked wonders. Without corporations under command of government, and government under command of the people, any reform risks getting rolled back or co-opted.

At the beginning of his speech, the Prince says that “questioning the conventional worldview is a risky business” and I agree. But if we want our proposals to be unconventional, we aren’t likely to find them from a member of the one percent whose position sits within a long tradition of Brits extolling the virtues of capitalism. Capitalist competition and the corporate class’ ongoing control over government–not mere misplaced subsidies–are at the root of the problems HRH decries.

Short of a total transformation of society (a long shot), there are other solutions to promote for food system change. A litany of electoral reforms (instant runoff voting, campaign finance limits, overturning Citizens United, limits to lobbying) might curb legalized corruption and two-party dominance, allowing the Prince’s reforms of subsidies and externality pricing to have a fighting chance. Beyond a focus on restoring democratic governance (which must include a resolution of the proper levels of both government intervention and the decentralization of decision-making), I see two “unconventional” ways forward.

To destroy the primacy of private property, without destroying it completely, we should develop “social obligation“ laws in land, as already exist in Brazil. Their constitutional clause allows the Landless Peasants Movement (MST) to squat un- and misused farmlands, creating instead their own agro-ecological communities. While there aren’t large peasant populations in the U.S., it would still be a substantial change to move the onus of environmentally friendly land stewardship to landowners (this is a “stick” approach in contrast to the “carrot” of paying landowners for ecosystem services). The other tactic is to revitalize the idea of “commons”, or “common pool resources”, on multiple scales. Nobel Prize in Economics winner Elinor Ostrom has pioneered research in this realm, helping us see that the management of scarce resources is sometimes best left to those who use them. As Ostrom advises, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution (like marketizing) to commons management, and so environmental issues should be negotiated by users of resources and those affected by their use–through governing structures they themselves participate in.

As difficult as this might sound, it is but one of the challenges for creating a sustainable agriculture. Technical, social, economic, geographic, and political factors must all be addressed, from multiple vantage points and at multiple scales, by a movement of people, creating solutions as data is gathered, models are proposed and tested, policy is advocated for, and direct action is taken. Relying on political leaders to craft or implement solutions, like relying only on dominant paradigms within which to envision solutions, will only limit our progress.

Recently, Tree and I discussed the recently-passed legislation which officially legalized urban agriculture in the San Francisco. His project is primarily concerned with food access for low-income communities and creating collaborative, non-commercial projects. Tree does not see a benefit in gaining the legal right to sell city-grown food because he wants food to be free. How, Tree asked, is the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance (SFUAA–the main civic group pushing for the passage of the legislation) going to work for those who want to see volunteer-based, collective, and non-commodified forms of urban agriculture?

As mentioned in my previous post, the SFUAA worked on this new legislation out of a need expressed by one of our members, Little City Gardens, and an opportunity presented by members of city government. But my conversation with Tree has brought to my attention a rift forming in the San Francisco urban farming scene.

The other side of the rift is expressed by Iso Rabins, Founder of ForageSF and the Underground Farmers Market, who said in a recent review of his market:

“The feeling in the food community is that if you’re making money, it’s not something you’re passionate about,” Mr. Rabins said. “But if we actually want to change anything—dedicate our lives to it—we need to make money doing it.”

I have two reactions to this. My skeptical response is to ask what sort of “change” Rabins is talking about making here. The Underground Farmers Market, in my experience, is a bacchanalian celebration of homescale food preparation, not food system change. To be sure, eating homemade pickles might be a stepping away from the corporate food world. But, as a student of international food systems issues, I’ve never seen the political economy of food shift due to slightly expanded networks of boutique prepared foods. That the Underground Farmers Market has also been skirting the law by allowing producers to circumvent health and safety rules (In fact, the market was recently issued a cease-and-desist notice by the California Department of Public Health) does not mean that it is challenging, or “changing” the food system in a substantive way.

My less skeptical response is that, yes, Rabins is right about something. No matter how anti-capitalist your values might be, we still live in a capitalist society, with capitalist realities like rent (which here is San Francisco is a brutal reality indeed). Some people can choose to live a low-income lifestyle, and spend their free time volunteering to grow and give away organic food. But many people cannot.

Many marginalized communities are not as focused on creating a world free of capitalism as they are creating a way to survive and thrive within capitalism. A model that promotes what some call “social entrepreneurship” then, is more appropriate than one that asks that we all volunteer our time, in service of grander values and long-term goals. With the exception of Little City Gardens, no San Francisco farm has people who are paid to farm via sales of produce. Most rely on volunteers, plus grants, philanthropies, and government funds to pay any staffers who do exist.

When one considers one’s actions as activism, done for the purpose of creating social, political, or economic change, and not just personal fulfillment, it behooves one to have a “theory of change.” The “anti-capitalist” theory of change holds that solutions to market failures can’t come from the market (recalling Einstein, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”), and this is hard to square with a “green economy” theory of change, which believes that a capitalist economy can be reformed, through business, into one that is less destructive to people and the environment.

Though the anti-capitalist perspective can be seen as elitist (how can many people afford to live from this perspective?), a similar critique could be leveled against green economy proponents. After all, most of the current pathways sought to create a local economy from sustainably produced food lead to high-end restaurants and products (like those sold at the Underground Farmers Market). While there have been efforts to expand access to “good food”, like the Eat Real Market or Peoples Grocery sliding-scale “Grub Box”, these efforts are limited by two main problems: good food costs more to produce, and low income people must often prioritize other necessary expenses over food. Our options are thus framed between cheap foods accessible to all or small scale food products serving only the elite.

A social movement must have a vision of the world it wants to create. Anti-capitalists have this vision in spades, seeing a future economy based in developing and re-creating commons and not just markets, but have a rather unverified and (to many) an unconvincing path to get there. Green economy enthusiasts have a vision which seems more “realistic,” but strikes me as toothless in addressing longstanding legacies of economic inequality and the structural hurdles to sustainability engendered by endless-growth capitalism. With waves of greenwashing and the watering down of organic standards, green seems easily compromised.

Also, competition from cheap foods grown by still-existent industrial farming operations continually skew a green food economy, causing good food sources to seem expensive, even as good food farmers struggle to survive. So “opting out” of this global, corporate-controlled food system is not tantamount to challenging it.

There is another point that vexes both sides of this debate: How do social movements succeed? Is it more imperative that they are massive, unpaid, volunteer, collectively-organized, and values-driven? Or that they are organized (into hierarchical bureaucracies), paid, and supported financially by their work? Looking to the past, we see that both sides are at least part of the equation. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece about the inadequacies of social technologies like Twitter to create social change, pointing to the effectiveness of the Civil Rights movement, which was built by organizations with paid staff, but also through deep connections built between individual activists acting together, for free and for no other compensation than the hope for success.

A scary truth is that creating social change almost certainly requires sacrifice, if not of life and limb, then at least of time. To expect to get paid to create change is to deny that change has its own value that deserves effort outside of remuneration.

I hope that we can find “both/and” solutions to this potential rift among food and farming activists, but once again I feel like I find myself with more questions than answers. We who do consider ourselves as “activists” or part of a “movement” need to do a better job of defining what and who that movement is for. And we can’t allow ourselves to settle with self-satisfaction of “a job well done” without considering the true nature of the problem and the efficacy of our actions to solve them.

This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed one of the most progressive pieces of legislation for urban agriculture in the nation. The new legislation has amended the zoning code to allow agricultural activities in all parts of the city, as well as defining the parameters by which urban agriculturists can sell their products. It doesn’t address the touchier subjects of animal husbandry or marijuana cultivation, but has created opportunities for and the legitimacy of urban fruit and vegetable cultivation.

The legislation was the result of a rare combined and cooperative effort between city officials and urban agriculture practitioners and advocates. This was accomplished mainly through the work of the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance (SFUAA), an organization of which I am a member, which formed nearly a year ago to coalesce the various efforts and projects focusing on local food and agriculture into a cohesive political voice. The coalition is made up of over 300 individual and 40 organizational members, and its formation turned out to be very well timed.

The work of re-writing the zoning code came up early in SFUAA meetings, but became more pressing when one of our members, Little City Gardens, came up against the code in attempting to expand to a new, larger plot of land. Told that converting the empty lot into a garden would cost $3,000 in conditional use permit fees, LCG opted to petition not for a personal exemption, but for a rewriting of the code.

With support from key individuals in the department, as well as in the mayor’s office, the planning department immediately went to work on crafting a new code. In that process, they consulted a zoning working group of the SFUAA, which proposed certain zoning priorities and tried to limit potential negative impacts of new zoning legislation.

For the most part, our advocacy campaign worked. For example, the original drafts contained provisions (supposedly at the express behest of former mayor Gavin Newsom) that gardens be required to have fencing, and further, fencing that is qualified as “ornamental.” Seeing as ornamental specifies made of wood or wrought-iron, this would have meant any new garden project would have had hundreds, if not thousands, of extra dollars of start-up costs. The SFUAA pushed for the the fencing requirement to be removed for new gardens, and for gardens to be given more choices. Which means that, not only will less-expensive fencing be a possibility, but we have encouraged new spaces to use their fencing to grow something (kiwi? grapes? passionfruit?).

Sadly, another of the SFUAA’s proposed amendments was not adopted. We recommended that the “change of use” fees paid to the planning department for new gardens be waived. We argued that if the city truly intends to support the flourishing of many new food-producing sites, it would behoove them to remove potential barriers to entry. In the context of an economic recession where all governments are having a hard time making ends meet, it was argued that agencies cannot make such blanket fee exceptions, even for something acknowledged as beneficial like urban agriculture. But comparing $3,000 to the $300 it will cost to get a permit with the new code, this is obviously an improvement.

One issue that the code brings up is the question of sales-focused versus community-oriented production. Many of the urban farming projects that currently exist in San Francisco (Alemany Farm, Free Farm, and Hayes Valley Farm being the three largest examples) are all focused on growing food and giving it away; none sell any produce. So how will this legislation help these projects? While a large portion of the legislation regards legalizing production for local markets, by virtue of setting up designations for urban agriculture the legislation legitimizes agriculture’s place in the urban landscape. Food that is grown for personal use is not regulated in the code; if someone has a backyard garden, this legislation won’t effect them. Should for-benefit (i.e. non-profit) farm projects seek to raise some of their operating funds through sales, including of value-added products, this will now be allowed. This could also open the door for social justice-minded urban farms to create truly green jobs without requiring so much grant funding.

Impacts on neighborhoods were also taken into account by planners in writing the code. As a result, the regulatory parameters of the legislation are based on size (less than an acre is designated “neighborhood” vs “large-scale” for more than an acre) and not whether or not the food is grown for sale or not. Any new project (for profit or not) that occurs on a large site would be legally allowable, following the permitting process (including a vetting of water-wise irrigation practices by the Public Utilities Commission). This means that, once neighbors have been notified and a permit has been secured, no neighbor will be able to complain and get a project shut down. Before this code, non-residential gardens on private property had an unknowable legal status, and could theoretically be fought by neighbors.

All told, this legislation is proof that “the system,” as ossified and change-resistant as it may seem, can occasionally work, with the combined efforts of the right people in positions of power and aware, active community members. The SFUAA’s mission and work is ongoing and constantly being developed, and we welcome input and participation (see our website for details on our mission and other non-policy-related work). Our next steps will be up to our members to formulate. Having worked to allow fruit and vegetable production and sales in the city, what steps will we take to support our other members’ work? Will we agitate for “food sovereignty” like Sedgwick, Maine? Will we create pop-up resource centers for urban farmers to access compost, mulch, and plants? Will we petition the Recreation and Parks Department to replace purely ornamental landscaping with productive alternatives? These are just some ideas, since we know that there’s plenty to do to craft the urban landscape we know to be necessary for a sustainable and equitable future.

Alliances have a long tradition within U.S. civil society, and urban agriculture alliances can be at the forefront of new movements towards food system sustainability. With the 2012 Farm Bill fast approaching, my personal hope is to see urban agriculture alliances serve as platforms for advocacy and organizing; getting urban folks working together to reorient some of the huge levers of subsidy which so distort our food system.

If you’re interested in starting an alliance in your area, or would like more information on our work, feel free to write us at info@sfuaa.org, or to me at antidogmatist@gmail.com

Photo: Little City Gardens, by Caitlyn Galloway

The new documentary screening around the country The Economics of Happiness says everything it should say. Ambitiously, it attempts to explain the many downsides of economic globalization, while offering actual alternatives that the viewer can get behind, and (for a movie just a little over an hour long) it does this concisely and without too much dreadful hyperbole or schmaltz. For this I am thankful. All too often, environmental themed movies rely on over-exaggerations, simplifications, and a preaching-to-the-choir sentimentalities–which result in a product unlikely to perform the educational (that’s entertainingly educational) role it was made for.

Director Helena Norberg-Hodge and her team use the case study of the Ladakhi people from the high-altitude regions of India, Pakistan, and China (whose traditional, sustainable, joyful, tightly-knit community lifestyle has been disintegrating since their introduction to the products and values of modern global capitalist culture) to illustrate their criticism of globalization, without overly romanticizing the Ladakhis or failing to address pro-globalization arguments.

The film’s analysis of the negative effects of globalization is spot on, citing eight main outcomes: mounting unhappiness in the industrialized world; feelings of insecurity for those who are not leading industrial-world lives; unsustainable use of resources; climate change; loss of meaningful livelihoods, especially farming for those in the “developing world”; increasing inter-group conflict; handouts to big businesses; and a false accounting of progress. The film contains effective explanations for how corporately-controlled global trade causes these results, including Hodge’s brilliant metaphor of how our “arms are so long we don’t know what our hands are doing.”

I have reservations regarding the use of climate change as an discursive tactic for getting people to make societal change toward sustainability. That being said, these other effects are clearly perceptible to the average person. With even a little effort to look at the world as it is, whether through scientific studies or personal experience, a reasonable American could see that these effects are real, and by watching this film could be convinced that they are a direct outcome and corollary of global capitalism.

The solution the film offers–economic and political localization–is one that we’ve heard for some time and with substantial frequency in the sustainable food world. Refreshingly, the film even includes a critique of the “buying our way out of the mess” argument which too often circumscribes the limits of sustainable foodies’ activism. And so I can heartily recommend this film as an activist tool, for introducing emerging or tentative foodies to the larger economic context of local, sustainable foods (and how to actually create more sustainable systems in general).

I do have one issue with the film, which isn’t really so much about what it says as what it doesn’t cover (and–as a filmmaker–I know this can be due to limitations of time, capacity, and/or the need to focus a film on one audience). That issue is that this film, like so many others coming from the environmentally-aware left, doesn’t ask the hard questions of how to actually leverage large-scale change. The film mentions the influence of corporate capital on our political system (which continues to be depressingly evidenced in all sections of government), but offers no ideas for how to counter this. It offers alternatives to the false accounting mentioned earlier, that of Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI) or Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of the grossly inaccurate Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But how to actually get governments to implement those measures, when those in charge are completely enthralled with and beholden to the ideologies of endless growth and “free” markets?

Something else kept haunting me as I watched the film: “the masses.” Globalization is no doubt the hegemonic ideology of our time, and the masses (at least its vocal, politically active members like Tea Partiers) have bought the line, practically without reservations. I believe that the biggest question for the anti-globalization (or better, the pro-localization) movement is: how do we change this? Can people be convinced to break from ideologies that don’t serve them? Can “everyday” Americans (those who this film claims to be at their unhappiest level of the past 60 years) be convinced that localization is a preferable alternative? More importantly, perhaps, can they be convinced that it is actually possible, and not just a hippie pipe dream?

The sad reality is that these questions are much easier to ask than to answer. I ask them not to try to seem like I have it figured out, but to honestly plea for continued conversation from those who would like to see humanity and the planet “saved.” We know the problems, and we think we know the (physical) solutions. Now, how do we get from here to there? I have a feeling that, at minimum, it will involve a lot of education. And for that, this movie is a great start.

One thing that fascinates me about political theorist Murray Bookchin’s writing is how prescient it is. His essay, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought,” was written in 1965, six years before Earth Day, and almost a half-century before now. Yet its content is as relevant as ever, if not more so, given society’s increasing interest in all things “green.” Bookchin even references future ramifications of climate change, long before many had even considered it.

I don’t agree with everything Bookchin has written. To start, he believes that due to technological prowess, we are entering a “post-scarcity” era of humanity—the idea is reflected in the title of the book this essay appears in, Post-Scarcity Anarchism. Still, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” convincingly describes how important the rethinking of human organization (i.e. politics) is, given the urgency of our environmental crises. And, similar to an earlier philosopher Peter Kropotkin, Bookchin looks to the teachings of natural systems to illuminate better approaches to our social relations. Without reworking these economic, political, and cultural standards, sustainability will continue to vex us, no matter how many local farms and solar arrays we build.

We begin, as always, with the problem:

“Man has produced imbalances not only in nature, but, more fundamentally, in his relations with his fellow man and in the very structure of his society. The imbalances man has produced in the natural world are caused by the imbalances he has produced in the social world. A century ago it would have been possible to regard air pollution and water contamination as the result of the self-seeking activities of industrial barons and bureaucrats. Today, this moral explanation would be a gross oversimplification. It is doubtless true that most bourgeois enterprises are still guided by a public-be-damned attitude…but a more serious problem than the attitude of the owners is the size of the firms themselves–their enormous proportions, their location in a particular region, their density…their requirements for raw materials…and their role in the national division of labor.”

I would add that, given Capital’s imperative to grow endlessly, maximize profits, and “race to the bottom” (for the cheapest wages, the most easily exploitable resources), the owners of industry can almost be expected to make these damaging choices. But, regardless of the reason, it’s clear (and has been for quite some time) that this status quo just can’t go on.

People have been pointing out the environmental problems of industry since industry’s beginnings. Yet, approaching the problem through conventional politics hasn’t gotten very far. We haven’t been able to legislate our way out of climate change, nor have we even mitigated some of the more solvable effects of industrialized society, like water pollution from agriculture. Most people hold onto the idea that it is merely the regulatory agencies, or the particular political party in power, that are to be held accountable for this, but perhaps the state itself cannot save us?

People (in the U.S. in particular but the world over as well) have lost control over government, which means a loss of control over the economy and its negative effects. In our “democracy” of corporately-funded elections, ubiquitous lobbyists, an impotent when not sycophantic mainstream media, and an (understandably and increasingly) cynical, jaded electorate, can we expect to regain control of the government, as it currently is structured? Perhaps the healthy function of government, like that of industry, is corrupted by aspects inherent to its top-heavy design. The ecological appropriateness of industry should be decided by the communities impacted by that industry, not by the industries themselves or a weak, distant, unaccountable government.

Bookchin essentially points to a more anarchist political structure as a precondition for sustainability. We need decision-making to be more decentralized and localized. We need to support diversity in all its forms, especially human cultural diversity. We need to have local conditions and citizens determining the answers to important questions of economic governance.

Unfortunately, these sorts of (anarchist) solutions have long been denigrated for being unrealistic or romantic. Humans, it is argued, are inherently self-serving, and without a centralized government keeping us in check, society would degenerate in chaos and violence. Anarchists are seen as naively expecting more pro-social and self-organizational behavior than exists or is possible in humanity. This main point of disbelief—that anarchism is based on an idealistic notion of human ‘nature’—is easily argued against, with various realms of hard and soft sciences (developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, among others) supporting the existence of a nuanced, and ultimately culturally-dependant human ‘nature,’ and not just one limited to selfish, egoistic, atomistic and maximizing behaviors. Still, there are real, physical limits to these ideas, especially in the realm of agriculture (the foundation of any society). At some point, extremely localized production of any physical necessity can become a liability if that production is at all compromised. How great is a local food system if it fails to produce enough food in suddenly tough environmental conditions?  This problem of decentralized organization for ecological sustainability—that localizing can’t solve everything—is an important one.

What this points to is the need for the integration (in our food system, our politics, and in general) of other ecological concepts—like that of interdependence. We’d need other communities and their support in a drought-caused famine. We’d also need to avoid parochialism, possibly through the establishment of networks that transcend our local boundaries; the federation of local bodies into larger councils would be a key aspect of a more localized political future. “Sociocracy,” a decision-making structure based on associated, connected groups, rather than individual “citizens,” provides a format by which to do this, and has been proven effective, mostly in a context of for-profit business.

People’s actions can be examined as expressing a search for a more connected and locally controllable future. People in the food movement are wont to share, connect, and establish local resilient mutual aid networks—as described by Kropotkin in his early anarchist writings. Rebecca Solnit’s new book, A Paradise Built in Hell, illustrates the hidden but ever-present undercurrent of pro-social tendencies, occurring across myriad cultures and circumstances, which emerge particularly in times of disaster and crisis. Considering the ecological disaster as one long-term crisis, couldn’t we consider restructuring society to not only “save the planet” but also support the full development of our positive humanity? We could make this world a reality, but currently seem to lack the required imagination or confidence to do so.

Once we get past our doubts about ourselves, and the belief that we cannot self-govern, then all that’s left to do is craft and implement a structure for self-governance. We don’t lack models for this way forward. Organizations like the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund innovate across the country with legal and political campaigns that assert the right to local self-governance. We should integrate these ideas into our work, join together with others, and fight smarter and harder against the structures and institutions preventing us from reaching sustainability.

Last year the owner of Asilomar, the CA State Parks department, signed a 20-year contract handing over the running of the property to Aramark, a national corporation with 260,000 employees. This led to some controversy at the recent Hazon sustainable food conference, where certain local, sustainable producers had their products rejected as donations for the conference. The reason? “Food Safety”, according to Aramark.

And now, this “Alcohol Announcement” from the 2010 EcoFarm program guide:

“Dear EcoFarm Friends! We know that celebration is a very important component of the EcoFarm Conference and you are probably noting a reduction of fun activities, especially reagarding the consumption of alcohol. The new Aramark management at Asilomar changed several longstanding policies regarding alcohol in the months leading up to the conference and we did not have time to figure out a new cost and activity structure to accommodate this. Therefore, we needed to cancel several bars and activities. We hope that you will still find plenty of fun – ask EcoFarm staff if you are looking for ideas! Thank you for your patience and understanding!”

I’m not that much of a drinker, and I did still have plenty of fun, but I understand a certain disappointment. Many farmers see this conference as their vacation for the year; its the one time they can kick back with their organic-growing buddies from across the country, talk shop, get inspired, and party. While I had a great time at this year’s conference, I can see how Aramark’s new management style might be just a signal that EcoFarm needs to move into a new phase. And sure enough, EcoFarm’s organizers are openly considering a move.

With 1,300 registered attendees and more who wanted to attend but couldn’t register, the popularity of ecological farming may finally be catching up with the EcoFarm community. The organizers really seem to know what they’re doing, helping us come together “for education, inspiration, and creative solution-building”. There are workshops for everyone; for the farmer, for the gardener, for the activist, for the policy wonk, some practical, some aesthetic, some en Español. Over the three years I’ve gone, I’ve learned what I love most about the conference (besides the conviviality, and the seed swap) is that I really come away inspired to continue working on these issues, with these people.

Particularly, I get inspired by talking to “heroes” of the movement, like Bob Scowcroft or Judith Redmond, who have done so much to advance the cause of just, sustainable food systems, yet remain so humble and approachable. Sure, it instills in me hope to know that progress can and has been made, but it also makes me think about how (personally) I am only at the beginning of my journey as an activist. My goal is not just to create change, it is to create change while having a good time and being good to people, and it’s nice to know that I have role models for that!

As for the conference itself, I’ve learned that I get the most out of the practical workshops, so the ones I attended were:
“High Quality Organic Wheat for the Local Whole-Grain Market”
“Advanced Soil Fertility Topics: The Wise Use of Micronutrients in Organic Farming”
“Farming With a Sharp Pencil!”
“Are Internships Illegal?”
and “Classical Plant Breeding for Improving Vegetable Crops.”

With the exception of the wheat one (where a UC researcher babbled about the chromosome locations of wheat/rye hybrids), I learned a lot. I learned how to be a better farm business planner. I learned that regulations intended to protect workers are ruining the prospects for on-farm internships (which have no doubt played a huge role in the expansion of ecological farming’s success). I learned the importance of proper Boron levels in your soil (and what to do if they’re out of whack). And, in the workshop which could have been titled “Dorkin’ Out on Seed Saving,” I learned how to effectively set the right genome composition of desired traits into a summer squash plant, over years of selection and growing.

The most theoretical session I went to was “Planting the Future: New Leaders in Activism for Food Justice.” This was a plenary, so all minds were on deck to ponder a newly-emphasized aspect of ecological farming: urban food access, and the various forms of environmental racism associated with food. This was a wonderful presentation, full of hope for more collaboration between social justice advocates and the ecological farming community. It made me think, however, about what the next step was. With so much press and emphasis on urban farming and urban food issues, you’d think that once people start growing food in the city, a sustainable food system is inevitable. But clearly this is too simple a read on the problem. I love that people are making efforts towards urban food self-sufficiency, but maybe we should think three steps ahead: we may be growing more of our own food in 20-30 years time, but we likely won’t be able to grow all of it. So I’d like to see a concurrent emphasis, along with urban food production, on connecting urban communities with their rural counterparts. This connection could be rooted in physical trade of food and work, but also serve to foster inter-cultural dialog. Obama may not be able to unite the country, but perhaps sustainable food can?

Honestly, after attending many other food conferences, I have almost nothing bad to say about this one. It was a blast, and I’m grateful to the organizers for sticking with it for 30 years. I encourage anyone who has ever been, or would like to go in the future, to contact EFA with your ideas for a new conference venue, or any other suggestions you can make to help them improve and expand the conference while maintaining its integrity.

As an ecologically-minded horticulturist, I like to think about everything with an ecological framework. Ecology, simply, is the study of organisms in relation to other organisms and the environment. Many things could be said to be wrong with the state of our nation’s political life, but if there is one to emphasize, it is the lack of a political ecology.  We tend to compartmentalize political issues, along the lines of our individual political identities (sometimes referred to as issues “silos”), and this often negates efforts to connect the dots between diverse issues.

If there is one political identity that should be able to look past these divides and see the importance of ecological connections between movements and struggles, it is that of the environmentalist. The environmentalist’s worldview is steeped in the interdependent view of life; the understanding that one action can cause reactions beyond the expected.  And the most visible (and seemingly the most active) environmentalists, these days, are the food sustainability activists.  Yet even food activists themselves have their silos: urban food access, farmland preservation, nutrition education, and so on. I hope this article will help us see our commonality outside of our silos, and see how to use that to better work towards change.

How are food activists taking the political climate and working it for change? I’d say they’re doing pretty well, in general.  Just a casual reading of this blog can show you the diverse projects, attitudes, and self-criticisms of this set.  However, I feel that there still lacks an inclination or willingness to question certain political behaviors. Namely, the three problems I see are:

1) Attachment to conventional political “truths” and strategies given a dearth of evidence supporting them as leading to the change we seek;

2) Ready acceptance of token political gestures and mainstream media coverage of our issues as tantamount to political change;

and

3) A lack of ecological awareness of how other modern political issues shape, structure, and limit our “food movement”, and a coincident lack of rhetorical cohesion or expression of the grander change we seek while we work towards change in our individual silos.

Let’s take these problems from last to first.

What do we want, as a “movement”? Well, clearly, we are into a food system that provides food for all that is “good, clean, and fair.” But is that all? Are our values also in favor of health care for all that is “good, clean and fair”? What about the right to housing? What about a governmental system that is accountable to the people it governs? What about having a country where education is funded more than war? What about the right to walk down a street and not be harassed by police for being dark-skinned?

Yes, these are all different issues, and perhaps not everyone in our silo feels the same way about them all, but we can’t deny that what brings us to our food movement are values that are held in common with the movements working on these other issues. It is not up to me to define these values, but it seems clear that there is a vision informing our movement that it is at least partly shared with these others. And whatever they are, these values have not been elucidated on the national stage for a long time.  As pointed out by cognitive scientist George Lakoff, the past 30 years have seen the conservative right dominating national politics with their framing of the issues and advancement of their policies, with the Democratic party ineffectually going along for the ride.

Granted, the U.S. political system is not simple, nor would it be solvable through one book, blog, or piece of well-written legislation. But there are patterns in the structural dismantling and dysfunction of government that have become frighteningly damaging within the past 30-50 years. These patterns, such as the privatization of government, the deregulation of the marketplace, the corporatization of public space and the commons, the globalization of capital, and the increased involvement of moneyed interests in government, are not just some natural development of the United States experiment in democracy.  They are a result of efforts by the moneyed class and their functionaries, at each step of the way, to bring them about, and (sadly) a failure of those opposed to stop it. For one example, look to the World Trade Organization, a supra-national corporate organization with the power to force the policies of “free trade” on any country in the world, regardless of what the voting populace thinks or wants. “Free trade” isn’t; more appropriately it would be called corporately-managed trade.

What does this have to do with us, the food people, you might ask? Well, on to problem two.

How do we confront these issues, as community gardeners, or farmers, or anti-hunger activists? Well, we start by framing our stories, our struggles, in the language of the values we hold for a better world overall — including issues not in our silos. Then we refuse to accept as victories changes that don’t actually challenge this current political structure, insisting instead on holding to solutions which represent our values.

An example of this is the White House organic garden. From the original New York Times article about the garden:

Dan Barber, an owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, an organic restaurant in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., that grows many of its own ingredients, said: “The power of Michelle Obama and the garden can create a very powerful message about eating healthy and more delicious food. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could translate into real change.”

Symbol of renewed interest in healthy, fresh food? Sure. Indicator of social or political change? I don’t see it. Cultural values surely change as the ideas that frame our lives evolve. Healthy, local eating may become more important to some people due to this White House garden. But the reality remains that whatever a person’s values are, healthy local eating will remain more expensive than the cheap processed foods Mrs. Obama decries (and therefore be less common), as long as the political and economic structures remain the same.

At the very least, a symbolic victory should contain a kernel of the truth about the change we seek, even if it is merely vocally expressed but not acted on.  If we are to be happy about a politician grandstanding on our issue of good food, or another New York Times article “discovering” the latest good food project or personality, we should be ready to see through it critically; to ask ourselves whether it promotes the larger vision of the world we seek, and not just a piecemeal feel-good band-aid of activist relief.

The last issue is perhaps the one that will garner me the least fans. I propose that we stop looking to the Obama administration, or any federally-elected Democratic officials, as boosters for our movement. I could list endless things the Democrats have done that upset my values (from voting repeatedly for the occupation of Iraq to defending torture), but here I’ll stick to ones that relate more directly to the sustainable food issue.

First, think of those Mexican ejido farmers, struggling to grow and sell their heirloom varieties of Maize in a market newly-flooded with cheap U.S. Agribusiness corn. Who made this possible? NAFTA was passed by Clinton, our last Democratic “savior.” Barack Obama campaigned on a strong promise to reform free trade agreements like NAFTA and now, post-election, has rescinded that promise.

Second, think of climate change, a major player in the future of agriculture. James Hansen, the foremost NASA climate change scientist, has written up a letter to President Obama, as reported in the Guardian UK:

Hansen wrote that there is a “profound disconnect” between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem as described by the science. He praised Obama’s campaign rhetoric about “a planet in peril”, but said that how the new president responds in office will be crucial. Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets to be met through “cap and trade” schemes as not up to the task. “This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity,” [Hansen] wrote.

President Obama’s solution to climate change has been, surprise surprise, cap and trade.  At least, some argue, he promised during his campaign to sell off 100% of cap-and-trade “allowances”, the permits for every ton of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. This would mean money from polluters for permits, slated to fund the largest investment in renewable energy in history. Now the president has backed away from that commitment, and through the recent Waxman/Markey Bill, 85% of these permits will be given away to industries that pollute.

Lastly, health care reform — or as it is disguised now, health “insurance” reform. As a farmer who does not have health insurance (not an uncommon occurrence) and like everyone else, no assurance of health, this is a big deal. President Obama pledged to fight for a public health insurance option (not even universal health care, the reality in many other more sane countries), in fact, he has said that it must be a part of any health care reform plan. We, “the people” elected him, partly on this promise. And now, with control of both legislative houses, and the support of the electorate, there is talk of removing the public option. We in the food movement believe in a right to healthy food, as a very common sense preventative measure to future health problems. But for me, it can’t stop there, because I believe that risks exist beyond diet-related disease, and that those risks can effect anyone. And NO ONE should be denied the right to take care of those problems due to lack of wealth. So instead of talking in the conservative frame of insurance, maybe we should talk about the right to CARE. But I digress — my point is merely that, even in the most conducive political circumstances, our saviors the Dems can’t even get it together to pass the most basic and non-threatening kinds of reform. This is our democracy in action.

So companies can continue to pollute (CO2, not to mention other noxious chemicals), jobs can move to wherever the environmental regulations are most lax, and we’ll keep voting for incremental change that doesn’t reflect what we actually want: a healthy environment, meaningful employment, social and economic equality, universal access to health care, good and affordable education, and a democracy that means something.

The usual counter-argument I field when I discuss the need to move past the Democratic Party to promote progressive politics is that I ask too much. Many insist that change doesn’t happen that fast; that there are many factors that keep Obama et al from acting the way we want them too; that we don’t understand these factors and that we should have patience.

Well, if we truly believe that change is needed (to avoid the worst effects of peak oil, to mitigate climate change, to revive our democracy, to leave a sane, healthy world to our children), and we have the values and ideas that can lead us there, why did we vote for Obama under the banner of change and those values, if we expected him to not actually do anything? Is this democracy?

One last comparison, to maybe frame this issue in terms that the food silo understands. We have (luckily) moved past the notion that changes in buying patterns alone can change the food system, but we still believe (rightfully) that when we “vote with our fork” we can affect on our food system. All I ask is that we move that concept to the political system, and stop voting for candidates, a party, and a political structure that doesn’t reflect the values we hold. Whether the answer is to form a third political party (as the abolitionists and suffragettes did) or directly confront the Democrats more forcefully, I don’t propose to know. I’m just sayin’: our food system won’t heal without a healthy political system, and what we got right now just ain’t working.