Though the federal government passes mega-legislation like the farm and child nutrition bills once every five years, the spirit of local innovation and the relative flexibility of state governments – to say nothing of the incessant tug of war between Washington and the states – means there’s always something daring being cooked up in state policy kitchens. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state food and farm legislation, 41 states enacted 77 laws during the 2009 and 2010 sessions related to school nutrition, food access, and direct marketing. If one were to add in a host of legislation related to food security, food safety, and farmland protection, the numbers would be far into the hundreds every year.

Whether it’s a World Wrestling Smack Down event like California’s GMO-labeling Proposition 37, the abolition of sugary soft drinks from public schools in Connecticut and New Mexico, or one small step for local food like Vermont financing a mobile poultry slaughtering facility, state-level food policy may be serving up some of the most exciting dishes in town.

As a minor partner in a major league effort, I’m proud to announce that stirring the policy pot at the state level just got a little easier thanks to the legal eagles and eaglets at the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. Emily Broad Leib, the Clinic’s Director, and a sizeable flock of law students have assembled Good Laws, Good Food: Putting State Food Policy to Work for Our Communities which, if I do say so myself, may be the best “how-to” document out there on the subject of state food policy. This toolkit will be particularly helpful to state food policy councils, of which, according to a 2012 census, there are now 25. (The Good Laws, Good Food toolkits, including the local policy version, the Food Policy Council Directory, and the food policy council “how-to” manual Doing Food Policy Councils Right can be found here.

As anyone who enters the state policy arena for the first time quickly learns, you need more than a state capital floor plan to navigate the labyrinth of statutes, regulations, and administrative actions that constitute state policy. Good Laws, Good Food (State) gives you a quick refresher course on federalism and what the respective roles of the federal, state, and local governments are. Why the political and legal theory? Well, if you want to radically change SNAP, for instance, you’ll need to go to Washington. But if you want to increase participation and tweak its implementation to help the local food movement, there are plenty of opportunities at the state level.

The central feature of the guide is the way it unpacks seven areas of the food system that are heavily influenced by state government: Food system infrastructure, land use and planning, food assistance programs, consumer access and consumer demand, farm to institution, school food and education, and food safety and processing. And as an added bonus, the toolkit provides a generous helping of information about local, state, and regional food systems including great examples of state food policies in action. In other words, you have a conceptual framework, a context for change and action, and the practice itself, all neatly packed into 112 pages.

If you’re a government major or policy-wonk and, like me, just can’t get enough of this stuff, you may be motivated to consume this document in one sitting. But for the general practitioner and those feeling their way to and through the policy world, you may want to take small bites because there’s a lot here. But whatever your current interests and involvements in policy making are, you’ll definitely want to use this toolkit as a handy reference guide.

There is no lack of ways to manipulate the public policy levers to affect change. But the smarter we are about how they work, the sooner that change will come.

I accepted an invitation from Derrick Kiyabu recently to visit MA’O Organic Farm where the path out of poverty starts with a walk down the farm’s vegetable rows. On the west side of the island of Oahu, just past Honolulu’s ocean view condos and the Pearl Harbor Naval Base I found myself on Highway 93 where a sign saying “Now Leaving Paradise, Welcome to Poverty” would be placed if tourist officials chose to acknowledge such things. But lacking what many vacationers are looking for in a tropical getaway, the Wai’anae Coast, as it is commonly known, can only offer fast-food joints, scruffy commercial buildings, and residential housing that rivals the worst of third-world Asia. Perhaps this is why the Lonely Planet guidebook refers to the region, almost quaintly, as “a little bit of Appalachia by the sea.”

My pre-farm tour reached a crescendo when I saw a homeless encampment cobbled together along a one-mile stretch of state beach. Late model cars – many rusted and in states of disassembly – jerry-rigged shelters, and a mish mash of makeshift camping and cooking gear presented such a scene of utter destitution that even knuckle-dragging conservatives would advocate for immediate relief.
As I moved inland a couple of miles, the landscape and my impressions changed. Small sections of dry, flat farmland intermingle with vast tracks of military land – securely fenced and sporting giant arrays of submarine-tracking sonar towers. It is here though, amid palm and banana trees, that you’ll find the peaceful acres of MA’O Organic Farms, armed with nothing more dangerous than wholesome organic produce and 40 or so farm interns between the ages of 17 and 24.

Like almost all the interns and staff, Derrick is wearing the farm’s “No Panic, Go Organic” t-shirt. Noting some of the underlying principles of the program, he reminds me that “pre-contact” Hawaiians were 100% food self-reliant and that their traditional farming methods were totally organic. In a more pragmatic vein, he also explains the program’s business model: “Organic produce generates the most revenue from our customers such as Whole Foods, natural food stores, CSA members, and Honolulu’s high-end restaurants.” As a self-described social enterprise, the non-profit farm generates 40 percent of its million-dollar-plus annual budget from produce sales. This is how they support the youth development and leadership program that is at the core of farm’s mission. Promoting food security in the surrounding region is secondary to the need to generate funds for instructional needs, community college tuition, and stipends for the workers.

Without a doubt, the produce is top-notch. The packing sheds – two retrofitted chicken coops – are filled with interns washing and packing perfect heads of green and white bok choy, glowing red radishes, and gorgeous greens. A big whiteboard lists all the customers and the number of units each will purchase that day. As the young people pack each order in custom boxes and load them on to the refrigerated delivery truck, pride is evident in their smiles; after all, they grew it, picked it, and packed it. From the sales revenue, they’ll be paid a monthly stipend by it. It will also help send them to college.

But MA’O isn’t just another scheme to reconnect kids to land, food, and a little income. According to Kamu Enos, MA’O’s Social Entrepreneur Director, the farm is a training and leadership development program designed to overcome the poverty and social dysfunction that was so evident on my drive in. He tells me that “this region of Oahu has the highest concentration of native Hawaiians on all the Islands. We also have a 20% poverty rate, which is disproportionately higher for Hawaiians. Over 40% of our kids drop out of school and only 10% of our graduating high school class goes to college, and many of those leave during the first year.” Derrick puts the problem more succinctly, “Our public education system has ripped off our kids.”

When I noted the unusually high number of very heavy people I saw in Wai’anae, Kamu explained that, like other Native American communities, the ravages of Spam, loss of land, and the decline of traditional practices have taken their toll on peoples’ bodies as well as their souls. “The root problem,” said Kamu, “is the disconnect between our land, people, and economy. Instead [of controlling these things], we exist under the predatory practices of the military.” Not only does the Defense Department control most of the land in the region, military recruiters find local Hawaiians easy targets for enlistment because good civilian job opportunities are so few.
Getting control of land, especially for farming, is a daunting challenge for Hawaiians – there’s not much affordable, arable land that developers don’t already have their mitts on. But sugar daddies do show up, and they are not always the kind that operated sugar cane plantations. In MA’O Organic Farms’ case, the sweet guy is none other than Pierre Omidyar, founder of E-Bay. He generously dropped a cool million on the program, which, with assistance from the Trust for Public Land, bought the 11 acres that are now the heart of the farm.

Pua, 21, is a MA’O youth leader and the first member of her family to go to college. She recently received her associate degree from Leeward Community College and is scheduled to start at the University of Hawaii at Manoa this August. She tells me that high school didn’t prepare her for college, but with her mother’s encouragement and MA’O’s help – counseling, remedial instruction, and peer support – she’s overcome some personal hurdles and is now ready for bigger challenges. While she’s not likely to pursue farming as a career she credits the program with giving her the emotional tools she needed to succeed. “The farm experience is an inspiration. Like college, it’s hard work. The farm grounds you because you have to manage your time, you have to work as a team with others to succeed, and you have to face the consequences of your actions.”

Sending worthy young people to college is admirable, but almost more importantly the program cultivates the interns’ state of mind. Other young people like Pua, start to eat better and lose weight. One youth worker, Kainoa, lost 130 pounds by exercising and changing his diet. Disempowered, brought up with low expectations, some homeless, these interns stared at a future that promised little but a swift descent into diabetes and a life in the unemployment line. Now the steps out of poverty are more visible.

To grow and sell a half-million dollars of organic fruits and vegetables every year is no small feat. But to raise dozens of young leaders who can challenge the dominance of the condo kings and restore the economic and physical health of their people would no doubt bring a smile to the ancient kings and queens of Hawaii.

Dan and Isabelle sit patiently on the folding metal chairs in the tastefully decorated waiting room of Seattle’s Ballard Food Bank. Intelligent, soft-spoken, and in his late 50s, Dan is a chronically underemployed architectural draftsman who barely managed to eke out three days of temporary work over the past week. His unemployment benefits have long since evaporated and he’s thinking about applying for food stamps, although he cringes as the words leave his mouth. With his shrunken income dedicated to keeping a roof over his head, he and Isabelle are two among 1,200 or so neighborhood residents who will request a shopping cart-full of food this week at the food bank.

Peggy Bailey, Ballard’s Operation Manager, is one of those dedicated, unflappable souls whose work holds the lives of others together as the larger universe spins out of control. Her recitation of statistics is the “growth” story that you’ll hear from any of the 60,000 emergency food sites across America: “In 2001 we were serving about 350 people per week; four years ago it was 450; now we’re serving between 1,100 and 1,200.” Peggy escorts me past tattooed skateboarders, young women clutching babies, and unshaven men for whom a good night is a dry patch of grass underneath a bridge.

Like all the 25 volunteers (out of a total of 100) on hand this day—good neighbors who keep the flow of people safe and dignified—Peggy beams with pride over the food, large walk-in refrigerators, and the recently retrofitted 6,200-square-foot machine shop that’s been their new home for only a year (after relocating from their cramped, dilapidated home of nearly 40 years). Almost half of the available food is produce, some of which comes from nearby Pea Patch community gardens and local fruit tree gleaners. An abundant supply of artisan bread, fresh dairy products, and even enough frozen meat to give each person two packages, fill the shelves. Not only can you select from a rather remarkable range of products, e.g., microwaveable entrees that retail for $9.00 at Trader Joe’s, and a “no-cook” section that, in an average month, serves 350 people without kitchens. In addition, nearly 100 bags are assembled and delivered weekly to shut-ins and people with special dietary needs.

Unlike food banks in days of yore, Ballard does more than give away food. If you don’t have a permanent address, they’ll act as your personal post office box, a service currently used by 480 people. Case workers from the Department of Social and Health Services try to connect food bank users with SNAP (food stamps) as well as medical and dental services. Need help paying your rent or electrical bill? You can apply for a $300 voucher for the former and $200 voucher for the latter.

When I asked Peggy how she keeps up with the demand for food, she told me, almost blithely, that enough food was not a problem. In a comment that would make her the envy of every food bank worker in America, she said, “We’ve never had to turn anyone away due to lack of food. This is a very generous community. We have Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Safeway, and dozens of other food donors.” While supporting five paid staff, three trucks, and a good-size modern facility, the food bank gets 95 percent of its operating funds from private donations, receiving only $40,000 per year from Seattle city government. One anonymous individual, for instance, gives the Ballard Food Bank $2,000 each month just to buy fresh dairy products.

In contrast to the generosity of the surrounding neighborhoods, you have the U.S. House of Representatives. If the miracles that these Seattle residents pull off every day make Jesus Christ’s feeding of the 5,000 look like a cheap card trick, the House majority’s proposal to slash $3 billion from SNAP, WIC, and TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) makes Scrooge look like a Salvation Army volunteer. At a time when the nation’s economy is still on life support and when a record 43 million Americans are receiving food stamps (cite), the House Republicans want to hack the safety net with a machete while leaving the silver cutlery of hedge fund operators untarnished. Take from the poor, but don’t touch a dime of the rich.

Ballard is a human-scale urban environment whose sloping landscape gently lowers you to the shores of the Puget Sound. On street corners, food bank volunteers greet the homeless people by name, who, in turn, respond in a friendly manner, pleased that there are people who don’t avert their eyes. Stroll a few blocks north of Market Street, and you’ll come to a lovely park where grassy slopes and park benches are populated by homeless men catching a ray or two of Seattle’s stingy sunlight. In the opposite corner is a small skateboard tunnel where young dudes, hat brims cocked at precise angles, practice their chutes and curls. Between the skaters and the homeless are several fountains that spray giggling toddlers cheered on by happy moms.

The park reflects Ballard’s values: There’s room for everybody, diversity is encouraged, and the community does its darnedest to meet everyone’s needs. But, beneath this cloak of tolerance, there is a creeping sense that there may be limits to what any group of caring people can do. Perhaps it’s symbolized by the police cruiser stationed just across the street from the “homeless end” of the park. Maybe you hear it in the voices of the young men at the food pantry who were too ashamed to give me their names, but did say that in spite of a couple of years of college they couldn’t find jobs: “We’re not trained for anything.” Or perhaps you can smell it on the breath of the middle-aged drunken man, who according to Peggy had been “doing so well up until now.”

If the House Republicans have their way, the Ballard Food Bank’s waiting room could very well become so crowded that the smiling volunteers will be replaced by stern-faced security guards. When I asked John, an 87-year old food bank volunteer of 12 years, what he thought was behind the ever rising number of clients, he said emphatically, “It’s all about the economy. I see how embarrassed people are who are asking for help, but you can either sleep on the street or come to the food bank.” One has to ask if that is the vision that the budget cutting, non-taxing conservative minority have for America. If that is true, and every statement from the Republican leadership seems to suggest that it is, then one has to ask where the rage is at this time in our nation’s history.

How big must food banks get to contain the ever-swelling legions of un- and underemployed workers? How much food will Ballard’s neighborhood grocers have to donate to ensure that all the young mothers can feed themselves as well as their babies? Is there indeed a tipping point when community compassion can no longer clean up the mess made by mean-spirited politicians who avert their eyes from the growing victims of a failed American dream?

Evelyn, 87, has been volunteering at the Ballard Food Bank for 15 years, longer than anyone else. She’s a feisty, retired machinist who worked for a Boeing Aircraft subcontractor. Sitting at a table where she was sorting nuts into small plastic bags for the home delivery sacks, Evelyn shared the most commonly expressed reason for volunteering at food banks. “If you’ve been blessed, you have to give back.” Yes, I said, I’d heard that sentiment from many people in the emergency food world, but I wondered if there wasn’t something else. At that point the fiery machinist union member took over from the charitable grandmother. Growing up during the Great Depression on a Minnesota farm, she did not need the reason for rage explained to her. “Things have to change in this country,” she said, eyes narrowing and pronouncing each syllable more distinctly. “The idea of not taxing the rich is ridiculous. We have to stop farm and oil subsidies. We got to get politicians to care about people all the time, not just when they’re trying to get elected.”

Compassion and “giving back” may not be sustainable when one class of Americans lives under the House Republicans’ Golden Fleece, while bourgeoning flocks live under highway overpasses. So that compassion may live, we must sometimes release the rage.

Highland Hills is one of those down-and-out communities that’s allowed a glimpse of prosperity but never gets to taste it. The Dallas skyline looms large across the hazy north Texas horizon and is linked to this poverty-plagued neighborhood by a seven-mile ribbon of light-rail steel. Ledbetter Avenue crosses the train line passing vacant buildings, empty parking lots, and a dizzying array of “For Sale” and “For Jesus” signs. Named for the renowned guitar picker Lead Belly who did time in these parts–both in and out of prison–the Avenue speaks little in the way of promise, but wails the blues of poverty loud and clear.

Like cockroaches in a post-nuclear winter, the only commercial survivors appear to be pawn shops, Dollar stores, and fast-food joints. One supermarket, a Minyard whose cinder-blocked and windowless façade is about as inviting as the entrance to Stalag 13, is the only retail food source in the surrounding miles of food desert. But a lifeline from an unlikely source has arrived via a group of innovative academics. Paul Quinn College, a historically black college that sits at the neighborhood’s eastern edge is committed to lifting the Highland Hills’ physical and economic health with a combination of food, farming, and servant leadership.

To drive by the campus is to, well, keep on driving. There are no signature ivy-clad buildings or tree-shaded quads, in fact the first roadside buildings you see are in various states of demolition. Student enrollment plunged from 600 to 200 and the school has experienced on-going accreditation problems. At first glance anyway, and like the adjoining neighborhood it wants to help, Paul Quinn appears to be hanging on by no more than a pea tendril.

But first glances are deceiving, and pea tendrils are stronger than they look. And when your back’s to the wall and nobody, even your own government, will help you, you fight like hell, you do the unexpected. You take risks.

In this case not only did the college take risks, it committed a grievous sin, at least by Texas standards–they terminated their football program and turned their field into an organic farm. Yes, in the shadow of the Super Bowl, with the specter of Tom Landry looking down, and the holy glare of Friday night lights forever dimmed, they ripped up sacred turf and planted–goalpost to goalpost–peas, lettuce, carrots, strawberries, and more, lots more.

While the roar from the stands may have subsided, the field has not fallen silent. When farm manager Andrea Bithell announced to student and staff volunteers that the kohlrabi had gone in last week, everyone cheered. Showing a group of farm visitors where the corn would be planted later this spring evoked a round of applause from students who proclaimed their love of its sweet kernels. The competitive spirit and enthusiasm so much a part of college athletics is hardly lacking at “Food for Good Farm,” the name chosen to denote it’s larger mission of education, community service, and healthy food for all. Sounding more like a coach than a farmer, Bithell uses words like hustle to describe her student crew’s effort to plant and seed the two-acre field. When the volunteers complained about working in the cold and the rain, she reminded them that football games are played in all kinds of weather. Even the plants are forced to compete in a set of 12 trial beds located in the south end zone. Here students test different growing methods and evaluate their potential financial rate of return.

Elizabeth Wattley, Director of Service Learning, said with pride that the farm’s tomatoes were better than anything she’d ever bought in a grocery store. Biology major Symphonie Dawson giggled when she described the farm’s mascot that they temporarily borrowed from Delta State University. “It’s the ‘Fighting Okra,’ an image of the vegetable wearing boxing gloves. We borrowed it because last year’s okra crop seemed to go on forever.” The “Rah-rah, Go Team, Go!” energy previously reserved for football games is now channeled into the planting of 1500 strawberry plants, 6600 onions, a new asparagus bed, and dozens of vegetable varieties. “The farm is the light of the college,” said Wattley.

Once on the ropes, Paul Quinn has gained a reprieve by discovering the multiple benefits of farming while also turning attention outward to the community. One major need the farm addresses is healthy living and eating, no small concern on today’s college campuses, especially one surrounded by a food desert. “Before their work on the farm, students wouldn’t eat carrots unless they were smothered in ranch dressing,” said Bithell. But by getting their hands in the dirt–a task that usually took two or three visits to get past the “yuck” declaration–students started eating carrots right out of the ground, dirt and all. “They actually taste,” said Wattley, pausing for a moment to find the right adjective, “carrot-tee.”

By engaging students in the school’s biology and social entrepreneurship courses, the farm gives young people a chance to get hands-on laboratory experience while getting their hands in the dirt. Even the students who don’t care to venture into the world of bugs and compost get a taste of the farm’s output. The cafeteria now offers a monthly dish to showcase the farm’s harvest and introduce students to food that is healthy, tasty, and very local. Jasmine Wynn, a freshman legal studies major, summed up the farm’s health benefits best. “I’m a city girl from Dallas, and for me the farm was something new. I liked being out there. I also started getting serious about my diet and decided that organic food is better for you. It’s just part of a healthier lifestyle, and I want to stick around for a long time.”

The lack of farming experience or a farm background has not been a deterrent to anyone’s participation, including school President Michael J. Sorrell. With public policy and law degrees from Duke University, his stellar resume shows he has represented American Airlines and Morgan Stanley, served on numerous commissions including an assignment at the White House, and was selected in 2009 as one of the 10 Best Historically Black College and University presidents. However, lacking from Dr. Sorrell’s career synopsis, which also includes representing top-flight athletes like Utah Jazz’s Deron Williams, are any agricultural credentials. So why did he eliminate the football program and have the audacity to make the field into a farm?

A big part of the answer lies in his commitment to servant leadership, which, like the farm, is a concept he brought to Paul Quinn. With such simple but difficult to live by ideas like putting others before self, leaving the world a better place than you found it, and maintaining spiritual faithfulness, Dr. Sorrell not only preaches what he practices (he teaches a freshman course in servant leadership), he practices what he preaches. The farm is the center of that practice.

Isaiah 58: 9-12 gets prominent mention on the College’s website which also touts the school’s Christian underpinnings. The scripture admonishes us “to pour yourself out for the hungry…then shall your light rise in the darkness…and you shall be like a watered garden.” The Food for Good Farm is set on serving the hardscrabble community that surrounds it and though a share of the harvest goes to the cafeteria, 10 percent is donated to a local food pantry, a sizeable share is sold on a weekly basis to the community from the field’s former hot dog stand, and just to preserve some historical symmetry, the Dallas Cowboys buy a small share of the farm’s organic veggies.

The “adaptive re-use” of the field has been impressive under Bithell and Wattley’s leadership. The hash stripes are gone as well as the top four inches of sod and dirt that they replaced by dump truck loads of pure organic matter. Reflecting the program’s absolute commitment to organic farming, there was simply too much distrust of the chemical residues from years of a perfectly green gridiron. The goalposts remain as do the blocking sled, scoreboard and the bleachers running the length of both sides of the field. The former press box will be turned into a chicken coop and Wattley retains some hope that the bleachers can be repurposed as a greenhouse. Acres of adjoining land are being eyed for farm expansion, especially if a federal grant comes through.

None of this extraordinary progress has come cheaply. The school has made significant capital expenditures to accomplish this conversion and the on-going operating costs, which are only marginally offset by farm sales. An April fundraiser featuring Will Allen hopes to swell the coffers to enable the farm to buy its own tractor.

The rapid development of the farm, and the rising fortunes of Paul Quinn College have come with a price, however. The Food for Good Farm is the result of a 50/50 partnership with PepsiCo’s Food for Good Initiative. The college makes it clear that this is an equal partnership and that PepsiCo has not placed any strings on their giving. Other than cleaning up its tarnished image, one cannot detect any sinister covert or overt motives in the cola giant’s support. Yet the contradictions can’t be ignored. After all, Pepsi and other soda makers have contributed more than their fair share of calories to America’s obesity crisis.

In the meantime, it’s hard to argue with the outcome of the partnership. Texas has one less football field and one more organic farm, clearly a net gain for humanity.

Picture this: three long-haired college kids are unloading crates of food from the bed of a battered pick-up truck. It’s parked curbside at the Androscoggin Food Co-op located in the equally battered mill town of Lewiston, Maine. The year is 1971 and these kids are, unbeknownst to them, the vanguard of the local food movement.

They’ve spent the day rounding up goods directly from local farms and food processors, not because they’re devout locavores (the word wouldn’t be invented for another 35 years) but because sourcing locally was the cheapest way to get food for a co-op whose members were largely lower income. Some crates are full of apples from a nearby orchard; others contain 12-pound wheels of a so-so cheddar from a small cheese plant; and one cardboard box contains 30 dozen eggs from a chicken farm only 10 miles down the road. That box is labeled DeCoster Farms.

Yes, the product of this family egg farm (now headquartered in Iowa) at the eye of the current salmonella storm was being handled contentedly by these prehistoric foodies, I among them. As a company that was started with 125 hens in the mid-1960s by Austin “Jack” DeCoster in the farm town of Turner (pronounced “Turna” by everybody except out-of-state college kids), it was as local as you could get.

Funny how times change. Jack, now 71, was an ambitious man who wasn’t going to be happy selling locally produced eggs just in northern New England. According to one DeCoster employee, Jack is a born-again Christian who doesn’t engage in any leisure pursuits other than work, which he apparently pursues 18-hours a day. With a work ethic like that, growth was inevitable. Now operating under the names of Wright County Egg and Quality Egg, Jack’s egg empire now produces 2.3 million dozen eggs a week in Iowa while his “starter” farm back in Turner, renamed Maine Contract Farming, keeps 3.5 million hens gainfully employed.

But Jack paid a steep price for getting big and going global. Though town folks in Maine and Iowa love the jobs, huge property tax payments, and Jack’s “community mindedness” (new playgrounds and all the free eggs you can eat at local fundraising breakfasts), they are less than sanguine about the factory farms’ legacy of pollution, labor abuse, and animal cruelty. In 1994 the State of Iowa fined DeCoster for environmental pollution and designated the business a “habitual violator.” Back in Maine DeCoster paid a $2 million fine in 1997 to the U.S. Department of Labor for egregious health and safety violations that led to then Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich describing the farm’s working conditions “as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop.” The federal Equal Opportunity Commission settled a $1.5 million sexual harassment suit brought against one of DeCoster’s Iowa operations in 2002. And again in Turner, as recently as June of this year, the State of Maine fined Maine Contract Farming $125,000 for animal cruelty. And now dirty eggs – 380 million of them are Jack’s – have been recalled following 1500 reported cases of salmonella poisoning (another Iowa producer, Hillandale Farms, not a DeCoster operation, was forced to recall 170 million eggs).

Had Jack developed some leisure activities earlier in life he might have become a relatively successful Androscoggin homey. But holding his personality traits aside, remaining a small egg business was probably not an option. Like other agricultural operations, “get big or get out” has been the driving reality. This has led to the egg industry’s consolidation with fewer but larger producers now controlling most of the egg supply in this country. That means, of course, massive egg-laying factories that often hold as many as 150,000 hens in a single warehouse, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics, and the production of Himalayan mountains of chicken manure.

For those of us who take refuge from the industrial food system by purchasing oddly sized and colored eggs packaged in a mish-mash assortment of cartons at a farmers’ market, or who are willing to pay $4 a dozen for certified organic eggs at Whole Foods, we have to be reminded from time to time that we are the exception. According to the New York Times, out of every 100 eggs produced in the US, 97 come from hens that are kept in tightly packed battery cages, 2 come from hens that are “cage-free” but always kept indoors, and just 1 from a “free-range” source where chickens can spend some time outdoors.

If the Jacks of the world rule, whether we’re talking eggs or eggplant, then how do we avoid the mischief that our industrial food system is heir to? Better government regulation and monitoring are the answers on the lips of many policy makers and consumer advocates these days. While there is always room to improve government efficiency – ending the divide between USDA and FDA food safety oversight is one obvious choice – I’m not confident that government can protect the consumer in an age of industrial agriculture. Our faith in science, technology, and regulatory oversight can be as misplaced as our trust in mega food and farm corporations. With tremendous resources at their disposal, our industrial food players are more than able to game the system. And in what could be the ultimate irony, the biggest violators often have the deepest pockets which positions them nicely to comply, at least on paper, with ever increasing (and costly) regulatory requirements. The little guy – the small farmer, the ones who are local and whom we know and genuinely trust – could be put out of business if a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation is implemented.

Perhaps there is another fear as well, one that we feel in our hearts more than our heads, but is nevertheless suitable for the 21st century. As the industrial food system becomes ever more dominant and government feels the need to escalate its authority, don’t we run the risk of sacrificing ever greater measures of our freedom and independence? Could the days of an all-powerful national Food Czar be far off? Holding aside the anti-government nonsense of the Tea Party, it is now possible to imagine food production being so remote and so beyond our understanding that we have no choice but to place all control and authority in the hands of a few food corporations and a board of government overseers.

A healthy antidote to this distinct set of possibilities, both in terms of food system control and human health, might come in the form of direct engagement by citizen-consumers in their food supply. For instance, there is ample room to educate ourselves about safe food handling, particularly if local school boards recognize the importance of (and fund) food education. The individual, after all, is the last and probably best line of defense against salmonella and other food-borne bacteria.

What about raising our own chickens? The backyard poultry movement may be even bigger these days than the Tea Party, and certainly more useful. A dozen hens can provide all the eggs that several neighborhood families could eat in a week and provide a lot of education and fun (a leisure pursuit, Jack?) along the way.

And what about food democracy? Food policy councils now exist in over 100 cities and states and are beginning to shape the direction of their local food systems. To support the backyard poultry movement, for instance, councils in places like Cleveland, Chicago, and Missoula have passed chicken ordinances which make it legal, easy, and safe to raise a few hens on city lots and in backyards.

Clean hands on sanitized cutting boards, building our own chicken coops, and bringing our voices loud and clear to city hall offer us a distinctly brighter set of possibilities than the prospect of ponderous bureaucracies locked in mortal combat with resistant food corporations. And who knows, maybe today’s clean-cut crop of college students could organize and stock the next wave of co-ops with authentically local food. The good old days may be coming back, but this time they could be even better.

Photo: Phae

Wow – Oxford!

Amidst Oxford’s venerable scholastic buildings and grounds, I spoke to 60 local foodies in the equally sainted Vault and Garden Café (local, organic, and the site of Oxfam International’s founding). Loosely led by the wife-husband team of Ruth West and Colin Trudge,  the crowd of local food activists had gathered to see what they could do to catapult their local food movement to a higher level.

Their food system challenges and opportunities were familiar to me: interest in local food is zooming, farmers’ markets (Britain’s first wasn’t opened until 1998) and “box schemes” (similar to CSAs) are exploding, and institutional demand for healthy food (a la Jamie Oliver) is strong. The supply and distribution networks, however, aren’t up to snuff. A food hub that aggregates supply and facilitates distribution was the most likely way to scale up their efforts, but they weren’t sure how to do it.

Social justice concerns were also on the table. In contrast to Oxford’s vigorous pub life and bourgeoning technology center, the city has food deserts that limit the access to healthy and affordable food. At the same time, participation at farmers’ markets by low-income households is weak. For wannabe gardeners, the waiting list for allotments (community garden plots) was so long that staying on the list was more likely to benefit one’s children than one’s self.

With 60 pairs of eyes scanning me for answers, I offered up several policy options that had shown promise in the US: special coupons and food stamp incentive programs to bring low-income shoppers to the farmers’ markets; local food policy councils to organize foodies and build a constituency for food policy change; and aggregation schemes that were making it easier for farmers to sell to local schools, restaurants, and smaller retail outlets.

The farmers’ market coupon idea was a big hit. But government-supported food programs like food stamps were non-existent in Britain, which had opted (correctly in my opinion) for a more comprehensive form of social welfare, e.g. National Health Service. When asked if they should start more food banks (Britain has very few), I gave them the thumbs down. I advised them that local food projects, better organizing among food activists, and developing supportive public policies were the way to go. My recommendations were greeted with affirmative head nodding.

The concept of food policy councils also resonated with the Oxford-istas. While several large cities like London and Brighton have developed local food strategies – detailed public statements about promoting a healthy food system – citizen groups don’t have a venue to advocate for those strategies.

In less than 5 minutes the assembled crowd created a 12-point action plan which included more allotments, coupon incentives, and aggregation schemes.  Four whip-smart Oxford students volunteered their services as researchers, and a date for the next meeting was set. I was stunned by how swiftly they had girded their loins for battle. The local cheese and beer that followed further cemented their commitment.

London Swings

Arriving in London in the aftermath of Britain’s national election, I carefully picked my way through the TV equipment and comely news anchors that ringed the Houses of Parliament. My talk that day was with the London-based new economics foundation, a self-styled alternative think-tank that draws on the teachings of E.F. Schumacher (its preference for the lower-case, I surmised, was out of deference to the notion that small is beautiful).

The audience reinforced my Oxford observations: great local projects, highly engaged activists, but inter-group cohesion and policy work were lacking. Two women in the group, Susan Steed and Clare Patey, stood out for their project work. Susan’s territory is Brixton, a hardscrabble working class section of London where she oversees the Brixton “pound” local currency project. Like similar projects in Ithaca (NY) and the Berkshires (Mass.) that value local goods and services for barter and exchange purposes, the Brixton pound supports local businesses, community connections, and a smaller carbon footprint. Unlike these rarefied U.S. communities, however, Brixton is a rough and tumble place with a reputation for sticking it to the man on occasion (think “The Guns of Brixton” by the Clash). The image on the Brixton “pound note” was of a bull-horn toting black man rousting the community to action. Contrast this with the image of a well-dressed 19^th century white guy on the “Berkshare.” Call it Brit grit versus Mass mellow.

Clare Patey is the creator of “Feast on the Bridge,” which for the past three Septembers has turned the Thames Southwark Bridge into the site of Britain’s premiere food celebration. She showed me photos of the bridge’s entire span covered from end to end with white linen clothed tables and thousands of chairs. Locally and sustainably produced food served by the country’s best chefs is the feature event, but it’s nearly upstaged by thousands of children who parade across the bridge in crazy food costumes. You can also bob for apples, stomp grapes, and partake in the Sacred Mayonnaise Ritual (you gotta be British to get it).

Feast on the Bridge demonstrates how far British food has come since the unfortunate days of “bubble and squeak.”  The Brixton “pound” transforms an idea with much cache in white, bright university towns into a symbol of economic revival in low-income communities. But are these groups working together to secure the promise of a food revolution for all? Are they using the broad shoulders of government to push for authentic food system change? I would need to push on to Wales for answers.

Wales Awash in Innovation

As stimulating as London and Oxford were, Cardiff, the capitol of Wales, embodied both progress and opportunity in the British food system. Through its formerly gritty port, Cardiff once shipped the Welsh coal that stoked England’s “satanic mills.” But thanks to Margaret Thatcher, the coalfields are dead, and the valleys that depended on them are mired in poverty. Cardiff, on the other hand, reinvented itself as both the heart of Welsh culture – including its tongue-twisting language – and its own blend of new Euro-urbanism.

I had the privilege of spending a day with two leaders in the Welsh food system, Stephen Garrett and Professor Kevin Morgan. Garrett – long-haired, black-bereted, and a self-described “child of the sixties” – is one of those special cats whose charm and integrity allow him to get away with starting trouble.  He runs the Riverside Community Market Association which is responsible for operating farmers’ markets, urban gardens, and a new 10-acre city youth farm. His organization also agitates for a sustainable Cardiff food system and played a part in a Welsh government initiative that developed 200 food coops in rural places where coal’s demise had left the people without economic opportunity or healthy food options. I said to myself that here’s a guy who’s really connecting the dots.

To be sure we saw the dark side of the British system Steven took us to the old Cardiff Market for lunch. The market hall dates back to the 19^th century and has seen better days. Stopping at one of its artery clogging eateries, Stephen guided me through a lunchtime order that included faggots (meatballs) and peas, Clark’s pie (a fatty meat concoction wrapped in barely cooked dough), and chips (fries) smothered in gravy.

Laughing at my lack of gustatory enthusiasm, Stephen told me that the city had given him permission to locate a farmers’ market on the public market’s main street. This will raise the profile of local food even more and give shoppers access to top-notch produce. When I asked Stephen what he thought was behind the dramatic uptick in local food interest, he cited Britain’s mad cow disease outbreak, memories of World War Two’s food shortages, and the Jamie Oliver craze. “Food is the new sex,” is the way he summed it up.

Walking off our lunch on the quays of Cardiff harbor, I asked Stephen about his challenges. As I’d heard in Oxford, he said it’s hard to attract low-income people to the farmers’ markets (he loved the Farmers Market Nutrition Program idea), and while the City of Cardiff has a food strategy on its books, there’s no one advocating for it (he liked the food policy council idea as well). Progressive food projects and ideas already abound in Wales. The challenge is to connect them.

After speaking to a Cardiff University audience that evening, I had dinner with Kevin Morgan whose deep, resonant voice sounds like its about to break into a Dylan Thomas poem. He is a Professor at the School of Planning, and with his co-author, Roberta Sonnino, wrote The School Food Revolution. Over the best lamb shank dish I’ve ever eaten (related no doubt to those fleeced darlings I saw leaping gaily across verdant Welsh hillsides), we discussed his book’s central theme: using the purchasing power of government – the “power of the public plate” as Kevin calls it – to leverage a wide range of economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Kevin’s opinions do little to conceal his heritage. As the son of a coal miner, he has no patience for the laissez-faire market policies of conservative politicians. He feels passionately that government must intervene to equitably distribute benefits when the market place fails. “Why not use the power of the public purse to stimulate economic growth, healthy eating, and lower carbon emissions?  After all, aren’t these outcomes desired by everyone?” he asked between enthusiastic gulps of wine. Kevin argues eloquently for the re-localization of the food chain saying that, “the power of purchase is one of the most influential means through which the state can effect behavioral change in economy and society.”

He cites the East Ayrshire, Scotland school district where purchasing officials decided to wring as much benefit as they could out of every school food expenditure. What distinguishes this approach from America’s farm-to-school movement is that it doesn’t just focus on buying more local food. It asks, and in many cases demands, that the food be produced sustainably if not organically, that fair wages be paid to everyone in the food chain, that packaging be reduced and recycling promoted, that job training programs are available to unskilled and disadvantaged people, and that the distance between the source and the user be shortened as much as possible.

The results are impressive. In this district of 120,000 people, food miles were reduced from 330 miles to 99 miles, and the economic multiplier effect contributed an additional $260,000 to the local economy in just one year.  And oh yes, student satisfaction with the meals was significantly higher when compared to the previous scheme.

By trip’s end I had concluded that British food fighters are nearly as prevalent as their nations’ sheep, but considerably more aggressive. People like Ruth, Clare, and Stephen are hard at work building a just and sustainable British food system. As their movement coalesces and engages policymakers at all levels, their chances of success will only increase.

Forsyth Park is an idyllic place – Spanish moss drips from the trees; the park’s open space is filled with frisbee-chasing dogs and laughing children. But the experience for Graham and other African-American farmers of selling organic produce in this park at this time is not just another farmer’s market story. Excluded for decades after World War II from public funds that helped white farmers prosper, black farmers have also been left out of the growing ranks of organic farming, a movement that is giving small farmers across the country a chance at success. As recently as 1963, segregation still ruled the South and Forsyth Park was for whites only.

Fortunately, that is now changing. By taking matters into their own hands, black farmers formed the Southeast African American Organic Network (SAAFON). And at the same time that they were converting more of their members to organic agriculture, black farmers, with partners in local multiracial organizations, were organizing a farmer’s market in a public space previously denied to them.

Farmer’s markets have become critical for small farmers who need the higher return that comes from retail venues. This is because it does not do a farmer much good to be certified organic without having access to a market that can command a higher price. “The first two years as a certified organic farmer I had no outlets, which meant I had to sell at a conventional price,” Graham said. So SAAFON decided to reach out to Savannah residents of all races, joining forces with others in the city’s “foodie” community. Together, they set their sights on Forsyth Park as a prime site for a farmer’s market.

Though nothing comes easily to any farmer, black farmers must add racism to the list of battles they wage, along with droughts, floods, and pests. That is why Hilton snarls when he thinks about events of the recent past, “We had a Republican world whose mission it was to kill the small farmer. The big farmers were getting $8 a bushel for their soybeans but I was only getting $4. It doesn’t take one long to figure that out.”

Graham, now 61, stayed behind to secure the heritage of black-owned farmland in the American South. Continuing the work of several generations of Grahams, Hilton raises timber, cattle, and collard greens for wholesale commercial markets, and several acres of organic vegetables to sell at farmer’s markets. The USDA organic seal is no guarantee that he will become profitable, but it does give him access to markets that often earn the farmer a premium price, whether it’s from Whole Foods or the neighborhood farmer’s market.

“Customers told us they wanted organic food,” said Cynthia Hayes, who co-founded SAAFON. But she also knew that black farmers were not fully participating in the organic marketplace, and, in an effort to change that, she teamed up with Southern University agriculture professor Owusu Bandele. Out of their shared passion for change was born what is by most accounts the nation’s first black farmer-controlled organic organization. In addition to its advocacy for organic and sustainable farming, SAAFON has also worked hard to develop direct marketing programs for their 120 members.

In the opinion of Hayes, the circumstances facing black farmers were different enough to warrant the development of their own program. This conclusion was fed by the perception that African American farmers could not get culturally sensitive assistance from organic programs because all of those programs were white-led. “We weren’t comfortable with the way that private groups were addressing the need. And this feeling was reinforced by the public sector whose agricultural extension agents were telling black farmers they couldn’t afford to go organic.”

While there is much in the nuance of words relating to the topic of race that perplexes well-intentioned white people, there was another factor that was just as dominant in SAAFON’s decision to go it alone. “Our farmers have a lot of pride,” said Hayes, “and they wanted a chance to do it their way.”

So under the auspices of SAAFON, Hayes and Bandele established a four-day training program. It is designed to teach farmers how to complete the USDA organic producer application, thus helping to transition them from conventional to organic growing methods. Farmers are taught to substitute animal manures and approved biological insect control for petro-chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And in an ironic twist, SAAFON’s trainees are given a historical review of African-American farming in the South that reminds them that “organic” was the form of farming they embraced long ago.

While expert trainers and a strong curriculum are essential to the program’s success, Hayes likes to reinforce the importance of peer support and the shared cultural experience of black farming. “It is common for most of the participants from previous trainings to mentor and support the new trainees. A real bond of solidarity develops among all the farmers.”

At their first training session three years ago, 15 farmers showed up—three times the turnout they expected. That training went so well that they were soon invited to South Carolina, where they trained another 15 farmers. Today, 41 SAAFON members are USDA-certified organic, and another 10 will join their ranks shortly after the next training class in March 2010.

“SAAFON wants to assure access to local, organic food for everyone,” Hayes said. To that end, she joined forces with Teri Schell, a homeless advocate and founding member of the farmer’s market, and several local food organizations, to form the Savannah Food Collaborative. This multiracial coalition set out on a five-month trek to secure approval from the City of Savannah to open the market in Forsyth Park.

Though the city is well known for its parks and meticulously restored anti-bellum mansions, Savannah also has a dark side. Like hundreds of urban areas across the country, gentrification has pushed up the city’s housing costs and put a severe crimp in the lives of the city’s low-income community. With a poverty rate that is 23 percent, and more than 28 percent of the city’s children enrolled in the food stamp program, Savannah’s lush Southern veneer has a less visible tattered core.

Initially, city officials were wary of allowing farmers to sell their fresh produce beneath the shade of the venerable oaks. In their eyes, a farmer’s market was not in keeping with their pristine image of the park. Even though Savannah’s population is over 50 percent black, SAAFON alone was not sufficient to instantly change the city’s mind. But with the intervention of the broad-based food coalition, aided in no small part by Savannah’s Mayor Otis Johnson, who has distinguished himself by his promotion of health policies, permission to open the market was eventually granted.

The Wholesome Wave Foundation, a recent creation of celebrity chef Michel Nischan, whose business partner was the late Paul Newman, gave the market a grant to double the amount of fresh produce purchased by lower income families when using food stamps. This healthy eating incentive has boosted sales for farmers while increasing consumption of fresh produce.

The market’s goal of serving the healthy food needs of the community was further supported by the establishment of the “Health Pavilion.” This bi-weekly event is a creation of the county’s health department and provides a much needed educational complement to the market’s robust offering of fruits and vegetables.

But the heart of the matter still revolves around the revitalization of black agriculture. “What gets me up in the morning,” Hayes said, “is knowing that farmers are returning to their land in the South.” Hayes is of course referring to the farmers who make up the membership of SAAFON, people who left their ancestral lands for jobs as teachers or social workers in the North. Other “returning farmers” are former conventional farmers who had given up because they couldn’t make a living in agriculture. “They are returning,” says Hayes, “because organic farming is allowing them to make money.”

Her long-term challenge, however, is making farming attractive to young African Americans. Hayes and others are working with the 1890 Land Grants Institutions, better known as Historical Black Colleges and Universities, to provide training and resources to nurture a new generation of African-American farmers. Through the work of one of SAAFON’s partner organizations, the Southeastern Green Network, students at these institutions are learning how they can make their campuses, including their dining halls, more sustainable. Hayes’ hope is that this broader interest in the environment and health will lead young people into farming. “Youth find organic food a little more ‘jazzy’ than conventional food. It just might be the way that more of our young people find their way back to the land.”

Early in Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press, 2010) former Texas Agriculture Secretary Susan Coombs declares that, “it will take 2 million angry moms to change school food.” Based on what we now know of the dreary state of our children’s cafeteria fare, there must be at least that many mamas, as well as a good number of papas who are ready to storm the barricades. Fortunately for them and America’s 55 million students who gulp down something resembling a meal every school day, they’ve been joined by Hunter College sociologist Janet Poppendieck who gives us the best reasons yet for unconditional school food reform.

We are already indebted to Poppendieck for her earlier works Knee Deep in Breadlines and Sweet Charity where she employed her sleuthing skills to unravel the historical contradictions and compounding irrationalities associated with feeding our nation’s neediest citizens. As she did then, Poppendieck combines her talents as historian and sociologist with those of an institutional psychologist to help us get in touch with our nation’s school food neurosis.

Why, for instance, have we developed three different ways to pay the lunch lady–one for the poor students, one for the nearly poor, and one for those who supposedly are being driven in BMWs to school? The logical answer might be because that’s fair; the rich kids should pay more and the government should subsidize the cost of feeding lower income children, as it does currently to the tune of $11 billion annually. But as Poppendieck peels back the layers of the onion, we find the issue has always been less about compassion for needy children and more about accommodating political and commercial interests. Harry Truman (school lunch is good for national security), Ronald Reagan (ketchup is a vegetable), nutritionists and nutritionism (its nutrients that count, not the quality and taste of food), and various agricultural lobbies wanting to unload their farm surpluses are just a sampling of what has driven the school food agenda. Somewhere low on the totem pole you’ll find concern for the health and well-being of boys and girls.

Like any parent, I love to regale my own children with tales of the good old days. I tell them about my high school cafeteria which had exactly one vending machine in the 1960s: a mechanically operated metal box that dispensed a red or golden, uncut, unpackaged and unadorned fresh apple for 25 cents. Far from feeling deprived (my children asked me if my school was the same one attended by Abe Lincoln), we were a healthy and reasonably bright group of young people. But today, vending machines (I once counted 51 in just one Albuquerque, New Mexico high school) are as ubiquitous as dog droppings in the melting snow. What has happened during the intervening decades?

Poppendieck’s jargon-free narrative takes us step-by-step through the deals, concessions, and compromises that have bureaucratized the school food process while simultaneously dumbing down the food. Why is so much processed food used to prepare school meals? Because it’s cheaper and “cooking from scratch” kitchens have been removed from the schools. Why does it have to be cheaper when we’re talking about feeding our children? Because the federal government (or anyone else for that matter) will not provide enough funding to enable schools to buy fresh, whole ingredients. (And by the way, taxpayers are spending billions of dollars to subsidize corn and soybeans, the prime ingredients in processed food.) Why do we have so many junk food items sold “a la carte” in our schools? Well, in addition to using a French culinary phrase to disguise what is otherwise crappy food, schools must sell these items to those with discretionary cash–supposedly the ones in the BMWs–to compensate for the low reimbursements they receive for meals that meet mandated USDA standards. And on it goes.

Perhaps what I found most astonishing, and central to Poppendieck’s thesis, is the evolution of the three-tiered payment system. While the free, reduced-price, and full-pay categories are the “wins” secured by anti-hunger advocates over many years of legislative battles, Poppendieck argues that the cure may have been worse than the disease. The high cost of determining student eligibility, the administrative reporting burdens imposed by USDA, and of course, the stigma that falls on poor students exacts a high toll. On this last point, Poppendieck has this to say: “The biggest problem is the stigma that comes from being different, from being marked as poor, from being unable to pay in a culture that places excessive value on being able to pay.”

Poppendieck has a solution that is as elegant as it will be hard to achieve–universal free meals for all students K through 12. She acknowledges the cost, an additional $12 billion per year (our present wars, please note, are costing about the same amount each month) that would not only feed all students for free, but also improve the quality of the food.

If the arguments for universal school meals–efficiency, equity, no one excluded–sound eerily familiar, then you’ve probably been paying attention to the arguments for universal health care. If nothing else, it’s certainly ironic to consider the consequences of removing each system’s respective middlemen: processed food purveyors for school food, and private health insurers for health care. Might we all be healthier as a result?

In a long chapter called “Local Heroes” Poppendieck acknowledges the pioneering work of many innovative school food directors like Ann Cooper, as well as movements to connect schools to local farms and even create school gardens. These and others have made important contributions, she says, but they all need to be “scaled up” by becoming institutionalized (my word choice here would be “naturalized”) into the system. This by the way is the role of public policy, and it is why every one who cares about what our children eat should be in touch with their members of Congress.  The future of school food will be decided in the 2010 Child Nutrition reauthorization now before Congress.

Free for All is well researched and written. While Poppendieck studies her subject with the thoroughness of a sociologist, fortunately she doesn’t sound like one. We are treated to a careful review of the facts that flow through a lively and personal narrative. The reader is kept closely by her side as Poppendieck travels through school cafeterias and pores over government reports. Along the way we observe, touch, and taste what 55 million American children consume each school day. Most importantly, she tells us why it’s the way it is, and how, if we could somehow put ourselves in the little shoes of people smaller than us, we would do everything we could to make it better.

I’ll even eat at one of those bastions of gastronomic elitism like Stone Barns in New York or that citadel of all things “foodie”, Chez Panisse in Berkeley. On one such occasion I celebrated my son’s college graduation with a dinner at Stone Barns where the tab for the two of us came to a cool $325. It dawned on me as I was staggering out of the restaurant that I could have paid for 126 low-income children to eat school lunch that day at the current USDA reimbursement rate of $2.57 per meal. Better yet, 283 food stamp recipients might have had dinner on me that night at the average meal allotment of $1.15.

Such disparities in the way that different classes of Americans eat are disconcerting. With our nation teetering on the brink of economic meltdown, a record 31.8 million of us are receiving help from the food stamp program. Nearly 190,000 Mainers currently receive food stamp benefits, 15 percent more than last year.

Food banks and food pantries have been overrun as well. Over 25 million Americans are using emergency food assistance annually. Maine’s Freeport Community Services’ Food Pantry alone received 20,000 visits from people seeking food last year, but estimate that will grow to 28,000 this year.

In light of the fact that demand for “free” food is reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression, at a cost to the taxpayer of $73 billion a year and climbing, it might seem odd that there is also an infatuation with higher-priced local and organic food.

Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters, regarded by many as the nation’s premiere food elitist, appeared recently on 60 Minutes to proclaim the virtues of local and organic. She snootily dismissed its high cost by saying, “some people buy Nike shoes, two pairs, and other people want to nourish themselves.” And in a recent New York Times op-ed, Waters slashed the quality of the nation’s school lunch program, pronouncing that its federal subsidy should be doubled to $5.00.

But when it comes to the cost of good food for our children as well as for those who have hit a rough patch on the economic highway, I find the arguments over food elitism a bit spurious. Why can’t our society ensure that all our well fed? After all, aren’t we a nation that just bailed out the financial industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, including bonuses for those who put our economy in the toilet?

Perhaps it was this group of financial elitists who were among the party of 12 at Spaggio’s, Chicago’s premier eatery, (yes, the Obamas’ “special occasion” restaurant) who spent $18,000 on one meal this past November. Not only would that feed 15,652 food stamp recipients, it makes my dinner at Stone Barns look like a Happy Meal.

The fact of the matter is it will take money to make sure that everyone eats well. And I place the emphasis on well because we must ensure that everyone has regular access to healthy food. If we don’t, we run the very real risk of sustaining one food system for the poor and near poor, and one for everyone else – a divide, my friends, which is as unconscionable as it is unsustainable.

While the Maine state legislature should be congratulated for its support of school breakfast and lunch programs, the answers are not all about government spending. They are also about commonsense and compassion, qualities that I have found Mainers have in uncommon abundance. Take the new Fresh from the Pantry program currently being devised by the Freeport Food Pantry and two area CSAs farms – Laughing Stock and Tir na NOg. Together they will use the pantry’s ability to help people, the production skill of the farmers, and the generosity of their CSA members to bring the best food to people who need it the most.

Ideas like Fresh from the Pantry combined with a citizenry willing to support the simple notion that all should be well fed will lift both the economic and personal health of the nation. And in the end, we all may become little food elitists. Wouldn’t that be grand!

But a fair wind is blowing, the market is shifting, the people are speaking, and some would even say that the leaders are listening. The pendulum is swinging in the direction of sustainable, local and regional food systems. Certainly for those with time, money, and good information, a healthy food supply is now at hand. No, the scales of justice are still not balanced. There’s plenty of “good food” for the affluent, but not enough affordable and healthy food for those with limited wealth or access to quality food retail outlets. But at least those who speak up loudly for sustainably produced food are beginning to speak up for justice as well. The voice we are hearing more often than not is one that cries out for a food system that is both just and sustainable.

The mere structure of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, however, presents a lingering policy problem that thwarts those growing hordes of activists who see the promise of justice and sustainability being fulfilled at the community level. USDA is hopelessly fragmented into programs that assist farmers—mostly very large commodity farmers, as we know; programs (15 separate ones in all) that feed people such as food stamps; and programs that support conservation. If I walked into USDA headquarters in Washington, DC, and asked to see someone who could help me develop a local food system that respected our natural resources, rewarded farmers with a decent livelihood, and provided healthy food to all our residents, nobody would know where to send me. If I was super clever that day, possessed of infinite stamina, and extremely lucky, I might be able to piece together what I needed out of the various silos in the agricultural bureaucracy. But to my knowledge, no one has ever survived the attempt.

What must be done? Even though I have kept my phone lines open for President-elect Obama to solicit my advice, he has not called. So rather than wait around forever, let me share my thoughts here. First, the new Secretary of USDA (Tom Vilsack?) should create an Office of Community Food Systems directly under his control. The Office’s task should be to coordinate all the functions of USDA for the purpose of ensuring that diverse, healthy, sustainably produced and affordable food is available to all residents of any community in the United States. The Office should focus on developing the potential of every region of the U.S. to meet a major share of its own food needs.

Caring for the natural resource base—both in terms of protecting vital farmland and promoting sustainable farming practices—should be at the top of the list. That emphasis should be followed by developing, or redeveloping as the case may be, the region’s production, processing, and distribution infrastructure. In addition to food storage, transportation, and processing, the infrastructure should include retail outlets as well—both supermarkets and farmers’ markets—to ensure that everyone has access to affordable food. Skill-training for farmers, including the development of new farmers, is necessary and should also be a part of the Office’s mission.

To ensure that everyone’s food needs are met, regardless of their income, the Office should work with existing nutrition programs such as WIC, Child Nutrition (school lunch, etc.), and food stamps to not only make sure those funds are adequate, but to every extent possible, target their use in ways that will also help local producers and retailers. For instance, billions of dollars are spent every year by USDA for the WIC program and school meals. If a sizable share of those dollars were used to purchase locally produced food, it would create an incentive that may be large enough to drive other initiatives to redevelop a region’s food system.

The Clinton Administration, under the leadership of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, created a Community Food Security Initiative. Though under-resourced and possessing little authority, it at least made the statement that USDA is capable of thinking about the simple but essential task of developing the capacity of communities to meet a greater share of their own food needs. It did not serve the American Corn Growers Association or the food stamp lobby, but attempted to integrate the vast resources of that sprawling agency in a way that would build that highly coveted American ideal, community self-reliance.

The time has come to try again, only bigger, better, and smarter. Mr. President-elect, thank you for listening.