The two lobby groups, the Security Industry and Financial Markets Association and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association have challenged the extremely controversial position limits rule, which the CFTC passed in a narrow 3-2 vote this October. Wall Street has recruited the lawfirm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, whose lawyers Miguel Estrada (among Bush’s counsel in Bush v. Gore) and Eugene Scalia (who overturned a Securities and Exchange Commission rule earlier this year) are determined to hold the scepter of market regulation at bay.

The rule caps the total future interest of a given commodity (such as wheat, corn, soy, etc.) a market participant can hold, aimed at preventing “excessive speculation” in those markets. Position limit supporters argue that their absence in recent years has led to price volatility and price spikes, such as the 2008 food crisis that plunged millions of the world’s most vulnerable people deeper into abject poverty, and rising oil prices which in turn drive up the price of food.

Why Position Limits?

Commodity futures exchanges are stocked with two types of traders: Hedgers and speculators. Farmers have long accepted hedging in commodity futures as a way of hedging risk, by selling off future interests (the earliest derivative contracts) in those commodities the burden of production is shared and the farmer ensured a fair price. But wherever futures exchanges were established the threat of speculation was always near.

Japan was home to the first futures exchange in Osaka in the 1730s, however the action of speculators led to famine and food riots, and over time strict controls were developed to protect both farmers and consumers. Recognition of commodity futures speculation prompted the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act 1936, and position limits were established for 28 commodities markets.

By the early 90s free trade ideology had exposed much of the Third World to cheap agribusiness exports. Secret exemptions from position limits for a new Goldman Sachs commodity index fund were allowed on the rationale that they too constituted bona fide hedging. Sixteen other large institutional investors soon received the same exemption. By 2004, cracks started to show in the housing market, and investors began moving money into commodities, spawning an enormous, unregulated and extremely profitable “shadow market.”

By purchasing huge amounts of imaginary wheat, corn, rice or any other commodity and sitting on the contracts for long enough to create an artificial price shock, these enormous “noise” investors were able to impact the price of future contracts to such an extent that real prices followed suit. One congressional staffer estimated that by 2008 80 percent of the market was made up by speculators.

As huge amounts of money entered these markets price volatility went critical. Real prices of Third World staple foods saw unprecedented rises–between 2005 and 2008 maize nearly tripled, wheat increased by 127 percent and rice by 170 percent. Food riots erupted in Mozambique and Haiti, killing hundreds. The 2007-08 food crisis drove 40 million people to hunger a further 20 million to extreme poverty. In 2010 these spikes returned, peaking in early 2011. In 2010 Goldman Sachs is estimated to have made $1 billion from these dangerous gambles.

There are other relevant factors influencing these graphic price spikes, such as biofuel subsidies, crop shortfalls from natural disasters and climate change, and increasing demand, especially for resource-intensive food. The financial industry attributes the crisis to these traditional “supply and demand fundamentals,” and their complaint highlights these fundamentals as driving price volatility. However, despite the vocal protestations of lobby groups in Washington and their vociferous report writing, a growing body of academic literature has observed the dynamic at work.

A Battle of Ideas

The current complaint alleges that the CFTC misinterpreted the existing law, mistaken in believing it was required to institute position limits. Comments from former Commissioner Michael V. Dunn (who stepped down in October) demonstrate this confusion, claiming that although he couldn’t logically justify passing position limits, he believed he was bound to it. Wall Street argues the limits are required only “as appropriate” if “necessary to diminish, eliminate, or prevent” “any undue and unnecessary burden on interstate commerce” caused by “[e]xcessive speculation.” First you must prove the limits’ necessity, and then establish limits as appropriate.

Industry claims that position limits are unnecessary because there is “no empirical basis to conclude excessive speculation had burdened modern markets in any way,” citing evidence from CME Group (which owns and operates large derivatives and futures) that “virtually unanimous academic agreement that commodity price changes have been driven by fundamental market conditions, not speculation.” Industry argues that ensuring market liquidity is critical to ensure “price discovery” functions are maintained, and that the CFTC failed to present a reasoned analysis, locking them out of the rule-making process. Further, it claims the CFTC didn’t carry out an adequate cost-benefit analysis, as restructuring would cost $100 million.

The claim of “virtually unanimous academic agreement” is somewhat specious, rather demonstrating the power of the financial lobby to shape the debate. The Sunlight Foundation counted over 13,000 comment letters to the CFTC regarding the rule. Chief Commissioner Gary Gensler estimated that it has prompted approximately 1,000 CFTC meetings, and the “vast majority are from large financial institutions.” A voluminous body of reports issued by financial firms and their legal teams eloquently condemn market regulation in a way that farmers and consumers simply cannot compete with. Data from The Center for Responsive Politics indicates that in 2011 alone lobbying firms have issued 175 separate reports on commodities.

Still, a wide cross-section of academics, activists, non-governmental organizations, former traders and international institutions have argued that excessive speculation, and not market fundamentals, causes commodity price spikes. The World Bank conjectures that index fund activity “…played a key role during the 2008 spike … [a]nd we find no evidence that alleged stronger demand by emerging economies has had any effect on world prices”. UNCTAD states that “financial investment in commodity trading appears to have caused commodity futures exchanges to function in such a way that prices may deviate, at least in the short run, quite far from levels that would reliably reflect fundamental supply and demand factors.” Nongovernmental organizations, such as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the World Development Movement and Oxfam have joined others include the IMF, U.S. Senate, the UN FAO, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and rockstar economists such as Jayati Ghosh, Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini to highlight of the connection.

Does Liquidity Ensure Price Stability?

The industry’s central argument is the claim that greater market liquidity helps the process of “price discovery.” A recent working paper from the Political Economy Research Institute argues that this position doesn’t take into account the role of investor psychology in determining asset prices, including a “strong desire to accept evidence that could earn traders lots of money.”

Beyond observing “a strong and obvious correlation between the increase in liquidity in these commodity futures markets and the rapid rise of prices in spot markets,” they argue that price volatility was relatively steady prior to the market liquidity bubble witnessed in the 2000s. They conclude that the industry’s position cannot be supported by the “strong and consistent descriptive evidence in support of the need to limit the huge increases in trading volumes on futures markets through effective regulations.”

The System on Trial

Cases like this hold many hurdles, as the poorest and most aggrieved victims of this dangerous trading have no practical power to mount a credible legal challenge against the financial industry’s endless resources. The revolving door between New York and Washington, D.C is such that the majority of its commissioners have held high-ranking spots in financial firms, cheering on or indeed overseeing the deregulation of commodity futures in the first place. The CFTC itself has no broader interest in Third World hunger, but recognizes that excessive speculation can burden interstate commerce.

Still, the message on commodity futures speculation is spreading and increasingly appears as a key lever of hunger and social unrest in our time. Research has linked conflict and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa to food price spikes (Egypt, for example, is the world’s biggest importer of wheat). It is an issue on which both farmers and consumers have a stake in, as the profits Wall Street makes from commodities futures gambling eats into their livelihoods.

This is the opportunity to that crack down on legitimate corporate profiteering–to put the system on trial–and the battle to control the dialogue is well and truly on. To countervail the voices of financial lobbyists, the Occupy movement has made it a key demand building popular power around the issue. Wall Street will not give up their profits easily, yet the power of people too hungry to listen to market liquidity mumbojumbo could prove a formidable barrier. If this power can be channeled, the CFTC’s first lawsuit might not be the one-sided battle it first appears to be.

Alison Cross and her older brother Alphonzo saw a vast need for fresh food in the Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta, where they’d spent time since they were kids. The community, which is adjacent to the Atlanta University Center, had seen both vibrance and decay, and was begging for transformation.

So the siblings decided to fill that need, and hatched a plan to open The Boxcar Grocer, a new food business. Alison, who studied architecture and worked as a video editor, and Alphonzo, with a background in fashion, describe the independent grocery store, which stocks local, organic, whole foods, as being at “the intersection of food justice and high-concept retail.”

And they’re right; it’s not your average corner store. The market looks modern, with lots of light, stainless steel, and wood. The shop, which had a “soft” opening in late October and celebrated its grand opening last Monday, sits in an area dotted with old railroad warehouses. African Americans own the majority of the storefront businesses. The neighborhood is undergoing a renaissance with small art galleries, graphic design firms, and a tattoo parlor that attract the typical urban mix of students, artists, and free thinkers.

Alison, 36, has also written about the personal inspiration for Boxcar (“This is Our Land“), the socioeconomic challenges of the food movement (“All the Foodies are Rich, All of the Farmers are White, But Some of Us are Still Cookin’“), and its shortcomings (“A Limited Engagement“) on the store’s blog.

I spoke with her recently about her hopes for the family business and the obstacles she and her brother have faced along the way.

Why did you decide to open a corner store in Atlanta?

For years we recognized a lack of stores in the area where we could get food we liked when we came to town. The space became vacant in May 2009 but we couldn’t find anyone willing to put in a store. So we researched, wrote a business plan, and started submitting to banks for financing.

In the meantime, I was working at The San Francisco Foundation part-time and part-time at Feldman Architecture, so I was getting this great vision of what could happen when social ideals merge with beautiful design. We felt no one had done that. And there were very few people actually creating something new in terms of for-profit business models for food access. We also figured if we were going to uproot our lives and move away from the Bay Area, it had to be for something extraordinary.

Did you run into any challenges?

Unfortunately, the economic crisis meant the process took us two years to complete. Banks flat-out weren’t lending, especially not commercial loans to novices. But we kept charging along. We applied to nine different banks and one foundation and all said no. All we needed was one yes, and that happened in March 2011.

Did you get support from the healthy corner store movement?

People we approached in the national food movement didn’t really take us seriously until we actually opened the store. Maybe it’s because we came out of nowhere. We were not involved in politics, nor did we run in foodie circles. We’d meet people at food movement events and when I mentioned opening a store I got the sense that people were dismissive.

What kind of response have you had from local residents?

We have had overwhelming support from the community. That’s a wonderful validation because for so long it was this thing rattling around in our heads and on paper. People have been amazingly patient with our mistakes. People are just so grateful to have a grocery store here after all these years. On opening day–which we tried to do quietly to work out the kinks–there was so much buzz about the business we had a line outside the door before we even opened. It was insanity.

Locating local farmers has been a discovery process–we thought we’d be dealing with rural farms–so to find such well-established urban farms as Truly Living Well, Metro Atlanta Urban Farm, HABESHA, and Patchwork City Farms right here in the inner city has been incredible. It’s allowed us to tap their network of supporters and access a knowledge base that is helping us learn about organic farm operations.

I spent last summer riding my bike from farmers’ market to farmers’ market meeting vendors, tasting food, and connecting with the producers.

What about some of the craft products in the store?

One couple make these phenomenal pulled pork sandwiches and organic barbecue sauce called The Heat Legend. A product like that speaks to our diverse community. It allows us to meet people where they are with their diet but offer a healthier option that is culturally appropriate. Another producer makes these kale salads with sun-dried tomatoes that people go bananas over. We can barely keep them in stock. It feels good to offer a healthy fast food that people can snack on.

What’s it like running a business with your brother?

It’s awesome. We’ve always been close and we’ve always wanted to work together. I’m in awe of his creativity, social nature, and energy. He appreciates the way I dig down in the details and my diligence in seeing things through. We respect each other’s visions and know that we get more done together than we do on our own because of our complementary skills.

Can you give us some background about your own relationship to food?

I was a notoriously picky eater as a child. Left to my own devices I’d consume nothing but Frosted Flakes and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Both my parents cooked. My mom made Cajun spiced red snapper, jambalaya, and gumbo, foods influenced by her mother, who was from Louisiana. My dad liked to cook us breakfast. We weren’t really allowed candy or lots of fast food, which was maybe a once-a-month treat. After my dad passed away in 2001, I went to Grenada, West Indies. It was the first time I was really surrounded by utterly fresh food. I was eating fruit right off the trees, vegetables directly from the ground, and seafood caught the same day it ended up on my plate. It was healing and cleansing and opened my eyes to what a difference food can make.

What does food justice mean to you?

It means approaching food access as an issue that is not reduced to a socioeconomic determinant. It means adding more faces to the cause so people can identify and desire to be part of a lifestyle shift. If Jay-Z and Kanye can create a lifestyle brand that people in urban and suburban areas aspire to, regardless of their actual income, why can’t we do that with organic food?

We have had family members and friends who are highly educated and in the middle class develop diseases directly related to the food they are eating. I like to tell people that we are not in competition with Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. We’re in competition with KFC, Burger King, and McDonald’s, who are marketing directly to people like me. The food [access] movement is looking at low-income people and telling them to eat better, but not necessarily including the people who CAN afford to eat better but don’t think it’s important or don’t connect with how it has been presented thus far.

What does the future hold for Boxcar?

We have always envisioned Boxcar as a national model. We wanted to be able to create something that would inspire other social entrepreneurs to replicate and hopefully get more healthy corner stores popping up in food deserts to show the demand is there for these businesses. What Alphonzo and I have done is an incredibly risky venture from a financial perspective. But we made a healthy gamble that was deeply rooted in the strength of our education, experience, work ethic, and commitment to seeing the model thrive in different incarnations across the country.

For now, we are focused on building this brand into a strong foundation. We would love Boxcar to be the Walgreen’s of healthy corner stores. We’d like to see at least another five to 10 stores like Boxcar in the next five years.

Originally published on Grist

A new article in the respected journal BioScience raises important concerns about the harmful influence of genetically engineered herbicide resistant crops on sustainable weed control. As many others have also noted, the excessive reliance on glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, has resulted in the emergence and spread of many harmful weeds that can no longer be controlled by glyphosate. These weeds now infest millions of acres of farmland the U.S., resulting in greater herbicide use.

But the new article goes well beyond most previous work by providing insight into the state of weed control for major crops in the U.S., and how the current use of engineered herbicide resistant crops is driving agriculture toward reduced sustainability.

Old herbicides in a new package will cause environmental harm

The authors make several important points to support their thesis. First, because of widespread resistance of several important weeds to glyphosate, companies are now working to commercialize crops resistant to several other herbicides, including the old herbicides dicamba and 2, 4-D. Crops resistant to these two herbicides are likely to be widely used because the herbicides they are immune to are more effective than others. This is bad news, because these herbicides can cause a lot of collateral damage to other crops and nearby natural areas. And natural areas are important for fostering biodiversity, such as pollinators and organisms that control pests and reduce insecticide use.

Based in part on the pesticide/seed industry’s own analysis that both glyphosate and these other herbicides will be used together on engineered soybeans and corn, the authors of the article project total herbicide use to increase more than twofold over the next decade. Dicamba and 2, 4 – D are projected to increase almost tenfold.

And the likelihood of these herbicides moving off site and harming sensitive crops is much higher than for glyphosate—75 to 400 times greater in one comparison, although newer formulations may somewhat reduce this problem.  This spells trouble, especially when combined with several other factors that accompany herbicide-resistant crops, such as use of the herbicides later in the season when nearby susceptible crops and wild vegetation have leafed out and are more vulnerable to damage.

This in turn could lead to a further shift to the few crops that are resistant to these herbicides in an effort to avoid damage.

This kind of further simplification of agriculture is understood to be bad for the environment. And in parts of the country where corn and soybeans are widely grown, it could also impede the growing demand for fresh local foods that have positive effects on jobs.

Where have I heard this before?

Increased herbicide use will surely lead to even more resistant weeds, some with resistance to both glyphosate and 2,4-D or dicamba (or all three), leaving even fewer options for farmers.

The industry has argued to the contrary that it is unlikely that weeds will develop resistance to these herbicides for several reasons…which the article adroitly refutes.

It is troubling that the industry is taking this “head-in-the-sand” attitude because, to the extent it is accepted, it may lead to lax policy by the government and lax practice by growers—that is, too little effort to prevent resistance or to promote sustainable alternatives.

It is particularly troubling because we have heard these irresponsible arguments before from an industry bent on maximizing its sale of products at the expense of the environment. The current article points out how spurious arguments where similarly made that weeds would not develop resistance to glyphosate, where to the contrary, the dramatic increase in resistant weeds is the driving force behind the new crops engineered for dicamba and 2, 4 – D resistance. And I have noted that the industry is also trying to deny and downplay the potential importance of emerging resistance of corn rootworms to Bt.

Undercutting sustainable agriculture

The authors of the new article describe sustainable weed control practices that readers of this blog will find familiar—crop rotation, use of cover crops, crops and cropping practices that effectively compete with weeds, judicious use of tillage, and for non-organic systems, minimal and targeted use of herbicides.

These methods improve weed control and make it more sustainable, while reducing weed pressure.  That means that when herbicides are used, it is less likely that weeds will develop resistance to them. And organic systems, of course, don’t use herbicide at all.

So in the context of these better ways to control weeds, it is perhaps most troubling that the authors document the decline in, as they put it, “…the knowledge infrastructure needed to practice IWM [Integrated Weed Management] in the future…” And, I would add, harm to the research infrastructure that can improve IWM and make it even more efficient.

The authors document a shift in land grant institutions and USDA away from research on more sustainable types of agriculture, toward more emphasis on chemical controls and engineered crops. The dramatic shift of agricultural research funding from the public to the private sector, and the growing ties between academia and the biotech industry, also do not bode well for sustainable agriculture research and infrastructure.

The biotech and chemical industries have no interest in developing the kinds of knowledge- and ecology-based farming vital to a productive and sustainable agriculture that conserves resources and biodiversity, and which will be vital to confronting coming challenges of climate change and increasing population. The companies can’t sell this knowledge, so they are not interested in it.

Sensible solutions

The authors discuss several useful recommendations to make weed management more sustainable. These include mandatory herbicide resistance management imposed by EPA, which approves these chemicals (and I would add, by USDA, which approves herbicide resistant crops); fees on GE herbicide resistant crops and herbicides to discourage their overuse, and which could be plowed back into sustainable ag research; the fostering of partnerships between all stakeholders to develop better stewardship information for farmers and to advise them on sustainable agriculture practices; and more funding and incentives for sustainable agriculture research.

These important policies face a daunting uphill fight—one that UCS and our allies in the sustainable agriculture community will continue to wage. There is considerable resistance to this important agenda by the biotech and pesticide industry and its supporters in the government and academia.

The GE and pesticide industry have no inherent interest in promoting a truly sustainable farming system, and in fact such a system is antithetical to their narrow interests of selling as much herbicide and engineered herbicide-resistant seed as possible. The kinds of sustainable IWM supported in the article would greatly reduce the need for both herbicides and engineered seeds that these companies sell.

Instead, the strong public sector policies advocated by the authors will only come through ongoing and vigorous engagement to convince the public and its servants, who are lobbied heavily by these industries, that sustainable agriculture is critical to the health of our food supply, our environment, and rural communities.

Photo: Giant ragweed, one of the serious weeds that have developed resistance to glyphosate, by Peggy Greb.

Originally published on the Union of Concerned Scientists’ blog

This growing season there’s a new GMO in town: Monsanto’s GE sweet corn. This Roundup Ready product is the first GE corn for direct human consumption, and it has not been tested by the USDA and will not be labeled. If you’re unhappy about this, you’re not alone. The majority of consumers don’t want to eat genetically modified foods, and 95 percent feel strongly that they should be labeled.  Many retailers, including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and General Mills, have already agreed to not use GE Sweet Corn in any of their products—but Walmart, the country’s largest grocer and self-proclaimed sustainability adherent, has yet to make such a promise.

In a campaign reminiscent of the  Starbucks rBGH campaign, (which ultimately culminated not only in a pledge by the java giant not to sell dairy from cows treated with rBGH, but also created a domino effect, causing most large retailers to make the same agreement) , Food and Water Watch has initiated a national campaign to pressure Walmart to do the right thing and to live up to their sustainability claims. Just last week, Walmart launched a brand new website called The Green Room to exhibit their green credentials. Over the past couple of years they’ve run public relations campaigns touting their support of local farming, healthier eating, and providing oases in food deserts.

Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food (taking a whopping 25 percent of grocery sales throughout the US, and much more in some areas) each year, making it the most powerful food retailer in the world. If Walmart agreed to not stock GE sweet corn, it is highly likely that other retailers would follow their lead. It would also relieve farmers of the economic pressure to plant the biotech seeds.

If you’re in the know about GMOs, you know there’s a lot we don’t know—and a lot to be wary of.  We don’t know the long term effects of GMOs on humans and  a new study suggests there is reason to worry. The potential environmental risks are many, including the rise of superweeds and resistant pests, the threat to biodiversity and the inevitability of crop contamination.  There are also the ethical and economic concerns associated with patenting of living organisms and the ownership of our food supply by corporations like Monsanto.

Since last fall, Food and Water Watch and their partners at the Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, CREDO Action, and Food Democracy Now! have been asking consumers to sign a petition saying that they would refuse to buy GE sweet corn and are asking retailers and food processors not to sell it. As of now, that petition has over a quarter million signatures.  Walmart is powerful, but consumers hold the ultimate power: all great social change starts from the bottom. Join the movement today.

Photo: Jamie Leo

Originally published on Ecocentric

Having saturated the rural landscape, shuttering local stores in small town America along the way, now, in the wake of stagnant sales and increased competition, Walmart desperately needs to expand into urban markets.

And what better urban market than one full of eight million people? While the big box retailer is eager to enter the Big Apple, challenges loom large. Given the negative reputation Walmart has earned for being hostile to workers among other problems, many New Yorkers are skeptical, to put it mildly.

To counter the opposition, Walmart is positioning itself as the solution to urban food deserts – areas where finding real food is next to impossible. But as Anna Lappé has eloquently argued, the big box chain isn’t the answer: “Let’s be clear, expanding into so-called food deserts is an expansion strategy for Walmart. It’s not a charitable move.”

Research Shows Walmart Kills Both Jobs and Food Access

Now a report released last month by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer concludes that not only would bringing Walmart to Harlem spell disaster for labor, but it could also make an already dire food access problemthere even worse.

Based on data from Chicago’s negative experience, the report found that within two years of a Walmart store opening in New York:

- Between 48 and 66 fresh food retailers could go out of business, representing a net loss of between 56,500 to 82,000 square feet of food retail within a one-mile radius;

- Closure of these stores would represent a loss of 50 to 57 percent of the fresh food retail square footage added in recent years by New York City’s incentive program;

- All of this would negate more than $4 million in public finance investment and four years of effort to improve fresh food access in the area.

As Stringer explained, Walmart shouldn’t be undermining city programs to improve fresh food availability: “Walmart would be a bane, not a boon, to the health food economy of Harlem – or any other New York City neighborhood.”

Moreover, previous economic analysis has shown that Walmart’s promise of jobs doesn’t pan out either. In a report from last summer called “The Walmartization of New York City,” researchers at the City University of New York concluded that, “despite Walmart’s promises of jobs and lower prices for the community, the longer term impact is actually the opposite.”

Assuming Walmart opened the 159 stores needed to reach 21 percent grocery market share in New York City (the same proportion the company enjoys nationally), the impact would be a net loss of almost 4,000 jobs, and a loss of more than $453 million in wages per year for all remaining workers.

What about the new Walmart jobs? According to the report, 4,279 new low-wage Walmart workers would have to “rely on social services to make ends meet, costing New York taxpayers over $4 million per year” in health care benefits alone. This, in a city where the mayor has asked for $2 billion in budget cuts.

Current Walmart Locations Confirm Bleak Outlook

Other areas of the country have already had real world experiences to back up these projected findings. According to New York’s Food for Thought report, of all the employers in Ohio, Walmart has the greatest number of associates and dependents enrolled in Medicaid, which in 2009 cost taxpayers $44.8 million.

Similarly, a 2004 study found that for each of California’s whopping 44,000 Walmart employees, taxpayers had to spend $730 on health care and $1,222 on other forms of state and federal assistance such as (ironically) food stamps.

In 2006, Walmart entered Chicago and recently convinced local officials to approve two additional locations, including (after a long battle) on the city’s South Side. How have things fared so far in the original Chicago location? Not so well.

A three-year study released by Loyola University Chicago in 2010 revealed that Walmart had not enhanced retail activity or even employment opportunities. In fact, “the probability of a local retailer going out of business during the study period was significantly higher for establishments close to Walmart’s location.” Specifically, researchers found that a nearby business had about a 40 percent chance of closing over a two-year period – not very good odds.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Buy Them

Of course Walmart paints an entirely different picture, and is spending a ton of money to hide these sobering facts in a massive PR campaign. According to the Walmartization report, in the first half of 2011 alone, the company spent $2.1 million lobbying in New York, as much as they spent there in the past four years combined. There’s even a dedicated website complete with a “fact-checker” and the heartwarming tagline, “Helping NYC Save Money and Live Better.”

Philanthropy is another time-honored corporate tactic, often used to buy silence from critics, curry favor with community leaders, or, in this case, grease the wheels to gain entry into a reluctant-but-lucrative market.

In December, Walmart announced a combined gift of $250,000 to five various New York City charities, including a home food delivery service and a soup kitchen. Of course $250K is chump change to a company whose net sales topped $405 billion in 2010, but to these five groups it no doubt means a lot. Moreover, in its press release, Walmart made sure to point out the company’s “more than $13 million” in donations in New York City since 2007. (Similarly, Walmart pledged to donate $20 million to Chicago charities.)

But Walmart will need a lot more than a few million dollars in tax-deductible contributions to make up for all the job losses, decrease in available fresh food (and even increased obesity) that could befall New Yorkers.

Other cities should also brace themselves, as the company is opening four stores in Washington, D.C. later this year, with additional area sites planned. Other locations on the agenda include Boston and San Francisco. But mostly the company is keeping quiet about its urban expansion agenda, at least publicly. Last year in Boston, the company was said to be “quietly chatting up city officials” while scouting neighborhoods.

I shudder to think of the consequences to American’s already suffering urban populations if Walmart succeeds in duplicating its rural retail takeover. What to do about it? Support the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has an important campaign called Making Change at Walmart. See also the Big Box Tool Kit, which is chock-full of news and practical resources. Communities can work together to fight back, we just have to act before it’s too late.

Originally published on Food Safety News

What if we could use technology-based products or services to grow local food systems ten-fold or even twenty-fold in the next few years–from one percent of the current food production in our country today to 10 to 20 percent in the next decade? Our new company, Goodeggs, seeks to do just that. Our hypothesis is that some technology-based product or service will be an important enabler of that future.

We’re a group of folks who care about the growth of local food systems–for the sake of health, environment, cultural impact, and plain old delicious meals. The six of us have been working in the technology industry for a number of years at big companies, startups, and everything in between.  (We’ve even sold a a startup to Google!) During that time, we have been increasingly inspired by the local food phenomenon in the Bay Area and around the country.

A few months ago we decided to leave our jobs and put our technology skills and business resources in service of the good food movement.

Right now our company is in research and design mode as we attempt to invent technology that will grow and sustain local food systems.  We’re trying to learn as much as possible about the massive wave of innovation going on in the local food universe: New CSA concepts, neighborhood grocers finding new ways to feed their customers, food hubs rebuilding infrastructure all over the country, community kitchens… the list goes on. In parallel, we’re learning about what drives people to spend their food dollars on local food instead of the alternative. What drives “convenience” in food shopping? What’s missing in the conventional grocery-shopping experience that can be met by new local food channels?

Our research isn’t being done in a library. It’s driven by real conversations we’ve been having with real people. In the past few months we’ve visited small farms and big farms, spent time interviewing food entrepreneurs and advocates, and followed along on grocery-shopping trips with a diverse set of folks.

Our latest research technique, started this past month, has been to run a mock daily grocery shopping service, where a small group of folks here in San Francisco have agreed to let us study their food shopping habits and run experiments in their food-lives.

Here are a few highlights of our research to date:

• The local food businesses that are making it work, profitably, truly care about their customers, across the board.  As a result their customers are extremely loyal and a new kind of community starts to emerge. We hypothesize that a future with more small, relationship-driven food businesses is good for the local food system.
• The local food businesses that are making it work, profitably, have diversified their sales channels: They all have a base membership (structured as a CSA or otherwise), plus they’re set up to sell wholesale and at various markets.
• Most people demand the convenience of a modern grocery store: Wide operating hours, easy parking, fine-grained control over what goes into the cart. We think this is what might be preventing CSAs from going more mainstream.
• For most food shoppers, taste is king. People want their food to taste great, period.  We see this as an inherent advantage for local food because most local food just tastes better.

• All sorts of food-shoppers crave inspiration about what to make (even the great cooks).  This is an opportunity for the local food system–seasonal eating is inspiring!
• Most food decisions are based on a protein: What kind of protein do I want to cook/eat?
• Cooking during the week is much harder than cooking on the weekend.

We also have a number of questions that we are working on today and we hope you can help us answer some of them:

• What are the newest innovations on the CSA model? We’ve learned about bread CSAs, beer CSAs, membership programs that involve pre-paying for groceries. What else is out there that’s inspiring and what hasn’t been invented yet?
• We’re interested in learning more about delivery-grocery services. We’ve learned about services that deliver local groceries to offices, a new wave of milk-truck businesses across the country, pickup locations for prepared foods, and more. What else is working to bring people the next level of convenience with locally sourced food?
• People mean all sorts of different things when they talk about health or nutrition. What kind of patterns exist across large numbers of shoppers? Are there any health considerations, or ways of thinking about nutrition, that are universal?
• How can we create new job opportunities in the good food movement for the many unemployed and under-employed folks in our country today?

We’d love to hear from you all and encourage you to comment on this post. What sorts of inspiring examples have you seen in your own communities of local food entrepreneurs making it work? As leaders of the food movement, what patterns do you see emerging? What needs are there in your own communities that could potentially be met by technology-based products?

We’re looking forward to working with you all to build the future of the food movement.

Rebecca Klein wasn’t expecting a lot when she signed up to attend last week’s Farm Bill Hackathon. This public health expert from the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University had never heard of a hackathon–a gathering of computer programmers who lock themselves in a room to tackle epic projects with unrestricted creativity–until around two weeks before the event. While the idea of bringing together other sustainable food advocates with computer programmers interested in helping them build tools appealed to her, it also seemed a little ambitious.

The event, which took place last Saturday, was designed to encourage multiple teams of participants to take a project (infographics and online tools) from concept to execution in a single day. “It just seemed like too little time,” says Klein. “I’d never been to an event to tackle an issue where the attendees weren’t hand-selected in advance.” The results–an array of infographics, apps, and other tools made by over 120 people who attended either in person or via the web–surprised her. “The energy in the room was palpable and the power of bringing such diverse expertise into one room was inspiring. This one day planted a whole bunch of seeds for projects and ideas that would have never existed without coming together in that room (and via the web) for that concentrated time,” she says.

Hackathons have been taking place for years, and contrary to how the word might sound, they don’t only involve getting together to wrangle secret information or shut down corporations (although there’s no doubt those things have been tried). At the core, Hackathons are about collaboration; from the beginning they’ve been a way to build programs and applications using the hive mind.

The second-place project.

The Farm Bill–that beast of a piece of legislation that comes up for authorization every five years and shapes our food and farming landscape–is complex to the point of opacity for many Americans. So, thought the minds behind media company Food and Tech Connect, why not host a hackathon in hopes of making the bill more accessible through technology?

The mood

“This is perhaps the first hackathon that addressed a piece of legislation,” says Food and Tech Connect’s Beth Hoffman, co-organizer of the event. “It brought together data people from the U.N., food policy experts, hard-core designers, etc.” And while participants like Klein may already be eating, sleeping, and breathing farm subsidies and other details of the legislation, Hoffman stressed that many came who “knew nothing about either the Farm Bill nor about tech design. There is a huge populace of people looking for ways to be involved with the Farm Bill discussion.”

The third-place project.

Throughout the day, food policy and technology experts–such as Food & Water Watch,WhyHunger, the New York Times R&D Lab–also spoke to the hackathon participants.

The event was sponsored by GRACE Communications Foundation (the organization behind Sustainable Table, Ecocentric, and The Meatrix). GRACE’s Destin Joy Layne says she saw the event as a unique educational opportunity. “It was thrilling to experience a new convergence in food consciousness.” And a way to “start to uncover the hidden truth of our conventional food system.”

The outcome

The first-place prize went to “FARM BILL of Health,” a series of visualizations about the difference in support for fruit and vegetable crops versus commodities in the bill.

Second place went to Meatlessly, a mobile app to promote Meatless Monday by allowing people to find, share, and submit recipes, places, and feedback about their progress.

Third prize was awarded to a work in progress looking at the international implications of the Farm Bill and the idea that crop subsidies in the U.S. drive further hunger and poverty in foreign nations.

The map that took fourth-place.

Fourth place went to ongoing work to map the congressional districts of the Agricultural Committee members. The maps will allow users to see who is on the committees, where they are from, their website and contact information, and other pertinent information like who is supporting them financially and what is grown in their region.

Read more about the winners on Food and Tech Connect.

More cool projects

This runner-up graphic sought to illuminate meat production and industry consolidation:

Today about 31 states have so called “cottage food laws,” allowing legal home-based food production on a small scale. The alternative is renting a commercial kitchen, which can cost $10 per hour, more often $25 or higher. Many of the laws passed recently thanks to grassroots efforts by bakers and jam makers eager to generate extra income, build a food community, control their cooking environments, and/or work at home. State guidelines differ, usually prohibiting riskier foods such as refrigerated items.

As a petition gathers momentum in California, along with a Facebook group, I took a look at the challenges and success of a few food entrepreneurs operating under cottage food laws in a time where local food reigns and career “Plan Bs” have become more like Plan A.

In most states, proponents have faced uphill battles. Two key objections tend to pop up:

It’s not fair to businesses that invest in commercial facilities.

As with the food truck versus restaurant battles, yes it’s more competition. I was thinking about a baker in Los Angeles who makes beautiful decorated cookies out of her bakery. If suddenly hundreds of home bakers could do the same without the overhead costs she might possibly need to drum up more commercial business to keep the bakery going.

But it’s also worth looking at the positive economic impact. Denay Davis, who runs a resource website for home bakers, believes “little food crafters are simply not a threat. It’s about sharing with other people, having control, and building relationships–not making a killing.” Etsy sellers exemplify typical cottage food law businesses, although many states only allow selling homemade goods locally, not online.

Retirees can supplement limited incomes. “If this was my only income I’d be earning about 40 percent of what I need. I didn’t have to make any capital investments. It’s a nice retirement job for me,” said Beth-Ann Betz, who bakes Middle Eastern pastries.

The laws also help those needing gluten-free or nut-free environments. “We’re gluten-free at home,” says Michigan baker Julie Rabinowitz. “So it’s easier to bake with confidence at home, without having to pay hourly to scrub someone else’s kitchen free of gluten.” The Michigan law caps her Tasty Sans Gluten sales at $15,000. It’s a delicate balance as commercial kitchens can run $12,000 a year. “My farmers’ market customers worry about price increases when I move to a commercial kitchen,” she adds.

Anni Minuzzo, California food consultant and former biscotti company owner, likes the idea of a cap. “It’s more fair to businesses who start out paying for a kitchen.” A cap also forces those who have outgrown their home kitchen to expand. Lori Jordan knows that “in the future if we want to grow beyond New England, we will have to move to a bigger place and hire more people.”

It’s not safe and clean.

The laws generally require the same FDA Good Manufacturing Practices required by larger food businesses. Many call for ServSafe food safety certification, no pets, and defined cleaning procedures (see Arizona‘s law). “New Hampshire has a good model,” says Betz. “I have a dishwasher, clean water that is tested, and ServSafe certification.”

Kelly Masters, owner of Cake Boss software, started her Texas cake business at a kitchen the Health Department had scored highly. But, she says, it “was so unclean that I would sometimes come home crying. I didn’t even want to sell cakes I made there.” Kelly went on to advocate a Texas’ cottage food law (passed September 2011).

Several years ago, Davis contacted all the departments of agriculture. “None had received sickness reports,” she says, adding that with very small batch production in all likelihood only a few people might be affected. Most or all states require a label to the effect of “made in an uninspected home kitchen,” letting the buyer beware.

“Maine requires us to have the same inspections, insurance, and file all the same paperwork as if we were a commercial kitchen,” says Lori Jordan of Out on a Limb.

One retailer who has seen a few questionable home food processors feels the rules should allow for spot inspections, unannounced–resulting in self-regulation. Could a new industry for a third-party inspection services arise, contributing further business license and tax revenues?

Realizing the economics of starting my own food business didn’t add up, I agree getting started on a small scale at home makes sense while proving the market. Seeing an array of local jams at the airport rather than only brands you can find everywhere makes a place special and keeps the home fires burning.

Need further inspiration to get your home-based food production business up and running? See also the San Jose Mercury News article on the California petition and this article on how to advocate for a cottage food law in your state.

Pat Van Valkenburgh is the kind of person that The Bread Project hopes to help. A stay-at-home mom who home-schooled her two children until they attended Berkeley High School, Van Valkenburgh desperately needed a job when her construction worker husband became unemployed. Since she enjoyed cooking, she thought the nonprofit’s nine-week café training program, which focuses on basic kitchen, food service, and barista skills, was a good fit and would help her find a job in the restaurant industry.

Van Valkenburgh didn’t have to look far for work: she was snapped up by the organization to manage the café it runs out of the Berkeley Adult School, where the program for low-income job seekers, started by Susan Phillips and Lucie Buchbinder in 2000, has been housed since 2003.

The part-time gig has made all the difference during tough economic times; Van Valkenburgh’s family has held on to their home and health insurance. (Both her kids, who attended the Academic Choice School at BHS, currently study at local community colleges and intend to transfer to UC.)

The Bread Project Café, where students learn and practice their new culinary skills, is open to the public and frequented by the staff and students at the adult school. It serves baked goods, soups, salads, and sandwiches, along with coffee and tea at prices half those charged in most local cafés.

No matter that the vast multipurpose room that houses the cafe is largely devoid of charm, people come to the café for the food, the friendly service, and to support a worthwhile cause. On the menu yesterday: lemon scones and chocolate croissants, corn chowder with spinach, vegetarian pizza, and corn-crusted tilapia with rice and vegetables. In the late morning a steady stream of people were putting in their lunch order.

The Bread Project also boasts a bakery in Emeryville, opened last year thanks to funding from both Semifreddi’s and Chevron, where it runs a 12-week training program that emphasizes baking, batch cooking, food service and food manufacturing.

The program serves vulnerable populations, including low-income immigrants and single moms, former felons and recovering substance abusers, the once homeless and the formerly employed. Bread Project staff recruit students from quarters few other culinary programs would approach: homeless shelters, halfway houses, addiction recovery programs, jails, and social service agencies.

Potential participants go through a screening interview to assess their strengths—along with their challenges and barriers—to better serve their goal of finding food service employment once they finish their training.

Students earn a certificate of completion if they attend most of the instruction sessions and pass most of the required written and practical tests given during the course.

While there’s a lot of encouragement and support for students, there’s also an expectation that they meet standards of on-the-job food industry—like showing up for work. The program’s main goal: to foster economic self-sufficiency in program participants.

Their results speak for themselves: over the past three years an average of 77 percent of students graduated, 72 percent found jobs in the food field, and 80 percent retained employment. Last fiscal year 126 students completed the program.

Many of those students have never had a job, have been welfare recipients for a long time, have minimal education or workplace history gaps. But as the economy continues to tank, there’s been a significant increase in the number of college graduates in the program’s mix, along with a larger group of recently unemployed and those who need job retraining, said acting executive director John Lee.

Graduates have gone on to work in restaurants like Radius in San Francisco and Lake Chalet and Spice Monkey in Oakland, said Daniel McCarthy, a veteran chef who co-teaches the culinary café program. Others have obtained employment in food industry positions for Jamba Juice, SF Soup Co, Mariposa Bakery, AG Ferrari, Berkeley Bowl West, and Revolution Foods, according to Lee. Some have joined the staff of catering companies or senior centers. In addition, the program, which has a policy of hiring its own graduates, currently has six on staff.

“It is personally rewarding to see the individual successes of our graduates, whether it is an improvement in self-confidence or obtaining their dream job,” said Lee.

The culinary program is free of charge to participants. The organization’s income is split 2 to 1, between donations, grants and other charitable contributions and earned income. The organization’s budget this year is $1,235,039.

The program offers students the opportunity to try their hand at everything from bread baking and cookie and cake making to main meals, side dishes, and other savory fare. Students also learn how to make specialty coffee drinks and work a cash register. The project has a catering arm, wholesale bakery business, and partnerships with farmers’ markets like the one at Rincon Center in San Francisco, and social-service agencies such as Project Open Hand.

“It was an excellent training program,” said Dilsa Lugo, a graduate who runs Los Cilantros Mexican food catering company, in a Berkeleyside story last year. “To this day the staff there have been helpful to me in my business.”

One former student recently opened her own café in Berkeley. Mary Dirks runs the new Hippie Gypsy Cafe on Shattuck Avenue (in the former Village Grounds space). Dirks hired two fellow students from The Bread Project to work with her, Angela Guzman, 25, from Oakland, and Erika Burrios, 19, from Richmond.

She’s not your typical Bread Project success story: Dirks’ parents ran a coffee house-gas station and she had years of food service experience as a Subway manager in Florida, where she lived up until two years ago, when she sold her home and moved with her son to South Berkeley.

The 46-year-old single parent already had a café business plan in the works, but landed in town with few connections on the food industry front. When a flyer for the Berkeley Adult School landed in her mailbox, she realized The Bread Project was just the kind of course she needed to help turn her café idea into reality.

She jokingly described Chef Daniel as the Gordon Ramsey of The Bread Project, because of his high expectations and commitment to restaurant-quality standards. But she also said he’s been an invaluable resource and informal consultant for her own budding business. And his philosophy of passing on your culinary expertise and giving back to the food community resonated with her.

Guzman, a single parent and former nurse’s assistant with no formal culinary training, was an immediate pick for Dirks, because of her common sense, calmness under pressure, and strong work ethic, the café owner said.

Along with food service training, the program helps students with job placement skills such as resumes and cover letters, said Guzman, and encourages students to overcome self-esteem issues (she described herself as quite shy before she did the training) in order to find work.

“I learned knife skills, such as how to julienne vegetables, health and safety rules around the use of cutting boards, and other kitchen skills,” said Guzman. “But there was also room to be creative. We were shown the basic ingredients that go into making scones and were given the opportunity to come up with our own flavors like lemon blueberry or orange chocolate,” she explained.

“It’s really hands-on, which is how I learn best. You’re encouraged to just do it, get messy, and figure it out for yourself—which is great training for a job.”

Photos: courtesy The Bread Project

Originally published by Berkeleyside

Development agencies across the country are ignoring the needs of small-scale producers and other small food enterprises, offering few opportunities for business assistance and training. Without small business development resources, those in regional food production have limited access to the capital needed to grow. Across the country, small and midsize producers, processors, and distributors provide critical support to local economies by creating jobs and building wealth that stays in the community.

Despite all the benefits of that small and mid-sized food business bring, here in the Puget Sound region, the local food movement isn’t recognized as a growth industry. They may not be Boeing or Microsoft, but food-related businesses in King County generated 118,000 jobs and over $3 billion in payroll in 2008. Local food producers often pay livable wages, treat animals with greater care than traditional agriculture and grow food in a way that replenishes soil, rather than depleting it.

But apparently you can’t take good business practices to the bank. The local food movement generally strikes out when it comes to economic development agencies and this is hurting communities. If we are going to increase access to fresh food and build more resilient communities, we have to invest in scale-appropriate infrastructure for small and mid-sized food enterprises along the value chain.

There are some steps forward in the Pacific Northwest. This year the City of Seattle issued Farm Bill Principles calling for bigger investment in smaller farms. In Everett, Washington a 60,000 square foot food hub is being developed for all the activity that happens after harvest. Food hubs provide facilities to aggregate, package, market and distribute products from multiple farms. They provide skilled staff to help small farms manage record keeping and logistics. The Everett hub is a partnership between a private developer and the Snohomish County economic development agency and will include a commercial kitchen to support processing and a retail market for local goods. This kind of regional investment in business incubation boosts access to institutional markets and makes regional food more available to everyday consumers.

Unfortunately, small food enterprises are too often are rebuffed when they search for assistance from county development offices. To fill this gap, some private and non-profit entities have stepped in. Organizations like Slow Money support food entrepreneurs with technical assistance and investment. Slow Money has 2,000 investor members nationally who are eager to provide patient capital to the right businesses—those that can demonstrate their savvy with well-crafted business plans. Helping prepare these plans is just the kind of technical assistance development offices should provide by shoring up their small business programs and tailoring them for building regional food economies.

We are told, after all, that small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, comprising almost 90% of all businesses in the United States. So what are agencies doing to support these engines of economic prosperity? If your business happens to be running a small food enterprise, the answer is not much. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $14 billion a year in subsidies go to huge commodity growers of corn and soy. Small acreage specialty crop producers receive less than one percent of federal agricultural subsidies—about $100 million a year.

It seems clear that increased federal investment is unlikely, so local jurisdictions need to find solutions that work locally. Development agencies could be doing a host of things to maximize regional food production and distribution. A critical step would be providing the market research and feasibility studies needed to identify infrastructure and technology needs. Local agencies could also support and promote food-processing entrepreneurs.

In Boulder County, Colorado feasibility studies completed by the Food and Agriculture Policy Council have led to a commitment to invest in commercial kitchen space. Working with stakeholders from across the county, the council and the parks department are developing plans to build out kitchens at the county fair grounds. They plan to make the space available at hourly rates, which are much more affordable for micro-enterprises.

Direct market farmers have been the catalyst behind school gardens and farm-to-school projects. They are the reason there is so much excitement around teaching our kids to eat right. But they can’t grow their businesses by attending ever more farmers markets. Expanding markets for small-scale food producers could be the most “shovel ready” projects in the nation. Investment in scale-appropriate infrastructure would not only employ thousands of people across the nation immediately, it would also promote good health and strong local economies.