When Jesse Kuhn started Marin Roots Farm at age 28, he already had dirt under his fingernails. He’d studied ag in college, managed a student farm, and worked as a landscaper. But when it came to succeeding financially in the farming business, he had a long way to go. “I was charging up my credit cards like crazy and bouncing balances back and forth,” he says. “I almost had to declare bankruptcy during the first year.”

Almost 10 years and many lessons later, Marin Roots is a well-established organic specialty produce business. “It’s a lot of people’s dream to live off the land, but the reality of it is, you have to have a plan for how you’re going to pay the bills,” says Kuhn.

His journey is not unlike that of many beginners who are eager to try their hand at farming but don’t yet have all the necessary skills and resources. In a recent report titled Building a Future with Farmers, the National Young Farmers’ Coalition (NYFC) surveyed 1,000 young and beginning farmers across the US and found that access to land, capital, health care, credit, and business training posed huge challenges.

“What’s different for young and first-career farmers is that they don’t have a lot of equity,” says Severine von Tscharner Fleming, a young farmer in New York’s Hudson Valley who is also co-chair of NYFC and director of The Greenhorns, a film and nonprofit organization that advocates for young farmers. “You see a lot of student debt. Farming is a high-capital industry—an industry that really needs us, but we’re walking in without any cash.” 

Green Thumbs To Greenhorn

Kuhn’s path to farming started as a child in San Geronimo, where he had little exposure to agriculture but picked up a passion for gardening from his grandmother. “She had two green thumbs for sure, and I learned from that,” says Kuhn. When he went to Humboldt State, he joined their new agriculture program and studied permaculture on the side. He also took time off from school to work at an organic soil company and contemplate career paths.

After college he started farming a small one-acre plot, using the model he’d learned on the student farm, but realized the operation was more like a hobby farm than a viable business. So he worked as a landscaper while farming small plots in friends’ backyards, which eventually helped him build the courage to take the leap into full-time farming.

He took out a “land wanted” ad in the Press Democrat and, after receiving a number of responses, settled on a 15-acre agricultural plot on a goat dairy ranch near Petaluma. But there were setbacks infrastructure-wise, such as having to install a new irrigation system, and Kuhn began charging up his credit cards. Right when he was about to declare bankruptcy, a low-interest beginning farmer loan through the USDA Farm Service Agency came through. He was able to buy a tractor, a delivery truck, and seeds.

Through much experimentation, Kuhn found his niche growing organic specialty crops such as baby greens, roots, beans, and summer squash for farmers markets and grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesalers. “A lot of the products I was selling weren’t standardized because I was doing open-pollinated varieties, but there was certainly a market for that,” he says. He now employs a handful of full-time market and field staff.

Kuhn has had to learn much through trial by fire, particularly the organizational side of growing a successful business. He’s found support in his family (his mother helps with accounting, and his father is on call as farm mechanic), as well as in other Marin farmers and the Bay Area farmers market community. “It’s definitely tough farming,” he says. “The farmers market has been a great support network for me, meeting up with the other farmers every week, bouncing ideas off each other, seeing what they’re bringing to market, and getting their advice.”

Growing Roots

Kuhn is still a young farmer by national standards, which place the average farmer at 57. The USDA estimates that 500,000 US farmers (about one-quarter) will retire by 2030, leaving a large gap for the next generation to fill. “We have ever older farmers and ever fewer people who are growing our food,” says Fleming. “I think young farmers are especially well poised to address food security and the re-regionalization of our food system.”

As a result of the Building a Future with Farmers study, the NYFC has proposed a policy agenda including recommendations such as improving credit and savings opportunities, addressing land access and affordability issues, legalizing farm apprenticeships, and expanding training programs. (For more about legal issues related to apprenticeships, see The Farm Intern Conundrum.)

The NYFC study underscores the viability of direct marketing as a start-up strategy for new farmers, with 61 percent of their respondents selling at farmers markets and 49 percent through CSAs. “Helping young farmers means reorienting our food systems so that we’re not just supporting producers who are growing commodity crops and abandoning the small- and medium-scale producers who are more than likely selling directly to the marketplace,” says Fleming.

For aspiring greenhorns, Kuhn recommends getting a job or volunteering on a farm in order to get to know the business. When taking the plunge into starting your own farm, he emphasizes finding the right piece of land, with infrastructure already in place, and developing a niche.

But despite the challenges he’s encountered along the way, Kuhn loves what he does. “Being able to wake up on the farm is incredible,” he says. “And it’s rewarding to go to the farmers market and meet the people who are going to be eating my food.”

Photo: Gary Yost. Chart by the National Young Farmers Coalition.

Originally published on CUESA

The potential to improve our current food policy is currently being challenged by a select group of Senate and House agriculture committees who propose $23 billion in cuts to federal spending on some of the most important programs related to nutrition and the future of small-scale, local, and organic farming. The 2012 Farm Bill could be rewritten as early as November 23. It’s vital that these issues be debated in a public forum, not behind closed doors.

Take Action Today
There is still time to participate in the fight for reform that supports new farmers, provides infrastructure for regional and local food development, and protects our health and precious land.

Here are some ways you can get involved in influencing the 2012 Farm Bill:

Call. Take 30 seconds to call leaders of the House and Senate ag committees and say NO to the “Secret Farm Bill.” Over 27,000 people have done so already using the Food Democracy Now call script. You can also support the development of local and regional farms, farmers, and retail markets by asking your two senators and your representative to co-sponsor the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.
Meet. To date, there are over 7,000 farmers markets nationwide. Get to know your local farmers. Listen to their stories. Ask them questions about the Farm Bill. The more you understand about the challenges that small-scale farmers face, the larger your role can be in supporting their farms and marketplaces.

Explore. Find out about programs intended for inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill. Learn about the new Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act, which supports novice farmers by creating jobs, affordable farmland, and farmer training programs. Or read about the pre-existing Wetlands Reserve Program, which has improved watershed health and secured protection and restoration for 11,000 private landowners on 2.3 million acres of land over the past 20 years.

Review. Learn a brief history of the Farm Bill to understand key programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which currently represents more than two-thirds of the Farm Bill funding and faces multibillion-dollar cuts.

Originally published on Nourish

As Campaign Manager for Food Day, a project led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Lilia Smelkova has a lot to do before the October 24 debut of this nationwide effort that hopes to advance the momentum of the food movement.

Good thing this isn’t her first time at the rodeo.

Lilia worked for Slow Food International for 10 years and not only initiated the Slow Food network in Eastern and Central Europe as well as Canada, she also worked on the core team (of five!) that planned the first Terra Madre, a meeting of food communities from 150 countries. While at Slow Food in Bra, Italy, she also supervised international communications and directed the launch of an international education program that birthed the first European network of sustainable school cafeterias.

Originally from Belarus, Lilia holds a BA from Minsk Linguistics University, a Master’s in languages from Turin University and a Master of Science in Environment and Development from King’s College London, and is fluent in Italian, Russian, English, French, and Spanish. She also earned a certificate in environmental management from UC Berkeley, where she co-authored a nutrition education study and recently guided an expedition of Italian scientists along the Silk Road to research food preferences and genetics. Lilia, an enduring idealist, believes that food is among the best ways to experience the world, especially Uzbek pilaf, Pamir mountain mulberries, and Transylvanian jams.

What issues have you been focused on?

I’ve focused mostly on food education and taste education. Taste education is about developing taste buds and the senses so that people can recognize good food. If you educate kids to taste food, they tend to change their interest and cravings for salt and sweets for example. Since moving to the U.S., I’ve focused more on policy. Food Day is really about how to change policy and how we make the work of non-profits easier and make Food Day work for policy change. I’m also getting into the Farm Bill because I think it’s key for the states. I’ve always thought that’s it’s personal choice that influences change; the more I work here I realize it’s not enough to address personal behavior through education, but we should work on food access, especially in food deserts, so there needs to be more done to improve policies. I’ve changed my opinion recently.

What inspires you to do this work?

When I was a kid in Belarus in the 90s, we had really bad food because when the Soviet Union collapsed all the junk came in and we didn’t have a lot of choice. I didn’t realize we didn’t have variety and quality. When I ended up at Slow Food, which was sort of an accident, my taste changed and my vision of the world changed. It made such a big difference for me personally. Initially, I started to work in Eastern Europe and I wanted to teach the kids there because I saw the difference in me and wanted to share that with them. Then I realized it’s not just an Eastern European thing, it’s everywhere. What people eat in the U.S. influences the world, so changes here can have a big impact. So, I just want to change the world.

What’s your overall vision?

I think I’m quite idealistic and I think that works. When I work I think of an ideal world and how that should be. So for Food Day, I start from there: Who do I want to get involved? What does the ideal event look like? If I hear it isn’t possible I will do anything it takes to make it possible. It’s more of a work style to set goals high and try to reach them. If I don’t arrive, I feel sad I didn’t but I know I did a lot to try.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I like Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle very much. And, I found Momentum and The Tipping Point useful. I’m reading now Fair Food by Oren Hesterman. And of course Carlos Petrini’s books – they are always good to read again.

Who’s in your community?

When I was with Slow Food, it was mostly colleagues and friends there. I get very close to people I meet through work and there are people in Canada, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. For the first time in my adult life I am working with people who talk about more than food. It’s fun to see how people not in the food world talk about food. I’m also very close to my sister. Here in the U.S., it was rather hard and took a while to build a group. I met a lot of new people like bloggers, community gardeners, educators, and chefs.

What are your commitments?

My work is my hobby. And, I’m lucky I’ve always done what I like. Dialogue is very important because sometimes there is very little. I like building networks and putting people in touch and trying to tie differences together and getting people from different sides together to talk. Wonderful things can happen. I appreciate an honest approach in everything.

What are your goals?

I would love Food Day to become at least as big as Earth Day and to change how kids are educated at schools. I’d like to see more food education in schools.

What does change look like to you?

It’s hard work of course and takes a lot of time and I think change is viral. When something happens and there is a critical group of early adopters of a new concept it can snowball. The trick is to get the critical group. I don’t know exactly how it happens. To give an example, when I started European Schools for Healthy Food–a network of 11 countries to improve food in the cafeterias, financed by the EU–I started by telling people whom I hoped to get involved that there was a network, before one existed, and so it was created.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

Seeing what ideally will work, having a vision and talking to people and asking for feedback, and sharing and seeing it as a structure and seeing how it actually takes shape. Once it does, I let it go. I know it will go well and it’s in the hands of people who know what they are doing.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

To date, for Food Day we have 45 states involved and more than 700 activities planned. We have major involvement from school districts (LA, Boulder, Denver) and public health departments in LA County, Seattle, and the state of Colorado. There are different events ranging from a huge festival in Savannah, GA to a progressive dinner along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson. There will even be an event in Union Square in New York. All of the events can be seen here.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a possibility?

I think so. With Food Day we have created six policy priorities. There’s a petition on our Web site and information about the initiatives. If you think there will be hundreds of events around the country with thousands of people participating, I am optimistic that momentum will be good. It’s hard to say what will happen in five to 10 years, because I don’t have a deep understanding of U.S. food policy, but maybe in six months I can answer that.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

There should be more dialogue. Groups need to get out of their silos, recognize the expertise of those of different backgrounds, share information and look for common goals. For example, in California I was talking with groups separately about Food Day, so to make it easier we had a conference call with several organizations together and they came up with a joint policy statement for the Farm Bill that was inspired by just one phone call. They will promote it on Food Day, a very common sense document on a large scale policy platform from groups of different backgrounds.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

I was thinking about this the other day. It would be cottage cheese pancakes my Mom makes with sour cream and kefir. It’s something I had as a kid before school. It’s a combination of tastes I’ve been missing for at least 12 years since I left home.

On Thursday, September 22, the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new trade association made up of some of the biggest players in the food industry—including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Dupont, and Monsanto—hosted what they called “Food Dialogues” in Washington D.C., New York City, U.C. Davis, and Fair Oaks, Indiana.

The USFRA describes the Food Dialogues, and their broader multi-million dollar media campaign, as an effort to amplify the voice of farmers and ranchers and help consumers know more about “how their food is grown and raised.”

Sounds good, on first blush.

Most of us are in the dark when it comes to the story of our food. And, farmers and ranchers—the people working hard every day to bring us our food—are nearly invisible in mainstream media. But dig into the Alliance’s membership, and its impetus for forming, and you start to wonder whether it truly represents the voices of grassroots food producers or whether this well-funded media campaign is agribusinesses latest attempt to push back against well-documented and well-publicized concerns about the environmental and health consequences of industrial agriculture.

When I asked a rep from Ketchum—the public relations firm hired by the Alliance—what motivated these groups to come together, without skipping a beat, he answered: Food, Inc. and movies like it. “People see Food, Inc.,” he said, “And think everything in that movie is accurate.” But, he continued, the film only presents one side of the issue and USFRA members feel they didn’t “have a voice in it.” Now, as the Ketchum rep put it, USFRA wants to “clear the air” and “get a national dialogue, a conversation, going.”

There are two big holes in this argument: Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc. did try to get industry voices into the film. And, while USFRA members may not like it, Food, Inc. is an accurate, if unpleasant, account of our industrial, toxic food system.

When I mentioned that Kenner approached many food companies to get their perspective, and they refused to go on camera, the PR rep said: “I’ll be honest with you: this is a change with how they’ve done things in the past. They’re trying to open their doors up.”

While these industry players may be saying they want to “open their doors up,” it seems only on their terms. Certainly the Food Dialogues yesterday gave a semblance of impartiality: Highly-credentialed journalist Claire Shipman of Good Morning America moderated from a satellite location in D.C. and celebrity chef John Besh hosted the panel in New York City.

But the reality was an orchestrated framing of the message about “modern agricultural production” from the perspective of big business. In the staged kitchen set at the New York City, the questions from the “audience” included only one: a pre-arranged question from the head of the National Pork Board. In D.C., Jay Vroom, from the agrochemical trade association CropLife America, was handpicked to join in the “conversation” and lob a softball question to John Besh about chefs and portion control.

Earlier this year, a trade publication explained that this image campaign, and others like it, not only aims to counter Food, Inc.’s “misconceptions” about food, but also to convert all those “Pollan-ated” minds. (Reading Michael Pollan is apparently unnerving to the food industry and it should be to the rest of the public, too.)

This media campaign, the industry publication continued, is also intended as a “preemptive strike” against “a long list of new regulations and restrictions coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food & Drug Administration, ranging from tighter rules on pesticide applications to a potential ban of routine, preventative use of animal antibiotics.”

Take a look at the policy priorities of USFRA members and you’ll see exactly that: Most of its affiliates are hard at work, lobbying on Capitol Hill to weaken the very regulations that the consumers the USFRA itself surveyed say they care most about: Pesticides and antibiotics, for instance, as well as artificial hormones in animal production, and air and water pollution.

As one of its current policy priorities, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a USFRA board member and the marketing organization and trade association for the beef industry, is fighting for the Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act. If passed, the Act would limit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, as many in the environmental community have pointed out, the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide pollution is key to addressing global warming in the absence of strong climate policy. This USFRA member attack on climate legislation shouldn’t be surprising considering the Alliance is working with Frank Luntz, the political strategist who has helped foster climate change skepticism. In a strategy memo leaked to the media in the early 2000s, for instance, Luntz advised Congressional Republicans that the best tactic to undermine public support for climate legislation is to cast doubt on the “scientific certainty” surrounding the issue.

To give you another sense of where USFRA membership stands, consider that the NCBA, along with other Alliance members, is actively fighting a policy that would reign in antibiotic abuse in livestock production. Called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, and sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the Act, according to the Cattlemen’s Association, is unnecessary: The industry already uses antibiotics “judiciously” to prevent disease.

Rep. Slaughter and other backers of this policy stress that research shows most antibiotics in livestock production are not given for disease prevention, but delivered at “sub-therapeutic levels” to speed growth—and therefore increase profit. And, as experts at the Government Accountability Office reported earlier this month, the inaction of the USDA and FDA to regulate antibiotic use, especially in animal production, is a serious threat to public health. It was chillingly ironic that the study came out on the heels of another major recall of Cargill ground turkey linked to antibiotic-resistant Salmonella.

Lest you think the Cattlemen’s Association is out on its own on this fight, other USFRA affiliates that are vocal opponents of regulating antibiotics in livestock production include the Dairy Farmers of America, National Pork Producers Council, American Egg Board, U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.

Another USFRA affiliate and board member, the National Corn Growers Association, is also battling policies that would help us protect public health. In a May 2011 statement delivered to the House Committee on Agriculture and on Natural Resources, Rod Snyder, the Corn Grower’s Policy Director and chair of the Pesticide Policy Coalition, dismissed the use of the Endangered Species Act’s to control toxic pesticides, describing the policy as “dysfunctional.”

He called for the Administration to “immediately suspend implementation” and continue with business-as-usual, regulating pesticides under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). But stress the importance of using the Endangered Species Act, explaining that FIFRA is “notoriously weak” and “industry-friendly.” According to advocates, the pesticide lobby, including USFRA members like the Corn Growers, wants to keep regulation under FIFRA because they know how to “sidestep and subvert it.”

While I believe the majority of our nation’s ranchers and farmers are respectful stewards of the land with the public’s best interest at heart—they’re working hard to reduce their environmental impact and address pesticide, artificial hormone, and antibiotics overuse—the USFRA clearly is not representing them. Instead, a look at the Alliance affiliates reveals that it is made up of, and funded by, the biggest players in the food industry, including those who profit most from toxic agricultural chemicals, polluting farming and food processing practices, and concerning animal welfare policies. No wonder, then, that that limiting protections from toxic pesticides and pushing back against antibiotic regulation are just two of the current policy priorities of USFRA affiliates.

The USFRA is working hard to present itself as a voice of farmers and ranchers interested in a conversation with consumers. I’m all for open, honest conversation, but let’s not be duped by polished PR into thinking that’s what the Alliance and its inaugural Food Dialogues is intended to be.

Photo: Courtesy of Food Dialogues Web site

Correction: The in-person question at the New York City Food Dialogues event was from a representative of the National Pork Council, not the National Pork Board.

This past holiday weekend, hundreds of people gathered for a free conference, called Food Justice, hosted by the University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. In the words of the conference organizers the purpose was to, “Explore the history and future of our food system with a focus on three themes: community, equity and sustainability.”

With a heavy hitters Fred Kirschenmann and Dr. Vandana Shiva offering inspiring plenaries and a host of academics and practitioners sharing their latest research and ideas, the event was as stimulating as it was frustrating. As Dr. Shiva so eloquently said in her closing plenary, “No other species has achieved the amazing success of depriving itself of food.”

As I was manning the Civil Eats table at the food fair in the student union all day Monday, I wasn’t able to attend as many sessions as I’d like, but I do want to offer a few notes and ideas that I gathered. There is no way to capture everything, clearly, and the following may seem out of context, but hopefully something will spark new ideas and actions.

I’m particularly interested in the language we use to express this movement and advocate that we all get on the same page, so to speak, especially with terms that will resonate with consumers, therefore new or recommended terms always peak my interest. To that end, some of the words I overheard: The word local isn’t cutting it, we should use instead, “resilient” and “foodshed.” We need no longer say “climate change” when we should call it “climate destabilization” and need to refer to GMOs as “transgenesis.” The best wheat to buy is “small wheat” and fish from the Pacific Northwest should be “troll caught” to ensure the future for farmers and the fish. And, finally it looks as if almost everyone has started to say “Food and Farm Bill” in reference to the 2012 Farm Bill.

At Saturday night’s opening plenary with Kirschenmann, we heard from Pete Sorenson, Lane County Commissioner, who started the evening off saying, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Kirschenmann followed and framed my experience for the conference when he said, “We are all just citizens of the biotic community and we need to start [designing a just food system] from this perspective.” He continued by saying, “Not all local systems are the same size … therefore it’s about community engaged as a local ecosystem as a part of a larger ecosystem … so it’s about the health of each impacting the health of the whole and about a network of healthy foodsheds.” He also talked about “coming into the foodshed” and that “our first priority should be to make food for people in the foodshed by people in the foodshed.”

There were conversations about: Measuring the cost of food by its nutrition value; a resurgence of the concept of food commons; the idea that we’ve become too linear in our thinking as a result of the industrial food system – that it causes us, as humans, to think in terms of either this or that, one or the other, rather than holistically and bio-diversely; that there is no one definition of food justice.

Net neutrality, a free Internet, should be a second priority to any food security solutions we work towards.

What if deliciousness were the solution to the problem? How would that re-order our priorities? What would that food system look like?

As citizens participating in food, we have obligations, we have power and our resources are supposed to be equitable, so it’s up to us to fight for them. (There were a lot of references to Egypt … when will Americans stand up for what’s truly just?)

Chuck Benbrook, a leading scientist at The Organic Center told us, “Our community needs to up its game in terms of how we respond to our current food system.” He and University of California Berkeley’s Ignacio Chapela presented on my favorite panel entitled, “Sustainable Agriculture & Emerging Research in Plant Genetics.” Chapela, whom I’ve heard speak on transgenesis in the past, is a total anti-GMO bad ass. He presented, in detail, how the scientific community was derailed and high jacked by the promises of the Manhattan Project and how a small group of people created a national program, in secret, to push technology as the new frontier and led us inevitably into what he calls a “bio ponzi” scheme, or “faciscm as they call it in Italy” – the GE era. He advocates for science that is free and independent (more reason to support the Union of Concerned Scientists) and says “we are bundling when we should be diversifying.”

There was a riveting presentation about wheat production and seeds that lead to the question, do you want to rent your seed or own it? Resulting in a call for revitalizing local mills and keeping wheat in county; as well as breeding our own varieties so Monsanto can’t sue everyone for saving, cleaning, or supposedly stealing seeds.

Our very own Naomi Starkman presented, with Leslie Hatfield on New Media & Food Activism. In “Digitally cultivating food justice” they explored the impact of Twitter (“it’s the tool”) and Facebook, advocated for everyone to use Wikipedia to define their work, and told us that the Huffington Post is our friend. Naomi encouraged anyone interested to become one of their bloggers because, “If we don’t frame this debate, they will.” Plus, it’s quite easy and once you do, “the doors are open.”

One of the attendees asked a question that I must throw out there: When thinking about a new food system, it’s become apparent that we’ll have to do it with the big guys, not against them. So, if that’s the case, that we’ll have to work with Monsanto, McDonald’s, Wal-mart, etc., what are some of the non-negotiables? Panelists didn’t have any answers, but I thought of two, to start: People who work to produce food are paid a fair living wage and if commodity crops get subsidies so should soil health and bio-diversity.

These snippets are a mere tip of an iceberg of notes, fodder for my own advocacy and continued learning, all valuable indeed. But as my head spun with theories, facts, concepts and case studies, I had to wonder why we don’t use our time together more meaningfully when we gather at these conferences. Here you have rooms full of activists, academics and advocates — all concerned, interested eaters hungry for action and change and yet we do nothing but listen and ask questions. Fill our heads with more information. I’d like to challenge all future conference organizers to come up with one action that everyone can take, en masse, some galvanizing call that will give these people something to actually do when they are all together. You know, the old power in numbers theory.

On a final note, Alison Carruth, the conference organizer and resident scholar at the Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics, said in her closing remarks, “Food justice happens when communities define it with each other.” Great. Let’s get to it!

I write about food because I think it is a vital issue that has for decades been critically overlooked by the media–and thus the American public–leaving a vast backlog of interesting stories. And because I think food has the potential to unite us.

The beet beat

If you are a journalist looking for an untapped market welling with potential stories, there could not be a better time to write about food. This is because food is a subject that touches so many lives everyday, and there is so much we don’t yet know about our relationship to it. Sure the media is contracting and thus not willing to experiment much with bringing a reporter on a new beat. But if there is one thing editors understand, it’s a good story–and there has been a noticeable shift in coverage over the last three years, with major outlets now filing food stories regularly.

Within the food writing space there are so many specific beats one can cover–from immigration and issues facing food system laborers, to healthcare, food safety and the national obesity crisis, and to the role modern agriculture plays in climate change and environmental degradation. Food today is still most often covered from a business angle or a hedonist foodie angle. But while these stories do have their place, these reporters have the potential–and I would even say duty–to expose their audience to the larger issues.

Agriculture beat journalism has been in slow and steady decline for the past four decades, leaving a handful of pros (like Philip Brasher, Chris Clayton, Jerry Hagstrom and Charles Abbott, all of whom I read regularly) reporting on policy issues from Washington, DC. This is absolutely necessary work, but the audience for food stories is expanding and changing rapidly. Rather than being a mostly rural farm population, readers are eaters, mom and dads, policy wonks of all stripes–and they are shifting the focus of the beat. They want to understand the process by which food gets to their plate, who the farmers that are growing it are and why they make the decisions that they do, how food is regulated for safety, the effect regionalized food systems have on local economies and job creation, how agricultural land is being stewarded, and more.

Bringing it to the table

Traditional agriculture journalism and the bloggers and reporters covering this new food territory are not at odds with each other. In fact, much of my work on Civil Eats is bolstered by the reporting being done by those embedded in DC. And if I had to guess, agriculture journalists are interested in our coverage, too.

The same can be said about battles stoked between industrial and organic agriculture. The media love to pit two sides against each other to move papers. Of course, there are legitimate reasons that both feel frustrated and even threatened by each other, but at the end of the day there are no easy choices in farming. Getting caught up in the black and white debates when it comes to food is easy because we’ve been critically uninformed by the media on food issues for so long. But this is changing. And as it does, corporations will have to alter their practices, critical misuse of resources will have to be addressed, and better access to healthier food choices will become a priority.

In fact, it is when corporations intervene on the discussion between farmers and eaters that the truth gets muddied and lines get drawn in the sand. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

We must therefore bring farmers and eaters to tables all across the country and get them talking to each other. Journalism can be the facilitator for that conversation–as it delivers facts about what is out there, and what is working and what isn’t working, and lays them in the sunlight.

At the end of the day, reporting on food is all about what we get to eat, and that is an exciting prospect. It’s why I am so optimistic about the future of our food system–when you bring people together at one table and feed them well, there are always things that they can agree on.

Good food practices are alive in our world today. We roam farmers markets to find new recipes for familiar produce. We know that once we have seen a farm operation that treats its animals with respect that the meat produced there is the meat we want to serve at our dinner tables. And, we learn from annual potlucks, where a well-guarded family recipe makes its only public appearance, what community culture really means. In Wyoming today, 2011 marks a crucial time in state history, when citizens are fighting for their right to eat free.

Many assume that there’s an unwritten but generally accepted contract between a producer and a consumer which guarantees that one’s purchase is of the best possible quality. When food outbreaks prove this supposed truth to be false, large food corporations swiftly handle the problem, in order to maintain power. This route seemingly protects the health of a consumer without stifling large licensing programs.

But since the 2009 Food Safety Laws were adopted, the state of Wyoming has endangered small producers, banned potlucks, and made it illegal for an individual to drink a glass of raw milk from his neighbor. If Campbell County Representative Sue Wallis has any say in fighting the law, the state may witness improvements for farmers markets and maybe–just maybe–win the right to drink a glass of raw milk without being considered a criminal this year.

In April 2010, the Teton County health department demanded that a local raw milk product be removed from a hybrid organic and conventional grocery store. Paradise Springs Farm, the Idaho dairy in question, is located about 25 miles from downtown Jackson and maintains the cleanest milk in the state, according to state inspection standards. The farm also adheres to Demeter’s biodynamic requirements. The current Wyoming Food Freedom Bill would facilitate distribution to knowing raw milk consumers but would not enable retail outlets to carry the product on a store floor. The new bill does not address interstate commerce at all. Raw milk availability, regardless of the bill, is still unsure.

The Food Freedom Bill has changed significantly since Wallis first authored it in the 2010 session as an individual bill with a number of co-sponsors. “The bill sailed through the House, but was met by stiff resistance in the Senate Committee because the Department that regulates food inspection took it upon themselves to inform every meat processor in the state that the bill, which in our opinion has absolutely nothing to do with their business in any way, shape, or form, would cause the federal government to pull Wyoming’s designation as a meat inspection service that would not meet USDA standards since it would allow for the sale of un-inspected meat between two private individuals,” she explained.

“This created a situation where it was obvious we needed to spend more time on the bill. The Senate committed tabled the bill with the suggestion that it be taken up as an interim topic for study. That is exactly what happened and it was assigned the number one priority by Management Council as to what the Ag Committee should look at over the interim. The result was a total of three separate bills sponsored by the Ag Committee: HB 8–Wyoming Traditional Food Act, HB 11–Wyoming Food Freedom Act, HB 17–Raw Milk.”

Though these bills can be tracked online, many individuals feel food advocacy in general will lose some of its grounding when and if Michelle Obama is no longer in front of the camera talking about school lunches. But from Wallis’ perspective, “for the bulk of Wyoming consumers, Michelle Obama and Jaimie Oliver have little, if any, influence whatsoever. Wyoming consumers for the most part have a very clear view of how food is produced in this country, and they know that the food they see being raised, grown, and harvested by their neighbors is high quality. They want access to that high quality food, and quite frankly have little trust in the gigantic corporate interests in other states that produce food behind closed doors and by questionable means.”

A great deal of Wyoming’s food advocacy gained momentum in April, when the Teton County public health department took incredibly extreme measures to carry out Food Safety Rules. Gag ads for potlucks hosted by the public health department even appeared in Jackson Hole’s local paper through the summer. “It becomes a bit hard to ignore or dismiss when so many good, honest people are standing up and speaking out and demanding the right to buy food from who they want, and that has been produced in a way that they approve of,” said Wallis.

But the Wyoming Food Freedom Act addresses more than just access to your regional producer: it’s asking for legislative support to encourage development for small time producers. This is the central issue for Wallis. The problem with the current food safety rules is that they don’t encourage business development for small producers; instead, they lean towards dependence on products available through large-scale distribution.

“This is what I see as the central problem with the regulatory environment we have today,” she said. “These regulations should not be labeled Food Safety Rules, they should be labeled the Big Business Protection Act. For instance, why is it safe for a livestock owner or a hunter to have their animal processed at a custom processing shop, but not safe for that meat to be sold to someone through a commercial outlet? If it is safe for one, it is safe for the other. So obviously, the only difference is that costs are much higher, and inspectors get fully employed but the food is no safer because of it.”

Wallis continued, “I think that the political environment is ripe, especially in Wyoming, for wresting back our fundamental rights in regards to how we feed ourselves. I predict passage.” She isn’t necessarily being optimistic—she’s realistic. Wyoming citizens are getting fed up with their liberties being hindered, especially in a state with an incredibly strong agricultural inheritance and a state motto that claims ‘equal rights.’”

Robert Harrington, director of the Casper-Natrona County health department, claims that while examining the risks in opening the “flood gate” on regulation in reference to the Wyoming Food Freedom Act passing, “we keep getting sidetracked with the assumption that somehow nonprofit status makes an event immune from contamination.” But has anyone died from a purchase at a farmers market or even got sick? The department of health maintains records of all of the food borne outbreaks in the state of Wyoming. There are zero outbreaks associated with farmers markets, and only a tiny number associated with any sort of church or nonprofit function.

The first Senate Agricultural meeting on consumer liberties took place yesterday. Topics debated: the promotion of purchase and consumption of fresh and local agricultural products, development of the agricultural economy, and encouragement of agri-tourism. These good food practices would provide Wyoming citizens with unimpeded access to healthy food from known sources and encourage the expansion and accessibility of farmers markets, roadside stands, ranch and farm based sales, and direct producer to end consumer agricultural sales. Is it altruism? I think not. Hopefully, these liberties stand for a change in policy.

As the Executive Director of CFSC, and the responsible party for some 20 conferences over the past 13 years, I was keenly interested in her comments. After reading her article, I soon realized that the contradictions at our conference are a reflection of the contradictions that our organization faces in society in general. We operate the conference in the context of a travel/meeting industry dominated by and tailored toward the needs of large corporations. This industry, like the rest of the country, is serviced by a highly concentrated industrial food system, grounded in convenience and commodification. Our organization and our constituency do not share these values and typically do not have the same resources as the other clients of this meeting industry. Thus, we are forced to make compromises and adjustments to make the event work. Let me explain.

First we have made the decision to move the event around the country from year to year, to allow people from many communities to attend. We also decided not to hold the conference in the summer because it is peak season for many of our members.  The implications of these decisions are as follows:

• We have to re-invent the event every year, with a different site and new host committee.

• A strong local host committee that sources local food, plans field trips and much more is an absolute prerequisite.

• With attendees flying in from all over the country, accessibility and affordability are key. Cheap flights and short drives from airport to meeting site are essentials.

• Nearby restaurants, cafes or other attractions are a plus, so attendees without vehicles are not stuck without choices.

• The facility itself must meet our space requirements for 1000 people and there needs to be adequate lodging nearby. They must be willing to work with us on serving local food.

All of these criteria limit both the possible communities in which we can hold the event, as well as the venues within those communities. In Des Moines (the 2009 conference site), we had only one option. In New Orleans (the 2010 site), we had four options: the Hilton, Sheraton, Crowne Plaza, or the Marriott.

Shifting gears from site to finances, the conference is a zero-sum game. We subsidize the event heavily with grants to cover staff time, but we typically break even. Expenditures need to be recouped by registration fees, corporate sponsorships, and the occasional grant or individual donation.

This brings us to one of the contradictions that Haven raised: corporate sponsorships. She commented that Sodexo’s sponsorship of our event is contradictory to the purpose of the event. Instead, I would argue that Sodexo is itself a contradiction: a multi-national company increasingly committed to serving local food, with some great practices and others not so commendable. It is a fair question to ask, though, whether their fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders will allow them to adopt truly sustainable triple bottom line practices. What is indisputable is that Sodexo holds a lot of power. They can, through one fell swoop of policy–and a lot of implementation headaches–establish farm to cafeteria programs at thousands of schools, colleges, hospitals and workplaces.  This power is what makes a partnership with them attractive to CFSC.

For the New Orleans event, we raised slightly less than $40,000 in corporate sponsorships. This income meant we didn’t need as much revenue from registration fees. Sponsorships enabled us to reduce registration fees by about $70 per person. Since our target audience tends to come from organizations or communities without a lot of money, we often find ourselves in a balancing act between ensuring a high quality event and keeping registration fees low.

We work hard to walk our talk and incorporate as much local food into the event as possible. As anyone who has done this work before knows, there can be challenges: the chef might not be very flexible about menus or sourcing; not knowing head counts until 10 days before the event makes procurement planning difficult; acquiring food donations from local businesses can be hit or miss. We’re frequently back-filling, adjusting, tweaking, and running around. All of this can be even more challenging on a budget. Local meals can require more labor for the hotel in managing multiple deliveries, keeping product separate from their normal stocks, as well as increased prep time. They’re loath to reduce their prices too much, in part because food and beverage is a big profit center for them.

We could have perfect food at every conference: local, organic, humanely raised, union labor, assuming it’s available. But, at what cost?  In New Orleans, we asked the food bank to get us donations for the snacks so we could save some money. They put out candy and Nutri-grain bars, which is what was donated to them. Less than ideal? Yes. But, serving real food would have meant having to raise registration fees $15-$20/person. Is it worth that amount to registrants?  I don’t know. We haven’t asked them.

Because we operate in a world in which candy is cheaper than healthy food, social justice organizations have a lot less disposable income than corporations, and community-oriented convention centers are not as prevalent as swanky corporate hotels, and because as an organization we have our own limitations in time, staffing and fundraising capabilities, we make adjustments, compromises, and mistakes.

We’re looking at holding our Spring 2012 Farm to Cafeteria conference in Burlington VT and our Annual Conference in the Fall in the DC area. If you know of any venues in those areas that are accessible, can hold 800-1000 people, have affordable sleeping rooms nearby, and are willing to serve local food, send an email to our conference planner, Emily Becker at emily@foodsecurity.org. We’d love your help.

Schlosser is now joining with Consumers Union to urge consumers to fight for passage of FDA food safety reform legislation, which passed the House of Representatives last year and is now stalled awaiting action in the Senate.

That we need better measures to insure food safety is indisputable. Deaths from eating ordinary foods, from spinach to peanut butter, have made that clear. Leafy green processors, peanut butter factories, and other high-risk facilities should be inspected at least once a year, not once a decade, as FDA currently averages. FDA should have the authority to order recalls of tainted food, and not have to wheedle and cajole to get a company to retrieve a contaminated product. These changes are incorporated in S. 510, the FDA food safety bill pending in the Senate.

That we need a more sustainable food production system, one that involves smaller, more diverse, local production, is also clear. At the urging of the sustainable farming community, and supported by Consumers Union, provisions to protect sustainable farming have been incorporated into S. 510. The bill requires FDA to develop new food safety standards in consultation with USDA that cannot be in conflict with organic standards. FDA must consider maintaining biological diversity, impact on small farms, conservation and the environment in setting standards. FDA must also take into account the needs of small businesses, and give small businesses more time to meet the new food safety standards.

As Schlosser says, it makes no sense to continue to let the food industry regulate itself. The Senate should pass S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act now. You can urge Congress do so here.

During today’s announcement, Secretary Sebelius thanked Rep. John Dingell and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, longstanding champions of food safety, before she introduced her FSWG partners, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and Vice President Joe Biden.

In the audience for today’s announcement were family members of foodborne illness victims, and VP Biden said changes in food safety laws were “long overdue,” and had been unchanged since 1906…”since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle.” He noted that part of his work with the Middle Class Task Force was ensuring food safety, and made a long statement about imported foods, processed foods, and how we’re all put at risk by these.

“In the past, we’ve focused on food safety problems when they occur, now we’re putting our focus on prevention,” said VP Biden. “The tragedy of someone getting sick from food is made worse by someone else getting ill after we know what’s making people ill.”

“The President has made food safety an important national priority,” VP Biden said.

He closed by thanking Brian Sylberman, president of the Produce Marketing Association, someone who has been critical in promoting food safety for the produce industry.

Jointly, VP Biden and Secs. Sebelius and Vilsack announced the following imperatives for the new food safety approach:

(1) Prioritizing prevention
(2) Strengthening surveillance and enforcement
(3) Improving response to and recovery from outbreaks

In an effort at better management and coordination, the FSWG is seeking to coordinate the activities of agencies that oversee food issues, and has created two new positions:

1. Deputy Commissioner for Foods, to oversee and coordinate its efforts on food, including food safety. This position, reporting to the FDA Commissioner, will be empowered to restructure and revitalize FDA’s activities and work with USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, and other agencies, in developing a new food safety system. —The ostensible Taylor position…
2. Chief Medical Officer, at FSIS: Within the next three months, USDA will create a new position, Chief Medical Officer, at FSIS. This position will report to the Under Secretary for Food Safety, and will enhance USDA’s commitment to preventing foodborne illness.

Also announced: Some Big New Rules, many of which have a three-month time frame; some have a longer time frame…

• Reducing Salmonella in Eggs: The Food and Drug Administration is issuing a final rule to control Salmonella contaminationof eggs during production. This rule is estimated to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses associated with consumption of raw or undercooked contaminated shell eggs by approximately 60%, or 79,000 illnesses every year, and will generate annual savings of over $ 1 billion.

• Cutting Salmonella Risk in Poultry Products: By the end of the year, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will develop new standards to reduce the prevalence of Salmonella in turkeys and poultry. The agency will also establish a Salmonella verification program with the goal of having 90 percent of poultry establishments meeting the new standards by the end of 2010.

• Reducing the Threat of E. coli O157:H7: The bacterial strain called E. coli O157:H7 causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, and fever in approximately 70,000 Americans each year. In an estimated one in 15 patients, complications arise potentially resulting in intense pain, high blood pressure, kidney failure, and even death. In recent years, this bacterium has caused outbreaks associated with meat and spinach.

• Stepped Up Enforcement in Beef Facilities: FSIS is issuing improved instructions to its workforce on how to verify that establishments handling beef are acting to reduce the presence of E. coli. Also, FSIS is increasing its sampling to find this pathogen, focusing largely on the components that go into making ground beef.

• Preventing Contamination of Leafy Greens, Melons, and Tomatoes: By the end of the month, FDA will issue commodity-specific draft guidance on preventive controls that industry can implement to reduce the risk of microbial contamination in the production and distribution of tomatoes, melons, and leafy greens. These proposals will help the Federal government establish a minimum standard for production across the country. Over the next two years, FDA will seek public comment and work to require adoption of these approaches through regulation.

• Building a National Traceback and Response System: A system that permits rapid traceback to the source of foodborne illness will protect consumers and help industry recover faster. Yet despite the dedicated efforts of food safety officials across the country, our current capacity to traceback the sources of illness suffers from serious limitations.

• Developing Industry Product Tracing Systems: Within three months, FDA will issue draft guidance on steps the food industry can take to establish product tracing systems improving our national capacity for detecting the origins of foodborne illness.

• Creating a Unified Incident Command System: Within three months, Federal agencies will implement a new incident command system to address outbreaks of foodborne illness. This approach will link all relevant agencies, as well as state and local governments, more effectively to facilitate communication and decision-making in an emergency.

• Strengthening the Public Health Epidemiology Program: Within six to twelve months, FSIS will improve collaboration with states by increasing the capacity of its successful public health epidemiology liaison program to State Public Health Departments through additional hires and expanded outreach.

• Updating Emergency Operations Procedures: Within the next month, Federal food safety agencies will ask State and local agencies to update their emergency operations procedures to be consistent with the new “Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response” soon to be issued by the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response. Implementation of these guidelines will lead to quicker response, better communication, and better coordination by all Federal, State, and local agencies.

• Improving State Capacity: The CDC will work with collaborating States to evaluate and optimize best practices for aggressive and rapid outbreak investigation, and will launch a new system to facilitate information-sharing and adoption of best practices within 12 months.

• Using New Technologies to Communicate Critical Food Safety Information by Creating an Improved Individual Alert System: The federal government will enhance www.foodsafety.gov to better communicate information to the public and include an improved individual alert system allowing consumers to receive food safety information, such as notification of recalls. Agencies will also use social media to expand public communications. The first stage of this process will be completed in 90 days.

• Improving Organization of Federal Food Safety Responsibilities: Building a more effective safety system requires federal agencies to improve management of their food safety responsibilities and coordinate more effectively with each other.

• Strengthening Federal Coordination to Address Cross-Cutting Problems: The Food Safety Working Group will serve as a mechanism to break down stovepipes, address cross-cutting issues and increase coordination of food safety activities across the U.S. government. HHS and USDA will continue to serve as the Working Group’s leadership, bringing information and experience from the front lines of food safety to their sister agencies across the government. The Group will monitor the implementation of its recommendations, regularly assess performance metrics, ensure that food safety policies are adequately coordinated with efforts to safeguard the food supply from deliberate tampering, and respond to new challenges.

This post originally appeared on Obamafoodorama.