Rural Food Deserts

Despite being regions of food production, many rural areas are food deserts, defined as particular geographic areas where there is insufficient quantity and quality of food, or where food prices are systematically higher than in other regions.

According to one source, over 800 counties in the U.S. are considered to have low food access with the largest concentration in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions. In a survey of 1,500 residents in four non-metro counties in Iowa, most lived 20 miles or more from a major food retailer. All of these counties had four or fewer grocery stores. About 10,000 farm workers live in Iowa year round. And while food insecurity rates for the state in 2002 were quite low (6.5 percent), 37 percent of households were in poverty and 21 percent of Hispanic households were food insecure.

Access to food is a critical factor in rural California as well. One study compiling data from county-level food assessments shows that a lack of fresh food options, few retail locations, and lack of transportation in rural areas all create barriers to accessing healthy foods. According to the same study, almost 60 percent of rural Californians live more than three miles from a grocery store and only nine percent live within a mile from one. When there is also a lack of transportation choices, food insecurity increases.

Farm Laborers and Hunger

Many workers coming to the U.S. for agricultural jobs are coming specifically to overcome hunger and diminishing opportunities at home. They are leaving rural regions, primarily in Mexico, where they are no longer able to survive as farmers due to the impacts of global trade agreements and national policies. They find themselves working in an environment where they have less control over the production and consumption of their food. In addition, their wages, though high by the standards of their country of origin are extremely low by U.S. standards. According to the National Agricultural Worker Survey, the median income among farmworker households nationally is between $7,500 and $10,000 and over 60 percent of these households are in poverty. When combined with the fact that they are remitting a sizable proportion of their income to their families at home, this poverty is entrenched.

In 2009, about 15 percent of American households weren’t getting enough food for their families. The Salinas Valley, located in Monterey County, is the third highest grossing crop producing county in the nation. But the people growing our lettuce and strawberries are likely worse off. One exploratory study found that during 2009, 66 percent of farm workers interviewed in the Salinas Valley were food insecure.

Monterey has the highest proportion of food insecure households in California at almost half. But its percentage is not unique: In Fresno County, the country’s most productive agricultural county, 45 percent of farmworkers are food insecure. Those who are indigenous Mexicans are at even higher risk: A  survey of Mixteco-speakers showed 76 percent were food insecure in the winter, when employment is limited and incomes are lower.

California is not alone when it comes to hunger among farmworkers. North Carolina data from four studies executed between 2002 and 2004, show that among households where there is a farmworker, 49 to 71 percent are food insecure. Texas has the second highest rate in the nation of food insecurity and the second largest agricultural income.  A sampling of 100 migrant and seasonal workers in Texas showed that 82 percent were food insecure.

Solutions

Food insecurity is a product of the global economic system and the dynamics of domestic food production. Yet, the agricultural base remains the best solution to rural poverty and food insecurity. There are several promising strategies aimed at addressing rural food deserts. Community owned grocery stores, like the Gove Community Improvement Association in Kansas, and rural distribution systems, like the Oklahoma Food Cooperative and Gorge Grown Mobile Market, are innovative solutions developed by rural communities to address their food access needs.

But change must also trickle downwards through increased private and public funding aimed at developing community resources and safety nets. A recent study of the top 1,000 grant making foundations showed that annual giving from these foundations to rural communities was only 6.8 percent of their total giving. There is room for improvement.

Federal policies need to be enacted as well to address the most marginalized populations. Public funding could affect rural development, transportation infrastructure, improved competitiveness of smaller scale producers, increased availability of school lunch reform and food stamp utilization, and access to low- or no-interest loans for rural residents. In addition, labor policies that allow for agricultural exclusion to labor laws need to be changed.

Rural counties make up the large majority (340 of 386) of counties with persistent poverty. And the more rural an area is, the poorer it is. The discussion of the farm worker population, inequality of food access in food producing regions, and rural poverty, must come to the forefront of the community food security movement.  Collaborative efforts for change require a common understanding and focus on issues of poverty and social justice.

We should take John Steinbeck’s 1936 portrait of American agriculture as a long overdue call to arms:

“The green grass spreads right into the tent doorways and the orange trees are loaded. In the cotton fields, a few wisps of the old crop cling to the black stems. But the people who picked the cotton, and cut the peaches and apricots, who crawled all day in the rows of lettuce and beans, are hungry. The men who harvested the crops of California, the women and girls who stood all day and half the night in the canneries, are starving.”  

The movement for reform to our flawed food system is growing stronger every day. Cooks, consumers, and campaigners alike are waking up in increasing numbers to the dangerous and unsustainable impacts of the way much of our food is grown, sold, and consumed.

This progress could not come at a more important moment. Our global food system works only for the few–for most of us it is broken. It leaves consumers lacking sufficient power and knowledge about what we buy and eat and almost a billion people hungry worldwide, millions of whom live here in the U.S.

The failure of the system flows from failures of government–failures to regulate, to correct, to protect, to resist, to invest–which mean that companies, interest groups, and elites are able to plunder our resources and to redirect flows of finance, knowledge, and food to suit themselves.

And now we have entered an age of growing crisis, of shock piled upon shock: Vertiginous food price spikes and oil price hikes and devastating weather events that catch us somehow unaware and unprepared. Behind each of these slow-burn crises continue to smolder creeping and insidious climate change; growing inequality, chronic hunger, and vulnerability; and the erosion of our natural resources. The broken food system is both a driver of this fragility and highly vulnerable to it.

But all of this can change and in fact it already is. Today Oxfam is launching our new campaign GROW. GROW is a campaign for the billions of us who eat food and the one and a half billion men and women who produce it. GROW is a campaign for a better future where we expose and overcome the threats we face and help build movements for a new era of prosperity.

This better future is one where we grow what we need, so everyone has enough to eat, always. Getting there will take all the energy, ingenuity, and political will that humankind can muster. We must mount powerful campaigns to win significant transformations in how our society faces common threats and manages scarce resources.

GROW may be ambitious, but we seek practical changes on the substantive issues that keep poor people hungry.  We will campaign for investments in small-scale food producers to increase their productivity, self-reliance, climate resilience, and economic opportunity.  We will campaign for an end to excessive speculation in agricultural commodities that drives food price spikes.  We will campaign to modernize food aid so that 50 cents of every dollar is no longer wasted serving industry lobbyists ahead of hungry people and the American taxpayer.  We will campaign to stop giveaways to the corn-ethanol industry that drive up food prices.  We will campaign to regulate land and water grabs to instill much needed transparency and sanity into global land deals.

Our targets are the powerful elites in poor countries that seize land and block reform; the special interest lobbies of rich countries that tip the playing field against small farmers on the backs of taxpayers; the multinational traders who profit as food markets unravel; the financial institutions that bet on them doing so. We will name them, and we will shame those who try to protect the status quo at the expense of the hungry.

Governments must renew their purpose as custodians of the public good rather than allowing these vested interests to set the agenda. And we must be hold elected officials accountable if they don’t, demanding change at the ballot box. We must build power and ensure politicians quiver in fear that we might use it.

Responsible businesses can help enable this future of prosperity and many already are. They are breaking ranks with protectors of the status quo, strengthening the will of politicians and governments to act. They are embracing effective regulation rather than undermining it. They are directing their business models and practices towards addressing the challenges we face.

But they must do better and citizens and customers must demand this of them. The incentives under which businesses operate must shift so that they can no longer impose their social and environmental costs on others and instead flourish in their responsible behavior.

Inspired by such ideas, and motivated by a desire for a better future, organizations, businesses, movements, and networks for a new prosperity are appearing, growing, and connecting up all over the world. Poor farmers are demanding fair shares from national budgets and market chains; leaders and scientists are working on sustainable agriculture; environmentalists are calling for a healthier and safer future; women are claiming their rights to opportunity; communities are leading healthier lifestyles; movements are forming—such as Fair Trade, which links ethical consumers and the private sector; and grassroots campaigns are clamoring for the right to food to be respected. The list is long and growing.

We are proud to stand alongside them. We will join their efforts to make practical positive changes in how we produce, consume, share, and manage food and other resources to move beyond this age of crisis to a new age of prosperity. Soon there will be nine billion of us on the planet and for better or worse we are all in this together. For those of you looking to be leaders in the fight for a better future, we hope you will join us and GROW.

This iteration of the child nutrition bill has received the greatest amount of support and publicity in its history. The good food movement has gathered more and more advocates, both citizens and professionals, and the public has become more aware of the importance of nutrition programs for children. The bill even enjoys rare bipartisan support. Yet conflict over compromises has been simmering under the radar, splitting would-be allies on the path to reform.

The bill currently on the table, sponsored by outgoing Senator Blanche Lincoln, funds its new, groundbreaking nutrition and hunger programs partly by cutting $2.2 billion in future SNAP (food stamp) funding. It was passed unanimously. The bill authored by the House did not cut SNAP funding; but neither did it find adequate funding. Instead the bill stalled, the August recess came and went, and only half of the $2 billion increase was funded.

Up until this point, a highly organized network of national hunger and nutrition advocacy organizations had been in alignment in accepting the passage of a child nutrition bill only if it left SNAP funding intact. But with the House bill crashing, the path to restoring SNAP cuts obstructed, and the expiration of the Child Nutrition Act looming, these groups began to split over the issue of the SNAP cuts.

Groups focused more on access and the needs of low-income individuals opposed the bill because of the negative impact SNAP cuts would have on poor children. SNAP had just been raided in order to pass teachers’ salaries, and hunger organizations were outraged to see those funds raided again. Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) has lamented the use of “the most important anti-hunger program in America as a piggy bank for other purposes.” According to Kristen Mancinelli, Senior Manager, Policy and Government Relations for City Harvest, an organization that collects food for the hungry, “for every dollar spent by the federal government in SNAP the public sees $1.83 spent in economic activity.”

“Half of SNAP funding goes to children, and the other half goes to adults and seniors in need,” explained Joel Berg, Executive Director at New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “At a time when we are lavishing billionaires with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of extra tax cuts, the idea of paying for modest improvements with school lunches with SNAP cuts–paying for kids’ lunches by taking away dinners from them, their parents, and their grandparents–is both immoral and counter-productive. If such cuts are enacted, they will boost both hunger and obesity.”

Organizations more focused on nutrition, on the other hand, worry that opposing the bill until SNAP cuts are restored jeopardizes the entire bill–and its many valuable initiatives, like giving the USDA authority over competitive foods sold in schools (foods not part of the school food program, e.g. those sold on the premises in vending machines), updating nutritional standards, and expansion of after-school supper programs.

Sophie Milam, Senior Policy Counsel at Feeding America, emphasized that her organization does not like the SNAP cuts, either. But they are concerned that if the current bill is not passed, the next Congress will delay work on a new bill, and that bill will likely not make the same investments and improvements as the current one does.

The White House has stated its commitment to restore SNAP funding, a promise that motivated two former opponents to the bill, Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Jim McGovern, to support it. Hunger organizations Bread for the World and Share Our Strength have also dropped their opposition, according to the Washington Post. This is a measure of how much the White House wants this bill passed–and it begs the question of how much support food groups could have gotten if they had all dug in their heels and remained united in their opposition to a bill that cuts SNAP funding.

“It’s a very tough decision. These are things that many, many people here are struggling with, people who have been working on this bill for the past couple of years. You have to make a decision about what’s going to be a long-term investment,” continues Milam. “You have to live to fight another day, try to secure the best you can for these programs. At what point do you say ‘this is the best we can get right now?’”

While hunger and nutrition groups have split on the national levels, a smaller coalition, NYC Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR), has remained united. Through City Harvest, Kristen Mancinelli has led this group (full disclosure, I work for Brooklyn Food Coalition, which has signed on to the Alliance), which maintains its opposition to the bill until SNAP funds are restored. Even groups tied to national organizations that have chosen different sides have remained in alignment with NYC for CNR’s position, something that has surprised even Mancinelli. This is partly because New Yorkers have more to lose with the SNAP cuts: 1.7 million people in the city are on food stamps.

In practice, the organizing around CNR could be seen as a warm up for the even more massive organizing food groups will be doing to advocate for real change in the Farm Bill. A more conservative House promises a different and more challenging climate for that work.

As told by the documentary Lunch Line, the story of school food is one of compromise and unlikely alliances. Looking ahead to the Farm Bill, I see urban sustainable food advocates joining forces with Christian fundamentalist libertarian renegade farmers like Joel Salatin. Can we look ahead and predict where the fault lines will lie? Is there groundwork we can build? How do we balance idealism and bold thinking with pragmatism? After the child nutrition debate has finished, work on the Farm Bill will no doubt accelerate locally and nationally. I’m hoping we will ask ourselves some of these questions and be open to productive alliances with each other. I’m hoping we will have the wisdom to know when to be flexible and when to be ambitious.

In the meantime, if you care about school food and child nutrition there is still time to lend your support for the bill. See the below links to read more about these organizations’ respective positions and to send a message to our legislators about the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

• Letter drafted by Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) opposing the bill unless SNAP cuts are restored, and their Legislative Action Center.
• Feeding America’s social media campaign and letter in support of the bill.
• Community Food Security Coalition’s action alert.
• New York City Alliance for CNR campaign.

I spend a great deal of my time on extremely small-scale food production.  Growing, procuring, cooking, eating, and writing about locally produced food is my bread and butter.  Thus picking up a copy of Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations was in some ways a departure for me.  Authors Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas are examining a world that looks to me much the same as the Grand Canyon must look to a mouse.

Culinary history is a truer history though than almost any taught in schools.  Most of what we were taught in high school or even college was little more than the chronology of war.  You may remember that the Norman Conquest occurred in 1066, you probably don’t know about the advances in agriculture that resulted from it, like the invention of the moldboard plow.  The authors suggest that this one innovation might well rank alongside the wheel or steam locomotion in terms of its importance to human development.

Across 12,000 years of history, Empires of Food lays out in clear and compelling terms the ways our world has been shaped by the repeated, head-on collision between politics and the production, transportation and consumption of food.  We learn how the Romans knew of the effects certain vitamins had on health and strength even if they didn’t know what the vitamins themselves actually were; how the ancient Chinese were ahead of even today’s methods of seed selection; of the inescapable importance and value of clean, fresh water.

They put some emphasis too on the flaws in our modern food systems and our seeming inability to learn, as a species, from our own checkered past.  “We devote much of our earth to a very small number of crops.  But instead of relying on prayer, dung and ditches to coax out a harvest we use machines, chemicals, and satellite-guided sprinklers.  The results overflow our silos, our supermarket shelves, and our waistbands.”  It is hard to tell whether the feasts of our current forms of agriculture will lead first to famine or death by excess.

All of this is fascinating, instructive, and vitally important.  But where they are most enlightening  is at the end, in a conclusion titled “The New Gluttony and Tomorrow’s Menu.”  They rail against those who consider food as fashion – what Carlo Petrini described as “wearing produce like jewelry” as people promenade through trendy, shop-to-be-seen markets.  The true threat though is not pop culture, it’s oil-addicted agriculture.  We worry about the effects climate change will have on shorelines and even in our fields, but we pay very little attention to the fact that when the oil runs out (and it will run out), the current food empire run by the likes of Monsanto, ADM and ConAgra will face a 50% loss in fertility and 170 million more empty mouths to feed.

This is what Slow Food proponents and other food activists mean when we say that what we have is not a sustainable food system.  What we must work toward is one that is Good, Clean and Fair.  By Good we mean that the food is good tasting and good for you.  By Clean we mean that it is not polluted and does not pollute – that there is nothing in the food that isn’t food (and if it wasn’t food 100 years ago, it isn’t food now).  And by Fair we mean that the people who produce the food should be justly compensated for their labor. That would be a sustainable food system.

To get there though we must know our history, and Empires of Food is a great way to learn it.  As the poet says, can’t know where your going if you don’t know where you’ve been.

We, as American consumers, have gotten so used to having whatever we want, whenever we want. You walk into a restaurant and expect to see that salmon filet on the menu. Food items that at one time were for special occasions have become the everyday, because they are being farmed to keep up with our demand. Our food has fallen into the business paradigm that rules our society, and this is not the correct place for it. Paul Hawkins opened up the Institute on Thursday with the notion of the cost vs. the price of our food. “We have very, very expensive food in this country, it’s just that the price is cheap,” he so eloquently points out. And so, when the price tag of that pound of shrimp looks so appealing to the general masses, why wouldn’t they choose to buy it? . A hamburger that costs 99 cents? Aren’t we lucky! The true cost of that shrimp or that beef, to our earth, to our health, to our political structure, is hidden deeply within the system of speed and convenience we have become used to.

When food is available so cheap, it becomes less precious, which leads to huge amounts of waste. Today, the typical starting point of any of our food is at some sort of farm…massive, sprawling areas of land or sea in which one type of ingredient is cultivated, harvested, and then packed on a semi-truck for delivery. The whims of supply and demand create a timetable that doesn’t correspond with actual nutrients or freshness, leading to spoilage. Enter food safety issues, contamination, sickness, and ultimately the disposal of what could have fed hundreds of people. The industrialization of food distribution has created a system riddled with waste, from “fresh” produce to large bulk grains to tiny, individually packaged candy. Everything has an expiration date, and the more that is produced to appease the appetite of our vastly expanding population the more will not be used. This middle-man format of large scale distribution is also incredibly inefficient and sucks up our natural resources, food miles being one of those very expensive, yet unseen externalities that isn’t figured into your total at the register.

Our food marketing industry is constantly thinking up new products, labels and campaigns to make us hungry for something we’ve never tried before (have you seen the new Kraft “cheddar flavored” singles with bacon?), instead of recycling or re-inventing value added products from what gets thrown out. There is certainly a huge population of people in this country, and on a global level, who still can’t and never will afford that 99-cent hamburger. As the population grows, we will increasingly need to find ways of feeding everyone, and value added products are a valuable key to that struggle. Maine based Ingrid Bengis, of Ingrid Bengis Seafood, brought up a discussion about the use of fish “racks” during the panel “Greening the Blue Revolution“, the bits and pieces of unused meat left on the discarded skeletons of various sea catch. These racks sometimes make their way into fishmeal or aquaculture feed, but couldn’t it also go towards feeding the hungry a source of protein that is otherwise wasted?

Our restaurant culture certainly exacerbates waste, from the fast food level all the way up to fine dining. A chef that turns away a cut of fish because it isn’t quite long enough, or large enough, or small enough, or pink enough, shuts the door on a product that has already been killed, and there’s not much shelf life for that. Rick Bayless tells his story about starting Frontera Grill in Chicago. He was inspired by the regional cuisines of Mexico and wanted to showcase them here in the states while utilizing fresh, local ingredients. But at that point, in 1987, he hit a wall, finding that all available produce was under ripe and tasteless. Trials and tribulations ensued, specifically dealing with distributors that didn’t carry local strawberries because there was no demand for such a fleeting, fragile item. His passion led to forming direct relationships with area farmers and creating a system of respect for what they could provide for him. He appeals to other chef’s, saying that “we have to cook with what nature gives us”, opposing the idea of “perfection” in the kitchen just to fill a need for aesthetic on the plate.

Bayless also brought up another issue about a common lack of connection to the origins of our food. His example was about a farmer who saw one of the Frontera chefs nonchalantly throw a box of lettuce from the truck. This unconscious act points to more of the hidden systems of cost involved within every product. The amount of time, effort and labor involved from seed to fork is gigantic, and the kitchen worker was discounting that in one mere toss. At a consumer level, the more impersonal and separate we are from our food choices the easier it is to disregard the crisis our food system is in. The state of our oceans in particular offers a huge challenge in trying to educate the public…you literally can’t see what is going on underwater, which makes it that much easier to ignore the fact that we are still consuming wild animals on the brink of extinction.

“We are in the middle of a food revolution,” the reassuring words of our closing speaker, Marion Nestle, and despite what she identifies as the biggest issues; food insecurity, obesity, food safety, globalization, transportation, and harmful marketing techniques, there is heightened awareness within the crisis that is pointing towards change. The gigantic 2009 increase in lobbying funds from the corporate food industry is evidence that a battle is on, and those of us that can see it have to fight back with the only thing that seems to make much difference within the human race…our money. Even the most well intentioned efforts remain contradictory in some way or another. As Dr. Nestle was showing evidence of Coca Cola’s role in tooth decay within Latin America since they began targeted marketing there, I heard the crack and fizz of a can being opened, just a few feet away at the buffet table laden with Coke and M&M packed cookies. Not to mention the huge amount of waste that is inherent to any large event, especially food-centric ones. At what point will these gatherings themselves reflect the integrity of what we are trying to achieve?

The issues are so multifaceted and complex that it is maddening to try to weigh them all, but we are seeing more solutions to promote less wasteful food systems today. Regional, localized distributors, gleaning programs, citywide composting regulations and the popularity of value added products like pickles and jams, and the general up swelling of farmers markets and people sticking to seasonal eating habits. Ultimately, our food policies need to change dramatically at the governmental level, and if there were one thing I took away from Cooking For Solutions this year, it would be that we, the consumer, do have the power to make change. If Marion Nestle has hope, then I do too.

In the same breath that he criticizes these “Western elites” who support sustainable food production,  Paarlberg espouses the very Western, elitist argument that the only definition of “good,” “modern,” or “improved” agricultural inputs are the ones created, patented and sold by big Western biotech companies such as Monsanto, where Paarlberg serves on the Biotechnology Advisory Council (PDF).

Paarlberg seems to believe that the only two options for global agriculture are dirt poor subsistence farmers barely eking out a living or mass biotech production on the Green Revolution scale. But between these two extremes is a middle ground: A diverse and robust rural sector that includes small and medium farmers serving local communities and nations along with appropriate technologies that help re-balance the mix between locally sourced and imported food options. In my role at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), I see the wisdom of this third way set of approaches every day through initiatives like Lambi Fund of Haiti’s home-grown seed banks.

The insistence that “modernization” only has one meaning and one possible approach puts Paarlberg out of step not only with many of the people on the ground actually living with this issue every day, but also with the current consensus among experts in the field as laid out by the findings of the International Science, Technology and Development (IAASTD) initiative. This process – a three-year intergovernmental research and analysis project on the state of global agriculture conducted under the co-sponsorship of the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO – came to almost the exact opposite conclusion of Paarlberg’s.

Wherever one stands on the issue of biotech in agriculture – and people of good will can disagree – the notion that all biotech practices are inherently “good” or “modern” whereas all non-biotech practices, such as indigenous seed banking and hybrid cultivation, composting and drip irrigation, are inherently “bad” or “backward” comes across as more ideological than scientific.

The first and biggest proponent of non-biotech food security is Via Campesina, a global social movement that represents millions of peasant and small-scale farmers in hundreds of developing countries. People who suffer from lack of food around the developing world do not need Western ‘eco-foodies’ to tell them that local food sovereignty is the best way to feed their families. They already know it, and knew it long before “locavorism” came to these shores.

No one is seriously suggesting that the current system is working. Paarlberg is right that farmers need good inputs (seeds, fertilizer, etc) as well as the existence of basic infrastructure (roads, power, etc) to succeed. But he undercuts his argument by failing to discuss the many factors that led to the current situation, other than a throwaway line about food aid, with which I heartily agree and wish Paarlberg would expound upon.

AJWS is paying particular attention to this aspect of hunger issues in Haiti, where huge influxes of US-subsidized bio-tech produced rice will continue to undercut local farmers’ ability to feed their country if something isn’t done soon. AJWS is asking Congress to support common-sense aid to Haiti – you can make your voice heard by signing our petition.

Most can agree with Paarlberg that food aid has not helped hungry people in the developing world and that we must switch from investing in sending bags of food to the continent to sending real support for agricultural development assistance. AJWS strongly supports US foreign assistance for sustainable agricultural initiatives, but only when they are supported and led by the people on the ground. People who really care about feeding the world’s hungry cannot create situations that just replace the old dependency on foreign food aid with a new dependency on inputs that are wholly controlled by biotech corporations.

Belo Horizonte is the stuff of food security legend. BH (pronounced beh-agah), as it is known by locals, has been on the radar of food systems folks since their innovative programming began in the early 90s, and their recognition has only grown over time. Attention has come in the form of shoutouts by the Lappe mother-daughter team in Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet, the Huffington Post and Yes! Magazine and the 2009 Future Policy Award from the World Future Council, to name a few. As topics relating to food security and the future of agriculture rise on the government priority lists and health-related NGOs, more and more eyes turn towards BH for best practices. So it was with nearly four years of built-up anticipation that I arrived in BH for a whirlwind tour of all things food and ag.

BH is Brazil’s third largest city. With nearly three million residents in the city proper, and nearly double that in the metropolitan area (which includes the city’s vast stretch of favela-like communities). But staring out the window of the bus only an hour before entering the city, one would never know a metropolis was just around the corner. BH is situated in central Minas Gerais, a state that earned its place on the map when the Portuguese discovered gold here early in Brazil’s colonial period. Mining (“minas” is Portuguese for mines) brought massive wealth to this vast stretch of verdant, breathtakingly beautiful land with its ever-rolling hills, waterfalls, and semi-tropical vegetation. As the mining industry grew, the state became one of Brazil’s wealthiest, and between the mining industry and the ideal growing climate, Minas came into its own with splendor and grace.

Long story short, the mining boom didn’t last forever (it never does). And although mining still remains an important economic activity here in Minas Gerais, it is nowhere near as central to the state’s economy as it was back in the good ‘ole days. But before the massive decline ensued, the mine-owners needed labor. And labor they brought. Over time, their workers ranged from African slaves to native Indio peoples from Amazonas to, more recently, internal migrants (from a number of ethnic backgrounds) seeking higher wages and a better life.

Today, the purpose-built capitol of BH struggles tremendously with ever-growing migrant communities. With the decline of mining, many laborers have found themselves out of work. In addition, Brazil’s tumultuous land-use situation has pushed many off subsistence plots, thus stripping farmers of their livelihoods. And, as the story goes worldwide, millions of these displaced, out-of-work folks have moved towards urban centers in search of work and educational opportunities for their children.

But the differences between BH and other rapidly-growing cities cannot be underestimated, and thus lies the nugget of gold that brought me to this food security mecca. In 1993, puzzling over what to do about skyrocketing food prices (and all the subsequent health problems), a growing poor population, and a loss of marketing opportunities for rural farmers, BH had the brilliant idea to centralize, in one municipal department, the Belo Horizonte Secretariat for Food Policy and Supply [PDF] (SMAAB in Portuguese). This department governs all the programs that deal, even tangentially, with food access, nutrition, and producer livelihood. What has unfolded over the past 17 years seems to be simultaneously “keep it simple, stupid” obvious and remarkably and bravely innovative.

The core tenants of SMAAB’s work are clear: food is a human right, not a commodity; everyone should be able to access and afford to eat healthy, nutritious food; nutrition is a vital component of public and personal health; and producers of food deserve fair marketing opportunities and wages. From those basic principles emerged a system of integrative planning and programmatic implementation that includes (ready? this is the bona fide bulletpoint list from the government of BH): direct marketing, warehouse marketing, organic markets, community and school gardens and orchards, central municipal supply, popular markets, a market district, food and nutrition education, courses for food handlers, food banks, food assistance programs, a free and fair trade model, research baskets, school food policies, popular restaurants, planting in alternative spaces, training agricultural workers (both urban and rural), supply for retail shops, and, to keep all the number-hungry politicos and grant-makers happy, the research-oriented Center for Information and Documentation.

As if this weren’t enough, BH has been blessed with a number of NGOs working on food, agriculture, and health issues on the community level. One such group, REDE de Intercambio de Tecnologias Alternativas (The Network for Exchange of Alternative Technologies), a non-profit that works at the household and community level to empower, educate, and train low-income BH residents in techniques to improve their health, environment, and quality of life. Their programs and accomplishments are too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say, they are a small but very busy team, and I have seldom stumbled across such savvy, engaged, progressive, and hard-working activists.

I could go into extensive detail about the workings of these programs, but instead I suggest you check out the Future Policy Award brochure, read the Lappes’ accounts, and peruse (with the help of a translator) REDE’s website. What I want to focus on is the stories I heard and the sights I saw, as for me, that’s where the proof of true success lies.

With city government representatives, I first visited a small organic market stand on a busy neighborhood corner. This particular producer (who we’ll call Joao) and his wife come three times a week to three different stall locations from their home 40k outside the city bearing bushel upon bushel of fruits, grains, vegetables, and preserves. Most of these they grow themselves, some they trade for with other organic producers in their community to diversify their market offerings. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. and they were almost entirely sold out. Empty crates sat piled by their truck, in preparation for the early afternoon trip home. While chatting over the benefits of having such marketing opportunities, Joao told me that they have been able to make plenty to live off of from their large garden alone. But he was careful to emphasize that the best part about the city marketing opportunity was the relationships he and his wife had formed. Nearly all of their customers are regulars, and they have adapted their production to accomodate local demands. Many city residents have standing orders which Joao and his wife keep on reserve until they can be picked up. When a regular customer is sick, they make local deliveries. And once, when their truck broke down en route into the city and the stall wasn’t set up, Joao told me he received nearly thirty phone calls from anxious customers wondering what had happened. I can relate, as working at farmers markets and in CSA sheds has always been the highlight of my ag-related jobs. To me, the best part of working with food and agriculture is the creation of these strong human bonds.

Next we headed to another BH neighborhood to visit another market stall. This particular producer (we’ll call him Ailton) and his wife (and, we’ll call her Carla) come twice a week to set up a sprawling display of gorgeous greens. For the first time since arriving in Brazil, I saw the likes of mizuna, artichokes, bok choy, and cherry tomatoes. This couple revels in the art of cultivating unusual crops, as expressed by Carla as she waxed poetic over the sublime flavor of her spicy greens and the beauty of their Italian artichoke varieties. And their customers reveal just as much glee from snatching them up. Carla and Ailton were originally courted by a local gym (of which there are a surprising number here in Brazil, and a particularly high concentration in BH) to serve health-conscious people in their post-workout shop. But in the years since then, local families and a handful of chefs have started to frequent the stand as well. Carla and Ailton’s stall was also nearly empty by 11:30 in the morning, save for a few heads of lettuce. When I asked them if they needed to have any off-farm work to supplement their income, they laughed. The city markets have provided more than enough for their lifestyle, and they can’t imagine doing anything other than the work they so love.

Hungry after eyeing gorgeous producers all morning, we headed to one of the city’s Restaurantes Populares. These remarkable programs, which serve approximately 16,000 nutritious, regionally-sourced meals a day (three meals a day) for less than a dollar a pop. As I guiltily cut the line with my hosts, I noticed a line that wound around the corner, down the stairs, and into the parking lot. This program is indeed feeding people, and lots of them.

Sated, we headed out to the source, a third-generation eight-acre organic family farm about 50km outside of BH proper. Stephen, a strapping hulk of a young man, greeted us donning his Prefeitura BH (BH City Government) hat, an immediate sign of his feelings about the city’s work to improve agricultural technology and marketing opportunities. We spent the afternoon wandering his fields and hoophouses and chatting about his family. He and his three brothers grow nearly 30 varieties of fruits and vegetables for themselves and markets, and are now beginning to experiment with aquaponics. They have received technical assistance from city extension agents, helping them to make their land-use more efficient. Their production and marketing has been so successful in the past couple of years that they have been able to move off the farm to a house closer to the village, and have been able to purchase basic appliances and vehicles to improve their quality of life and that of their children. The process seems so simple, the goals so obvious. And yet, these are they types of programs we so struggle to initiate in the United States.

I spent the next day scouting neighborhood projects with REDE. From a small garden started on a formerly druglord-infested corner to an enormous school garden project (this is more like a school jungle, complete with terracing and a shaded hoophouse for crops that can’t stand the midday Brazilian sun). We ended the evening sitting in a backyard garden REDE had helped to plant. An old woman and her husband lovingly tended a chicken coop, three thriving orange trees, a vegetable patch, and banana and papaya groves. I was amazed by the sheer amount of food produced in this small space, and my friends at REDE helpfully explained to me that all their work is done with a focus on agro-ecology — a technique that considers environmental, human, and cultural health. We watched the sun set over the remarkably rural favela as we sat carving the peels off of perfectly ripe oranges, the delightfully tart juice dripping down our arms and chins, the perfect end to a hot day.

Belo Horizonte certainly hasn’t solved all their food-related problems (not that I can think of a city that has). But what so impressed me was the willingness to integrate, to share information, to bring new players into the fold, and most importantly, to demand attention for nutritious, affordable food as an absolute necessity. It seems to me, if all of us working in and around cities could integrate just a bit of BH’s model into our own work, we would be well on our way to a series of more just, sustainable, and — let’s get serious — delicious food systems.

The USDA has released its data for hunger [pdf] in the United States, and the numbers aren’t good.

In 2007, 36 million people were classified ‘food insecure’. In 2008, the figure was 49 million — an increase of 13 million.

Children were badly affected, though older children took the hit if they had younger siblings. Those in the front lines were, of course, women. The graph shows the differences in US hunger between 2007 and 2008: single mothers and women living alone were worst hit.

It’s no accident that women are hit harder than men. Food stamps and similar social services just aren’t enough to feed a family. When women are paid less than men for the same work, why should we be surprised at the differences in hunger?

The responses from government are mixed. Although sensible in the press release written for him by the USDA, Secretary for Agriculture Tom Vilsack showed his real pedigree in a briefing to reporters, quoted by The Washington Post where he offered that

“These numbers are a wake-up call . . . for us to get very serious about food security and hunger, about nutrition and food safety in this country.”

What have nutrition and food safety got to do with people going hungry? Very little, except that if you’re going to patch up the worst signs of hunger, you probably want what little food poor people get to be more nutritious than what industrial agriculture is normally ready to provide. But injecting flour with vitamins doesn’t get you very far in tackling the root causes of this hunger — poverty.

Then again, Vilsack doesn’t come from a background of worrying about the hungry as much as we worries about what producers want. It’s not surprising that he went off-message when, it appears, he has never really grasped what drives hunger in the United States. And so long as the USDA remains a producer-driven organization, neither he nor the people who follow him are likely to understand.

Of course, at heart, this is a bipartisan issue. The USDA is largely a plaything of agribusiness, and is increasingly so. Neither Republican nor Democrat are likely to change it. Meanwhile, the root cause of hunger remains unaddressed, and the best mechanisms for addressing it are allowed to wither.

While the White House trumpets its efforts to drive recovery, and hence jobs and wages, the fact remains that it was a Democratic president driven by a Republican Congress who dismantled the welfare system that most effectively would have prevented this catastrophe.

A plague, then, on both their houses.

Originally Published on Stuffed and Starved

As a polarizing subject, biotechnology has no peer.

On the one hand, it has potential to raise crop yields, increase the nutrient value in food and speed up traditional plant breeding through marker-assisted selection, a biotechnology that does not mix genes of different species.

On the other hand, biotechnology is generally funded and controlled by large corporations. The corporations then patent the products produced through the technology and sell them to farmers to make a profit.

In the past, agricultural knowledge and seeds have been owned by everyone for the common good and shared freely among gardeners and farmers. This new system is a departure from how food has traditionally been raised. By turning knowledge into private property, it effectively removes the control over food production from the communities engaged in it.

There are many other problems with biotechnology, as well, including potential loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation caused by indiscriminate spraying of pesticides and herbicides on crops that have been bioengineered to withstand heavy doses of chemicals, and the unknown impacts on our health we may experience from consuming genetically modified organisms.

Another problem is with the companies that develop and promote this technology. Monsanto in particular is known for spying on farmers and suing them if Monsanto-patented crops are found in the farmers’ fields – whether or not the farmers planted these crops or they ended up their via “drift.” Further, Monsanto is known for using strong-armed tactics to gain new markets in countries around the world.

Monsanto has also been devoting significant resources to an advertising campaign aimed at thought leaders who read publications like The New Yorker, or listen to NPR stations. To influence a public that is wary of biotechnology, the campaign asserts that we need biotechnology to “feed the world.” The ads imply that if you care about starving people around the world, you’ll support biotechnology.

This advertising is disingenuous because most crops patented by Monsanto are engineered to withstand the pesticides and herbicides the company also sells. In reality, developing these crops and selling them to farmers is another way to sell more chemicals.

Furthermore, the most widely-planted GMO crops don’t feed the people in the countries where the crops are grown; they are export crops for the global marketplace. Most are not used for food at all.

Soybeans, the most-planted GMO-crop worldwide, go mostly to feed animals or for biofuel; GMO corn is used in animal feed and industrial products; rapeseed is used to make canola oil; cotton, of course, is not even a food crop.

All of these crops favor large landholders, not the people we think of when talking about hunger.

With GMO development being framed as the only way to combat hunger, let’s take a look at some of the global hotspots around the world.

Africa

The Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations are currently funding what’s touted as a Second Green Revolution in Africa. Unlike the first Green Revolution in Asia and South Asia, which promoted a fossil-fuel dependent form of heavy input agriculture, this new, improved Green Revolution is supposed to benefit smallholders, use genetic engineering to reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers and utilize the extensive knowledge of the farmers on the ground.

According to an article in Seed Magazine, seven out of every 10 Africans make their livelihoods through farming. They produce the majority of Africa’s food but with minimal resources and little support. Agriculture receives, on average, just 4 to 5 percent of national budgets.

This article asserts that the main problem is not lack of technology. It is that national governments have not invested enough in basic programs that will turn smallholder farming into a viable economic enterprise.

The Gates Foundation funding is being distributed to AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. According to AGRA’s website, AGRA “works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa through the promotion of rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers.”

That all sounds good, but in an article in The Nation this past September, it was revealed that though the Gates Foundation appears to have learned something from the first Green Revolution, much of what is being funded looks like business as usual.

The Gates project is doing some work engaging small farmers and sharing technology with African scientists, but researchers at the Community Alliance for Global Justice have found that a hefty portion of the Gates money is going to organizations connected to Monsanto.

Some farmers that have been working on their own sustainable, ecologically based farming systems to increase yields say they have been ignored. For their part, The Gates Foundation responded to these charges in a letter to the editor in The Nation. That letter (and others) can be read here.

According to Africa Files, “a network of people committed to Africa through its promotion of human rights, economic justice, African perspectives and alternative analyses,” AGRA is a “hoax.”

Africa Files accuses AGRA of promoting monoculture type farming that relies on heavy irrigation and ignoring the possibilities of economic gains when smallholders engage in organic farming.

According to Annie Shattuck, Policy Analyst for Food First, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, and co-author of the article in The Nation cited above,

“The pattern of the Green Revolution is to reduce agriculture systems to a monoculture crop that responds well to a highly limited set of circumstances and inputs. Trying to engineer genetic resistance to one more circumstance is not going to cut it for the agriculture of the future. We need systems that provide resilience to multiple hazards, and to do that we need diverse sustainable systems that also provide a decent living for the people who work them.”

India

The first Green Revolution begun in the 1970s was touted as a success. But today, it looks more like a disaster in India. While yields did go up, hunger did not go down. The reason for this is the high input technologies promoted tended to favor large, already privileged landholders. What it really did was push a lot of rural people into cities to try their luck there.

Today, despite the Green Revolution, there are famine conditions in India caused by drought and extreme weather. Suicide among Indian farmers has been epidemic as farmers find themselves in crushing debt when technological farming fails. Recent stories profile Indian farmers going back to organic methods.

What’s clear from the stories in India is that technological solutions only work for so long. Whether you are talking about chemical fertilizers, or genetic modification, such solutions are a crude fix overlaid across nature’s elegant variability. Currently, the only GM crop grown in India is cotton, but the country recently approved the development of GM eggplant.

“The myth of “one gene, one solution” to complex problems like climate change and poverty, (the root cause of hunger), is a myopic way to look at what is a complex ecological and social problem”, says Annie Shattuck. “So far attempts to engineer drought tolerance have been a miserable failure. The crops do well in drought years, but not in a normal year. We know agriculture will have to use less water and less fossil fuel in the future. It will also have to deal with increasingly wild weather – delays in the rainy season, erratic frosts, more intense storms. Unpredictability is the name of the game.”

China

Due to concerns about food security while agricultural land is being lost to rapid industrialization, China has been engaged in state-sponsored GMO research since the early part of this century. Details of the Chinese program are sketchy but the most interesting aspect of the program is that it is owned by the Chinese government rather than being funded by Monsanto, BayerCropScience, Syngenta or any of the other large agricultural biotech companies.

According to an article in Reuters, a large budget was approved in 2008 for GMO research with a huge portion of that budget earmarked for safety research. A good thing, because unauthorized GM rice has been found in processed foods imported into the EU from China.

With consumers in Europe among the least accepting of GM foods, China would do well to be cautious.

According to Chinese officials, the Chinese program “aims to obtain genes with great potential commercial value whose intellectual property rights belong to China, and to develop high-quality, high-yield and pest-resistant genetically modified new species.” Currently China grows large amounts of transgenic cotton. Rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, and a few food crops like peppers and papaya are in the development phase.

Mexico

In October, Mexico issued the first permits to grow GM corn. Despite assurances that the corn will not be planted in the same areas as native corn, native corn in Mexico is already contaminated. In a study published in the journal Nature, in 2001, scientists reported that corn in remote fields in Oaxaca was contaminated with GM genes.

This report set off an ugly industry effort to discredit the scientists who published the study. But in spring 2009, the controversy was finally put to rest when another study confirmed the findings of the first study. At any rate, according to the story in Reuters, some Mexican farmers in the north have been planting GM corn illegally.

Turkey

In a surprising and controversial move in October, Turkey (which doesn’t grow any GM crops) put restrictions on the import of GM foods into the country. Some say the move did not go far enough toward an outright ban and will endanger Turkey’s chances in its bid to join the EU. The regulation does not restrict or ban the import or use of GMOs but rather introduced some criteria for their import. Because Turkey does not yet set rules and regulations for GMOs, the government sees this as a stopgap measure until a comprehensive law comes into effect.

Ireland

Also in October, Ireland joined a growing number of countries with an outright ban on growing GM crops or using GM feed for livestock.

The battle lines are sharply drawn.

As Europe, Japan, and some Middle Eastern countries increasingly reject GM foods, look for more action in developing countries as agricultural biotech companies muscle in. Just last week, President Obama nominated Dr. Rajiv Shah as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Most recently, Dr. Shah served as undersecretary and Chief Scientist at the Department of Agriculture under Tom Vilsack and before that was the Director for Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he promoted the technological farming solutions of the organization.

As we debate how to feed the world, we would do well to remember that the problem is not so much lack of food. The problem is lack of food sovereignty. When control of the food system is in corporate hands rather than local ones, people who have no money to buy food on the open market starve.

For more information on the GMOs in the developing world, and other battles for food sovereignty, sign up for the Food First newsletter or check out their publications section. If you want to help, donations are always welcome.

Originally published on EcoSalon

The people behind Gaining Ground, a non-profit farm in Concord, Massachusetts, don’t just believe that the hungry shouldn’t have to subsist on canned and boxed food donations. They make sure they don’t, by converting this principle into 30,000 pounds of organic produce grown between April-October. Then, they donate it all to hunger relief organizations in their region.

Their philosophy exemplifies the current trend of democratizing organic foods. But this farm has been around since 1994, which says a lot about the integrity and longevity of its intention. “Simplicity makes us nimble,” said farmer Verena Wieloch. “We aren’t beholden to supporting our own huge infrastructure to make the farm successful. If a crop fails, it’s not the end of the farm. We’re not counting on every dollar for every pound of potatoes to make our living.”

They lease their land from the town and receive funding from individuals, family foundations, and the local community chest. Their annual student read-a-thon, Read For Seeds, encourages 3rd graders from the local public schools to get involved with community service. The kids generally raise 15% of the farm’s yearly budget. But Gaining Ground keeps a tight budget of $150,000 which means that volunteerism is tremendously important, and team leaders work to inspire their volunteers to feel as enthusiastic about community responsibility as they feel themselves.

“I’m not a farmer. I’m a farmer enabler,” says board member Stona Fitch. The same holds true for the rest of the board, which is comprised of financial people, writers, locals and parents. On Saturdays, they also head up Concord Food for Families, which gives a direct deposit of freshly picked crops to 30+ families in the area. Last Saturday in the rain, they filled a truck with squash, greens and onions, set up a table behind the Armory, and gave their produce away. They also talked to their customers about how to cook the vegetables, teaching them not only about nutrition and recipes but also about the pleasures of cooking.

In its most simple form, Gaining Ground is a service provider and it knows its customers well: Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese, among others. Volunteers plant what people want to eat — everything from seasonal varieties (right now: eggplants, peppers, carrots, lettuce, beets, turnips, and rutabagas) to traditional vegetables typical of Asian cuisines (lemon grass, bitter melon, obscure herbs, bok choy, hot peppers, okra). The farm outputs about 300 varieties of crops per season and its organizers interface with organizations they select for donation, making sure that the produce is getting to those who need it. The supported groups tend to be small and within a 20-mile radius from the farm. Proximity allows for crop pick-up within 24-hours after the vegetables have been picked.

On five acres of cleared land, the farm runs on manpower from 9am-4pm. People usually work three-hour shifts doing age-and skill-appropriate tasks. They even have raised beds for handicapped helpers. Three days a week, volunteers pick, wash, weigh and box crops for pick-up in the mornings. Then, the afternoon is spent weeding, transplanting — and in blightless seasons — staking tomatoes. They don’t have tractors or machinery—only hand tools.

“We can afford to take risks and play with techniques that maybe a for-profit farm wouldn’t want to,” Wieloch explains. They experiment with a no-till method that increases soil fertility. Nitrogen-fixing crops are rotated through the beds where they also have a drip irrigation system. In addition, they have used organic pesticides only once in the last ten years.

For farmer Wieloch, being in the garden means working with few expectations and little limitations. And she’s also keen on democratizing healthy eating.

For the volunteers, farming means positive community work that 99% say they would do again the next growing season, and they do. Hard work on the farm ends with a chance to catapult rotten tomatoes using a handcrafted “weapon of mass nutrition”— simply put, a flying compost mechanism.

It’s a unique farm but Fitch has seen an up-tick in interest from others looking to do the same type of work. He’s even written a business model for others to follow and you can read it here.

Started on a private plot of land, Gaining Ground now sits on Thoreau’s birthplace property. Sixteen growing seasons later, the farm reinforces the beauty of simplicity. The goal is to grow more crops and take in more volunteers “while still keeping the experience as rich and meaningful as it always has been. In short, to grow gracefully.”