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A Food Bill for America's Cities
Progressive urban food bills could help reshape America's food future
With many legislative hiccups along the way, Congress is rapidly deciding the fate of America's food supply: what's grown, how it's produced and by whom, and how that food will affect our health and the planet. The roughly $288 billion Farm Bill, covering everything from urban nutrition and food stamp programs to soil conservation and agribusiness subsidies, will dictate much about what we eat and at what price, both at the checkout line and in long-term societal costs. And if agribusiness lobbies keep getting their way, as they've largely done in this year's Farm Bill battles, the 'food bill' we all pay will be astronomical -- not just the cost of the Farm Bill itself, but the hidden costs of a taxpayer-subsidized industrial food system that causes profound harm to public health and the environment, as well as to farmers and workers.
Despite valiant progressive efforts that may bring some change at the margins, the big picture is not pretty: increasingly centralized power over food, abetted by lax antitrust policies and farm subsidies that provide the meat industry and food-processing corporations with cheap raw ingredients; huge subsidies for corn and soy, most of which ends up as auto fuel, livestock feed, and additives for junk food, fattening America's waistlines while soiling the environment; and, despite organic food's rising popularity, a farming system that's still heavily reliant on toxic pesticides (500,000 tons per year), which pollute our waterways and bloodstreams while gobbling up millions of gallons of fossil fuel. As a nation we consume (quite literally) some 100 billion gallons of oil annually in the making and long-distance transport of our food supply.
Closer to home, despite annual crop surpluses and the dumping of cheap excess supplies onto foreign markets, residents in poor urban areas are deprived of fresh, nutritious food. These so-called 'food deserts' - whose only gastronomic oases are fast-food joints and liquor marts - feature entire zip codes devoid of fresh produce. Government studies show this de facto food segregation leads to serious nutritional deficits - such as soaring obesity and diabetes rates - among poor people. And in the countryside, taxpayer subsidies directed mostly to large-scale growers and agribusiness are plowing smaller farmers out of business at a rate of one every half an hour, creating individual misery and community-wide economic havoc.
What's to be done? Congress (particularly the Senate, where debate currently resides) needs to hear Americans - urban and rural alike - demand serious change, to shift our tax dollars ($20 billion to $25 billion a year in farm subsidies alone) toward organic, locally oriented, nutritious food that sustains farming communities and consumer health. Investing our tax dollars in food isn't the problem; instead of commodity subsidies for meat and fattening processed foods produced by a handful of corporations, we need a New Deal for food that reinvests funds in sustainably grown, healthful produce grown by a diversity of farmers. (for news and policy alternatives, I recommend visiting http://www.foodsecurity.org. )
But even as the congressional Farm Bill battles grind toward a mostly disconcerting conclusion, it's not too soon to look beyond this omnivore's omnibus, and begin considering a national movement of progressive urban food bills. Cities and states have enormous purchasing power and are slowly taking the lead: San Francisco's Department of Public Health is devising sustainable procurement policies to buy more local and organic produce; some city and state food policy councils, such as Minnesota's, are helping smaller organic farmers survive by linking them up with urban markets; and the California Assembly last year passed a pilot measure to help develop new fresh produce markets in poor neighborhoods.
Change is coming piecemeal on the local level, and needs a serious booster shot. A movement of progressive urban food bills could help galvanize and expand local efforts and create a new food infrastructure that trult sustains our health, ecologies and economies - and could help buck the trend toward increasingly monopolistic supermarkets that eschew poor districts and shut out small farmers and food companies. For starters, such a measure could include:
*Organic and local-first food-purchasing policies requiring city agencies, local schools, and other public institutions, such as county jails and hospitals, to buy from local organic farms when possible.
*Incentives - backed by public education, expanding markets, and consumption of local organic foods - to encourage nonorganic farmers to transition to sustainable agriculture, while subsidizing affordable prices for consumers. Ultimately this could build momentum for national subsidies for sustainable organic farming.
*Healthy-food-zone programs with carefully targeted grants that encourage small businesses and farmers' markets to expand access to healthy foods in poor neighborhoods identified as deserts. Such measures would simultaneously boost markets for area growers while, over time, radically improving public health.
*City-sponsored education campaigns discouraging obesity-inducing fast food while promoting farmers' markets and other healthful alternatives, such as an accessible directory of stores featuring regional organic products.
*Zoning, targeted water subsidies and other incentives for small-scale urban and suburban farming.
American cities have agencies and budgets for everything from trash collection and wastewater treatment, to public health and the environment -- yet few dedicate serious planning and money toward ensuring that its residents eat well. With Congress predictably poised to sustain the present agribusiness system that's proven so destructive and unhealthful for America's populace, cities and states must keep brewing policy change from below. There will be resistance there, too, as the fast food industry and corporate supermarkets will fight hard to keep their virtual stranglehold on sustenance. But with ample pressure from urban and rural consumers, farmers, public health experts, antihunger activists, environmentalists, and others, cities can create model food bills that build a policy-driven grassroots alternative to our industrial food system. No better time than now to start showing Congress how it ought to be done.
Christopher D. Cook is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. His work has appeared in The Nation, Harper's, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor and Mother Jones. (www.christopherdcook.com).
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Show AllChristopher Cook should surely be the next Secretary of Agriculture as he has all the answers on how the entire nations farms are to be managed. One wonders just how close he has ever come to setting foot on a real farm, as if he had, it would not look so simple to turn around the entire system that has been developed over decades. About all those fantastic ideas would accomplish would be to throw the entire industry into chaos, and then we might have a real problem. We farmers could give a few suggestions on how the cities should be managed also but tend to mind our own business. If Mr Cook wants to help the situation, he could try to stop the terrible waste of resources going to Iraq, that drains money that could be used to help poor people buy the good fruits and vegetables they need to eat. The problem is not always the greedy farmers fault.
Noticed the increase in your food bill lately? Well, it's going to get a whole lot worse. And the current Farm Bill is going to accelerate your inability to pay for food. This is not a problem that needs to be solved in the future. We all have to start NOW, in our local communities, to take all the necessary steps to feed ourselves in the coming year.
Support all things local with your dollars. DO NOT buy anything from or by ANY large corporations that you can buy that is locally produced. And if what you want is not locally produced or made, think about if you really need that item at all. I struggle with this all the time. Toilet paper isn't produced locally, but I'm not willing to give it up. So, I buy it from locally owned and operated stores. Sometimes I have to pay a bit more, but at least I feel a little better.
The other really important thing is working with your neighbors to work out a plan to get together to grow your own food. Think community gardens or a patchwork of backyards where everybody helps everybody else. And buy your open pollenated seeds NOW! Learn how to collect your own seeds for the next planting season. Learn which things you need to grow. Maybe summer squash isn't a great idea because it can't be stored.
And, another thing. Organic is great, but learning how to grow stuff in a sustainable and balanced way is okay too. A lot of small farmers can't afford organic certification but actually have very good products grown with traditional, sustainable practice. So, support them too. It's more important that is local than just organic.
All of these problems would have been avoided if only the "war on drugs" would just be shut down. Even now, it's not too late. Don't be a LOSER. Fight to SHUT DOWN THE PHONEY "WAR ON DRUGS". That in return will pave the way for holding Big Agri accountable !
Cannabis has the most nutritious oil, with higher concentrations of the various omega fatty acids. It is a weed that requires no pesticides, herbicides, grows on marginal land, requires no tilling or clear cutting, little water and gives the best natural fiber for clothing, paper and hemp boards for construction. It out-performs cotton and all other fibers.
Cannabinols have medicinal properties and can prevent muscle spasms for people with chronic injury and disease and it is a proven remedy for depression and other mental illnesses. It is used to bolster the appetite of cancer and AIDS victims and more.
Used recreationally, it is a safe substitute for dangerous alcoholic drinks or hard drugs. It causes no violent behavior, child or spousal abuse or traffic accidents. Contrary to drug war propaganda, it no more leads to hard drug use than drinking milk does. In fact it's prohibition can lead to abuse of other drugs by its association with these.
Used as food and fuel, cannabis can minimize the damage that chemically growing corn and soy causes. Cannabis prohibition, like prohibition of all drugs and alcohol has caused the resurgence of drug mafias, bribes to politicians and corruption of justice. Mass murder, private prisons, high public cost and loss of civil liberties has been the result of prohibition.
Someone here wrote that pot itself convinced its users to recommend it, as a way of perpetuating it's species. That would apply to booze, food, sex, shelter, clothing and just about any other basic need.
How can John Edwards be sincere about restraining corporate excesses if he is against marijuana legalization, one of the lamest excuses government/corporations use to take away our civil rights and to invade other countries and establish America-friendly dictatorships to make them safe for our corporations to loot?
ezyflyer: "How can John Edwards be sincere about restraining corporate excesses if he is against marijuana legalization, one of the lamest excuses government/corporations use to take away our civil rights and to invade other countries and establish America-friendly dictatorships to make them safe for our corporations to loot?"
Answer: Because he is not sincere. He can't be taken seriously about corporate excesses if he benefits from hedge funds at the same time. That's like the fox being concerned about the welfare of the chickens. BTW his excuse against Marijuana was "for the sake of the children" argument. A common arguement used by despots like Hitler and Stalin to justify their despotism. Edwards is a phony.
Pot is an herb, American Drug Warriors like Edwards are dopes!
STOP SUBSIDIZING FARMERS! That in and of itself would solve our food problems.
it's all about an economic collapse, not corporate misbehavior: the big corporations have no choice but to turn whatever they can into cash for propping up their imploding financial system.
as soon as they make cannabis legal............they will be dumping at least 21 poisonous additives into it.....and taxing you up your wahzoo.....it is better off, pure and illegal,ESPECIALLY from a medical point of view.......
"We farmers could give a few suggestions on how the cities should be managed also but tend to mind our own business."
Don't worry, here in Pennsylvania, we get plenty of rural input on how cities should be run - we should abolish public transit and publicly-owned water, let the streets decay even further, and let the poor black people starve.
And yes, these city slickers WILL drink milk from our rBST injected cows whether they like it or not - and we'll put out of business any milk plant that dares to put the label "rBST free" on their cartons. Thanks commissioner Wolff!
And don't get me started about that communistic "rails to trails" stuff, we enjoy allowing those old railroad ROW's for riding out big, bad quads and shooting stuff, and we don't want our peace and private property rights disturbed by thise bicycle-riding hippies from the city.
But, you say the large majority of Pennsylvanians live in the cities? Don't tell me that! You know, it's one acre-one vote, not one person, one vote.
I'm sure farmers and rural dwellers in other states are more enlightened -expecially those who would be reading this article.
But back to the subject. Fortunately, this isn't a big problem in my town - our food co-op adjoins the cities biggest poor neighborhood, and we have a warm season farmers market in another poor neighborhood. But the problem is getting people (and not just the poor) to pick healthy food when they do go to the food store.
But, the ideas in this piece are good ones.
kernal .. I don't think that Mr Cook has called farmers greedy at all. He has called the system unbalanced and states that it is skewed toward subsidizing commodity crops, such as corn & soybeans. I believe that this year for the first time there may be funding to help farmers who produce fruit & vegetables. What Mr Cook seems to be calling for is a bill that empowers regions to subsidize it's own farmers. This makes sense on a number of fronts 1. it stabilizes-strengthens regional economies by developing a diverse farm community. 2. it is also a homeland security measure 3. it let's local business, schools, municipalities etc purchase food locally. 4. it brings farming/farmers back into the community where they have been traditionally.
oliveoyl__ I would be more than happy to see many urban folks coming back to rural areas to help with our nations food supply, and have suggested that very thing before. My only reservations about it is that even small area vegetable and organic grown crops are very labor-intensive and I question whether enough people would be able to stick with it to make much difference. We are having trouble keeping our own kids on the farms and they have been exposed to the hard work and long hours involved. One thing that has been helping is the use of labor saving equipment and new practices that make it seem worthwhile, but are tremendously expensive. I believe organic farming is a fine idea for some but any change will take years to accomplish. Subsidies for fruit and vegetable growers are probably long past due. As for the grain crops, the subsidies furnish more help when prices are low or crops are lost, and they do serve to equalize income from year to year. This country subsidizes many different industries, so it makes no sense to cut them out except for the largest operations.
ezeflyer,
Thanks for framing it well. I probably sounded like too much of a tough "sargeant" in my previous posts on Cannabis and even got mistaken as a "neocon" which I ain't but I'll try to put this up on an easier note the next time I post. We'll just have to get people to slowly change their habits and move to conservation and I thought the alternative renewables including hemp would greatly help and I'm still convinced it can.
"I believe organic farming is a fine idea for some but any change will take years to accomplish."
To Kernal : This is precisely the attitude of Cuban farmers flush with tractors , fuel , pesticides , ferilizers provided gratuitously by the USSR for twenty years . In fact , Cuban farmers like American farmers were hooked on all of the above . With the pullout of the USSR and the loss of most of the above plus a loss of sugar market , organic farming became a very "fine" idea and did not take years to accomplish.
Even with the "fine" idea of organic and local farming , the average Cuban adult citizen lost fifteen pounds of body weight during the transition of what Cubans "affectionately" call the Special Period.
The vast majority of Americans have not gotten their heads around the consept of Peak Oil or more-starkly expressed," What'll we do when the oil runs out?". Until Cuba and Venezuela come up with doctors-for-oil Cuba had figured it out , Do without or do with much less and that means organic.
Read or watch the DVD , The Power of Community : How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.It's message is simple : Take some advice ; we've been through it.
We will grok you well, and drink precious water of your essences
Ronald__ Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to remember Cubans setting out in boats to get to the USA so it must not have been so great for everyone there. Yes, America can change in a hurry also if our country falls into another depression and people are losing weight because of a lack of any kind of food, but I doubt many folks would recommend that. When I see people ready to give up all of their comfortable and expensive lifestyles, including all of the fancy electronic equipment, the SUV`s in the 3 car garage, the trips to the Carribean, the gourmet restaurants, etc., then it might be possible to see everyone out raising their own pure food like many of us did 60 years ago. With no oil for engines or heat and a shortage of electricity, we can go back to wood, cobs, and coal for heat, and burn candles for light. There will be no TV or computers to take our time so planting and processing our own food will be just fine. I know how that works as it was done that way when I was growing up and I never realized then what fun it really all was.
Soilent Green
Well, KEM: if you get a wafer that tastes like habaneros and whiskey, smile and think of me, won't you?
Try Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg for sensible and sustainable food choices!
Ronald White: Thank you for adding what has occured in Cuba post USSR support. This is a really important point and also a look into the future of America.
And to those of you that point out that many Cubans tried to get to America during this "Special Period", it is delusional to believe that people will not try to escape starvation and hard times. Of course they tried to get away from hard times! But Americans when faced with the same scenerio will not have the same options. There will be nowhere to run to. Like the Cubans who stayed for the conversion to sustainable food production, Americans are going to have to roll up their sleeves collectively and get to work. Cuba is just an example of how it can be done.
Kernel, Kernel, Kernel - I apologized to you in a previous post for what you perceived to be "name calling" on my part. Although I didn't call you any names but was merely warning you about the consequences of your backward opinions - I take back any apology! You really don't deserve it.
Most "farmers" and by that I mean people who respect the traditions and responsibilities to be true stewards of the land and managers of our food supply are compassionate, intelligent and innovative people who can do more with less than any other people I have met. The people involved in corporate, or industrial agricultural practices - whether large or small have neither earned nor deserve the title of "farmer".
You offer no solutions to the unquestionably unsustainable practices of corporate and university sponsered agricultural practices and yet seek to criticize, without factual backing, those who propose, with factual backing, sutainable agricultural practices that are working and becoming increasingly popular among consumers and young farmers alike.
A man of your age (50+ years of farming experience, in your words) should be excited to see others in cities and rural areas as well interested in healthy food and sustainable farm practices, but instead you can only preach your sermon of B.S. Perhaps you might consider actually trying to educate yourself on some of the facts of modern sustainable agriculture and support new farmers rather than sticking your head in the sand and remaining part of the problem.
Now that we all know your usual rant, how about getting some education on the subject before dragging out your old arguments - your years of experience amount to nothing if you don't keep up with the future.