Food Movements Unite!

It was about the same time that I started reading “Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappé that I received some information about Food First in the mail.  With so many different organizations asking for support, it’s hard to decide which ones to pay attention to.  But as I read through the letter explaining the mission of Food First (which happened to be co-founded by Frances Moore Lappé), I knew that there was something special about this organization that stood it apart from a lot of the other foodie organizations.  Food First recognizes the centrality of democracy to the food justice movement.  As I read the letter I noticed one of the ways to lend support involved receiving a complimentary copy of the book “Food Movements Unite” – which sounded like an important book. How could I say no to this deal? 

Not too long after I received the book in the mail I heard about a launch event for the book with the author/editor, & current Executive Director of Food First, Eric Holt-Giménez.   And with 2 of the panelists being leaders from the Bronx on the front lines of food justice, I knew it would be a good event J

On the panel were Karen Washington from La Finca del Sur / NYC Community Gardening Coalition / Just Food / etc; Ray Figueroa from Friends of Brook Park; Daisy Cheung from Restaurant Opportunities Center – New York, Diana Robinson from the Food Chain Workers Alliance, Lupe from the Community Farmworker Alliance, Eric Holt-Giménez from Food First, and last but not least was moderated by our fearless food sovereignty champion, Christina Schiavoni from WhyHunger. 

Eric opened it up with the background behind the book.  He saw that everyone was too busy doing their own food justice work to look at the movement as a whole.  He wanted to create unity in the food movements by getting the stories from food justice movers and shakers across the globe, to hear not just about what they’re doing, but how they believe what they’re doing intersects with the larger picture of the food movement.  To find the areas of convergence and figure out what the barriers are that still need to be addressed.  I’m excited to read the book.

The panelists brought up some interesting points.  Yes, there have been food riots because despite there being enough food grown in this world to feed the population one and a half times over, there is still an extraordinarily high number of people suffering from food insecurity (about 50 million in the US) and hunger (1 billion worldwide).  But this is just a result of the capitalist global food system doing exactly what it is supposed to do – consolidating the food supply into the hands of a few, creating a monopoly over our food supply.  That’s what capitalism was built for – making money.  Which lends itself to disregarding the social externalities which would slow down the profit-making machine that is the world of corporations.  But our job has to be to connect the dots of people doing incredible work in our own backyards, and take back our food system. 

Ray Figueroa from Friends of Brook Park said that one thing we can do is connect with the other human rights movements.  Go off of the model of the Black Panther Party, which saw food justice as one part of a much larger story of liberation. Food is a human right, and the people who work on Housing as a Human Right will also be in solidarity with the food movement.  And not only that, but there will be areas in which to work together.  One thing the housing movement works on is land issues, and it just so happens that community gardening space is also a land issue. So one thing Ray & the NYC Community Gardening Coalition is working on is spreading the word and advocating for the NYC Garden Law, which would protect GreenThumb community gardens so that the Dept of Housing Preservation & Development cannot reclaim and raze the gardens. (If HPD can just take back GreenThumb land whenever it wants, what’s the point in registering the garden in the first place?  That was the question of the day for the Morning Glory community gardeners in the Bronx, whose garden was razed last fall.  But there are a number of other gardens legitimately registered with GreenThumb that still get reclaimed by the City on a regular basis.)  

Karen Washington mentioned that what’s missing is the grassroots element of food justice organizing and advocacy.  We can get funding for certain initiatives, but how do we make sure the money will fund the true grassroots work that needs to get done, and not necessarily just fulfill the “goals” of the grant?  And, how do we get young people engaged in community gardening?   Ray added to the point with the wisdom heard time and time again in social justice circles – top-down education won’t work, communities aren’t going to be educated out of oppression.  He offers the alternative from Gandhi, who was a “fierce humanist” – we must weave our own cloth.  Move to the communities experiencing oppression.  But don’t come if you’re just coming to “help.”  Come if you believe your destiny is tied up with my destiny.  Because then we can all live with dignity, and actually work together to get somewhere. [It’s quite inspiring, really, to have been part of the struggle against FreshDirect moving to the South Bronx from the very beginning of South Bronx Unite in February 2012, and to see the fierce dedication and in-house capacity and skills of the people who are part of this campaign for food, environmental, and economic justice.  Enough injustice in one community is enough.]

Karen Washington echoed something I heard Steve Ritz say at a Bronx Health REACH meeting recently – it’s important to talk to the grandparents.  This generation has a lot of wisdom, and many of them come from agricultural backgrounds and are a lot more respected than other authorities within a community.  We also need to see who is at the table at meetings we have – is there fair representation of communities of color?  Are the meetings held at night so that working class people can attend?  Is childcare and transportation made available?  Until these needs are met, it’s going to be very hard to get people to care about an issue, if their main concern is providing for their families and just having enough money to get by. 

The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) advocates for restaurant workers nationwide, who survive on poverty wages, little to no benefits, and discrimination.  These restaurant workers federally are salaried the tip minimum wage ($2.13), and are often treated more like machines than human beings.  70% of restaurant servers in the US are women.  And out of 20 million people working in the food industry in the US, most of them are immigrants and people of color.  So ROC works with racial justice organizations and women’s rights organizations to advocate for better conditions for restaurant workers, such as paid sick days, living wages, and dignity.  They’ve organized a national campaign against full service dining, against Darden, which owns 1900 restaurants in the US and made a $500 million profit last year, despite its workers suffering from wage theft and discrimination. [I’m a fan of ROC-NY’s incubator restaurant worker-owned cooperative, COLORS.  Juan Carlos even worked with me to host a screening of the movie FRESH in the restaurant as part of their “Building Bridges Not Walls” series, where Karen Washington/ BUGs, Eric Weltman / Food & Water Watch, and others came together to share their experiences with the food system.] 

Lupe from the NYC Community Farmworker Alliance discussed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which came together to support the tomato farmers in Immokalee, Florida that grow 90% of America’s tomatoes.  These farmers get $0.45-$0.50 for every 32 pounds of tomatoes they harvest, which makes it hard to earn the minimum wage.  They’ve been successful in getting some new sign-ons to the Fair Food Agreement to prevent exploitation of tomato harvesters, and currently in NYC are campaigning to get Chipotle to sign on to this agreement, since they’ve now been successful with getting Trader Joe’s to sign the agreement.

Lupe talked about how the farm workers’ method of dealing with problems that arise is one of community organizing which everyone in the food movement could utilize – see the problem, analyze it, and take action.  Her other suggestions were to make sure youth have access to food justice information; start youth-run collectives; and bring in faith communities. 

According to Eric Holt-Giménez, there’s the dominant white narrative on food justice (described quite eloquently by Michael Pollan), and then there’s “this” narrative.  [Might I add, it’s not that Michael Pollan’s story is “bad,” it just isn’t the complete story.  Not everyone has adequate access to farmers markets and CSAs and organic food.]  As Eric said, “Voting with your fork doesn’t work when the only option is capitialist food.”  The answers need to come via grassroots, innovative solutions to the issues of food injustice, like entrepreneurial youth farming projects [the Green Bronx Machine being one of my favorite]. 

The event organizers put together a really good handout of next “action steps.”  I will share most of them with you here:

Events:

May 1 – All out for a general strike on May Day!  Stand with food and farm workers and all workers – particularly immigrant workers – everywhere!  See http://www.may1.info/ and http://maydaynyc.org/. 

May 12 – Come to the Brooklyn Food Conference!  Over 5,000 people are expected to attend this free, all day event filled with keynotes from notable food activists, workshops, panel discussions, food demos, family programming, art and much more. http://bkfoodconference.org/

June 1-3 – Occupy the Land ‘Unconference’ – the NYC Community Gardening Coalition is collaborating with the Occupy Wall Street movement, environmental and social justice groups, and a variety of artist collectives to hold an ‘unconference’ in community gardens across the city. The unconference will be a platform for dialogue between different groups and struggles, from the local to the global.  www.nyccgc.org

June 6 – Food Workers & Food Justice Conference – the Food Chain Workers Alliance is co-hosting this conference with UFCW Local 1500 and the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN).  http://foodchainworkers.org/

June 20 – Global day of action in solidarity with La Via Campesina and the Peoples’ Alternative Summit to Rio +20 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  There’s a call for people to do actions in their own communities to expose how corporations are driving climate chaos and environmental destruction and to put forward real grassroots solutions. There’s also a call for actions leading up to Rio+20 the week of June 4^th.  More at www.viacampesina.org and http://tinyurl.com/772yf4m.

More ways to plug in:

http://www.picturethehomeless.org/

www.usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org

www.whyhunger.org/fslc

Diet for a Small Planet: Lessons for the Long Haul

Last September, I attended the 40th anniversary celebration of Frances Moore Lappé's book "Diet for a Small Planet" in New York City, entitled "Feeding Hope, Living Democracy."  At this event I heard Frances say that "hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, but a scarcity of democracy" - a quote which truly intrigued me.  (How ironic that the event was held only five days after the start of Occupy Wall Street!)  
While my reading list is always umpteen books long, I figured Diet for a Small Planet should be pretty high on my priority list.  I'd already read her daughter Anna's book, "Diet for a Hot Planet", and have a lot of respect for them both as women in the food movement who also support Oxfam America and HEN.  Today I finished reading Book 1 of "Diet for a Small Planet," and I will say it definitely lived up to its reputation. What I could not believe is how everything Frances wrote about 20, 40 years ago (1971 edition updated in 1991) is still just as relevant today as ever.  We still have the same issues with our food system, but the stories of struggles and successes in overcoming food injustices all over the world are just as inspiring as ever.
Working to change the food system is a daunting task, because the roots of the issue are so multifaceted and cannot be solved with one solution.  It's easy to get overwhelmed and not know what to do first, as happens over and over again in my life in NYC.  But Frances gives some words of encouragement, from the lives of some people whose names still ring a bell 30 years later.  From the life of Harry Chapin, co-founder of World Hunger Year (now WhyHunger) and namesake of the Harry Chapin Media Awards which were created to encourage the media to "tell the story of hunger and poverty," Frances tells us to use what we have.  Well, I have the experiences of life and the books I've read and films I've seen, and this blog, so can write about what I know.  Meanwhile, Oxfam America has relationships with many famous music groups across the country who can continue in the vein of Harry Chapin and encourage musicians to speak out against hunger and poverty.
Frances next talks about how Joan Gussow - the matriarch of the "eat-locally-think-globally food movement," source of inspiration for Michael Pollan, and professor emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University - believes that her decision to study nutrition was probably the "first real decision in her whole life."  She struggled past the dull image of nutrition to learn the science of how food works in the body, and as a result has earned the respect of people interested in bridging the gap between studying food from a scientific perspective and learning about where food comes from... the ground.  I picked up a copy of her book "Growing, Older" when at the NY Botanical Gardens last year and look forward to reading it someday.
Frances tells the story of Michael Jacobson from Center for Science in the Public Interest, a highly respectable organization which has gained a lot of publicity within the last year since CSPI re-launched the annual Food Day initiative on October 24, 2011. Mike Jacobson started off studying biochemistry, and wanted to do something to touch more immediate social problems than could be solved in a chemistry laboratory, so he started looking into the hazards of food additives as an intern with Ralph Nader.  (Fortunately for us, the research into food additives that Mr. Jacobson started in the 1970's has evolved into a food additive safety database available online and on phone apps, called Chemical Cuisine.)
It was also interesting to read about a Nestlé infant-formula boycott at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and to think about how the ICCR could become more engaged around food justice issues in the future (perhaps through the food justice work that NY Faith & Justice has started? hmm....).
Frances Moore Lappé gives us some other tips in the chapter "Lessons for the Long Haul" that are of note.  These include:

• working with others - finding a core group who can push you further than when trying to work on the issue alone
• using the direct experience of oppression - whether placed in a situation involuntarily or voluntarily
• remaining critical of oneself and one's organization - such as Larry Simon's experience with working with Oxfam America, when "he concluded that Oxfam should not work in certain countries where government repression is so strong that it precludes the existence of any organization working for redistribution of power, the only kind of organization which Oxfam wants to support" 
• hard work and balance - hard work and self-discipline are important, and balance important so as to prevent burnout; but some of us have recognized that working for social change is incredibly rewarding, makes life interesting, and gives us the opportunity to work with people who are equally inspiring and passionate about social change and food justice. 

There is still so much more to learn and so much more to share.  (I did not even touch upon the books' themes of citizen democracy, meat's impact on the world, or protein complementarity in this post!)  But when you surround yourself with incredible people, read books by inspiring visionaries, and stand on the shoulders of the giants who have paved the way before us - anything is possible.

What's On Your Plate? on the Discovery Planet Green Channel

If you've read any of my earlier posts about "What's On Your Plate" you know how important a film it is. Fortunately, the film will be shown soon on Discovery's Planet Green Channel. I received a message from WOYP staff asking me to post some information about how to view it. So here it is!

Catch What's on Your Plate?, the documentary about kids and food politics, on national TV this February 7th, 2010!

Join families across the country for a Family Cook-In! on Sunday, February 7th and spend an afternoon learning with your kids about food - what it's made of, where it come from and how to enjoy every bite.

First, download our Screening Toolkit. It has all the stuff you need to have a fun and delicious Family Cook-In!
Second, watch What's on Your Plate? at 2:00 p.m. on Discovery's Planet Green. (Go to http://planetgreen.channelfinder.net/ to find your local channel).
Third, check out the games and activities in our Screening Toolkit.
Fourth, cook and eat together! Get everyone in the kitchen chopping, stirring, pouring and baking. Then sit down together for some fresh and yummy home-cooked food.

Think food justice is too tricky for kids? Think again.

What's On Your Plate? proves that not only can kids understand the issues, they can actually teach other kids about how they are what they eat.

The film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates.

According to Michael Pollan: ""What's On Your Plate?" is exactly the film we need now."

And Alice Waters says: "It was an amazing experience to hear kids talking about these issues. This movie can have a real impact on the way we think about what we’re eating."

Don't miss this chance to see this witty and provocative film on national television!
Join in the conversation on how we can change what we eat, and in the process, change our world.

Visit our website for more information on the film and how you can get involved.
www.whatsonyourplateproject.com

Can't make the Family Cook-In! broadcast? No problem.
The film will be showing throughout the week, with additional broadcasts on:
Saturday February 6th, 2010 at 10 pm
Thursday February 11th at 11 pm
Friday February 12th at 7 am
Friday February 12th at 3 pm

Re-evaluating Obesity

I saw an open heart surgery a few weeks ago. And I never want to see another one in my life.

What the food industry has done to us is very disturbing. It's messed with people's minds and mouths. It's made our country and much of the world obese. And we can't stand for it any more.

CBS gets this message: they aired Where Americans Stand on Obesity yesterday and pointed out that the American Dietetic Association is sponsored by companies such as Coca Cola, PepsiCo, and Mars.

But luckily, the Hunger & Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association also gets this message. We have an ADA Corporate Relations Sponsors Review Task Force and are developing a survey that will go out to HEN members (and other registered dietitians eventually) to obtain data we can present to ADA so that this organization can start to change its practices.

This is one of the things that has to happen if we are ever to solve the obesity crisis in this country. Another thing we have to do is reexamine our practices, see if they're aligned with our morals, and most importantly rethink the questions we're asking so that we can learn from our mistakes (as Jim Wallis argues in his new book Rediscovering Values on Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street: A Moral Compass for the New Economy). And don't ever forget, everything's related: the rise in obesity and chronic disease is related to the economy - it has drastically increased the amount of money being spent in our sickcare system...billions of dollars are being spent treating chronic diseases. What did centenarians do centuries ago?? Not spend billions of dollars on a sickcare system, that's for sure.

Let's start with a few new questions, then. First off: What guidelines should we be using to determine the food we put into our bodies? In Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules, he lays out 64 simply put guidelines for what foods to eat, such as "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," "avoid foods you see advertised on television," and "don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk." For the reader who wants a bit more detail, check out Marion Nestle's book What to Eat.

Here's another question: What's the root cause of the obesity epidemic? My answer: agricultural policy. Corn and soy subsidies and a Farm Bill limitation on growing fruits and vegetables, supported by no other than the specialty crop growers who don't want the prices of fruits and vegetables to go down because then they will lose money. That's why I wrote an independent study paper for Marion Nestle last semester on the corn and soy subsidies. (Which, by the way, I'm going to revise and revise until it's good enough to be taken seriously by people with power. So if you want to contribute to the conversation, by all means share your thoughts with me.)

Let's do this. Growing our own food is so much better than open heart surgeries.

NYC Food and Climate Summit

In case you haven't heard yet, next Saturday, Dec. 12, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Just Food, and NYU will be hosting the NYC Food and Climate Summit. We are even lucky enough to be having HEN as a co-sponsor of the event, since HEN agreed to be a main contributor to making video messages possible from Vandana Shiva and Wangari Mathaai which will be shown at the plenary session and uploaded to websites afterward. The Food and Climate Summit will be happening smack in the middle of the Copenhagen (or "Hopenhagen") climate talks. It will even be held the day after 350 holds candlelit "Vigils for Survival" all across the world (these are on Dec. 11 - find one near you). In NYC, there will be one in Washington Square Park from 5-6 pm and one at Chelsea Piers from 6-8pm.

The Summit's registration was full within 36 hours of opening, which shows that it is guaranteed to be a successful event. Fortunately, as much information as possible from the conference will be posted to the conference website.

It is so important that NYC is making the connection between food and climate change, because food and climate change are so inextricably connected and it is not receiving enough attention on the global or even national scales in terms of climate change talk. Yes, Oxfam, tcktcktck, and 350, among other organizations, have been doing a great job of promoting the urgency of demanding action from our world leaders (such as limiting CO2 emissions to 350 ppm) - but as far as I can see there is not much talk here about agriculture. There are several main reasons to connect food and climate change. First of all, climate change is devastating developing countries' ability to produce crops on their own, leading to there being over a billion hungry people in the world. Climate change hits developing countries far greater than it impacts countries like the US (see some of my previous posts on Oxfam).

Second of all, producing "food" is a big contributor to climate change. If you've read Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, seen Food, Inc., FRESH, King Corn, or know anything else about the sustainable, local, organic, and/or slow food movements - then you might have an idea about the gravity of unsustainable agriculture and how it is contributing to health problems, economic problems, climate change, etc. The fact that it takes 1,500 gallons of water to make one pound of beef...that is not good for the environment or our health. Monocultures are sprayed with pesticides and chemicals that make it really easy for resistant strains of bacteria to develop. Subsidies for corn and soy given to farmers are used to feed cattle and pigs with ground meat and corn. ...These are the things that contribute to the artificially low cost of unhealthy food (artificially because we do pay - later on, that is, in the form of healthcare costs).

All that stuff is unsustainable. As Michael Pollan & Joel Salatin put it, we are taking a solution - grass-fed cattle - and turning it into 2 problems: 1) unsustainable CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, where animals standing in their own manure only leads to bacterial infections and other diseases), and 2) nutrient-deprived farmland that needs to be sprayed with chemicals and harmful fertilizers (because it doesn't have the beneficial nutrients from manure).

Sign the NYC Food Pledge & Charter

Below are the session topics for the Summit next week. Visit here for more details. (And don't forget to check out the wonderful Partnering Organizations!) Be sure to help spread the word using facebook and twitter (@nycfoodclimate) Please use the hashtags #nycfoodclimate, #cop15, and #tcktcktck on twitter. Thanks!

Informational
Session 1: Introduction to Food and Climate Issues

Skills Building
Session 2: Faith-Rooted Climate and Food Justice Organizing
Session 3: Best Practices in Institutional Purchasing
Session 4: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 5: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 6: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet.
Session 7: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 8: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 9: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 10: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 11: Urban Agriculture: Community Gardens, Urban Farms, and More
Session 12: The Food Shed: Promoting Sustainable Local Agriculture
Session 13: Greening Food Infrastructure
Session 14: Setting an Agenda for Child Nutrition, School Food and Food Education
Session 15: From Farm to Landfill: Reducing Food Waste in New York City

Informational
Session 16: Understanding Your Foodprint

Skills Builder

Session 17: Cooking Up Climate-Friendly Change: Youth Lead the Good Food Movement
Session 18: Tackle Hunger, Health and Environment in Your Community
Session 19: Grow Food in the Big Apple
Session 20: Cool Food on a Budget: Good Diet for People, Pocketbooks and Planet
Session 21: Cool Food Demonstration: Preservation Without Refrigeration
Session 22: Composting Your Food Waste
Session 23: What’s at Steak: Tips for Talking about Animal Food and Climate Change Connections
Session 24: How to Mobilize around Food and Climate Change Issues

Public Policy
Session 25: Urban Agriculture: Roofs, Walls, and Other Under-Utilized Spaces
Session 26: The Food Shed: Harnessing New Yorkers’ Buying Power
Session 27: Institutional Procurement: Buy Local and Sustainable
Session 28: The Food-Collar Economy
Session 29: Structural Discrimination Related to Food and Climate Change

Thoughts on "Eat This, Not That!"

A friend of mine recently mentioned the book “Eat This Not That!” that Ellen Degeneres talked about on her show, and that appeared in "Men's Health" magazine. I read a book review on the kid version, “Eat This Not That! For Kids” in my American Dietetic Association – ADA Times magazine. This is what it said:

"While most of the nutrition information in this book is solid and science-based, what's less clear is how some foods made it onto the ‘Eat This’ list, while others are on the ‘Not That’ list. For example, the authors recommend a package of vanilla crème sandwich cookies (170 calories, 7 grams fat), but not a package of mini chocolate chip cookies (170 calories, 8 g fat). Other ‘Eat This’ items include a kid's fried shrimp and fries meal or a candy bar, while some puzzling ‘Not This’ items include canned corn (no salt added) or white rice. While this fun, photo-filled book could be a great tool to pique a kid's interest in nutrition or start a dialogue about food, it does little to educate readers about maintaining an overall balanced diet and it is certainly not the "complete nutrition and fitness guide for kids it claims to be.”

After speaking with Marion Nestle at NYU today, I can’t agree more. Marion is very much anti- food industry marketing its products, and for good reason. I do believe that it’s important to educate people on what a healthy diet consists of and the nutritional benefits of eating healthy foods (and why I created the blog http://whyeathealthy.blogspot.com/), but when the food industry does it solely to make their product look like a better choice than the next product, it’s gone too far. Better to stick with the whole foods – whole grains, fruits, vegetables – than to figure out the minute differences between the multitudes of processed foods on the market.

Read "Food Politics" by Marion Nestle and "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan…then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Food, Inc.

I just had the opportunity to view a screening of Food, Inc. - what a well done documentary! I felt like I had seen it before - if only because Michael Pollan was very much apart of making the movie, and he did such a good job laying out all of the hot issues in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pollan made Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm come to life in his book, but to pack it all into 1.5-2 hours that can be easily watched on a screen definitely has the potential to reach a lot more people than would bother reading such a heavy book. It didn't matter that I hadn't eaten dinner before watching the movie, because I didn't have an appetite after it anyway; after seeing the awfully unhygienic, graphic descriptions of how meat is made. The meat that you buy in the stores...to actually see footage of the slaughter and the processing that goes on - not to mention the terrible living conditions & corn diet that *ruminant* cows are fed. Come to think of it, it seems quite impossible to eat sustainably by shopping in a supermarket. The aisles of food are really just rows of corn and genetically-modified Monsanto soy re-packaged cleverly to look like thousands of different branded foods, and even the produce comes from all ends of the earth and is laden with pesticides and God knows what else. Oh yeah and by the way, Monsanto has produced herbicides, DDT, and Agent Orange for the US Military operations in Vietnam, which has led to birth defects, as well as various health complications for veterans.

The movie airs June 12, but in the meantime you can watch the trailer. When the movie comes out, go watch it and tell everyone you know to watch it too!


From Food, Inc.: 10 Things You Can Do to Change Our Food System

1. Drink fewer sodas and other sweetened beverages.

Fact: If you replace one 20 oz soda a day with a no calorie beverage (preferably water), you could lose 25 lbs in a year.

2. Eat at home instead of eating out.

Fact: Children consume almost twice (1.8 times) as many calories when eating food made outside the home.

3. Support the passage of state and local laws to require chain restaurants to post calorie information on menus and menu boards.

Fact: Half of the large chain restaurants do not provide any nutrition information to their customers.

4. Tell schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks.

Fact: Over the last two decades, rates of obesity have tripled in children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years.

5. Meatless Mondays…Go without meat one day a week.

Fact: An estimated 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals.

6. Buy organic or sustainable foods with little to no pesticide use.

Fact: According to the EPA, over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the U.S.

7. Protect family farms, visit your local farmer’s market.

Fact: Farmers markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer.

8. Make a point to know where your food comes from – READ LABELS.

Fact: The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to your dinner plate.

9. Tell Congress that food safety is important to you.

Fact: Each year, contaminated food causes millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths in the United States.

10. Demand job protections for farm workers and food processors, ensuring fair wages and other protections.

Fact: Poverty among farmworkers is more than double that of all wage and salary employees.

The Organic Green Revolution

Christopher Bedford from the Center for Economic Security has given one of the best descriptions of our current state of affairs that I've seen in recent times. The Rodale Institute's "Organic Green Revolution" document, seems like a great resource. Here's his message:


Comfoodies and HENs,

What do next? Hank suggests that the change we seek has to rise up from thousands of local food system (let 10,000 flowers bloom) developments that inform, push, demand action from elected officials. I agree with that prescription for change with these substantive additions.

Those of you who have heard me speak know that I am enamored with the Bill McDonough lines, “If you want to go to Canada, but are driving towards Mexico at 100 miles an hour. Slowing down to 30 won’t help. You are still going the wrong direction.”

Many of the suggestions made in these last commentary strings around the appointment of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture are the good intentioned equivalent of “slowing down to 30”.

Sure, it is important to have Obama appoint Under Secretaries of several federal departments who understand our concerns, who share parts or all of our agenda. But absent real change in corporate dominated agriculture and food power relationships in Washington politics, these “friendly appointments” may help us secure some grants for our institutions or some other helpful, marginal actions…but little more. (Not marginal if it is your institution, I know)

The change we are facing is real, profound, and potentially overwhelming because of…

…climate change and its impact on food production,

…the emerging ecological and economic limitations of the global industrial paradigm in agriculture and food production, (want a little melamine with that milk?)

…the growing health crisis produced by poor nutritional policies, (let them eat cheap food so we continue to increase the cost of health care)

…the economic and food security consequences of the rapid decline in petroleum availability for the US food system, (Peak Oil)

…a growing planet population with unequal access to food, energy, capital and information resources, (why would someone become a terrorist, anyway?)

…our continued reliance on new technological practices like GMOs and cloning to solve problems caused our lack of harmony with nature’s systems, (if brute force isn’t working, you aren’t using enough of it!)

…the relentless logic of greed by many in power when faced with future defined by new ecological limitations and scarcity, (the corporate patenting of genes, seeds and, indeed, now whole animals like pigs.)

…the growing use of corporate funded disinformation campaigns to slow the coalescence of voters and consumers around the need for fundamental change in our food and farming systems, (the Corn Processors’ HFCS campaign is just the latest example of a strategy that was first developed by the tobacco industry to slow the regulation of cigarettes.)

…the use of governmental actions and regulations to slow and stop the development of “local food systems and regenerative agriculture in every food shed in the United States” that kind Hank referred to in his earlier emails. (The Monsanto seed laws)

Does anyone on these lists seriously think I have exaggerated the scope and depth of the challenges that I have listed above? If, not, then we have to ask ourselves the question
”what do we really need to do to affect the change we seek?”

If you answer, “lobby Tom Vilsack”, then you should stop reading here. Tom Vilsack is a decent person. His wife, a more aware person, understands the importance of good food to our future. But Tom Vilsack won’t and can’t save us.

We must actually imagine what it means for us to “turn around and go in a new direction.”

Hank suggests that the “ten thousand flowers” of the local food revolution will create this change. I totally agree with him as far as he goes. Urgency is the question on my mind.

We don’t have time to fight a guerrilla war against the global industrial food system. Nature’s and history’s clock is ticking. Although, the local food revolution ultimately will be successful in replacing the global corporate industrial systems now in place, it could be a Pyrrhic victory if we have passed one or more of Nature’s tipping points (when decline is unstoppable) in the process.

I believe we need to demand fundamental change – the change presented in the Rodale Institute document “The Organic Green Revolution”. www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/GreenRevUP.pdf

In this new organic Green Revolution, industrial, petroleum based agriculture will become the niche (like arsenic sniffers of the 19th Century, a doomed and dying niche) and ecologically intelligent food and farming systems based on organic and permaculture growing principles will be the way we farm.

Now, anyone who speaks regularly to conventional farmers knows that such a suggestion is tantamount to treason. If you want to really make conventional farmers really angry just raise the issues surrounding “organic farming”.

But why such anger? If organic food production is just a niche, why does it arouse such powerful emotions?

The answer is, most farmers know deep in their hearts, that industrial agriculture is dying as an operational, viable paradigm. “Anger” is just one of the five Kubler-Ross stages in acceptance of this death. It is followed by “bargaining” (perhaps IPM and GMOs can be seen in this light) and “depression” (something working farmers are all too familiar with).

The final stage is acceptance, in this case, of a new way to farm, one that has the power to regenerate not just the health of the earth, but farmers’ economic, physical, and emotional health as well.

We must help conventional farmers through this transition and not let their “grieving” dictate the food policy for an entire nation.

Luckily, we have an example, a role model, for what we need to do. The WE Campaign, a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, seeks “repower America with 100% of its electricity from clean energy sources within 10 years.”

That means no more carbon-based energy to produce electricity within a decade. A remarkable goal. A fundamental change of the same scale we seek.

The WE Campaign makes effective use of media to allow us to visualize this change. Their latest TV commercial depicts a working class guy recharging his pickup truck’s batteries from a wind-powered plug-in station. This is a brilliant commercial at many political levels.

The French anthropologist, Clause Levi-Strauss, says, in most cultures men must dream their children before they can conceive them. I believe this is true of the local food revolution as well.

Michael Pollan’s NY Times “Letter to the Farmer-in-Chief” is an example of creating a clear frame for our dream of regenerative, healthy food future. Every time a local TV station does a story about a chef using local food or a farm operating a CSA, our collective dream, necessary to imagine this change, is enriched.

But I believe we need to do more. We need to use the arguments and principles presented in “The Organic Green Revolution” to develop an effective national media effort to promote the ecologically intelligent values and community-based processes of the local food revolution that Hank wrote about.

In effect, we need our own “We” campaign to change the debate in the public square. In doing so, we will empower those ten thousand flowers of transformation, regeneration, and hope.

Does anyone want to join together to make this happen?

Peace and good food and Merry Christmas,

Chris Bedford

Op-Ed: Vision of a Grassroots, Grass-Fed Revolution

Here's an article I wrote for the NYU Steinhardt Public Health Student Group Fall 2008 Newsletter:

Op-Ed: Vision of a Grassroots, Grass-Fed Revolution
by Kelly Moltzen

Growing up, we were taught by the USDA that “all foods can fit,” that everything in moderation is good for us. We were taught that we needed dairy products in our diet in order to get calcium, otherwise we would develop osteoporosis. We were taught that we needed to get our protein from meat. But what if this were not the whole picture? Would the USDA actually hide information from us?

Unfortunately, yes. It seems as though Congress is more concerned about taking food industry lobbyists’ money than about giving the public scientifically sound advice, as Marion Nestle tells us in her book Food Politics. However disturbing this may sound, we cannot allow the food industry to dominate us, not when 63% of Americans are overweight or obese and children born in the year 2000 or after may be the first generation to die before their parents; not when animals are subjected to living on claustrophobic, unsanitary Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), force-fed corn and artificial substances that make them sick, necessitating the use of administering antibiotics before we buy and eat the omega-6 laden meat which makes us sick. Not when 25% of the foods we buy in the grocery store has some form of corn in them, and the ammonium nitrate left over from the production of explosives during World War II is used to fertilize crops – facts Michael Pollan shares with us in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

This country needs a complete change of mindset, where we raise humanely treated omega-3 rich grass-fed animals and stop using additives and pesticides on our food. We need to craft a world that is not dominated by the need of the food industry to keep money in its wallet, but one that is driven by the need to keep real food on the table. A world where our children don’t need to learn how to read labels, but instead learn how to grow vegetables. A world where we get energy from the sun and wind, not coal and oil, and where we eat our food, not burn it as biofuel.

Fortunately there is a revolution starting, as people have banned together for such programs as the Real Food Challenge and Slow Food Nation. Californians had an initiative on their ballot this November called “Proposition 2,” which was a huge breakthrough for humane farm animal treatment. It prohibits cruel and inhumane ways of confining animals in their cages. The USDA recently passed more rigorous regulations for organic food, prohibiting the existence of organic CAFOs. The list of 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee appointees looks promising as well. Yet we need to continue supporting CSA communities, creating farm to school programs, and weakening the connection between food industry lobbyists and Washington, D.C. If we don’t do it, then who will?

Watch Michael Pollan on Bill Moyers

Watch Michael Pollan on Bill Moyers :)

Michael Pollan's letter to President-Elect; Farmer-in-Chief

Once we successfully implement everything Michael Pollan suggests here, my life will be complete.

Big Organic

After the sustainability-nutrition program I put together for Pow back in the spring, I feel like I still have some justice to do on the topic of organic foods. So here I'll put together a list of pro's and con's based on some of Michael Pollan's wisdom.

(-)
The organic food industry is precisely that: an industry. And with an industry in America, it was virtually impossible for for the idealistic philosophical values originally instilled in the term "organic" to be saved. And even though the USDA finally agreed to put forth guidelines that organic gurus could live with, they are still not the best, and certainly not what many people envision when they think of "organic." Factory farms can be organic, which means the animals are still cooped up indoors, being fed "organic feed," except might have a small door that leads to a narrow patch of grass that they can access for the last 2 out of 8 weeks they are given to live. And the animals that are allowed outside, such as cows, are fed grains in a "dry lot - a grassless fenced enclosure," instead of being allowed to graze on grass (the natural way).
Pollan brings to light quite a few seemingly oxymoronic phrases, such as "processed organic food." Yet it exists, food additives and synthetic chemicals and all. Essentially, the USDA found it easier to accept a list proposed by the growers themselves as standards than to do the legwork on its own and come up with more wholesome standards. And new studies are emerging linking pesticides (especially the organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos - currently used on corn, soy, wheat, and many fruits and vegetables - to ADHD, obesity, diabetes, and learning disorders.

In addition, since most organic crops in this country are mass produced in the same way as their conventional counterparts, they are grown in monoclones, while historically varying up the fields with diverse crops is better for the soil. Growing the crops on such a large scale also depletes the soil of nitrogen, which means more nitrogen has to be added to the plants later (as opposed to smaller farms, where nitrogen-fixing bacteria take care of the problem). And the heavy tillage (done by migrant workers, no doubt) required of organic fields (to get rid of weeds the old-fashioned way, instead of chemicals) reduces the biological capacity of the soil "as surely as chemicals would."

(+)
In many respects, organic farming is still better for the environment and people's health than conventional means. Thousands of acres of farmland have been converted to organic farms within the last decade or two, which has eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers. Earthbound, one of (if not) the biggest organic company, even uses biodiesel fuel (which is of questionable benefit). So undoubtedly, as organic farmer and founder of Cascadian Farm Gene Kahn argues, "Big Organic" (industrialized organic) is a better alternative - "Big Organic" is more effective than "Little Organic" (small farms) would be at converting the US's dependence away from the industrial food market (using leftover military weapon chemicals on our food).

As for nutritional quality, the USDA contends that "all carrots are created equal" and does not do a significant amount of research to determine if organic foods are more nutritious than conventionally grown produce. But a study done at UC Davis (J. Agric. Food. Chem. vol. 51 no. 5, 2003) found that organically grown produce had more vitamin C and polyphenols. This may be because plants grown organically have to work harder to defend themselves against pests and so need to produce these substances (which also happen to be good for humans), while plants grown with chemicals are given substances to protect themselves (which happen to be harmful to us) and so don't need to produce the polyphenols.
Even so, it still depends on the soil the crops are grown in - plants grown in soils with more nutrients will have more nutrients in them. And another thing - organic plants may have more flavor ("since they're not pumped up on synthetic nitrogen, the cells of these slower-growing leaves develop thicker walls and take up less water," and less water means more sugar and more concentrated flavors).

With that said, I think organic foods are a better alternative to conventional, but still not ideal. They are a good way to support the growth of organic farms in relation to conventional farms, but if you want true organic foods (with less food mileage, consuming less fossil fuel energy), I recommend going to a nearby farmer's market or growing them yourself (it's becoming more popular - see here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201397.html). Small farms are more productive than big farms, anyway, in terms of the amount of food produced per acre.



Here's some more information about conventionally grown produce:
(Another option is to use a product such as Veggie Wash, http://www.veggie-wash.com/)

Highest in pesticide residue:
Peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes (imported), spinach, lettuce, potatoes

Lowest in pesticide residue:
Papayas, broccoli, cabbage, bananas, kiwi, sweet peas (frozen), asparagus, mangoes, pineapple, sweet corn (frozen), avocados, onions
(Source: Today's Dietitian, April 2008)

Here are some more websites to check out:
Scientific Findings About Organic Agriculture: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/organic/
Where do your fresh fruits and vegetables come from? http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/resources/fruitveg/fruitveg.php
More studies: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/research/grants/completed_grants.htm#2008

Earth's Health, Our Health

Today I picked up reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, where Michael Pollan's good points and tidbits of information never cease to capture my attention. I blogged on this earlier when I talked about how corn is taking over the world, but today I'll tell you about People's Park. People's Park in California is what is left of the original 60's grassroots attempt to bring farming back to its natural state. The organic food they grow is sold to Whole Foods in Berkeley - but these aren't the farmers' pictures you see on the walls of Whole Foods touting how great their product is (sorry, Pollan's style rubs off on me). Anyway if it were up to me, we could make places like People's Park into a farmer's market and this would be the norm throughout the country - subsistence farming and locally grown foods - instead of the mass industrialized supermarket. But then, this is America, and I've always been one to love the way people lived thousands of years ago and think that's the way humans were meant to live, far superior to the industrialized society we've become. I wouldn't mind reading Sir Albert Howard's An Agricultural Testamant, though, and figuring out from the expert how to compost my food scraps. There is something instinctively right about the idea of the health of the soil being linked to the health of all the creatures that depend on it - an idea that was once discussed by Plato and Thomas Jefferson.

Organic

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan sheds so much light on the problems of the food industry, how it has come to allow corn to dominate us, and how food should be grown & sold. This movie also looks like it has some great information, when it comes out: What's Organic About Organic? http://whatsorganicmovie.org/. It was developed by Shelley Rogers, a recent graduate of NYU's MPH program.