food policy

No Piece of the Pie

From ACORN International organizer Wade Rathke:

The Food Chain Workers’ Alliance released an updated state of the industry report entitled “No Piece of the Pie,” and it’s not just sobering, it’s depressing, because even as employment is soaring in this critical industry, the workers are falling farther and farther behind. There is no way to separate the precariousness of the workforce from any final conclusions about food quality and safety.

The report’s executive summary speaks for itself and includes the following findings:

· Fourteen percent of the nation’s workforce is employed in the food chain, over one in seven of all workers in the U.S. The number of food chain workers grew by 13 percent from 2010 to 2016.
· The food chain pays the lowest hourly median wage to frontline workers compared to workers in all other industries. The annual median wage for food chain workers is $16,000 and the hourly median wage is $10, well below the median wages across all industries of $36,468 and $17.53.
· Thirteen percent of all food workers, nearly 2.8 million workers, relied on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (food stamps) to feed their household in 2016.
· Eight-two percent of food chain workers are in frontline positions with few opportunities at the top.
· For every dollar earned by white men working in the food chain, Latino men earn 76 cents, Black men 60 cents, Asian men 81 cents, and Native men 44 cents.1 White women earn less than half of their white male counterparts, at 47 cents to every dollar. Women of color face both a racial and a gender penalty: Black women earn 42 cents, Latina women 45 cents, Asian women 58 cents, and Native women 36 cents for every dollar earned by white men.
· Injuries are up and union protection is down.

 

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Celebrity crusade for online food stamp use

Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, Will Smith and Kristen Bell are just a few of the big name stars teaming up with Thrive Market, a digital marketplace where individuals can purchase affordable, healthy food. They’re petitioning lawmakers and retailers to allow the use of food stamps online.

Thrive Marketplace

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Meet the Woman Who Gave Michael Pollan His “Eat Food” Line

“I am deeply aroused by the world,” she said, because for Joan, the world is a feeding web: No one eats without affecting someone else and impacting the environment, and she can’t consider one part of the system (access to good food, big ag, what’s for lunch, pop culture) without considering every other part (poverty, advertising to children, the endless rise and fall of trends, school lunches). She can’t stand to be in grocery stores (“A whole aisle of juice!”) and fears that innovations like boxed meal kits could kill CSAs. She’s skeptical of the food-tech movement, an area where so many others see potential: “What we need is a more direct contact between people and the earth,”she said.

Source

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Home Place Pastures to Become USDA Processing Plant in Mississippi 

If you read the From 0 to 35 in Mississippi post here last fall, you know that the good food revolution in my neighboring state has been lacking a few important items to help build their capacity such as USDA processing facilities. The news of one opening in MS is very, very welcome as without it, producers are severely limited to what, where and how much they can sell. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a new level of infrastructure for direct marketing family farms across the Magnolia State.

Here is a good site for producers of niche meat processing to have handy.

Source: Home Place Pastures to Become First Slaughter, Processing Plant in Mississippi | HottyToddy.com

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The Daily Caller Is Totally Wrong About Michelle Obama’s School Lunches 

A study in misrepresentation

The data used in the Virginia Tech study ends in 2007 — five years before the first round of new school lunch standards went into place, three years before Congress passed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, and two years before Barack Obama was officially sworn is as president.

In short, the data from the Virginia Tech study has absolutely nothing to do with Michelle Obama’s school meals program — and actually shows how much reform for school nutrition was needed.
“We found that the longer children were in the programs, the higher their risk of being overweight,” Wen You, associate professor of agricultural and applied economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech and co-author of the study, said in a press release. “The question now is what to do in order to not just fill bellies, but make sure those children consume healthy and nutritious food — or at least not contribute to the obesity epidemic.”

Source: The Daily Caller Is Totally Wrong

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Taste, sip, learn: Farm to Table Experience

What: A three-day event, with tastings, talks, hands-on workshops, receptions and meals sponsored by the National Farm to Table Alliance, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry and the New Orleans Convention Center, which promotes sustainable local farms, food safety as well as supports communication between home cooks, brewers and wine makers as well as chefs and other food professionals and policy makers.

Where: New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, 900 Convention Center Blvd.

When: Aug. 18-20.

Ticket price: Half-day registration is $49, full-day $79, two-day $129 and full conference $169. Separate tickets are required for the food and drinks events: The Garden & Glass reception on Aug. 18, $69; the bistro lunches each day, $29; the Lunch & Learn session, Aug. 19 and 20, $49; and the Chefs Taste Challenge Dinner on Aug. 19, start at $129.

F2T website

 

To register: For all events, except the Chefs Tasting Challenge, visit f2texperience.com, call 504.582.3072 or send an email to info@f2te.com. To register for the Chefs Tasting Challenge, visit chefstastechallenge.com.

 

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Update your market

Hopefully, all market leaders know that the USDA directory is the go-to list for farmers markets for those within the department, for market advocates and for researchers and funders. Most media stories about markets use this link to direct shoppers to us. Additionally, all of the evaluation about markets is calculated from this directory and so if your market is not listed, the true impacts of your producers hard work and of your organizational projects cannot be measured.

Do yourself and all of us a favor: take a breather from outside for a few minutes this week and sit down with a cup of coffee or a glass of tea to update the directory for your market. Market vendors: ask your market manager or lead volunteer if they have updated the list recently.

 

Dear Farmers Market Colleagues, 

Get ready, get listed! National Farmers Market week is coming (Aug 7-13) and you want people to find your market! USDA’s Local Food Directories can help you promote your farmers market. This tool will allow shoppers to quickly identify you as a supplier of the local food. It takes less than 10 minutes to add or update your listing.

 

USDA will share the number of farmers markets listed in the directory with media and stakeholders across the country during National Farmers Market Week. We want you to be counted! Time is running out!  New listings or updated information must be entered by July 15, 2016, to be included in the national numbers, so don’t delay.

 

It’s easier than ever to register!  If this is your first time listing your market in the Directory, go towww.usdadirectoryupdate.com to add your market. In less than 10 minutes you’re done.  That’s all it takes.

 

If you do not know if your farmers market is listed, then you can search the National Farmers Market Directory database to find out. If your market was in the Directory last year, we sent an e-mail during the week of June 27th that has a direct link to update your market listing.

 

Even if you listed your market last year, you should check the directory again to make sure all your information is still correct.

 

Here is how the Directory can help you

The USDA National Farmers Market Directory helps you tell customers what they want to know about your market:

  • Where and when your market opens
  • Second and third market locations that you operate
  • What products your market sells
  • If your market  accepts:
    • Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
    • Women, Infants and Children Farmers Market Nutrition Program (WIC-FMNP)
    • Women, Infant and Children, Cash Value Vouchers (WIC-CVV)
    • Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP)
  • Whether or not the market acceptances debit/credit cards
  • Consumers can even get:
    • Driving directions to the market they choose to visit
    • Map markets within a radius of their current location
    • Get a state or national map of farmers markets

 

The USDA National Farmers Market Directory used by mobile application developers to help consumers find you or other markets across the nation.

 

The Directory attracted over 400,000 page views from users last year.  It’s the “go-to” resource for consumers, researchers, community planners and more to better understand the size of farmers markets across the nation.

 

Don’t delay, please be counted by including your market by July 15.

 

Thank you.

USDA’s National Farmers Market Directory Team

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Against the Soda Tax | Jacobin

One of the most thought-provoking magazines on the newsstand gives an argument this month against soda taxes. The argument made here is both in how regressive taxes have been traditionally been spent in the US but also includes the unfair choices of what is being taxed:

While low-income people’s fizzy drinks are getting socked with taxes, most of the sugar-laden beverages favored by the upper middle-class and the rich are conspicuously exempt.

In Philadelphia, drinks that are at least 50 percent juice are excluded from the 1.5-cent-per-ounce fee. The bottled smoothies that line Whole Foods’s shelves? Tax-free, even when they contain more sugar than a Pepsi.

Beverages that are more than 50 percent milk are also exempt, a loophole big enough to drive a tanker truck full of venti white-chocolate mochas through.

Source: Against the Soda Tax | Jacobin

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A decade after ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ Michael Pollan sees signs of hope

This new generation of young farmers is helping to build what amounts to an alternative food economy. That new economy is comprised of farms supplying local markets; farms employing organic and other sustainable methods; and farms raising animals outdoors, as well as producers of artisanal foodstuffs of all kinds and new distribution models such as the farm subscriptions known as CSAs, or community-supported agriculture. No one knows quite how large this new food economy is, but we do know it is growing much faster than the old one, which has stalled. Its rise is the direct result of consumers and producers working together to shorten the food chain in order to radically simplify the answer to the “Where does my food come from” question.

Source: A decade after ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ Michael Pollan sees signs of hope – The Washington Post

 

The New Food Economy also reconsiders TOD, 10 years after.

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How Columbus Is Using Smart Cities Challenge and Transit to Reduce High Infant Mortality Rate 

A very important story that illustrates how the social determinants can undermine any desire by individuals to access healthy living strategies. As many enterprising organizers have learned, simply adding a farmers market deep within  a food desert does not solve all of the nutritional problems faced by those residents. Additionally, the fact that markets do well when sitting on the “edge” of two or more communities (even with one being a food desert) and can therefore encourage bridging among the many residents has not been tested enough by planners or food system leaders.
As someone who was a community organizer in Columbus many years ago, I lived and worked in some of the very underserved areas described in this article and saw the effect on my neighbors and even on myself in those years. No doubt in my mind that the “mobile” in the term mobile markets in some cases should be focused on adding public transportation and shuttles from agencies to functioning markets that can offer a wide group of amenities to those new shoppers.

Finally, anyone who has heard my presentation on the “eras” of farmers markets which concludes with me asking those attending what the next era will be focused on will understand how gratified I am to see planners and regional governments include farmers markets in their strategies. Maybe this is the start of a beautiful friendship…

Crucially, Columbus wants to offer universal transit cards, which riders could use to pay for public transit as well as taxis, ride-hailing and car-sharing options. Kiosks would be installed at key locations, which would allow riders with (or without) credit cards or smartphones to add funds, call rides, and access real-time transit information. The city may also subsidize trips by private service providers like Uber and Car2Go. (A report released this week by the Center for American Progress highlighted this approach as a boon for low-income riders.) This could go a long way to address gaps in first mile/last mile connections, which can be a huge hurdle to low-income citizens getting the services they need.

The city is hoping a new BRT line and smarter technology can help families access crucial services.

Source: How Columbus Is Using Smart Cities Challenge and Transit to Reduce High Infant Mortality Rate – CityLab

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The Link Between Food Insecurity and the Great Recession 

A report from the Hamilton Project highlights the lingering effects of the Great Recession on food insecurity…

There’s considerable state-by-state variation in food insecurity levels across the country, demonstrating once again that geography matters if you’re poor.

Here’s what Vilsack had to say about some states’ approach to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and whether SNAP should be eliminated in favor of a block grant (as House Speaker Paul Ryan has proposed):

I’m leery about block grants, just simply because I haven’t seen governors step up.
I alluded earlier, when we came in in 2009, there were states where a little over 50 percent of eligible people were actually receiving SNAP because that particular governor, that particular administration, did not care enough to make sure that people knew about these benefits, did not care enough to make sure that their bureaucracy was getting information out in languages that people could understand, did not care enough to simplify the process, so I’m skeptical.

The Obama administration has successfully increased overall SNAP participation levels to 85 percent, but Vilsack’s comments illustrate how seemingly minor local political decisions around SNAP education and outreach can affect enrollment in a program that effectively reduces food insecurity.

The Link Between Food Insecurity and the Great Recession — Pacific Standard

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SaveTheFood.com

Check out the new NRDC food waste campaign with lots of “assets” for organizers to  share on different platform. It’ll be seen via The Ad Councils strategy (which means millions of views at least), uses music from Disney’s UP movie and is a  charming and engaging take on this issue:
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Sweeping study of US farm data shows loss of crop diversity the past 34 years

U.S. farmers are growing fewer types of crops than they were 34 years ago, which could have implications for how farms fare as changes to the climate evolve, according to a large-scale study by Kansas State University, North Dakota State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Less crop diversity may also be impacting the general ecosystem.
“At the national level, crop diversity declined over the period we analyzed,” said Jonathan Aguilar, K-State water resources engineer and lead researcher on the study.
The scientists used data from the USDA’s U.S. Census of Agriculture, which is published every five years from information provided by U.S. farmers. The team studied data from 1978 through 2012 across the country’s contiguous states.

Source: Sweeping study of US farm data shows loss of crop diversity the past 34 years

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New state laws boost farm to school in Louisiana

The first is Senate Bill 184 – the “Small Purchase Threshold” bill. Up until now, any food purchase a school made larger than $30,000 was subject to a complicated bidding process, known as a “formal bid.” This made it difficult for schools to get seasonal and local foods because the process is often challenging for smaller-scale, local farmers. The passage of SB 184 increased the small purchase threshold to meet the federal standard of $150,000, enabling schools to work more closely with small-scale farmers to serve local food to Louisiana children.

The second is House Bill 761 – the “Urban Ag Incentive Zone” bill. This bill creates urban agriculture incentive areas and reduces taxes on land used for urban farming. It greatly reduces expenses associated with acquiring urban agricultural land, and in turn encourages Louisianans to grow more local food.

Source: New state laws boost farm to school in Louisiana

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