This won an award for this ad where a farmer realizes the error of his ways and returns his farm to sustainable farming, and presumably because of his change of heart, becomes a supplier to Chipotle.
I’m not kidding.
See how far we’ve come?
http://usat.ly/Mft5Cp
In case you sometimes forget that the farm bill is a political fight, and there will many attempts to derail a thoughtful, serious conversation about the type of food we eat, who produces it and who will get access to it.
Jeff Sessions Argues Food Stamps Increase Not Moral, Mocks Kirsten Gillibrand.
As 2012 Farm Bill debate rages in Congress, a new investigative report demands SNAP program transparency
Oakland, CA, June 12, 2012 — Are food stamps lining the pockets of the nation’s wealthiest corporations instead of closing the hunger gap in the United States? Why does Walmart benefit from more than $200 million in annual food stamp purchases in Oklahoma alone? Why does one bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, hold exclusive contracts in 24 states to administer public benefits?
These are a few of the questions explored in a new report called: “Food Stamps, Follow the Money: Are Corporations Profiting from Hungry Americans?” from Michele Simon, president of Eat Drink Politics, a watchdog consulting group. This first-of-its kind investigation details how the food stamp program—originally designed to help farmers and those in need—lines the pockets of junk food makers, food retailers, and banks.
Right now, Congress is debating the farm bill, including significant cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps). Much attention has focused on how agricultural subsidies fuel our cheap, unhealthy food supply. In reality, the largest and most overlooked taxpayer subsidy to the food industry is SNAP, which comprised two-thirds of the farm bill budget in 2008.
“Michele Simon’s well-researched, credible investigation breaks new ground and exposes who else stands to gain from the government’s largest food assistance program,” said New York University Professor Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics. “While reauthorizing the farm bill, Congress needs to make sure that the poor get their fair share of SNAP benefits,” she added.
Food Stamps, Follow the Money examines what we know and don’t know about how much the food industry and large banks benefit from a tax-payer program that has grown to $78 billion in 2011, up from $30 billion just four years earlier, and projected to increase further due to current economic conditions.
“Transparency should be mandatory. The people have a right to know where our money is going, plain and simple,” said Anthony Smukall, a SNAP participant living in Buffalo, New York. He says his fellow residents are “facing cuts year after year, with no sustainable jobs to be able to get off of programs such as SNAP.” Smukall added, “J.P. Morgan is shaking state pockets, which then rolls down to every tax paying citizen. I am disgusted with the numbers in this report. If people knew how such programs were run, and how money is taken in by some of the world’s conglomerates, there would be outrage on a grand scale.”
As the largest government-funded agriculture program in the nation, SNAP presents a tremendous opportunity to help tens of millions of Americans be better nourished and to reshape our food system in a positive way. SNAP dollars now represent more than 10 percent of all grocery store purchases.
“Every year, tens of billions of SNAP dollars are propping up corporations that are exploiting their workers and producing foods that are making America sick,” said Andy Fisher, founder and former executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition, who is currently writing a book about the anti-hunger movement. “It’s high time we stopped this madness, and returned the food stamp program to its original purpose: providing needy Americans healthy real food grown by farmers,” he added.
“I hope Congress does not cut SNAP. Food prices have been skyrocketing while salaries remain unchanged, and many people I know have two jobs to try to make ends meet,” said Jennifer L., a SNAP participant living in Massachusetts. “As a single mom who has only recently re-entered the workforce, the SNAP assistance I receive makes a huge difference in my ability to support my children,” she added. “I am in favor of making retailers’ and banks’ information regarding SNAP public. What are they hiding?”
Food Stamps, Follow the Money offers several recommendations on how to improve SNAP in order to maximize government benefits for those in need. These include:
· Congress should maintain SNAP funding in this time of need for millions of Americans;
· Congress should require collection and disclosure of SNAP product purchase data, retailer redemptions, and national data on bank fees;
· USDA should evaluate state EBT contracts to determine if banks are taking undue advantage of taxpayer funds.
“Congress should make SNAP more transparent by mandating accurate tracking of SNAP expenditures. Why should only the likes of Walmart, Coca-Cola, and J.P. Morgan know how many billions of our tax dollars are spent each year?” said Ms. Simon.
About: Michele Simon is a public health lawyer specializing in industry marketing and lobbying tactics. She is president of Eat Drink Politics, a consulting group that helps advocates counter corporate tactics and advance food and alcohol policy. http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com Twitter: @MicheleRSimon
Hopefully, many of you are planning on heading to the Midwest for the PPS September International Public Market Conference on September 21-23, 2012. If you do, it might be worth an extra few days to drive or take the train to Chicago and see their growing local food presence. Every time I go, I find another sustainable project or food system piece to check out. It certainly has to do with the current federal administration’s own interest (and connection to the new mayor) in their home city, and probably also has to do with the last mayor’s interest in greening the city; Daley was the one who put the rooftop garden on city hall after all.
The cart approach that Mayor Emmanuel is offering in the press release attached here has its supporters and detractors. I, for one think before we use these less balanced fixes to try to address food insecurity and sovereignty issues, the farmers market movement needs to be better at knowing how to identify the types of markets that work in these different situations. Or, at least, make sure that the powers that be have farmers needs in mind and have time to build food producers’ long range direct marketing plans. Those types of markets would be collected using the research that myself and others are working on: identifying characteristics, indicators to get typology of markets. My project, using the acronym Market CITY, will be bringing together researchers, practioners and stakeholders to start to build the typology framework. More on that later.
But, do start to plan your Midwestern fact-finding trip and I hope you can find time to seek out these regional farming initiatives when you travel.
Chicago Outdoor Produce Stands Serving Underserved Areas Approved By City Council.
When I worked at marketumbrella.org, one of the many projects that I helped design and run was our White Boot Brigade, the roaming shrimper market for added seasonal seafood sales. Rouse’s Supermarkets was an early supporter of the WBB, and we genuinely enjoyed working with this Houma-based family company. Since they gamely took on being the main grocery store chain in our city (when Sav-A-Center decided that post-Katrina New Orleans wasn’t for them), I for one was very happy as I knew them and knew their stores. New Orleanians are VERY picky about their “markets” (as stores are often called) and yet, the Rouse family has mostly met their needs. As for buying locally, they do buy, they do support local entrepreneurs. Farmers have a harder time getting their produce in there, but value-added farmers market vendors seem to be doing well.
They just opened a store a few blocks from the flagship Saturday farmers market in downtown New Orleans, and I think it will help both the market and the store. That store is the subject of this excellent story on their new rooftop garden.
The only supermarket in downtown New Orleans is the first grocery in the country to develop an aeroponic urban farm on its roof.
What exactly is an aeroponic urban garden?
Think vertical instead of horizontal. The garden “towers” use water rather than soil, and allow plants to grow upward instead of outward. It was developed by a former Disney greenhouse manager, and is used at Disney properties, the Chicago O’Hare Airport Eco-Farm and on the Manhattan rooftop of Bell Book & Candle restaurant.
“The (obesity) epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?_r=2
I am quite suspicious of media that tries to decree our movement as the answer to a region’s entire set of problems, and as a food activist, I am on record as being uneasy with terms like “urban ag” as I believe in regional ag as the better term to describe entrepreneurial farming in both the urban and rural areas TOGETHER. I mean if a rural farmer came to me and told me to support rural farming, I’d argue for the urban by asking for him or her to consider their regional needs.
And I also like regional ag since it includes existing farmers and appreciates our hinterlands and waterways which we also need to supply food for our beloved cities. I believe in urban farming, let me say that- but as for agriculture, I think we’re best served when we just support family farming and farming as an honorable profession.. Add to that, the power shift that needs to happen to support new farmers should happen today by supporting those existing farmers, some of whom are still stuck deep in in the industrial food system. We can polarize them and point at them as “part of the problem” but it may be better to learn from them and to assist them in gaining knowledge and awareness about why they may want to join us over in the alternative food system.
However, I love these quotes from legendary Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs from the article linked below about Detroit’s agricultural movement:
“The food riots erupting around the world challenge us to rethink our whole approach to food,” she said, but as communities, not as bodies politic. “Today’s hunger crisis is rooted in the industrialized food system which destroys local food production and forces nations like Kenya, which only twenty-five years ago was food self-sufficient, to import 80 percent of its food because its productive land is being used by global corporations to grow flowers and luxury foods for export.” The same thing happened to Detroit, she says, which was once before a food self-sufficient community.
I asked her whether the city government would support large-scale urban agriculture. “City government is irrelevant,” she answered. “Positive change, leaps forward in the evolution of humankind do not start with governments. They start right here in our living rooms and kitchens. We are the leaders we are looking for.”
Detroit: Farming Paradise?
Food Among the Ruins / Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics.
This is a Greenpaper that I wrote while I was with marketumbrella.org (with help from Leslee Goodman, technical writer and editor) on the phenomena of mobile markets. I have had loads of requests for it recently, so am posting it here. It is available on marketumbrella.org’s marketshare page, which remains an excellent site for markets to find resources, as does the FMC Resource Library. The mobile market idea is interesting, but I believe that it is a short term fix that benefits the industrial system of food, rather than extending the reach of the alternative system we are creating. Because, without adding dignity and sharing wealth, nothing will change.
An interesting view of grocery stores using “alternative concepts” as a marketing ploy. (cheat sheet-some see right through it)
Am I being whiney and ungrateful? Yes. Wegmans responds to every item on my consumer wish list. It has consistency and dependability. It won’t be sold to some large chain that will destroy its quality, as was the case with Kings and Zagara’s. But that’s the problem. It is the large chain. It’s the specialty market gone corporate. In the tradition of American cooptation of the alternative option, it has made the alternative option into standardized fare.
Another way that Community Food Security Coalition supports the movement. When the conference can link and throw attention to worker rights or immigrant issues or food sovereignty issues.
In our market context, I believe we need to consider these issues more often and think of how we can support other parts of the movement that are not clearly tied yet to farmers markets.
On average, prices were 36% higher than supermarkets.
In case you forget, food system organizers live and work in a parallel universe of food sovereignty . That other world is held in trust for the corporations who get to feed off our innovations and human-scaled ideas.
The Smart Set: Things Aren’t Grrrrreat! – June 16, 2011.
HMMM, breakfast cereals (or RTE Ready To Eat cereals in industry parlance) are fading. Is this because there are alternatives or because they are more expensive? In any case, consumer behavior takes a slow turn…
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 