I'm finally home - not in San Diego but at my parents' place where I grew up. It's right outside of Hastert's district so I can assure you it's entirely nauseating to be here. (Off topic, why hasn't anyone commented on Hastert's cleavage? If Hillary is fair game, so are overfed Republicans.)
Anyway, I will try to the best of my ability to capture what went on at the food panel, and I encourage anyone who took notes or attended to share their memories, reactions, impressions, suggestions, and other feedback.
After the panel, I heard rave reviews from all who attended. Many said that it was the most lively panel they went to - which I am guessing has a lot to do with the community we've formed, comprised of so many committed Kossacks who care about food.
I'd like to say a big thank you up front to all of the Kossacks who asked questions. I tried to call on people who have really thrown their heart and soul into these issues, reading, writing, and voting with their forks. You added so much to the panel with your intelligent, thoughtful questions.
The A Siegel Effect
For me, the food panel started before the food panel itself. Friday, I attended A Siegel's workshop "From Blogosphere to Legisphere" where several different Kossacks talked about how they were trying to take issues from the blogs to the Hill (the Energize America crowd, Teacherken, nyceve, Matt Stoller for OpenLeft, and myself).
I hope that our food group, Recipe for America, is about a year behind the Energize America group in terms of progress. This year, we built a fantastic (and beautiful) interactive website, collected an email list of Kossacks interested in food issues, wrote MANY diaries about food, generated calls to Congress, had our first panel, outlined most of a progressive policy platform on food, and ate a LOT of food (hopefully much of which was sustainable).
Energize America presented their policy platform a year ago, and now they've got bills on their way to Capitol Hill, contact with legislators and so much more. What an inspiration to look out on where we could be a year from now! That workshop really re-energized me to keep moving forward even after the convention and I hope others feel the same way. I know I've said already but I'll say it again - THANKS Adam, Jerome, and George for being role models as well as partners in achieving progressive change.
Dinner with Marion Nestle
After the workshop, I finally met Kerry, the brilliant organizer of our food panel, and her husband Matt. We joined up with Natasha to start plotting our takeover of the nation's food supply. It's funny when food people get together, because of the habits we have in common that would be strange to anyone else... shlepping organic, locally-grown produce halfway across the country, for example.
When I visited my family in AZ in June, my grandmother heard I was bringing a ton of peaches and informed me that Arizona has stores that sell food too - even peaches. Yes, I said, but not peaches that my friend Annie grew organically. So I'm weird to 99% of the world, but Kerry, Matt, and Natasha all get it. We started comparing the treasures in our hotel rooms, almost like little kids trying to trade food during school lunch. I'd like to think that I one-upped everyone when I said I had sungold tomatoes with me, but in the end we went for Kerry's celery and carrots.
While we were in Kerry and Matt's room, Dr. Nestle called to say she'd arrived. Matt went down to greet her and I eagerly followed along. I wonder if Marion knew that she'd be ambushed by a groupie (me) so soon after arriving in the hotel.
You never know before meeting a celebrity of god-like status whether they will be normal, down-to-earth human beings or entirely full of themselves with no time for mere mortals like you. When you find out your hero is in the latter group, it can really shatter your image of them. I have to say I was a little bit nervous, but I had no reason to be. Dr. Nestle could not have been more lovely - inclusive and full of humility.
I don't even know what to say. I suppose in a way the wonderful impression she made on me magnified my hero-worship but it's clear that with her there's no need for that. She treats people like equals and like friends. I think it would be a bit presumptuous to claim Dr. Nestle as a friend, but during the convention, that's how it felt.
We decided to hit up Chinatown for dinner and the hotel recommended we take the bus instead of walking. Our little group's New Yorkers scoffed at such a silly notion - why take the bus when we have a nice chance to stretch our legs? I quite agree. So off we went.
I can imagine that many would be intimidated to try picking a restaurant or ordering dishes for the nation's preeminent food expert, but Marion's sweet personality put me at ease (and I'd guess the others felt the same way). We went for one of the first restaurant's we found, which was half full of Chinese people and half full of liberals in orange name tags. One approached our table and introduced himself as the ag person on the rural panel. He had lived in China for 7 years so he and I haggled in Mandarin with the waitress to get a nice assortment of dishes, both meat and vegetarian.
For dinner, we got a delicious green bean dish (Marion's pick), stir-fried kongxincai with garlic (a Chinese green veggie I adore), an eggplant dish called yuxiang qiezi (another favorite of mine), sweet and sour fish, steamed pork buns, mushu shrimp, and home style tofu - all with no MSG, please. The ag expert ultimately joined our table, even though he had already eaten - perfect for Natasha, who had attended his panel and wanted to chat with him anyway.
I asked our waitress to snap a pic of us, and Marion guessed it would end up on the blogs. I gave her veto power, which she declined :)
In front, Natasha on the left, me on the right. In the back, from left to right, Matt, Greg, Marion, and Kerry.
I left the dinner on cloud nine and went back to the hotel to prep for the panel drink liberally until at least 3am. I ordered a wake-up call for 7a.m. so I could work on my spiel before the panel... but woke up at 8:30 instead and rushed out of the room 15 minutes later to get to the panel on time. Thank goodness I had the foresight to shower the night before. I might've been unprepared but at least I didn't stink.
The Panel Itself
I think we had about 100 to 150 attendees at our panel, MANY of whom I recognized (sidnora, Elfling, San Diego Dem, Brudaimonia, Cedwyn, SallyCat, Pontificator... I wish I had a better memory, but that's the best I can do for the moment). Our panelists were Dr. Nestle, Kerry Trueman, and Tom Philpott. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey was scheduled to join us, but she had to stay back in Washington to continue fighting so working Americans could "put food on their families." Her absence was a mixed blessing, because it allowed us extra Q&A time.
I kicked us off with a brief word on why we were there and what we hoped to accomplish. Selfishly, I made my part brief because I wanted to have the maximum amount of time to hear my three heroes assembled there on the dais speak and answer questions. (I have to say, I was a bit nervous - normally I can make myself sound intelligent by quoting Dr. Nestle, but this time she was here to speak for herself so I was no longer armed with that tactic.)
I started by identifying food as a "strategic initiative" (in Lakoffian terms) because progressive changes to our food system would mean progressive changes across the board in issues we care about - healthcare, the economy, the environment, labor, immigration, energy, etc.
While we all know the bad news - the problems with our current food system - the good news is that ONE solution will fix all problems (it's not like whack-a-mole, where solving one problem causes another one to pop up somewhere else). That solution? Local, organic food - and access to it for all Americans regardless of geographic location, ethnicity, or class.
The last point I made was the reason we need specifically a political change instead of an individual one. Currently, individuals all over the country are trying to localize their eating, cut out meat or choose pastured meat instead of factory farmed meat, etc - but it's difficult, especially for those with certain lifestyles, low incomes, or in areas that don't have much to offer in terms of sustainable food. Until eating healthy is as easy as eating McDonald's, we won't reach the critical mass required to make a difference. For that, we need to reverse the political and legal structures that have entrenched industrialized agriculture and create new ones that promote sustainability.
Tom (food editor at Grist and full time farmer) went next. He spoke from his experience as a farmer about how our entire infrastructure promotes industrialized agriculture and makes it difficult for the sustainable farmers to compete.
An example he gave was about farms producing fluid milk. Dairy farmers pay the expenses for trucking their milk to dairies run by companies like Dean Foods (which has about 30% market share, he said). When gas prices go up, trucking prices go up. Additionally, Dean Foods and other giant companies go around buying up the little guys, then shutting down their facilities in order to consolidate operations.
This happened to a little farm where Tom bought his milk, and suddenly the farmer had to pay to take the milk 90 miles from his farm instead of 30. The added cost put him out of business. Tom made a number of good points, but my take-away was the need to re-create the infrastructure that we have destroyed in the past several decades so that small farms can compete on a fair playing field with industry giants.
Marion (professor at NYU and author of What to Eat, Food Politics, and Safe Food) followed him. She started by sharing her desire to participate in blogging, entreating the audience to visit her blog at http://www.whattoeatbook.com/ Marion's a fantastic writer, but she sounded like a born speaker too. If only we could all register for her classes at NYU!
She kicked off with a number: 3900 calories are produced (on average) for every man, woman and child in the United States per day. That figure was determined based on food produced less exports plus imports. Of course we don't eat that much because a lot is thrown away, but we still eat more than we need.
For an explanation why, she gave a description of the goals of food companies. As publicly traded companies, they are not only encouraged to keep their sales up - they must also increase profits every single quarter. How do you do this? Convince customers to eat more of your food instead of another company's food, or just convince customers to eat more.
One way they've done this is by selling foods in new locations and making it acceptable to eat in more places. One example she gave was bookstores. Remember when they didn't all contain Starbucks? She said when she came to NYU in the 1980's, the library had signs up saying "If you eat here, we will kill you." Now they have two cafes.
The rest of her speech is now a blur for me. I think I was just dazed with so much admiration that all of her wisdom washed over me like a wave and it's gone from my brain for good (does anyone have notes?).
Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally went last, and you are ALL in luck because she was kind enough to post her entire speech on the Eating Liberally blog. Kerry has a flair for embellishing her writing with alliterations, metaphors, similes, puns, and all other manner of literary devices that the rest of us learned in high school English class and then forgot, so her writing is incredibly enjoyable to read (and even more delightful to hear as a speech).
Here's a blurb of her speech, promoting a low-carbon diet (roll over in your grave, Dr. Atkins!):
One of my favorite peak oil prophets, James Howard Kunstler, likes to say that the American suburb is "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." Kunstler predicts that we’re going to run out of gas and face food shortages that will force us to grow our own food the way we did back in World War II, when our government told us it was our civic duty to plant victory gardens.
After 9/11, the president told us it was our civic duty to shop. Our troops are dying to defend a way of life that—if the rest of the world chose to emulate it--would require the resources of roughly five planet Earths.
I read an AP story a couple of weeks ago about how Americans use twice as much toilet paper as Europeans do, so apparently we can’t even wipe our asses as efficiently.
During the Q&A, one audience member asked each panelist to give his or her #1 book recommendation for people interested in food issues. I was going to say Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, but Kerry said it. So I thought of Appetite for Profit by Michele Simon, but Marion said it. Unfortunately Tom's pick has fallen out of my faulty memory (does anyone remember?). With two of my ideas gone, I went for two favorites (I can't choose between them) - Marion's book What to Eat (now available in paperback) and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
Where Do We Go From Here
Is anyone else jealous of Energize America, for having access to a total of 5 million people via email mailing lists, contacts on the Hill, and even bills that will perhaps be laws some day? I know I am. Let's use this year to get from here to there.
Right now, we've got most of a policy platform written up at the Recipe for America site. On my to-do list are:
- Finish writing up the platform
- Keep the site up to date as laws change or new problems crop up requiring us to propose solutions
- Use the netroots community to generate calls to Congress on promoting our policy platform
- Get legislators, experts, and organizations to endorse our plan and start promoting them in DC or state governments
We've got a few people who are passionate and heavily active in participating in this, including Natasha, Kerry, Farm Bill Girl and myself. If you're interested in getting more active, the more the merrier! Investigate an issue you care about and write a diary! Email the DailyKos food group with a link to a diary (yours or someone else's) relating to food or even an article you found that you think people should read! However you feel you can contribute, we'd all benefit from your participation.
For now, I ask a favor of everyone here. Please check out the project page of Recipe for America, read through the various sections of it (all of them if you have time, or just a few that you find most interesting), and give feedback. The best form of feedback is most likely comments made directly on the RFA site (you can create an account to do so). Don't forget to check out the links at the bottom of each page, and let us know if we've missed anything on there.
If we can get the RFA policy platform reviewed by our community and then refined so we all generally agree with most of it, then we can hit the ground running once the Senate starts debating the Farm Bill in September, generating mucho phone calls to our Senators.
Thanks again to everyone, for being my true family, for giving me the most amazing week of the entire year, and for your passion and commitment to sustainable food!!!