I wasn't sure what to write about today, because I've got a number of topics swirling around in my head. I've beaten the farm bill to death so it's time to take advantage of the break between the House vote and the Senate debate on it. Instead, I will give you an "appetizer" to get you excited for the main course at YearlyKos - the food panel on Saturday, Aug 4 at 9:15.
One of our panelists, Tom Philpott, is a sustainable farmer as well as the food editor at Grist magazine. What better way to build up excitement for YearlyKos than to read a few of his articles? (I'd do the same for panelist Marion Nestle, but she wrote books... a bit harder to cover in a diary!)
At the end of this diary, I'll include info about the food panel - and a call for questions you'd like to ask the panelists during YearlyKos.
Let's start with a warm-and-fuzzy piece by Philpott, Turn the Eat Around, which describes a community farm and farmers' market in Brooklyn's extremely poor (and heavily diabetic) Red Hook neighborhood.
Red Hook's community farm got going around the time the neighborhood's grocery store shut down. Without a grocery store, the only local food source were bodegas - hardly a place to find wholesome, nourishing foods. No wonder diabetes is so prevalent! After the grocery store left, the community farm expanded and established its farmers market. It also involved students at a local elementary school, giving them hands on gardening experience.
Is it just me, or is it immoral that a rich nation like America can leave poor neighborhoods without any source of healthy food? Conventional grocery stores aren't even that great in my opinion, but I'd rather shop there than a 7-11. We're so wedded to the idea of the free market that we just let the invisible hand of capitalism do it's thing, even when it means denying real food to poor people because they aren't a profitable market segment.
That thought reminded me of the first Tom Philpott article I ever read, one I go back to again and again. It's called I'm Hatin' It: How the Feds Make Bad-For-You Food Cheaper Than Healthful Fare.
Compare the cost per calorie of a Ding Dong or a serving of wild Alaskan salmon. Cheaper calories? The Ding Dong. More nutrients per calorie? I hope you don't need to get your calculator to answer that question.
From a short-term economic viewpoint, the Ding Dongs present a better deal: 360 calories per dollar, and no need for the time or skill to cook. "If you're on a limited income trying to feed a family, in a sense you're behaving rationally by choosing heavily sweetened and fat-laden foods," Drewnowski says.
The price gap between these two categories is growing. Drewnowski and Monsivais show that the overall cost of food consumed at home, when adjusted for inflation, has been essentially unchanged since 1980. But over the same time, the price of soft drinks plunged 30 percent, and the price of candy and other sweets fell 20 percent. Meanwhile, the price of fresh fruits and vegetables rose 50 percent.
Philpott's article was the first time I put politics and food together in my head. Before that, I thought they had virtually nothing to do with one another. Well, perhaps other than that embarrassing time when Bush went on about "the pig."
In "I'm Hatin' It," he explains how subsidies work to suppress commodity prices while boosting production of corn and soy, the building blocks of processed food. He gets into greater detail in a blog post called Ag Policy as if People Mattered.
I suppose I'm about to break my promise to give the farm bill a rest for a little while. The blog post explains a few different camps each arguing for a different version of commodity policy, as well as their motivations.
There's the House Ag Committee whose members each represent farming districts. They basically copied the 2002 farm bill, subsidies and all, into the 2007 farm bill. Why rock the boat if the status quo got you elected? Ag subsidies doesn't really bother Big Ag (ADM, etc) too much because it keeps commodity prices down, even if subsidies aren't their first choice.
Then there's the Bush Administration. Naturally, they are the most sold-out and evil bunch. They support a plan to reduce subsidies (and presumably phase them out in the future) and let the "free market" take over. This would support Big Ag even more than the current subsidies, because they basically control the market (guess the market's not so free, is it?).
Last, there's the Kill the Subsidies crowd, an odd collection that includes Oxfam and the Environmental Working Group as well as the Cato Institute. They've each got their reasons, and some of them even mean well - but it's a dumb idea. (Philpott didn't say dumb. I said it.) It's similar to the Bush approach and it would end up helping Big Ag and hurting farmers more than anything else.
OK, well if subsidies are a vital part of this bad system we've got that causes everything from the Gulf's dead zone to high diabetes rates among our poor, why isn't the solution just chucking out the subsidies? I'll let Tom tell you.
But rather than compensate farmers directly, the government could organize them to manage supply and maintain a surplus. That's the policy that held sway between the Great Depression and the early 1970s. I described that program in another old Victual Reality column:
To keep prices at a reasonable level, the government tried to manage farm output. The program worked like this: When farmers began to produce too much and prices began to fall, the government would pay farmers to leave some land fallow, with the goal of pushing prices up the following season. There was an additional mechanism that sought to stabilize prices. In bumper-crop years, rather than allowing the market to be flooded with grain, the government would buy excess grain from farmers and store it. In lean years -- say, when drought struck -- the government would release some of that stored grain, mitigating sudden price hikes. The overall goal was to stop prices from falling too low (hurting farmers) or jumping too high (squeezing consumers).
Why would the agribusiness lobby rebel if supply management came back? Simple: it would give farmers pricing leverage in a market now controlled by buyers. In short, it would ensure that they always pay a fair price for the corn and soy they consume
What Philpott describes here is the approach I favor. I believe it would involve getting rid of the subsidies, basically by making them unnecessary and irrelevant. If farmers are getting paid a fair price, then they wouldn't need (or even qualify for) subsidies. This is the point Farm Bill Girl has been trying to make by saying that the subsidies aren't the problem, they are a symptom of the problem. Solve the problem, and the symptom (the subsidies) disappears.
Supply management is one of the two big needs we have to clean up our mess. The second is fair competition. In his ag policy blog post, Philpott links to a post by another Grist blogger describing our needs for a competition title in the farm bill.
With so much industry consolidation, farmers have few choices when selling their products. If you've only got one company in your area who can buy your products, you're stuck agreeing to whatever terms and prices they give you. Not that the Bush administration has a problem with that. They let two huge pork processors merge just this year (Smithfield Foods - #1 pork producer and processor - and Premium Standard - #2 pork producer, #6 processor).
I'm going to wrap up by posting a few things that made me smile in Philpott's guide to a sustainable Thanksgiving. He asks WWAWD? (What Would Alice Waters Do?) and posts a picture of cranberries with a caption "Real cranberries aren't cylindrical," referencing the oh-so-mouthwatering shape of cranberry goo dumped out of a can. (I'm so thankful I didn't grow up with that. My recipe is here.) He's also got a series on biofuels (sorry guys, the topic bores me so I'm skipping it) and another article answering the question my non-locavore mom posed to me last year: But how could I eat local if I want arugula during Chicago's winter?
The YearlyKos Food Panel: Forging Links to an Alternative Food Chain
I wrote up and announced the panel here, but I'll repeat some of it for those who missed the original diary. The panel will be Saturday, Aug 4 at 9:15am (yes, unless something changes, we conflict with the Energy Panel). Your panelists will be:
- Tom Philpott: Food editor at Grist and full-time farmer at Maverick Farms.
- Dr. Marion Nestle: Former nutrition policy adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at NYU, and author of Food Politics, Safe Food, and What to Eat. (I'm such a big fan, I'll be acting like a 13 year old at a Backstreet Boys concert during the panel)
- Kerry Trueman: Co-founder of Eating Liberally, blogger, and member of NYC's Food Systems Network, a coalition working for sustainable agriculture and a fair, healthy food system for everyone.
- Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey: Eight term congresswoman representing Sonoma and Marin counties, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the first former welfare mother to serve in Congress.
I'll be there too, as the moderator. We've only got an hour so we'll run short on time for questions. To mitigate this situation, Natasha and Kerry came up with a plan to take questions in advance and then see if we can get answers from our wonderful panelists after the panel if we run out of time during it. Please, if you have a question for any or all of our panelists, post it in the comments on this diary. Thanks!
Beyond the Panel
First of all, I'll have T-shirts to sell - the Vegetables of Mass Destruction ones as well as a few others. You can get them online, but by getting them from me at YearlyKos, you'll avoid paying shipping. If you want to reserve one to make sure I have your size available, email me and include your size and your cell number.
Second, don't forget about the outing I've planned for Wednesday. I found out that the restaurant (highly recommended by many Kossacks) is TINY and they'd only allow a reservation for eight people at 8pm. PLEASE email me to RSVP if you plan on coming so I can hold a seat for you. Here are the other details:
Green City Market - Noon
Where: Lincoln Park (directions)
What: Chicago's sustainable Green City Market
When: Wed, Aug 1, from 12pm-1:30pm
Who: Whoever wants to come! So far my mom's RSVP'd :)
(The market starts at 9am, so you can get there early if you want. And don't forget to bring a tote to carry home any goodies you buy!)
Shedd Aquarium - Around 2pm
This has nothing to do with food (OK, no jokes about eating the fish) but I grew up in Chicago and I'm dying to return to an old favorite of mine.
Dinner at Green Zebra - 8pm
Green Zebra is sustainable, delicious, and both omnivore- and vegetarian-friendly.
1460 W. Chicago Ave
312-243-7100
Gourmet, Veg-friendly
Bus: 66 to Bishop
Driving: Starting at the Hyatt, take I-55 S to I-90/I-94 towards Wisconsin. Then take I-90 to exit 49B (Milwaukee Ave/Augusta Blvd/1000 N) and get on W Augusta Blvd. Turn left on N Noble St and right on W Chicago Ave.
If you'd like to join up at some point during the day, please email me for my cell phone number. To make myself easy to recognize, I'll be wearing a Vegetables of Mass Destruction shirt.
That's all I've got for now. See you all in Chicago!!!