Mark Winne's Blog, page 16

State Food Policy Guide Released

GMOs, trans-fats, and buying local. Food retail in underserved communities, farmland protection, and kicking soda out of public schools. That’s just a partial list of the cutting edge food and agriculture issues seizing the attention of lawmakers and advocates across the country. While hot policy topics like these are heating up everywhere, the places where they are currently burning the brightest are in the nation’s state capitols.

Though the federal government passes mega-legislation like the farm and child nutrition bills once every five years, the spirit of local innovation and the relative flexibility of state governments – to say nothing of the incessant tug of war between Washington and the states – means there’s always something daring being cooked up in state policy kitchens. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state food and farm legislation, 41 states enacted 77 laws during the 2009 and 2010 sessions related to school nutrition, food access, and direct marketing.  If one were to add in a host of legislation related to food security, food safety, and farmland protection, the numbers would be far into the hundreds every year.

Whether it’s a World Wrestling Smack Down event like California’s GMO-labeling Proposition 37, the abolition of sugary soft drinks from public schools in Connecticut and New Mexico, or one small step for local food like Vermont financing a mobile poultry slaughtering facility, state-level food policy may be serving up some of the most exciting dishes in town.

As a minor partner in a major league effort, I’m proud to announce that stirring the policy pot at the state level just got a little easier thanks to the legal eagles and eaglets at the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic. Emily Broad Leib, the Clinic’s Director, and a sizeable flock of law students have assembled Good Laws, Good Food: Putting State Food Policy to Work for Our Communities which, if I do say so myself, may be the best “how-to” document out there on the subject of state food policy. This toolkit will be particularly helpful to state food policy councils, of which, according to a 2012 census, there are now 25. (The Good Laws, Good Food toolkits, including the local policy version, the Food Policy Council Directory, and the food policy council “how-to” manual Doing Food Policy Councils Right can be found at http://www.markwinne.com/resource-materials/.)

As anyone who enters the state policy arena for the first time quickly learns, you need more than a state capital floor plan to navigate the labyrinth of statutes, regulations, and administrative actions that constitute state policy. Good Laws, Good Food (State) gives you a quick refresher course on federalism and what the respective roles of the federal, state, and local governments are. Why the political and legal theory? Well, if you want to radically change SNAP, for instance, you’ll need to go to Washington. But if you want to increase program participation and tweak its implementation to help the local food movement, there are plenty of opportunities at the state level.

The central feature of the guide is the way it unpacks seven areas of the food system that are heavily influenced by state government: Food system infrastructure, land use and planning, food assistance programs, consumer access and consumer demand, farm to institution, school food and education, and food safety and processing. And as an added bonus, the toolkit provides a generous helping of information about local, state, and regional food systems including great examples of state food policies in action. In other words, you have a conceptual framework, a context for change and action, and the practice itself, all neatly packed into 112 pages.

If you’re a government major or policy-wonk and, like me, just can’t get enough of this stuff, you may be motivated to consume this document in one sitting. But for the general practitioner and those feeling their way to and through the policy world, you may want to take small bites because there’s a lot here. But whatever your current interests and involvements in policy making are, you’ll definitely want to use this toolkit as a handy reference guide.

There is no lack of ways to manipulate the public policy levers to affect change. But the smarter we are about how they work, the sooner that change will come.

George McGovern – Too Good for His Times

I was standing in the Ambassador’s reception line nervously chatting with those closest to me. In spite of the wine that I was gulping more than sipping, and the charm of the late September Rome evening, I was growing more anxious as I waited my turn on the terrace at 14 Vicolo Antoniniano. This was the Italian residence of the American Ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization where I and my colleagues from the U.S. delegation to the 2000 Conference on Food Security were about to meet Ambassador George McGovern and his wife.

Though the exotic location populated by important people had over-stimulated my senses, it was more the prospect of what I would say to Ambassador McGovern that was fast undoing me. True, I had never met an ambassador before and the number of high-level politicians whose hands I’d shaken could be counted on one hand. But this wasn’t any ambassador or politician; it was George McGovern – the first presidential candidate I had ever voted for, a fervent opponent of my generation’s war in Vietnam, and possibly the best known elected official to work tirelessly to end hunger and malnutrition.

There were only three people ahead of me in line. I had less than a minute to come up with something brilliant to say, something that would at least rescue me from drowning in my own pool of sycophantic drool. As I lifted my hand to his, it came to me, from my heart I think, which is always the best place if only your brain gets out of the way. I told him that his work as co-chair, with Senator Robert Dole of the Senate Committee on Nutrition had been an inspiring and seminal event for my career and for thousands of other young people who chose community food activism as their path to social change.

Ambassador McGovern seemed to hold his smile and my hand a little longer than he had for those he’d previously greeted. In his easy South Dakota drawl he earnestly thanked me and went on to say at some length that he had just run into Senator Dole at a recent Washington function. They had both agreed that their service on the nutrition committee was among the most important and meaningful of their careers. He said he was truly touched by my compliment and thanked me for sharing it with him. I thanked him, he thanked me, and I thanked him again. It was time for me to move on.

It’s hard to imagine another person whose public persona and actions were such a touchstone for my life. As I marched on Washington to protest the insanity of the Vietnam War and later faced jail time for my refusal to comply with orders of the Selective Service System, George McGovern’s voice became my voice; he spoke for me and to me. He was a bed rock of consistency and principle that never let me down, and if this sounds like a homily for today’s class of politicians whose positions waft like stray pigeon feathers in the wind, then so be it.

McGovern, however, was also a loser. He had been stomped badly in the 1972 presidential election by Richard Nixon whose Watergate antics would soon leave a permanent hurt on the American political experience. Rather than wage a less principled campaign that might have endeared him to more Americans, presidential candidate McGovern chose to speak out against a nonsensical war that was then long beyond futile. He also spoke out against poverty and hunger, subjects that have never proven able to win over a majority of American voters. For speaking the truth he was rewarded with 38 percent of the popular vote, the electoral votes of Massachusetts and the District of Colombia, and the scarlet “L” of “Liberal loser.”

After taking such a drubbing he could have easily retreated forever to the plains of South Dakota, but instead chose to expand his fierce advocacy for ending both domestic and world hunger. By making the association between hunger, poverty, equity, and sound nutrition, he remained ahead of the pack. As a re-elected Senator in 1974 McGovern led the Senate Nutrition Committee into on-going investigations into the link between the rising tide of hunger in the U.S. and domestic poverty. Perhaps most importantly and with prescience we can only appreciate today, the Committee issued its now famous 1977 Dietary Goals for the United States that made it clear that the growing prevalence of salt, sugar, and fat in our diet was likely to have grave consequences for the country’s health. It called for a change in the way we ate, but like Vietnam, we didn’t pay attention.

I’m sure there will be ample competition for the epitaph on George McGovern’s headstone, but somewhere engraved in granite and read aloud until everybody hears it should be these words from the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition:

“[Hunger] is not [so much] the mechanics of the food assistance programs as it is the fact of persistent poverty, and the continued tolerance in this country of a starkly inequitable distribution of income. In a nation…in which 40 million people remain poor [50 million today] or near poor, more than a food stamp or child-feeding program is at issue.”

His life was a testament to peace, truth, and the promise that all should eat well.

VIVA KOREA!

The young farmer was wearing aviator sunglasses and a black Che Guevara t-shirt. If it wasn’t for the fact that she weighed considerably south of 100 pounds, I might have felt intimidated. But any fear quickly dissipated after she told me with a shy, girlish grin to call her “Lucy” after I had repeatedly mispronounced her Korean name. Far from being an AK-47-toting guerrilla, Lucy was one of 60 organic farmer members who wanted to show me around their Hoengdong Horticultural Coop.

After a six year hiatus I was back in South Korea at the invitation of a provincial planning agency called the Chungnam Development Institute, and their intrepid senior agricultural researcher, Hur Nam-Hyuk.  Our little international team consisted of Vanessa Malandrin, an agricultural researcher with Italy’s University of Pisa, and Professor Yoshimitsu “Tani” Taniguchi from Japan’s Akita University. Our mission: share our “lessons-learned” about direct marketing, food security, and food policy from our respective countries. And, as is common with such collegial exchanges, our pronouncements were often followed by a prolific consumption of kim-chi, stewed octupus, rice wine, and other authentic expressions of Korean cuisine.

The Hoengdong Coop was just one of the many good food stories that Korea had to tell, stories that always humble the so-called “international expert”. It turns out that Hoengdong is the Bethlehem of Korea’s organic food movement, a kind of Emmaus, Pennsylvania where the organic flag was planted in 1976. The “seedpods,” as the Koreans like to call them, sprouted and today Hoengdong has a produce distribution facility that manages $2.5 million in annual organic sales to consumer coops scattered across the country. On the day of our visit, the large walk-in cooler was brimming with cabbage, potatoes, and onions. A pick-up truck overflowing with four feet long sesame plants was being unloaded by three teenage boys. Scattered about the warehouse floor were dozens of large boxes holding beautiful brown chestnuts, which, lacking appropriate machinery, had all been hand-shucked by the four elderly women I had just seen sitting beneath a roadside tree. A combination of high-quality facilities and labor-intensive village style agricultural practices were the order of the day.

Organic farmers and the coop are not isolated expressions of Korean longing for sustainability and self-reliance. They are part of a larger and well-planned scheme that combines food safety, food security, and comprehensive rural development.  Youth and adult education programs that build food awareness and the next generation of organic farmers, a testing and research laboratory that promotes bio-diversity and soil health, and a new community library and retail food coop were all part of an integrated development approach that make Hoengdong a very attractive and livable place. In terms of social engineering it appeared to mirror the biological diversity of nearby rice paddies where, according Hoengdong’s ag lab, 5,668 different species of microorganisms and over 2,000 separate plant varieties contribute to the paddies’ sustainability.

The most striking visual feature of Korea, whether you are in the vibrant metropolis of Seoul or remote country villages, was the way that every square inch of undeveloped land was planted in food crops. Arable land is precious in Korea, and the rugged landscape is stingy with its flat land. But the driving force behind the country’s roadside-to-roadside planting mania is the people’s near obsession with food security. World War Two and the Korean Conflict (“conflict” being a bit of a euphemism after most of the country had been bombed back into the Stone Age) are not distant memories. They wrought poverty, despair, and a ferocious hunger. And even though Korea imports most of its food today, it treasures what its farmers produce.  

But it’s not just what Koreans see when they look in their rearview mirror that scares them. As they look down the road they see agricultural giants like the U.S. and China breathing down their neck with cheap food, and a global food crisis that could one day mean no food. As Dr. Hur put it, “the global food and health crises (obesity, diabetes, hunger) and globalization necessitate the revitalization of local economies, rural community support policies, and control of food at the national and regional levels.”

A dozen rice paddies of perhaps an acre each are arranged in a neat grid that are each set off by irrigation ditches across the small, flat valley floor. Backyards, front yards, and side yards, from a house’s outside walls to fence lines and roadbeds, are planted in vegetables. And the hillsides, right up to a grade so steep that farmworkers may have to don climbing gear to manage them, are planted in ginseng, a valuable cash crop. As this “international food expert’s” journal attests, “every drop of food security is wrung from this lush landscape which gives up it nutrients willingly to communities that respect their centuries old compact with the land. All the parts make sense and fit together with no leftover pieces; functional, not fanciful; utilitarian, not utopian; beauty is not deliberately sought, it’s simply what’s achieved when harmony exists.”

In Seoul we met with Bae Ok Byung, head of Korea’s school food network. Just as farming is important to Koreans so are their children, and unlike lesser developed nations such as the United States, school lunch is universally available and free to every Korean school child. Ms. Bae’s group stays on top of both the national government which funds and gives tacit approval for school lunch, but most of advocacy work is at the provincial level which exercises its own discretion over how it implements the national mandate. Not only is food quality and nutrient content part of the network’s ongoing oversight, so is the push to get local and organic food into the school kitchens. Food education is also one of their interests, and Ms. Bae was very proud to tell me that over 200 public schools in Seoul alone had school gardens. Good practice is supported by good policy, and just to maintain its leadership in the food policy arena, the mayor of the City of Seoul will be announcing the Seoul Food Strategy in mid-October.

But as Dr. Hur alluded to, the global beast is huffing and puffing at Korea’s door. How severe the threat was became readily apparent to me during an interview with Kwan Sok Lee, chairman of the Korean Peasant League that had adamantly opposed the Korea and U.S. Free Trade Agreement. The Peasant League in concert with trade unions, students, and millions of Koreans fought ferociously, sometimes violently, to keep out American beef and to protect Korea’s farmers – 100,000 Korean rice farmers would have gone out of business if rice had been allowed into the agreement. As the chairman put it, “we’re more concerned with food sovereignty than we are with food security,” meaning trade agreements could potentially wipe out the country’s entire agricultural base.

The Kor/US FTA is now a fact – though Korea won on rice, it lost on beef and 1,541 other agricultural items. But the bigger threat in the opinion of Chairman Lee is the pending Korea and China FTA. Vast, government subsidized farms, cheap labor, and proximity give China the ability to swamp Korean agriculture. Already 70 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables purchased in Korea are of Chinese origin. The League is utterly opposed to this FTA as it is to all FTAs, and is prevailing upon the Korean government to protect farmers with subsidies and to do more to purchase Korean-grown food. With a Korean presidential election coming up in December, the League promises to make things very interesting.

The food struggles in Korea are like everywhere else – globalization undermining food sovereignty, food insecurity and health challenges, decline in farmers and an emptying out of the countryside. Yet, the Koreans are pursuing robust, grass-roots efforts to make food sovereignty (and security) top national policy priorities. At the same time, others are demonstrating smart rural development strategies and sound nutrition and local food practices. The challenges are immense, but with a united front on the part of those who want a vibrant national food system, Korea could become a model for the world.

Fall Appearances 2012 (revised)

Sept. 7 – 12: South Korea – International Local Food Conference in Chungnam Province; Sept. 10 Presentation to the Chungnam Development Institute; Sept. 11 Presentation to the National School Food Movement. For more information contact Hur Nam-Hyuk at hurnh@naver.com.

Sept. 13 – Edmonton, Canada – 12:00 noon – Presentation to City Officials regarding an Edmonton Food Policy Council at art gallery; community presentation at art gallery. For more information contact Jonathan McNeice at jonathan.McNeice@emonton.ca.

Sept. 18 – New York City – Harvest Home Farmers’ Market fundraiser at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Restaurant with Chef Marcus Samuelson. For more information and tickets go to www.harvesthomefm.org.

Sept. 19 – New York City – Queens College – Lecture and campus wide talk – 12:15. For more information contact Fern Estrow at fern.estrow@qc.cuny.edu.

Sept. 20 – New York City – Manhattan Borough President’s Office – 12:00 to 1:30 – Presentation to the Food System Network of New York City. For more information contact Caitlin Salemi at caitlin@foodsystemsnyc.org.

October 9 – Waterbury, Connecticut – Food Advocacy Symposium at the University of Connecticut Waterbury campus – 11:00 to 4:00. Presentation by Mark Winne. For more information contact Susan Pronovost at susan.pronovost@snet.net.

October 10 – Williams College – Williamstown, Massachusetts – campus lecture. For more information contact Sarah S. Gardner at sara.s.gardner@williams.edu.

October 15 – Utica, New York. Presentation to City of Utica public officials and community stakeholders regarding food policy councils – 11 to 1:00. For more information contact Debra Richardson at drichardson@rcil.com.

October 16 & 17 – Binghamton, New York – Presentations at the NYS Healthy Farms Healthy People’s Conference – Riverwalk Hotel and Conference Center, Binghamton. For more information contact Jack Salo at jsalo@rhnscny.org.

October 17 – Hamilton College – Clinton, New York. Campus and community lecture. For more information contact Franklin Sciacca at fsciacca@hamilton.edu or Lauren Howe at lhowe@hamilton.edu.

November 1 & 2 – Tallahassee, Florida – Florida A&M University – Presentation at the Climate Change and Global Food Security conference. For more information contact Cynthia Hayes at sogreennetwork@comcast.net.

Academics and Activists Unite!

When the tomatoes ripen in such numbers I know it’s time to can, and when the delirious scent of basil is so redolent I know it’s time to pesto, I know that school is just around the corner.  Whether these seasonal signals were for me, my children, or the neighbors’ kids, they send an unmistakable message that summer’s doldrums will soon be shaken loose by nature’s ripenings and cracking textbooks. The reunion of nature, experience, and classroom learning is about to begin.
 
Though not by nature a modest man, I have tried to avoid self-promotion hoping instead that my words and experience will rise above the marketing world’s dissembling din. But when one reviewer seems to understand me better than I understand myself — and says some very nice things along the way — I just can’t help but share the news, especially when college faculty are dutifully assigning the fall’s semester readings. In a recent Amazon.com review of Closing the Food Gap, university professor Daniel Hicks draws a distinction between academics like himself and activists like me, suggesting, I believe, that there is much we can learn from each other — a marriage, as it were, of nature, scholarship, and hands-in-the dirt experience. His review follows. 
 
5.0 out of 5 stars Good food — but for whom?,August 6, 2012


By 
Daniel Hicks – See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)   

 

This review is from: Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Paperback)

I’m an academic, and read this book in part for possible use in a class that I teach on philosophy and the food system. Criticisms of the food system are very popular these days, and my current (and very incomplete) list of food books is pushing a couple hundred. Winne’s book stands out from this crowd in two respects: his perspective as an activist rather than an academic, and his attention to aspects of the food system and the “food movement” that are often overlooked.

As Winne notes near the beginning, he’s a college-educated white man, but his working life has been spent as professional activist and organizer for food access in impoverished urban communities around the US. Much of the book is stories from either his own experience — especially in Hartford, Connecticut — or from other activists and organizers. His tone is generally thoughtful, and he stops occasionally to reflect on what succeeded and what failed in these efforts. In a few places — though only a few — he steps back even more, giving his take on the fundamental problems with our food system. But he’s not an academic, and he’s not offering an academic analysis. In my class, I can see using his book (or a few of the best chapters of it; more below) in tandem with more theoretical readings: How well does this theory fit with Winne’s experiences? How useful would it be for what he’s trying to accomplish? In this respect, Winne’s book is similar to Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. However, where Estabrook is a journalist writing about activists, Winne is an activist writing about himself.

Winne offers us an especially keen view of the class dynamics of the food system and the movement that aims to change it. The food movement, especially in the wake of Michael Pollan’s three books on food (The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) and the documentary Food Inc., has emphasized artisan and home production, organic/natural practices, and the aesthetics of food. However, over the past thirty-five years, supermarkets have followed their white, middle-class customers from cities to suburbs and politicians have dismantled the economic supports that helped impoverished households maintain food security. Urban farmer’s markets and community gardens may be well intentioned, but aren’t an adequate replacement for a familiar grocery store and food stamps.

Finally, I found four chapters to be especially thought-provoking — and I’ve been thinking about food a lot over the past two years, so that’s saying something! Chapters three and four deal with urban farmer’s markets and food banks. Winne is skeptical about farmer’s markets to address food security, since food insecure households can’t afford to pay the premiums small farmers need to stay in business. Food banks do a much better job providing “emergency” food, but are dependent on wealthy and powerful benefactors and consequently are hesitant to pose deep criticisms of the food system. Chapter five discusses the economics and geography of urban grocery stores, including the best discussion of public transit systems and food deserts that I’ve come across. And the first half of chapter seven looks at the obesity epidemic, portraying the food industry as a predator of vulnerable consumers in the urban jungle.

Fat or Fiction?

A Review of Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice and the Limits of Capitalism by Julie Guthman 

Food issue books have become as prevalent as Thai restaurants these days. One publishing house lists 32 titles devoted to the category of “Food and Culture” alone while one professor I know has counted well over 200. So the explosion of enthusiasm for all things gustatory begs the question, “Do we need yet another book?” The answer seems to be “yes,” especially when UC Davis Assistant Professor Julie Guthman ably dissects America’s attitudes toward our number one public health menace, obesity.

Be prepared, however, to have your cherished obesity assumptions sliced and diced.

Replenish “food deserts” (communities underserved by supermarkets) with gardens and farmers’ markets and fill our schools with tons of fresh fruits and vegetables. Wrong, says Guthman, who spares no ammunition on elitist “foodies” and the Bay Area Food Mafia. “The alternative food movement is the problem,” she claims, “not only in its inability to seriously challenge the cheap food movement, but also in its production of self-satisfied customers who believe that…good food is enough.”

Eliminate the commodity crop subsidies that have made us sick. Our long and complicated farm policy history, contends Guthman, has many causes and alternative explanations that have more merit than the “Pollanesque” logic connecting high fructose corn syrup, “cheap” calories, and federal farm policies.

More physical activity must be encouraged. Guthman retaliates against America’s obsession with working out and thinness by labeling it “healthism,” which under her peevish academic glare is rendered an illness rather than a healthy behavior. Not only does healthism reek of “self-absorption,” says Guthman, it leads to attitudes that discriminate against fat people.

Having recently spent three hours on a plane trapped in the middle seat between two obese gentlemen, I will confess to occasional spasms of prejudice against persons of weight. But Guthman made me feel guilty enough to conceal my comparatively svelte 61-year-old form – purchased with a 4-mile-a-day run and 8 daily servings of fruits and vegetables – in baggy sweat clothes.

Weighing In’s more significant shortcoming is not so much the author’s attack on the attitudes of the too thin, too beautiful, and too smart – one that we can all sympathize with from time to time – but with a distinct sense that Guthman is using this book to work through some of her own food issues. Though she claims to be an “annoying San Francisco Bay Area foodie,” she acknowledges early on that she is the product of an orthorexic father, e.g. a childhood that only permitted ice cream once a year, and a personal weight that fluctuates “between both ends of the ‘overweight’ category.” These experiences may account for the book’s decided tendency to lean more on opinion than research.

Given her attack on all things “foodie,” one could pigeonhole Guthman as one of those Ph.D. toadies that the food industry trots out from time to time to defend itself from healthy food advocates. Unfortunately, the reader must wade through many chapters of weedy academic prose before pronouncing her innocent of being a corporate shill. In what I would categorize as her most compelling argument, she makes her anti-capitalist credentials clear by positing a parallel between cheap food, low wages, degraded working conditions, and obesity. Wal-Mart, in other words, not only causes obesity, it profits from it.

For those of us who have labored long and hard to build a new food system out of the shell of the old, it will be hard to digest Guthman’s scathing critique. But the irritating grit of academic reason, as maddening as it sometimes is, can also sharpen our analysis.

Summer and Fall 2012 Appearances

June 7 – Rochester, NY – All day training for people interested in local food policy councils throughout New York state. Site: Monroe County Cooperative Extension office. Sponsored by NOFA-NY and the Hunger Action Network of New York State. For more information contact Kate Mendenhall at kate@nofany.org.

June 27 – Chicago, IL – 9:00 AM – Presentation by Mark Winne to the University of Chicago Teacher Institute “Feeding the World: Challenges to Achieving Food Security.” For more information contact Jamie Bender at jbender@uchicago.edu.

July 17 (tentative) – Wisconsin (site to be determined) – workshop on the development of state food policy councils. For more information contact Tracey Mofle at the University of Wisconsin/Barron County campus.

August 3 – 5 – Burlington, VT – Farm to Cafeteria Conference – workshop presentation on food policy councils and farm to school initiatives. For more information go to www.farmtocafeteriaconference.org.

October 9 – Waterbury, CT - Brass City Harvest is sponsoring “A Day with Mark Winne” that will include workshops and lectures in association with the University of Connecticut Waterbury campus. For more information contact Susan Pronovost at susan.pronovost@snet.net.

MORE TO FOLLOW!!!

 

 

 

 

Living On Earth episode: “Food Deserts: A Mirage or Reality?”

A recent article questions whether food deserts – areas with minimal access to fresh fruits and vegetables – are as pervasive as some policymakers claimed. We recap a 2009 story about an area of Brooklyn where locals grow their own vegetables due to a lack of supermarkets, then host Bruce Gellerman updates talks with food writer and activist Mark Winne to update that story.

Click here to listen to the show

Guerrilla Gardeners in USA Today

USA Today’s spring supplement features a great spread on guerrilla gardening by reporter Matt Villano.

Mark Winne…says that after years of reporting, he concluded that guerrilla gardening is a way for people to feel like they’re taking control of their lives and their communities. “It’s simple, but it’s true: Guerrilla gardening is just making the most of the resources and tools at hand to give your community what it needs.”

Read more by downloading this file: Guerrilla_Villano.pdf

 

Food Rebels Down Under

Imagine living on an island, albeit a big one, but an island nevertheless where almost everything you need has to travel across vast oceans. You can grow food and raise livestock, but most of the country is desert, and the arable land is merely a thin coastal strip. Water is limited and the one percent of the agricultural land that is irrigated produces 25 percent of the country's food.

Millions of people compete for the same space. They pave over the prime agricultural soil, carve out quarter-acre house lots, and build "middle-class" homes that sell for $600,000 each. Droughts and wildfires alternate with floods and typhoons while the billions of people who inhabit your far northern flank covet your land and agricultural skills with a hungry lust.

Welcome to Australia.

I was invited to Melbourne – a delightful modern metropolis with a dazzling array of eclectic architecture – to render what meager wisdom I had on the subject of promoting local food security and national food sovereignty. A public lecture sponsored by a national philanthropy, a seminar at a city university, and a workshop for the State of Victoria Health Department, were my venues. The audiences were a composite of food system activists not atypical to the United States – academics, young urban food warriors, and mid-level public service professionals. Each event had its own air of excitement, leavened perhaps by a sense of anticipation and joy that playfully marks food audiences everywhere.

My message? You have a choice between the global industrial food system and a new, emerging food system that is undergirded by a respect for locality, sustainability, and equity. The only choice you don't have is to not choose. You can be an obedient food consumer and eat what they hand out, or you can muscle up some moxie and set the table to your own specifications. What else could a "can do" Yankee say to a country which appears to be as dominated by Big Food and the global marketplace as the U.S?

The Aussies were ready to listen. The most recent drought had been so bad that the University of Melbourne had sent out teams of mental health professionals to help psychologically distressed farmers. As if incurring the wrath of God, Australia's unrelenting dryness was soon followed by floods that caused $800 million in agricultural damage in New South Wales alone. A just-released government report revealed that 61% of Australian adults were obese or overweight (one in four high school students were obese). Mining and energy interests, housing development, and countries as far away as Qatar were devouring Oz farmland. And if farmers weren't taking enough hits, the nation's duopolistic supermarket giants, Coles and Woolworths, were, according to numerous analyses, using "predatory practices" to drive down farm prices.

But when the Australians are ready to change they get all their oars in the water at the same time. The Labor government headed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard was working on the development of a national food plan, and the State of Victoria Health Department had announced a commitment of millions of dollars for the development of numerous local health plans that included the development of 12 local food policy councils. The latter effort was labeled by the Herald Sun, Australia's largest daily newspaper, as a "massive, multi-million-dollar pilot project for councils (larger municipal jurisdictions) to come up with local food policies."

The National Food Plan is, in the words of National Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig, a response to the fact that Australia has "no overarching food policy framework." If you live in Canada, the U.S. or the United Kingdom, that charge will sound familiar. Clearly we would all benefit from an "integration of the whole food supply chain from paddock to plate."

Australia's Green Party, though in a distinctly minority position, has vigorously stated that it wants food policies that promote "food sovereignty, sustainability, and ensure that the social conditions of the people who produce food are just and fair, and promote equal access to fresh, affordable food." They fervently attack the country's current policies that undermine food sovereignty by valuing short term mining and gas extraction over agricultural land and water. These policies, according to the Greens, devalue local food systems and communities, and sustain a distorted domestic food market dominated by a handful of large corps. Hmmm. Where have I heard these arguments before?

As a sign of where local food policy might be headed, I checked in with Cultivating Community, a 17-staff, not-for-profit located in Melbourne. They develop edible classrooms, start community gardens, organize composting and recycling projects, and conduct "food politics advocacy." Their purpose is "to create a fair, secure and resilient food future." Michael Gourlay, the recently appointed executive director, told me that since he was new to the community food field, he had already read my books (now being actively distributed in Australia) to prepare him for the job. I suspect he'll go far.

Another organization key to Australia's food rebellion is the Food Alliance, a kind of academic and government hybrid that was established to "analyze and advocate for evidence-informed politics and regulatory reform that enable food security and healthy eating in the [State of] Victorian Population." While not language that makes me grab my pitchfork and storm the barricades, it does represent the kind of initiative that can build the necessary bridges between research, change agents, and government. Their strategic plan is painstakingly outlined and bulleted, and every word shows evidence of hours of deep meditation, but it does vibrate with a restrained urgency that shows promise of promoting long-term food system change.

The threats to Australia's food security are both internal and external. The symptoms are the same as those in every other industrialized nation. And the Aussies are taking a good long look in the mirror for the answers as they cultivate their inner food rebel.