Mark Winne's Blog, page 3

West Virginia—When Teaspoons Are Not Enough

Almost Heaven, West Virginia

Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

Life is old there, older than the trees

Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country roads.

Williamson, West Virginia Coal House — 65 tons of coal!

No one has done more to shape West Virginia’s mythology than the late John Denver. Today, the state’s “country roads” that the wide-grinned troubadour may have ambled down are largely interstates paid for by the American taxpayer and leveraged by the late Senator Robert C. Byrd, a master in his day of bringing home the bacon. To cruise at 65 miles per hour along one of these endlessly curving expanses of concrete and pavement, all of which seem to bear the senator’s name, is a rare driving experience. The sensation is one of maneuvering a Jetson’s TV aerocar from one mountainside to the next, soaring across precipitously steep gorges and hollows (pronounced “hollas” in these parts). Swerving from right to left and immediately back again, the chance to enjoy “almost heaven[ly]” scenery is sometimes denied by the concentration required to set up the next turn.

But the bacon of days gone by has lost its sizzle; in fact, past decades have not been kind to West Virginians. As the only state to lose a significant number of people in last US Census, those “country roads” are not taking their inhabitants “home.” Too frequently, they are conveying them out of state in search of more rewarding opportunities. Yes, the twisting by-ways bring in tourists who inhale the state’s breathtaking beauty and imbibe a bourgeoning outdoor recreation scene, but they also transport people in from far away who have succumbed to drug addiction and seek recovery in a place known as the epicenter of the nation’s opioid crisis. Just as the Sackler family is paying out billions for hooking millions on opioids, the crisis has spawned a large sub-industry of treatment and recovery services. As a result, John Denver’s “mountain mama” is not the rich warbling voice of the coal miner’s daughter, but the plaintive chorus of thousands of West Virginia grandmas forced into a second round of parenting. Called by their big hearts and a sober sense of duty, grandparents back in the hollas are caring for the children of their children—the victims of drugs, the drug industry, and a state economy that still leans on coal and chemicals the way a town drunk leans on a lamppost.

One such mama was the 75-year-old woman I met at a Williamson community forum sponsored by Facing Hunger Food Bank. She told the 20 or so of us gathered in a non-descript town building that she’s a retired school teacher now forced to work at Walmart to raise her three grandchildren because their mother was lost to drugs. “It’s an epidemic out there!” she told the group, noting that with these additional responsibilities, “I can’t make ends meet because the foster care support is not enough.”

I found myself in Williamson, the county seat of Mingo County which shares a rugged border with eastern Kentucky, as one of many destinations on my 2023 summer road trip. The purposes of subjecting myself to nearly 5,000 miles of often-grueling driving was to see East Coast friends and families, take a break from New Mexico’s heat and drought, and immerse myself once again in my favorite question—what and who is responsible for the crucifixion of so many American communities, and what’s required to nurture their resurrection.

My map showed that it would be hard for me to miss West Virginia. After a consultation with Dr. Joshua Lohnes, who oversees the Food Justice Lab at West Virginia University and is part of a team that directs the state’s SNAP-ED initiative, I was told that the state’s southwestern Appalachian region has all the fuel I need to fire my curiosity. “These are resource-extraction (coal mining) communities where people feel disempowered by structural economic forces,” he told me, “It’s where people are pushing through those challenges, surviving, and doing what they can do.”

The Williamson visit confirmed Josh’s assessment and then some. A drive through the town takes you by its one and only attraction: the world’s biggest (and maybe only) building made entirely of bituminous coal—65 tons of it. Embodied in that building is both the story of the region’s rise and former prosperity, and its decline and struggle to find a new identity. As coal mining employment declined—23,000 jobs in 2011 in West Virginia, 11,000 today—so has the population. Mingo County had over 47,000 people in the 1950s but only 23,000 in 2020. In the wake of coal’s demise and its well-paying union jobs, you’ll find a 30 percent poverty rate and, as one indication of the region’s overall poor physical health, an obesity rate of 38.5 percent and a 15 percent diabetes rates, among the highest in the nation.

The unofficial populist sentiment in these parts is that the blows to the state’s economy are the fault of Democratic administrations, singling out former-President Barack Obama and his Environmental Protection Administration for special scorn. When one round of coal mine closing notices was issued in 2014—including two shut-downs in Mingo County—a spokesperson for the West Virginia Coal Association blamed it on the “war on coal” orchestrated by President Barack Obama and the EPA. The truth of the matter is that aside from the global need to shift to cleaner and renewable sources of energy, coal’s decline is a function of the rise in natural gas and fracking, the decline in coal demand, especially as coal-fired power stations shut down, and the mechanization of coal mining methods—more mountaintop removal and open-pit mines mean fewer jobs.

The truth, however, is the first casualty for the miner who’s just been handed a pink-slip, and all he has to feed his family with are food stamps. With little doubt, this is why Barack Obama received only 8 percent of Mingo County’s vote in 2008, losing not only to McCain, but also to a convicted felon who ran as a write-in candidate. Overall, the fortunes of Democratic presidential candidates have tracked the coal industry’s decline. Bill Clinton took 52 percent of the West Virginia vote in 1996 compared to Joe Biden’s 30 percent showing against Trump’s 68 percent in 2020.

The voices in the Williamson community center echoed both the heartbreak and the hope of their economic malaise. When I read out loud the following statement from the Town of Williamson home page: “Williamson could have easily resigned itself to be a casualty of the decline in the industry [coal] that built it. But it’s proving it’s powered by an ever-greater energy source: a hopeful community,” I asked if people had read or even knew of the statement. Even though no one had, their reactions to it were shrouded in a curtain of despair that, when pulled back, offered a few reasons for optimism.

One young man who ran a home insulation business was chagrined by the hundred-plus abandoned houses in the small town of 3,000. From his work he knew that many seniors pay high energy bills because they live in poorly insulated homes (West Virginia is second only to Florida for its high percentage of seniors who make up the population). Jarrod Dean, the director of the town’s parks and recreation department was hopeful that a new committee on abandoned properties and the promise of state development funds might alleviate both problems.

Two representatives from the county school district shared that, due to the county’s dramatic population decline, the number of county schools had consolidated down from 30 to 9, and from 9000 students to 3,500. The “good news” was that all the schools qualified for a free, USDA lunch as well as a summer meal program that was currently serving about 600 kids a day. Erik Johnson, a community liaison specialist with Facing Hunger Food Bank (Facing Hunger Foodbank) pointed out that state funds were enabling the food bank to partner with all the schools to offer a weekend backpack program that provided enough food to sustain a child through the weekend. Additionally, the food bank ran a very popular “medically indicated food box” distribution every Wednesday in Williamson that customized the contents to the specific health and dietary needs of lower income seniors.

Limited broadband coverage and low literacy levels were cited as barriers to effective communication and community organizing. Lack of public transportation and the region’s notoriously winding roads reinforced the isolation of many communities and hindered the distribution of emergency food. And again, opioids and their multiple individual and community impacts were powerful undercurrents of everyday life.

Drug users and those in recovery—a visible presence about town—fell into one of three locally designated categories: “backpackers, walkers, or zombies,” referring to those who were either just arriving, in a recovery program, or totally zonked out. This is not the grinning “stoner” culture of my marijuana-using, Jerry Garcia blasting from the dorm room college days; this is humanity crippled, trapped in strands of rusty barbed-wire, crawling down a sidewalk like an injured cat seeking only a quiet place to die. This is where the cops carry naloxone, the antidote that can jumpstart the breathing of someone who has overdosed on opioids. It’s a place only two hours from Huntington, a community of 50,000 people which recorded 26 drug overdoses in one four-hour stretch in 2016.

Mingo is in a co-dependent economic relationship with four health facilities—two hospitals, one drug treatment facility, and one methadone clinic (with a 15 percent diabetes rate, drug treatment is not the only medical condition that sustains the region’s health care industry and hence the local economy). Drug use and its aftermath also send out seismic shock waves of collateral damage. Participants in our Williamson forum complained about the noise and chaos emanating constantly from subsidized apartments that are rented out to those in recovery. One woman in our group came to tears when she told us she had been adopted by her grandparents because her mother was opioid addicted. She said the emotional pain was exacerbated by the lack of family reunification services that might promote long-term healing.

In spite of a flood of troubles and challenges, mountain pride and persistence still prevail. Answers loomed, action was vigorously encouraged, villains were targeted, and a kind of faith against reason that their democratic institutions could still save them was proffered. Nathan Brown, a local attorney, Mingo County commissioner, and former West Virginia delegate (the designation for elected members of the legislature’s lower house), put the matter succinctly. “We got kids here who can’t afford to eat, but meanwhile, the state has a $2 billion budget surplus!” he told the group in a barely contained rage. “If the [State of West Virginia] doesn’t invest in this southwest region over the next 10 to 15 years, it will become a drag on the state’s entire economy.” To that end, Brown recommended that the state invest in the region’s infrastructure such as broad-band and roads. “The internet is just as important as water; it should be regulated like a public utility.” He emphasized that the state must also help the region become more attractive to private investment adding, “If we were good enough for the coal industry, we gotta be good enough for any industry,” he added with just a hint of irony. But spiffing up their look requires removing the physical blight (e.g., abandoned buildings) which, in his opinion, should include threatening jail time for absentee property owners who don’t take responsibility. Second, the region needs a drug-free workforce. “Businesses won’t locate here because they can’t find healthy, able-bodied workers,” he told everyone.

Interestingly, food and farming surfaced as one recipe for local change and economic growth.  Jarrod Dean felt that agriculture could play a much larger role in diversifying the region’s economy. “We’re not even producing a small percentage of the food we eat in this state. Not only could we be developing high tech agriculture (e.g., greenhouses and hydroponics) to feed us, it could provide therapeutic and vocational opportunities for ‘second chancers’” he said, referring to those coming out of recovery and looking for work.

But the news that stirred the most attention—and kudos—was when Cyndi Kirkhart, Facing Hunger’s executive director, revealed plans to lease a 55,000 square-feet warehouse in Mingo County to distribute food to it and three adjoining counties. The warehouse will employ 15 people (a large number for one business in this region) and expedite food delivery to the area’s food pantries and other food distribution points. It will shorten the supply line from Facing Hunger’s current location in Huntington, a two-hour drive that is longer when winter turns the roads treacherous. Some of the new warehouse hires may be opioid users and/or convicted felons, both of which Facing Hunger has experience working with in job training situations.

It was generally known in the region and from sources I contacted in the state that Cyndi has taken the food bank in bold and innovative directions since she assumed the helm nine years ago. As a coal miner’s daughter herself, and with a psychology degree that led to work with the area’s most vulnerable adolescents, she hasn’t been afraid to make Facing Hunger a serious force for systemic change. Covering an unusual territory that serves 17 counties across three states (West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky), Facing Hunger sits at the center of Appalachia’s multiple maelstroms, including the economic decline that has pushed up demand for food but also made public and private resources harder to come by. “I’m paying for food now that we used to receive as donations,” Cyndi noted.

Against one of the most challenging socio-economic backdrops in the country, Cyndi and her staff are hoping to mobilize the community to address the underlying conditions of their hardships. “No more ramen!” is one mantra Cyndi is using to upgrade the nutritional quality of Facing Hunger’s offerings. Besides the medically indicated food box program, the food bank works with farmers, non-profit organizations, and multiple state agencies to stock and distribute as much locally produced and healthy food as possible. This includes a CSA program for seniors, and using the new warehouse in Mingo County to store area farmers’ produce, even if that food is not destined for food bank recipients.

When it comes to regional economic development, she sees numerous pathways starting with the most basic: “If people aren’t hungry, then they are more hopeful,” she said. But ever pragmatic, she convinced Senator Joe Manchin to bring home a slice of bacon for the hardest-hit part of his state. As a result, $1.5 million in Federal funds will be available to make the new warehouse facility operational, which both Cyndi and others see as a significant economic development tool.

But the most aggressive stance that Facing Hunger is taking is directed at the state’s policy makers. Meetings like the one she sponsored for me in Williamson are part of a larger regional organizing strategy that staffer Erik Johnson sees as a way to pry much needed resources out of state politicians. With 250-member food pantries in Facing Hunger’s region, there’s potential to galvanize the hurt and hopelessness of thousands of food recipients into a cacophony of demanding voices. Erik told me that, “Facing Hunger and its partners hope to bring 1,000 people to the state legislature during Hunger Day in January.” The plan is to shift the thinking of unresponsive conservative politicians, long the sycophants of the state’s coal and chemical industries, to meet people’s basic needs, diversify the economy, and make food and farming a central policy focus. As Cyndi told those at the Williamson forum, “We can’t be asking for teaspoons of assistance anymore when we need buckets of resources!”

Having not experienced many food banks that played such a dominant economic and community development role, I brought up Facing Hunger’s actions with West Virginia University’s Josh Lohnes. He said the states two food banks—the other one being Mountaineer Food Bank—are the biggest food hubs in the state. That makes them well-suited to not only address food insecurity but also assist local growers and other small and locally owned food businesses. In a similar vein, Josh has been exploring how nearly $1 billion in Federal food assistance (e.g., SNAP, WIC) that West Virginia receives annually could better leverage economic development in the food and agriculture sector. “Most of that money is now going to Walmart, Kroger’s, and Dollar General; over half of the state’s $500 million in SNAP dollars are going to big box stores. The impact of directing large amounts of those food purchases to the local food economy, including farmers and locally owned food businesses, could be immense.”

Strengthening the link between Federal food money and a state’s broader economic needs has certainly gained traction over the years nationally. The steady increase in USDA funding that incentivizes under-resourced people to buy and eat locally produced food, whether from schools, farmers’ markets, food hubs, or other food outlets, represents a significant—and welcomed—national policy shift. But Federal funds take on even greater meaning in West Virginia where, because of comparably high nutritional needs and low state resources, Federal food assistance represents about 15 percent of the state’s total budget. By contrast, if New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer secured a $1.5 million grant for some local project in his home state, the news would be greeted as a definite snoozer. When it’s done by Senator Manchin for Mingo County, the high school band suits up for a parade. “Because of the low investment in our communities by the state,” said Josh, “Federal money has a disproportionately greater impact.”

The same can be said for private philanthropic aide, another place where West Virginia comes up short. Having relatively few large foundations, there are not many places local food activists can turn for support other than local government, which can barely pay its own bills (Josh tells me about a food plan he worked on for a poor, rural county which desperately needed a mobile food pantry to reach isolated families. There was no way the county could help because their sheriff was in desperate need of a new car).

One notable exception, however, is the Pittsburgh-based Benedum Foundation which has distributed over half-a-billion dollars to West Virginia since World War Two. Recognizing, as others I spoke to did, the central role that food can play in so many facets of community life, the Benedum Foundation has targeted charitable food and farm projects with their giving. Signifying the priority they place on a food system model, their 2020 annual report was titled “Sowing the Seeds of Food Security” 2020-Annual-Report-Pandemic-Response.pdf (benedum.org)and highlighted numerous innovative food assistance and food development grantees. A few lines from that report are worth highlighting:

In 2006, the Benedum Foundation launched a decade-long strategy around the agricultural economy in West Virginia. This report reflects on that work, showing us all that food is a source of healing, an opportunity to train people in new skills, a connection to nature, and a way to give back to one’s community. Food affects every aspect of our lives. From heirloom vegetables… to Appalachian culture. It serves as an important economic connection between our urban and rural communities….Economic recovery depends on creating a viable support network for our food producers and providing families and children with access to the nutritious food they grow.

The industries that make up West Virginia’s glory days have seen better days, but their legacies of environmental degradation, hunger, poverty, and an Appalachian diaspora still pulse through the state’s veins. In spite of the fact that no one read the Williamson website’s paean to hope, the sons and daughters of the coal miners I met in Mingo County are making one hell of a goal-line stand. And if their state’s leaders drove with their eyes on the road ahead rather than on the rearview mirror, they would see the virtues of diversification, investing relentlessly—as in buckets, not teaspoons—in places struggling to remain alive, and roll out the red welcome carpet to young people. Leadership’s vision for the future should encompass a food and farm focus, not only because it meets today’s nutrition and economic needs, but because it presents a healthy and positive glow that can attract a new generation of bright, eager, and innovative minds to a state that is in sore need of young hearts and strong hands.

As the West Virginia portion of my 2023 Summer Road Trip continues, we’ll drive east over 125 miles of endless switchbacks—only 77 miles as the mountain bluebird flies—to Fayette County, West Virginia to see what a bright and shining future might look like. Stay tuned for Part Two!

Laredo Shows the Way to a Mending Wall

…Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost

Laredo, Texas is one of the more unique cities I have visited. Despite the fact that the Urban Dictionary defines the name as “a place you should leave,” or the weird YouTube video of a faux country cowboy singer sucking as much sentimentality out of its three syllables as he can, Laredo is a fast growing, Rio Grande flowing, border boogeying kind of place.

Celebrating the 268th year of its founding, Laredo is drenched in a rich Spanish/Mexican/US history about which most Americans are mostly clueless. That ignorance, when combined with its border location directly across the river from its Mexican sister city, Nuevo Laredo, sometimes turns this part of the world into a cauldron, to which the witches of the right add ingredients like eye of Newt, toe of Trump, and gall of Green. This venomous stew is then served up to the American public to heighten their fears. With their toil and trouble sown, the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert, co-pilot with Rep. Margorie Taylor Greene of the Spaceship Looney-Tune, pronounced “President Biden’s negligence of duty has resulted in the surrender of operational control of the border to the complete and total control of foreign criminal cartels putting the lives of American citizens in jeopardy.” Heady stuff indeed, especially if any of it was true.

Without considering the source of this mischief, I too became anxious. Going to Laredo this past May for the second time in five years to work with the Laredo Food Policy Council, I wasn’t sure whether to have my bullet-proof vest dry-cleaned to take with me. With the expiration of the Trump perversion of Title 42, the news media projected that hordes of desperate immigrants would be flooding the “poorly protected” border. To the contrary, I arrived in Laredo to a scene of utter tranquility where even the Border Patrol looked bored. The only thing I was assaulted by was my Verizon international calling plan that hit me with an extra $10 a day charge, falsely insisting that I was in Mexico even though my hotel was a good 100 yards inside Texas.

When I asked Laredo City Councilwoman Melissa Cigarroa, a staunch anti-wall advocate, why there wasn’t more visible commotion, she immediately called the Republican assertions of chaos at the border “nonsense,” then offered that it was part of a Trump-inspired narrative that “Laredo is a dangerous place filled with dirty migrants crossing at will.” Viviana Frank-Franco, born in Mexico and a co-founder of both the Laredo Food Policy Council and the architecture firm Able City, was equally astonished when I asked her if the two-day food policy council conference might be cancelled. She promptly replied that “nothing is wrong; everything is quiet; it’s all a bunch of hype.”

The Border, NAFTA, and Many Trucks

Once a sleepy Texas town with a population in the tens of thousands, Laredo has exploded to about 270,000 today due to what is now the largest inland port in America annually channeling $227 billion in trade between Mexico and the U.S. Expected to climb well past 300,000 people over the next ten years, Laredo is coming to terms with the upside and downside of its growth as well as the all-pervasive border security industrial complex. Its binational status and vibrant cultural heritage offer endless life-enhancing possibilities, while its extreme climate issues like deep drought and withering heat (it’s 108 F. in Laredo as I’m writing this in late June) may alter life for the worse.

In order to make Laredo an inland port—a product of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—a multi-lane highway and bridge were constructed connecting Nuevo Laredo, Mexico to Laredo, Texas. Now known as Interstate 35, this transportation network, along with rail lines, conveys thousands of trucks a day right through the heart of the city.

Free-trade, as they say, is only “free” for the private companies that benefit from government subsidies, but very costly for those who are smack-dab in the path of its development. The massive infrastructure required to build the port blew away the homes of 390 Laredo residents who had the poor fortune of living in the way of “progress.” The belching diesels and other trade traffic leave a King Kong-size carbon footprint; much of the cargo passing in sight of Laredo neighborhoods is fresh produce from Mexican fields, none of which is available to the people who live there; and the border security with its lights, gates, and armed keepers suggest Checkpoint Charlie in the Cold War-divided city of Berlin where the U.S. faced off against the Soviet Union, not the friendly nation of Mexico.  This present-day reality stands in stark contrast to what Frank recalls when she would cross the border frequently fifty years ago as a child: “We’d refer to it as ‘going to the other side.’ There was one border guard on the bridge who you smiled at and waved to.”

The Emerging Food System

In contrast to this rough and tumble economic growth, Laredo is progressively and thoughtfully nurturing a robust and more just food system, much-needed in light of the city’s high poverty rate (25 percent) and distressing diet-related health numbers. Set against its bustling inland port, Laredo is not only joining the urban trend of cool new coffee shops and boutique Japanese restaurants, it’s also raising up locally produced food as evidenced by a farmers’ market and young new farmers like Marcella Juarez; encouraging the development of micro-food businesses like @houseofbreadd which makes gluten-free/sugar-free baked goods; addressing the gaps in healthy, affordable food retail with the emerging Frontera Grocery Coop; and harnessing public policy for healthy change under the city’s dynamic, young new health department head, Dr. Richard Chamberlain.

During a panel discussion on the second day of the food policy council conference, Dr. Chamberlain, nattily attired in a sharp blue suit, highlighted by a pair of bright white fashion sneaks, shared the sobering findings of his department’s city-wide health assessment 2023 Laredo CHNA.pdf. “Thirty-two percent of the respondents reported that they were unable to eat nutritious food due to lack of money,” he noted with concern. But even more worrisome was the diet-related health data. Laredo’s obesity rate was over 45 percent with an official diabetes prevalence of 15.7 percent, figures that are far in excess of both Texas and U.S. averages. Putting a challenge to the 100 or so people gathered at the event, Dr. Chamberlain said, “These numbers are a call to action! We need a collective voice to drive policy decisions.”

Later, I spoke with Councilwoman Cigarroa, who, as a local policy maker, is in a position to address these unfortunate numbers. “I don’t know a family that’s not impacted by diabetes, which is a particularly pernicious disease,” she said, adding that her husband has been practicing cardiology in Laredo for decades and sees lots of heart disease stemming from diet. Of Mexican-American heritage herself, Ciagarroa doesn’t hesitate to blame part of the problem on “traditional Mexican food choices that are [from a health perspective] mostly terrible.” But she also makes it clear that Laredo is medically underserved, and, as the assessment points out, about 30 percent of the residents are uninsured. A large number of undocumented people are also reluctant to seek medical care when they’re sick. “I know too many men who stay at home rather than get help when they have a shooting pain in their shoulder,” she says, “They say it’s nothing to worry about; it’s just indigestion.”

Cigarroa makes it clear that at least another leg of Laredo’s health stool is physical activity. For instance, the heat can be so punishing in the warm weather months that nobody wants to go outside to exert themselves. In driving around Laredo for two days, I also noticed a severe absence of parks. She confirmed my observations, pointing out that the health assessment process heard that problem loud and clear from residents. The study’s methodology included numerous surveys that ranked the community’s concerns, including the finding that, “Over a quarter (26.0%) of community survey respondents indicated that a lack of parks and playgrounds is a problem affecting their health or the health of those with whom they live.”

Binational River Park

Binational River Park between Texas and Mexico selects Overland Partners to create design plan (archpaper.com)

A good part of the answer to the lack of safe, multi-use public space may come from the very place that generates much of the region’s tension—the border. At the beginning of 2022, the U.S. and Mexico jointly announced that they intend to create the Binational River Conservation Park that will be a 6.3-mile corridor along the Rio Grande (U.S. name)/Rio Bravo (Mexican name). As a non-walled or fenced 1,000-acre park that incorporates the river, it will join Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Multiple agencies and government levels are responsible for making this visionary project happen, but U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Kenneth Salazar (former U.S. Interior Secretary), is receiving much of the applause.

As a project with a $100 million price tag, not only is the Binational River Conservation Park cheaper than Trump’s vanity wall priced at $24 million per mile, it will incorporate over 40 projects such as a monarch butterfly garden since the park is along the monarch’s flyway, a tree farm, a job training site for various outdoor trades, and numerous cultural, educational, and recreational activities. The project “walls” nothing out; it offers a bridge of peace and humanity to all, and in the words of Frank Rotnofsky, co-founder of Able City architects and one of the project’s primary design firms, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime project for planners and architects!”

From Councilwoman Cigarroa’s perspective, the Park builds beautifully on Laredo’s number one natural asset, the Rio Grande. But as one who can barely contain her disdain for Trump and his wall—Cigarroa was the board president of the No Border Wall coalition for several years—she sees any security wall as both an environmental and security failure—it destroys natural wildlife corridors, but also, ironically, fails to keep people out. “Not only does Laredo currently not have a wall, it has the lowest illegal crossing rate anywhere along the border, including places like El Paso that do have walls,” she said. As the elected official who stands as the Park’s staunchest advocate, Cigarroa sees it as “an amazing opportunity” and that “its incumbent upon the city to make it happen.” She speaks to the culturally unifying theme of the park that brings the two cities—Laredo and Nuevo Laredo—together, and also to the larger purpose of creating a “highly visible, safer space in a beautiful setting that will draw people to it for productive activity.” In fact, with more than a little pride in her voice, Councilwoman Cigarroa thinks the Park will one day rival the world-class San Antonio River Walk, as a destination site.

With aspirational language that embraces a new world order, the Park’s website declares that:

The Binational River Park at the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo connects and celebrates our common culture on the United States and Mexico border. It reclaims our shared history, spurs the economy, promotes security on both sides of the river, and restores the ecological treasure we call home. The first of its kind, this international conservation project enhances our quality of life and serves as a prototype for border cities around the world to follow. Two nations, one community. One river. One park.

Farming

While the Park will offer a host of environmental amenities, including ones that will benefit the region’s food system writ large, it doesn’t eliminate the challenges that have left Laredo and its surrounding area virtually bereft of all forms of agriculture. The Food Policy Council and its partner organization, the Laredo Center for Urban Agriculture and Sustainability are attempting to fill that yawning void with smaller-scale farms and gardens. One of the people who is opening a path to a new agricultural future for south Texas is Marcella Juarez, who with her brother Manuel, is converting a mostly fallow 110-acre ranch known as Palo Blanco into an intensive, state-of-the heart, mixed-use food production and instructional farm. On land that has been in her family for 160 years, she hopes to make it a “foundational source of good local food for my community.”

Armed with a master degree in small scale and sustainable farming from Texas State University at San Marcos and a bright and brimming confidence that belies her twenty-something years, Marcella got the farm’s new enterprises up and running at the same time COVID-19 hit. Undeterred and with a business plan that would make your head spin, she started applying hydroponic science and technology, including adapted, solar-powered shipping container farms she designed herself, to the unforgiving, heat-heavy, drought-laden Laredo landscape. Her crops are a daring mix of microgreens, herbs, eggs, and sprouts for a marketplace that is, one might say, only in the tasting stage for such products. But the early reception has been enthusiastic at the farmers’ market, among a few cutting-edge chefs, and with customers for their own farm-to-home delivery service. With the help of the Food Policy Council, Marcella hopes to see market demand grow steadily.

Clearly, Palo Blanco is a mission-driven enterprise. Having attended a small, rural school where her father taught, and where her friends were buying food at a gas station grocery store, Marcella decided at a young age that, “everyone deserves access to fresh food, and that I wanted to use our ranch to feed my friends.” But her views extend beyond a compassion for others and a heart-felt desire to feed her community. “Hispanic people need lots of healing,” she says. “As Mexicans we’re just viewed as farmworkers, not farm owners. God willing, we’ll have more young Hispanic farmers soon.”  In addition to wanting to make her community more food secure, she also recognizes its dietary health challenges. “Food is our first medicine,” she said, and in a burst of authentic optimism, she added, “We’re starting to see health, diet, and local food coming together!”

One new development for Texans came to light during the FPC conference that could make a difference to Laredo and young farmers like Marcella all across Texas. The Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) had completed the “Texas Food Access Study,” Texas Food Desert Study (texastribune.org) which among other things recommended the establishment (passed into law in June) of a state food policy council 88(R) HB 3323 – Enrolled version (texas.gov). Count me as a skeptic when it comes to anything about Texas state government. So, when I heard about this report, I had thought for a moment that Jim Hightower had seized control of the TDA’s commissioner’s office. While some Texas food justice advocates have rightfully criticized the study as not going far enough; in the words of Addie Stone, Policy Specialist at TDA and the study’s co-author, “It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.” I would agree with both the advocates and Stone, but most importantly, it puts the State of Texas on record as acknowledging the state’s high levels of food insecurity and their need to support locally oriented forms of agriculture and food distribution. That gives advocates and local farmers a place to build from.

A little before my ride to the airport arrived, I strolled a short distance down to the banks of the Rio Grande, a river so freighted with history and ecological significance that watching its brown waters gave me momentary shivers. It occurred to me that at least a few H2O molecules now flowing beneath me had started their 1,896 miles journey to the Gulf of Mexico from the snow packs of the Rocky Mountains. There was a majesty of movement before me that existed far beyond my comprehension.

On the Texas bank, a few people baited hooks and lazily cast their fishing lines into the water, making audible plops in the still morning air. Across the river, not much further than I used to be able to throw a baseball, a half dozen Mexicans were also fishing, mirroring their American counterparts who, in all likelihood, were themselves of Mexican ancestry. Just upslope on the Mexican side, hanging languid and limp, was the Mexican flag, so large that it could cover the entire Fenway Park infield. Upriver, a railroad bridge, a symbol of binational commerce, bisected a horizon that was largely dominated by forests and the Rio Grande’s serene, narrowing perspective. It didn’t escape me that this image of peace and beauty softly unwinding before me didn’t allow for the unsavory actions of desperate people who may have been concealed in the bushes and bullrushes. Hurt begets hurt, and when all that you carry on your back are the twin lashes of poverty and violence, fear and flight are your closest companions.

There is an energy in Laredo coming from those associated with the food policy council, city hall, and numerous private sector endeavors that holds the promise of uniting two nations, partnering on shared health and environmental concerns, and equitably distributing a steadily growing prosperity. In all likelihood, success will be determined by whether the Rio Grande is viewed as a mending force and a healing gift of nature, or as a barrier that walls people off from each other and only serves to “give offense.”

Part II: Great Falls, Great Food, Great Gaps: The Tale of Paterson and Ridgewood

(This is the second in a two-part series that looks through a food lens at two New Jersey towns—Paterson and Ridgewood—that are only a few miles apart geographically, but light years apart socio-economically. Part I focused primarily on Paterson, while Part II will focus on Ridgewood, my hometown.)

“The province of the poem is the world.”  “Paterson” by William Carlos Williams

Former site of the Ridgewood Grocery Coop and the author’s first job.

Ridgewood is a town of 25,000 people located in Bergen County, whose eastern border looks across the Hudson River into northern Manhattan. Based on what I thought I knew about the place where I grew up, the expectations I had for Ridgewood were a redundance of abundance, all the perks that privilege can lay claim to, and a surfeit of greenery and scenery. I wasn’t disappointed. But beneath the enchanting display of its idyllic downtown and serene suburban neighborhoods, Ridgewood’s residents rarely rise to the level of conspicuous consumption, adhering instead to unspoken principles of tastefulness and understatement.

While wandering around Van Neste Square—as pleasing a little town green as you’ll find anywhere—I chatted with two bored police officers propped up against their patrol cars. Joking with them about when they expect the next crime wave to hit, they smirked, then cracked that they had just issued warnings to a couple who were out of compliance with the town’s dress code. With mock indignation, I asked them what they were going to do about the young man asleep on a bench at the far end of the park? “Ah, he’s not hurting anybody,” they replied.

Having just come from Paterson, where only 10 days prior to my arrival eight people were shot in one night (none fatally), I was grateful for the sense of safety the village afforded. But just to confirm I wasn’t missing a carefully concealed cauldron of murder and mayhem, I checked the crime statistics. On average, Ridgewood’s violent crime rate, according to Crimegrade.org, is 0.75 per 1,000 residents earning it an A+ safety rating from this site. Paterson, on the other hand, has 3.73 violent crimes per 1,000 earning “The Silk City” a C- rating.

“War! a poverty of resource. . . “   “Paterson”

Ridgewood citizens lost in 9/11

Though I paint a picture of a place encased in a bubble, even affluence doesn’t keep you from harm’s way.  On the park’s westside is the war memorial that records the sacrifices the townsfolk made to humanity’s bellicosities, including my generation’s big mistake. The Vietnam War took 11 Ridgewood boys, my peers, a loss I’m likely to never forgive this nation’s leaders for. And on an inconspicuous boulder wrapped in shrubbery sits a plaque memorializing 12 Ridgewood citizens whose souls left this earth on 9/11 as the Twin Towers fell to the ground.

But as the person returning to the place that’s largely responsible for who I am, I had to pay my respects to some of the sources of my food stories. Just a hop, skip, and a jump over the railroad tracks from the park is the former site of my first real job—a cooperative supermarket, the last of the pre-granola “old wave” grocery coops that once dominated Main Streets everywhere. Guess what’s there now? A Whole Foods, whose parking lot couldn’t squeeze in another BMW if it had to. As a bag boy for the site’s earlier retail food incarnation, I sent many an egg to an early death by packing the cartons in the bottom of the grocery bag.

Just over half-a-mile from Whole Foods is a Stop & Shop supermarket, where those of more modest means secure their victuals. It was formerly a Grand Union before that chain’s regional identity was forever lost to a wave of corporate raiders who picked over their acquisitions and sold them off for parts. But Ridgewood’s underlying wealth gave this store a second life, albeit under a different name. If you add in a few lesser supermarket retail brands just over the borders of neighboring towns, Ridgewood is a shimmering food oasis when compared to Paterson’s food desert status—officially determined to be the 13th (southside) and 15th (northside) worse food deserts in New Jersey.

I started motoring “uptown,” which is barely a few blocks west of downtown, where I soon passed my former elementary school. What’s notable about my tenure here in the early 1960s was the total absence of a school meal program, perhaps because we all had stay-at-home moms. This forced most students, including myself, to walk home for our so-called lunch period which was an hour in length. A 19-minute walk home, followed by 19-minutes inhaling a Fluffernutter sandwich and a glass of milk, and a 19-minute return walk gave me exactly 3 minutes of playground time before school resumed. Not that anyone was paying attention to empty calories back then, but given that I was walking or biking four miles to and from school each day—morning, noon, and afternoon—I could have been getting a steady IV drip of Fluffernutters with no ill effects.

Formerly The Corner Store and site of the author’s early adolescent candy addiction.

In a similar vein, I had to track down a former den of nutritional iniquity that was only a few blocks from my house. I found my way up North Monroe Street until I took a left onto West Glen Avenue. At that intersection is a small park where my pals and I spent countless hours throwing, hitting, or kicking whatever ball happened to be in season at the time. Our considerable exertions, to say nothing of our astounding acts of athleticism, earned us the right to indulge the treats available at the nearby Corner Store that I was now searching for. Having heard rumors of its demise I was guessing it was gone. To my delight, it was still there—barely signed, no bigger than it was in 1956, and now operating under the name of Park Wood Deli.

I entered the premises with only slightly less reverence than when I once entered Chartres Cathedral. No longer a general grocery store where my mother often sent me at the age of 12 with a one-dollar bill and signed permission note to buy her a pack of Salem cigarettes, it now sparkled with display cases of prepared take-out food. Gushingly, I told the young clerk that this was the place where I came with friends 65 years ago to buy candy, soda, and fruit pies after our ball games. We’d sit outside, against the store’s front wall and consume our “contraband” with gusto. (I can say with a limited degree of certainty that 75 percent of the ultra-processed food I’ve eaten in my lifetime was ingested against that wall). The clerk smiled, and with only a hint of condescension said, “That’s nice to hear, sir; you know what, they still do that,” pointing out the window at the same spot. And wouldn’t you know it, exiting the store just ahead of me, sheepishly clutching similarly illicit items were five boys I guessed to be about 12-years old. Single file, they lined up, backs to the wall, and slid down its smooth surface in unison until they sat on the sidewalk. Devoutly, they unwrapped candy and cakes, and popped their cans of soda.

Noting the irony of how one site of my misspent youth contrasted with my next destination, HealthBarn USA HealthBarn USA | Strong Bodies, Healthy Minds, I headed back up North Monroe for my appointment. This unique, for-profit organization, which provides a range of healthy eating and gardening programs for children and adults, had come to my attention a few months earlier. When I learned that it was located in Ridgewood, my first question was, why? In a place so affluent (the average household income is just shy of $200,000) and highly educated (78 percent of the adults have bachelor’s degrees or better), Ridgewood would be the last place (Paterson being the first) I would choose to place such a beneficial program. Though obesity and diet-related illnesses have cut a deadly swath across all income, race, and ethnic categories, rates are significantly lower for white and college-educated groups. That’s Ridgewood.

Approaching HealthBarn’s location, I drove along streets where the shade trees were so thick and lush you barely noticed the expensive homes the flora carefully concealed. I passed a natural pond with a small, cascading waterfall that ran under the road into a lower pond which turned out to be the southwest corner of Habernickel Park, the site of HealthBarn’s facility.

The public park, formerly a privately owned 10-acre horse farm, is a testament to Ridgewood’s capacity to secure much-needed open space in a town that is 99.9 percent built out. When the owners decided it was time to sell the property, the surrounding homeowners were seized by that paroxysm of fear the wealthy are heir to–a developer will carve out an obscene number of lots for a condominium complex! Quickly, the town, county, and state stepped in to calm jittery nerves by purchasing the land and its house for $7.4 million and turning it into Habernickel Park. When the dust settled in 2016, the modest house, an outbuilding, and an adjoining garden area were leased by Ridgewood to HealthBarn.

“BRIGHTen

The corner

where                  you                        are!”   “Paterson”

Upon entering the premises, I was greeted by Stacey Antine, HealthBarn’s energetic and entrepreneurial founder. Standing in the foyer, I also found myself engulfed by swirling pools of chattering children who were called either “sprouts” or “seedlings.” I learned that the horticultural designations (later I would also meet “young harvesters” and “master chefs”) were based on the child’s age, which would then channel them into various activities, rooms, and adult leaders. All in all, it was the kind of camper/counselor, controlled chaos atmosphere that I recalled enjoying during my own day camp days.

HealthBarn USA’s children’s garden. Strawberries waiting for some spring warmth.

Amidst the commotion and the occasional wayward seedling uprooted from their pot, I sat down with Stacey to hear her story. Part of her motivation to establish HealthBarn in 2005 came when her father was battling cancer. “But the quote that got me hooked,” she tells me, “was ‘this is the first generation of children who won’t live as long as their parents’ generation based on lifestyle choices.’ When I heard that, I knew I wanted to be part of the solution.” Stacey got out of corporate marketing and started graduate work at NYU to pursue nutrition sciences and become a registered dietitian. Soon, HealthBarn was hatched as a child and family food enrichment program that competes with today’s plethora of non-school activities—athletics, ballet, tuba lessons; in other words, the haute-suburban culture that spawned the term soccer mom.

In addition to hands-on food and gardening programs, HealthBarn offers a summer camp and adult culinary workshops. Between the lovely setting and high-quality programming, HealthBarn attracts people from several nearby towns. As a for-profit business, however, these programs are not inexpensive. One week of HealthBarn’s summer camp is $720, and 10, 90-minute per week summer sessions for young children are $425. Scholarships are available, and Stacey makes a strong effort to raise money to support them, but clearly HealthBarn targets an upscale market.

HealthBarn USA’s business reality prompted Stacey, in part, to establish the non-profit HealthBarn Foundation in 2015 as a way to direct healthy meal services and funding to needy people. The foundation receives donations for the scholarships that underwrite the participation by lower income children in HealthBarn USA’s programs. It also offers a variety of special school nutrition education programs (coincidentally, earlier in the day that I visited HealthBarn, Stacey had provided a nutrition program to a middle school in Paterson).

But the service that really put the foundation on the map is Healing Meals. Described as “a nutritious food gifting program made with love,” it set out to provide special meals to ill children and seniors. As Stacey put it, “I wanted to go beyond just feeding people. I wanted to give people nutritious meals.” By placing quality ingredients and the highest standards of nutrition ahead of quantity and calories, the program developed a favorable reputation throughout Bergen County. In the course of providing meals to seniors, Stacey and her team discovered malnutrition in one of Ridgewood’s affordable senior housing facilities that did not offer an on-site meal service. In cooperation with Ridgewood Social Services, Healing Meals began preparing meals for those seniors who were just barely getting by. This burnished their image further, but more importantly, it prepared HealthBarn for the big bomb that exploded across the U.S. in March 2020.

There is the story of the cholera epidemic and

the well known man who refused to bring his

team into town for fear of infecting them

but stopped beyond the river and carted his

produce in himself by wheelbarrow – to the

old market, in the Dutch style of those days.

“Paterson”

COVID-19 and the lockdown that followed set off a rapid chain of events in the food world. Under the auspices of Ridgewood Social Services, Healing Meals immediately ramped up preparation to 150 meals a day for Ridgewood’s isolated COVID-19 shut-ins. With the HealthBarn programs for children and families shut down, Stacey turned her attention to feeding those in need, a number that was growing by the day, and often under very challenging circumstances. For instance, the staff at Ridgewood’s Valley Hospital was not only struggling to keep up with the surge of patients, but its exhausted staff also needed to be fed. Ridgewood’s then-mayor, Ramon Hache, saw the opportunity to solve two problems at once, the second being the downtown restaurant community that was shut down and laying off large numbers of lower-income workers.

Mayor Hache connected with Paul Vagianos, the proprietor of one of those restaurants, Greek Like Me, and together, under the auspices of the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce, kicked off Feed the Frontline to mobilize Ridgewood’s restaurants to feed hospital workers. They needed two more things, however: a nonprofit sponsor to receive donations, and the donations themselves. Stacey’s HealthBarn Foundation solved the first problem, and the people of Ridgewood solved the second. In a one-night social event for Ridgewood Newcomers, $13,000 was raised. Over another week or so, an additional $100,000 came rolling in. Everybody was stunned by how fast Feed the Frontline came together. As Stacey told me, “Ridgewood came through like you wouldn’t believe! Pretty soon, we were operating like a well-oiled machine.”

That was only the beginning. Yes, Ridgewood had the resources and the generosity to take care of its own; its downtown restaurant scene was a destination eatery for all of Bergen County, sporting about 50 restaurants throughout the town, 38 of which were highly rated by TripAdvisors.com. But looking beyond the village’s boundaries, COVID was churning up a world of hurt. According to the Bergen County Food Security Task Force, the county had 104,000 food insecure people. How would they be fed when people were losing jobs and the food pantries were shutting down?

Hache, Vagianos, and Antine conspired to take Feed the Frontline to a higher level. Less than two months into the lockdown, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority launched their Sustain and Feed initiative as a way to meet the rising tide of hunger across the state. Stacey, who had not written a lot of government funding applications before, decided to tackle the state application that offered grants ranging in size from $100,000 to $2 million. Being cautious, she thought she’d only aim for $100,000, but then, “I said to myself I don’t think that’s enough, so what the heck, I’ll just add another zero to kick it up to $1 million. I was totally shocked when we got it!”

With a large infusion of state bucks, the Ridgewood Sustain and Feed initiative went into high gear. Vagianos and Hache brought 20 of the town’s struggling restaurants into the fold, and together they started pumping out 1,000 to 2,000 prepared meals a week that were going to needy households identified by local food pantries all across the county. Initially, the state reimbursement rate was $10 per meal, later bumped up to $12, but hardly approaching the kind of revenue that restaurants with $40 menu entrees were used to getting. Nevertheless, it kept them afloat and, perhaps more importantly, it kept their lowest-paid workers employed.

Of course, preparing the meals and identifying the recipients is one thing; delivering them safely to the right place and person is another. That’s where Ridgewood showed its stripes again. Over 400 volunteer drivers emerged from the ranks of town’s citizenry to get the food to where it was needed most. “We never had a vacant volunteer slot,” Stacey told me. “The other counties that received Sustain and Feed grants had a hard time fielding enough volunteers, so they sometimes had to pay Uber and Lyft to make deliveries. Ridgewood is not only generous; it has a great community spirit!”

As we all know, COVID-19 did not go away any time soon. The Ridgewood initiative received two more rounds of state funding totaling $3.5 million. After nearly three full years of operation, the program ended this past March; tens of thousands of the county’s most vulnerable residents received nutritious, high-quality meals prepared by the area’s best restaurants who, in turn, kept hundreds of their staff employed or partially employed.

“The fact of poverty is not a matter of argument.”   “Paterson”

When the shit hits the fan, it doesn’t matter whose raincoat you wear. As Stacey sees it, Ridgewood residents have enormous purchasing power and generally don’t get too agitated by such things as food price inflation. “They realize they’re fortunate. They are also very well educated. It’s an incredible equation for success.” That Ridgewood had the wherewithal and the will to serve dozens of county towns besides themselves should be commended and, frankly, made me feel proud that I was one of its native sons.

But wealth has its privileges which beget more privileges, even when it comes to charity. Paterson, with vastly more human need and a paucity of resources, did not, according to Mary Celis, CEO of the United Way of Passaic County, “have the start-up capital and infrastructure that the state required to be eligible for the Sustain and Feed grant program, even though we have greater need in terms of hunger and small businesses on the margin.” Paterson also has a host of other funding priorities, such as crumbling schools, that Ridgewood’s rich tax base makes it nearly immune to.

Ridgewood raised $100,000 virtually overnight and has a concentration of culinary might second to none in the state. Stacey and her partners merely had to tell the community to “Jump!” and they immediately said, “How high?” Emergencies like COVID bring out the best in people, but they also reveal the system’s failures and the yawning socio-economic gaps that cannot be closed by even the most well-intentioned forms of local charity.

Food, and the lack thereof, is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When people have less purchasing power and restricted access to healthy food, it stretches their resiliency to the breaking point. We shouldn’t have to wait for a crisis to define the gaps between our communities nor test the limits of their residents’ endurance. Local heroes like Stacey Antine, former Mayor Hache, and Paul Vagianos in Ridgewood, and Mary Celis, Mayor Andre Sayegh, and Deacon Willie Davis in Paterson should be celebrated. Like William Carlos Williams’ man who defied the cholera epidemic, they got their wheelbarrows and brought the food to the people.

But are individual heroics and community spirit sufficient to restore equity to and between American communities? Will those courageous, often selfless actions by themselves bring about the conditions that one day put places like Paterson on some kind of par to places like Ridgewood, or will it, despite the best intentions of people of good will, always be its poor stepchild? Clearly, something stronger, something more systemic are needed to rectify the enormous wealth disparities that exist across this nation and are often most visible between neighboring communities.

One thing I think I learned from growing up in Ridgewood is that neighbors don’t let neighbors suffer. To extend that notion beyond the person next door or down the street to nearby, financially struggling communities, I might turn to Alexander Hamilton, whose footprints are all over Paterson and North Jersey, to say nothing of America’s economic system. Hamilton’s greatest contribution to the new republic was the assumption of the states’ debts by the new Federal government. A more comprehensive assumption of the financial need of under-resourced communities by state governments, progressively funded by their affluent residents and communities, is a form of neighborliness that will distribute economic prosperity to all. And with that prosperity will come, among other benefits, the assurance of food security and access to healthy and affordable food for all.

Great Falls, Great Food, Great Gaps: The Tale of Paterson and Ridgewood (Part I)

How do I tell an accurate story about places that are embedded in my subjectivity? On the surface it’s a food story because that’s nearly all I know, but it’s also a personal story rooted in the memory of my agitated youth. Decades of experience and reflections have sharpened its edges. Clouds of data have settled like stardust across the plain of my consciousness giving objectivity a stronger foothold. Yet the affluent suburb of Ridgewood, New Jersey, my hometown, and its rough and ready neighboring city, Paterson, occupy a large compartment of my soul where the two places remain divided by a concrete Jersey barrier.

The story begins in the 1950s with two buses—one is brown and the other is yellow. The brown one carried businessmen from Ridgewood to the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal where they would fan out across midtown to their respective corporate office buildings. The yellow bus transported women from Paterson—about seven miles away—to my town’s tony neighborhoods where they would make their way to the private homes of residents to clean, cook, and care for their children. My house was one of them. The women were known as “cleaning ladies,” they were Black, and my siblings and me called them by their first names even though they were often older than our mother.

Both buses motored up and down Monroe Street, the same route I used to walk or bike to school. Late in the afternoon as I made my way home, the brown bus would sometimes pass the yellow bus as each was returning riders to their respective homes. Occasionally, I noticed the Black women turn their heads to look at the white men whose faces were buried in their evening newspaper. I wondered what these women thought, what Paterson was like, and who, if anyone, cared for them. I knew about the white men. One of them was my father and others were fathers of my friends. The cleaning ladies, who we politely referred to as Negroes, or sometimes “colored,” only traveled 15 minutes by bus, but for a 10-year-old Ridgewood boy, Paterson was as remote and mysterious as Mars.

When you don’t know stuff, you tend to make it up, and what we made up about a place as dark and distant as Paterson was often fueled by racism and white privilege. In that sense, the things you don’t know, or know incorrectly, also become the source of your fear. We saw Paterson as Black, dangerous, and poor. It was the place you did not take your date on Saturday night. It was where Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a contender for the middleweight boxing crown, was falsely accused of murder in 1966, convicted, imprisoned, later spotlighted by Bob Dylan, and not released until 1985. It was the site of civil disturbances in 1968 following Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. It was a place where police corruption and incompetence exceeded even New Jersey’s legendary standards of skullduggery. (And it is, unfortunately, still such a place: the New Jersey attorney general took control of the Paterson police department this March, due to its inability to manage itself, including police killings of Black men).

In an effort to gain some clarity over these dissembling memories, I embarked on a modest pilgrimage to Ridgewood and Paterson to look at each place afresh, and as I am wont to do, I did it through a food lens. Food gives me a place to pivot from, a solid and necessary footing from where I can interpret a city’s broader social and economic dimensions, perhaps ones that would afford me more accurate views into my discontent. But the food lens was not just a vocational choice, it was also because the region’s poetic godfather, William Carlos Williams and his epic 20th century poem “Paterson” admonished, “Say it! No ideas but in things.” To capture the truth, in other words, I had to let my ideas grow out of the reality and immediacy of people, their deeds, and nature. Those are the things that matter, and I can think of no better thing than food.

To begin, a community’s food system has much to do with its social and economic conditions, and since numbers are also things, or at least representative of other things, here’s an abbreviated side-by-side comparison of Ridgewood and Paterson (all figures are for 2021).

RidgewoodPatersonPopulation  26,202157,794Median Household Income ($)194,256  48,450Persons without health ins. (%)       2.9        20.9Average life expectancy (years)     86        74Poverty rate (%)       2.6        25.1Bachelor’s degree or higher (%)     78.3        12.5Black or African American (%)       1.2        24.7Hispanic or Latino (%)       8.7        62.6

These are the things that tell a tale of two cities. Ridgewood and Paterson are geographically close, but the socioeconomic differences are achingly far apart. To place Paterson in a larger metro New York context, Mary Celis, president and CEO of the Passaic County United Way put it this way, “Paterson is only nineteen miles from Wall Street.”

Imbalances like these translate into long-term consequences for children. Take education, for instance. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars of investment by New Jersey over the past two decades, Paterson Public Schools—which educate nearly 25,000 students in more than 40 school buildings, 17 of which are over 100 years old—remain in desperate need of new facilities and extensive repairs (northjersey.com). Without the tax-base to adequately support its physical infrastructure, to say nothing of ongoing operations, the Paterson school system must rely on mostly inadequate aid from the State of New Jersey whose often unsympathetic suburban state legislators look askance at urban needs.

…poor, the invisible, thrashing, breeding, debased city

“Paterson” by William Carlos Williams

Never could such conditions be imagined for Ridgewood schools. My parents deliberately moved there in the early 1950s because even then the schools had a reputation for being among the finest in the state. Later, new residents would mortgage themselves to the hilt for the privilege of settling themselves anywhere within the village’s boundaries so that their little Marks and Susies could one day claim a diploma from Ridgewood High School. Of course, the property taxes required to maintain an exceptional educational standard would suck the marrow from your bones. A classmate of mine and former mayor of Ridgewood is reputed to have said that residents will never flinch from raising taxes in order to support the schools—that, effectively, the sky’s the limit. So steep is the “membership dues” that, as the tale goes, the lawn signs congratulating Mark and Susie for graduating from Ridgewood High in June are soon replaced by for-sale signs in July.

Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls

Its spent water forming the outline of his back…

[T]he river comes pouring in above the city

And crashes from the edge of the gorge

In a recoil of spray and rainbow mists…

“Paterson”

Given that Paterson was envisioned by Alexander Hamilton in 1792 as America’s first industrial center, there is more than a little irony in the city’s struggling financial condition today. Building off the Passaic River and its Great Falls potential for energy generation, a system of channels was constructed to power textile mills and later the manufacturing of locomotives and airplane engines. Hamilton led the founding of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.), New Jersey’s first corporation, to oversee what became a juggernaut of creation, technology, and industrial output.

When the demand for all that productive might declined after World War II, so did the surrounding economy. Today, the Great Falls, a still functioning hydroelectric plant, and the Paterson Museum are joined loosely around the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park which is now part of the National Park System. Nearby, you will find recently revitalized Hinchliffe Field, one of only two remaining Negro League baseball stadiums in the country. It stands as a testament to the national shame of segregation and the resilience of Black athletes. The reactivated stadium is also accompanied by the construction of 75 units of affordable senior housing, both projects instigated by Paterson’s Mayor Andre Sayegh.

As with similar efforts I’ve seen in other cities where a well-intentioned economic comeback is underway, the focus is often on burnishing one gem while ignoring the setting. The Falls and the adjoining viewing areas created by the Park Service are one of the more spectacular natural sites in the mid-Atlantic region. And if you take the time to absorb the totality of U.S. history compressed into this one small area, most people would not fail to be impressed. Unfortunately, the surrounding neighborhoods are in disrepair and probably on some city list for renovation. The signage, roadways, and parking in and around the historic site will leave the visitor hopelessly bewildered (I swear, Siri told me, “Sorry pal, I’m lost. You’re on your own!”). The general maintenance and appearance of the area are such that you could imagine the Paterson Sanitation Department, some private museum board of directors, and the Park Service arguing over whose job it is to pick up the trash, fix the broken fences, or provide a minimum of landscape services. On the day I visited, the main roadway into the historic area was closed while emergency construction crews repaired an aging street that appeared to retain vestiges of Hamilton’s wagon ruts.

In spite of all this, it’s worth a visit!

Against this backdrop, it’s not surprising that food has become both an opportunity and a challenge. Andre Sayegh—the city’s youthful and visionary second term mayor—is using food as a part of the city’s comeback plan. I was admittedly delighted to see Paterson’s home page tagline read “Great Falls, Great Food, Great Future!” No argument from me about the Falls; the city’s multi-ethnic restaurant scene (there are 72 nationalities represented among city residents) may one day put Paterson on some kind of regional food map; as to the future, well, time will tell.

Consistent with his aspirations, the mayor, a lifelong resident of Paterson with a Jimmie Fallon-like personality, did a video of a five-restaurant food crawl with northjersey.com’s food editor, Esther Davidowitz (Palestinian restaurants in Paterson: Our food crawl to 5 in 5 blocks (northjersey.com). Together, they noshed their way down Palestinian Way, an honorary street name selected to recognize the city’s Palestinian population, the second largest in the U.S. To call the blocks along Palestinian Way a food Mecca is more than an obvious pun—the large number of halal food outlets and mosques speak to the depth and diversity of Paterson’s Arab community—it is also a rich and rewarding cultural immersion.

Having had lunch at Al-Basha, one of the restaurants on their crawl, I can attest to how delicious the cuisine is. In their video, Sayegh and Davidowitz sampled hummus, compared the restaurants various baba ganoush dishes, waxed enthusiastic over an okra and meat creation served over rice, and had a cute argument about the correct shape of falafels. What stood out for me about the piece were two things: that a city mayor would celebrate his community’s cuisine with so much articulate gusto, and that one of the region’s major media outlets would raise up restaurants in a tattered city that would not be a dining-out destination by its generally prosperous viewers (the broadcast’s opening line captured that ambivalence: “Been to Paterson lately? Ever?”). In a not-unrelated note, Mayor Sayegh also understands the connection between calories in and calories out. One of his quality-of-life initiatives is to have active outdoor recreation space no more than a half-mile from any residential dwelling—no small task in a city as densely built as Paterson.

But the big food challenge is not where to eat out, it’s food insecurity—affordability, access, and dietary health. Paterson has a large low-income population, virtually nothing of economic substance to anchor its tax base, and not enough financial fuel to rev up its economic growth engines. Capturing as much economic benefit from food—normal household consumption, restaurants, and various food chain activities—is an obvious default position for a resource-poor place. But until the time when a rising economy can lift all ships, people must be fed, and to do that well in Paterson requires a steep climb up a mountain of food injustices.

In 2021, the New Jersey Department of Economic Development conducted a statewide food desert and access study. Using the USDA standard definitions, the study identified 50 areas around the state—urban, suburban, and rural—as food deserts and then ranked them as to their comparative “desertification.” Paterson’s southside was the number 13th worse while its northside came in number 15  Food-Desert-Communities-Designation-Final-2-9-22.pdf (njeda.gov).

The ironic accompaniment to a food desert is a food swamp—an oversaturation of fast-food places and low-nutritious food outlets of which Paterson is awash. Filling in the food landscape, and in response to high levels of food insecurity, Paterson is also home to five large food pantries, each receiving over $500,000 a year through Emergency and Shelter funding, according to Mary Celis of United Way of Passaic County, which sponsors the Passaic County Food Policy Council Passaic County Food Policy Council | United Way of Passaic County (unitedwaypassaic.org).

Food studies like New Jersey’s and the tabulations of a city’s other food outlets can tell you a lot about a food environment, but they don’t reflect how people living in those places cope with a multitude of realities that an anti-poor marketplace imposes on them. To get a better sense of that, I had lunch with Mary and six of her Food Policy Council members at Al-Basha’s.

Clearly, themes of underinvestment/disinvestment and their impacts on Paterson’s food system were strongly shared by everyone. “Good food is not available in Paterson,” was the conclusion reached by Deacon Willie Davis, one of the city’s leading urban agriculturalists. This was echoed by others including Kimmeshia Rogers-Jones, a social worker and long-time community activist who sees the small grocery stores that remain in the city and those just beyond its borders as predators who take advantage of Paterson’s BIPOC community. “They know we’re coming because we have no choice, which is why they have low-quality food. Go to a Shop-Rite [a regional supermarket chain] in Fair Lawn, Wayne, or Paramus [higher income, nearby towns] and the quality is much more improved.” She also expressed her frustration with local food insecurity: “It’s mind-boggling to be in a rich country when we have so many hungry people in Paterson.”

Shana Manradge, a food entrepreneur and founder of A Better Market, said, “We [BIPOC residents] go to places where bad food is because ‘they’ know we’ll buy it! What’s affordable to us is not healthy and causes diseases—that’s the inequity!” The relation between the low quality of available and affordable food, and what’s healthy was underscored by Darryl Jackson, a teacher and political activist. A number of years ago, Darryl adopted veganism as his primary diet in reaction to the unhealthy food that filled his neighborhood. “I realized how addicted I had become to the sugars and salt around me. I realized how my body was affected by the food available in my community.” While he likes to make it clear he’s “not militant” about his choice to be vegan—“I’ll eat whatever in the company of others”—he feels passionately that there’s a strong relationship between Paterson’s low-quality food, the residents’ health, and their low levels of activism. “Not enough people act against these injustices because their food undermines their vitality [including] not knowing how to grow their food.”

The more macro aggressions of society’s injustices were also highlighted. Steve Kehayes from Habitat for Humanity reiterated that “access to safe and affordable food and housing are human rights,” ones that the group felt were not fulfilled in Paterson. Lisa Martin from City Green, a statewide gardening organization, pointed out that there’s a need for a living wage to be paid to everyone. As the leader of the Passaic County United Way, Mary Celis confronts the depth and breadth of the region’s inequalities and their consequences every day. She bemoaned the absence of fair tax policies that would progressively tax and equitably distribute wealth and income. “The nation’s COVID allotments and waivers ended which reduced the expanded Child Tax Credit and SNAP benefits and is impacting access to Medicaid. These policy changes are having adverse effects on people in Passaic County, and they are issues that the Food Policy Council cares dearly about,” she said.

Beauty is a defiance of authority. “Paterson”

Much to my surprise, the subject of nature’s beauty came up as something that was lacking in Paterson. Maybe it was because I grew up under the canopy of Ridgewood’s well-tended shade trees and walked through dappled light my whole young life that I took nature’s soothing and salutary effects for granted. To lie in the grass and gaze up at the leafy majesty of my lot’s massive oaks was a gift I naturally assumed was available to all. I guess that’s why I was a little shocked when Kimmeshia said, “Beauty isn’t just a suburban thing. We should have it here too! We need more gardens like Deacon Davis’s in the 4th Ward. It’s so beautiful!” Lisa Martin added with just a hint of irony, “After all, this is the Garden State!”

And in that spirit, knowing that waiting for an under-resourced city to intervene was like waiting for Godot, these citizens are cooking up their own solutions. I made my way on a cool day in late April to the Green Acre Community Garden at 12th and Rosa Parks Avenue. That’s where I found Deacon Davis presiding over an outdoor “chapel” of raised vegetable beds, a greenhouse, and an array of fruit trees that he’s been developing and tending since 2014. Lettuce, early collards, and onions were poking their heads above the soil and soon would be joined by a steady flow of fresh, summer vegetables. At the age of 72, Deacon Davis is as fit as spring fiddlehead. He works circles around those who are half his age so that he and his volunteers can give away thousands of pounds of fresh produce to the people of the 4th Ward. “My agenda is for the people, not for profit,” he said.

Mark Winne, Deacon Willie Davis, and Mary Celis in Paterson’s Green Acre Garden

The garden, which is one of the more attractive urban gardens I’ve seen anywhere, has numerous partners including Habitat for Humanity, City Green, and the United Way. But clearly it is Deacon Davis’s diligent and nurturing presence which bathes a harsh, urban environment with beauty. He comes from a family of Black North Carolina sharecroppers who taught him how to farm, but like millions of other Black farmers, was victimized by that brutal and racist form of agriculture. “I grew up in a house with no running water or electricity,” he tells me. “One night before I went to sleep, I placed a bucket of water next to my bed. When I woke that morning, it was frozen.” Emerging from these circumstances remarkably un-embittered, he said “I also learned a lot of patience.” As I stood with him and Mary Celis taking in the abundance of his horticultural achievements, a steady stream of residents walked by calling out, “Hi, Deacon Davis,” and “How are you, Deacon Davis!” Clearly, the Deacon is a beacon.

Shana Manradge is another member of the food policy council who’s taking matters into her own hands. Frustrated by the distance she must drive from her home to buy healthy food, she decided to go into the retail food business in a most unusual way. When she swings her garage door open in the driveway of her modest house, you’ll find grocery shelves and refrigerators filled with food instead of a Subaru. Packed with produce and chicken from Black-owned farms in South Jersey (K&J Organic Farm and Smith Poultry) and a variety of nonperishable food items from local food entrepreneurs, Shana started “A Better Market,” which currently serves 60 households a week at prices that beat those of area supermarket chains (Home | A BETTER MARKET). One of Shana’s specialties is a bag that contains $40 of fresh produce that she sells for $25. “People in Paterson have to go too far to find real food. I want to make it available right here!”

While Shana pays herself a small salary, it doesn’t cover the many hours required to pick up food, run the store, advertise, and conduct endless rounds of outreach. For all of these tasks she taps into a full reservoir of willing volunteers including a high school student who produces a weekly flyer, Deacon Davis who rounded up a free refrigerator unit, and countless friends and church members who lift crates, sort produce, and price goods. Her midterm goal is to find an affordable brick and mortar store so she can reach more people and also accept food stamps, a physical facility being a USDA requirement for SNAP certification.

The State of New Jersey is not indifferent to the injustices that befall places like Paterson. When compared to surrounding, mostly white suburbs like Ridgewood, Paterson exists under a system of food apartheid. In an attempt to rectify that condition, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority has committed $40 million to invest in the state’s food desert communities. Mary Celis and her team put together a proposal for a portion of those funds for a Paterson project. (Just as this blog went to press, they received word that they will be awarded a $125,000 grant from the state that “will be used to develop a feasibility study for a supermarket, food retailer, or farmers market to be located within a mixed-use development site in Paterson.”)

Paterson’s problems are complex and deep, and the wealth and income gaps in North Jersey are wide and frustrating, especially when you see the region’s islands of intense poverty surrounded by one of the heaviest concentrations of financial power in the world. People like Deacon Davis and Shana Manradge bootstrap their way from one bushel of produce to the next; the United Way dutifully assembles one funding proposal after another to secure money for badly needed projects; Mayor Sayegh cobbles together $100 million to renovate a former Negro League ballpark to restore some of the city’s glory days. This is how it’s done in crumbling places like Paterson—a combination of local heroes, persistent social service organizations, imperfect and at times ambivalent state governments, and an earnest elected official or two keep the boat afloat, but their efforts alone are never enough to beach it firmly on the shores of prosperity.

When I asked the food activists gathered at Al-Basha what their number one priority for action would be, they responded with near unanimity: Kids! Better schools for kids, better food in the schools for kids, a garden in every school, etc. “Would you feed this food to your children? That was the question I asked the board of health,” Kimmeshia Rogers-Jones told the group, referring to the city’s overall food environment. “To me, that’s the only test that matters. I would prefer to shop in Paterson, but I can’t serve that food to my family!”

As I was wondering why people like Deacon Davis, Shana, and Mary go to such lengths to secure food and rebuild a once beautiful city, I remembered a passage from James Baldwin’s extraordinary essay, “Nobody Knows My Name.” He cites the substandard conditions of segregated Southern Black schools and their abysmal educational results. As school integration proceeded in the face of white hatred and violence, Baldwin asks if “those Negro parents who spend their days trembling for their children” place them at such risk (some days their children return home covered in the spit of their white antagonists) out of some set of ideals? No, he answers himself, “They are doing it because they want the child to receive the education which will allow him to…one day abolish the stifling environment in which they see, daily, so may children perish.”

I suspect that is why Paterson’s people do what they do. They want their children to overcome the conditions that will, if not corrected, cut decades from their lives.

(Coming soon: Part II in which a former son of Ridgewood, New Jersey, returns to his old stomping grounds to find that nothing is as he expected.)

Welcome to the Weight Wars

Childhood obesity is very much in the news these days, as well as it should be. Reflecting back over several decades of work in the community food field, it feels incomprehensible to me that one in five American children now (compared to one in twenty in 1980) fall into the body mass index (BMI) obesity danger zone. BMI is the most accepted measurement of healthy/unhealthy weight, though by itself it is not an indication of any specific medical condition. In 2013, however, the American Medical Association officially recognized obesity as a chronic disease. Over 220 health conditions have been linked to obesity, not the least of which is that obese children run a high probability of becoming obese adults with greater risk of even more health complications. According to a New England Journal of Medicine projection, 57% of today’s two-year-olds will be obese by the time they reach 35 Simulation of Growth Trajectories of Childhood Obesity into Adulthood | NEJM

I find so much of this data frightening, perhaps, because my awareness of body size as an issue has surfaced gradually over the course of my lifetime. My first recollection was an incident that occurred when I was 11-years old. As I was leaving my New Jersey elementary school one sunny spring afternoon, I noticed a circle of classmates staring at the ground in front of them. Elbowing my way into the silent crowd, I saw two of my classmates, Davey and Richie, locked in a brutal playground brawl. Davey had pinned Richie to the ground with his knees while his hands were locked in a death grip around his throat. “What’s going on?” I asked to no one in particular. “Richie called Davey ‘fat-so’” was the reply. I knew that Davey, certainly on the chubby side, was the only kid in the school who’d likely pass for barely overweight today, and that Richie, always a wise guy, loved picking on him.

At that moment, much to our impotent horror, Richie was paying the price. His eyes were bulging, his face was beet-red, and except for a few gasps of breath, he was nearly motionless. Fortunately, two male teachers jumped into the fray and pulled Davey off, hauling him away to God knows where while the school nurse administered first-aid to Richie. The rest of us, in a state of shock, were disbursed, replete with enough grist for weeks’ worth of boyish gossip.

The fight today, the one that has escalated well beyond a playground tussle, is over our individual and national approach to obesity, weight, diet-related disease, body size, and a host of other terms that increasingly carry fraught associations. What has exacerbated the fight, at least partially, is the lack of consensus among experts as to obesity’s cause. At one recent international gathering of researchers in the United Kingdom (Opinion | Scientists Don’t Agree on What Causes Obesity, but They Know What Doesn’t – The New York Times (nytimes.com) John Speakman, a biologist offered this ‌‌assessment of the days-long debate:‌ “There’s no consensus whatsoever about what the cause of it‌ is.” In other words, obesity is a far more complex issue than most of us have thought.

Take the study of genetics, for instance. There is a genetic component to human obesity that accounts for 40% to 50% of the variability in body weight status, and that is substantially higher in individuals with obesity and severe obesity (about 60%-80%). After controlling for BMI, science has learned that the genetic contribution to the accumulation of harmful forms of fat ranges from 30% to 55%. Genetics of Obesity: What We Have Learned Over Decades of Research – PubMed (nih.gov). In fact, we now know that, “227 genetic variants involved in different biological pathways … have been associated with polygenic [involvement of multiple genes] obesity.” Recent progress in genetics, epigenetics and metagenomics unveils the pathophysiology of human obesity – PubMed (nih.gov). In addition to polygenic contributions, there are some known single-gene causes of obesity. For example, genes that regulate hunger, (e.g., in the MC4R pathway) underly the cause of a portion of the approximately 5 million individuals in the US who experience early-onset, severe obesity. Genetic Testing For Obesity | Uncovering Rare Obesity® Program.

Such advances are bringing us ever closer to the new age of personalized medicine where we will be able to see how genetic factors affect the outcome and choice of obesity treatments. With more studies being conducted, the introduction of precision obesity treatment is brought nearer.  According to one paper, “We can predict that, in the future, when receiving a new patient in our obesity department, we will be able to determine the patient’s personal responses to the different treatments through genetic testing, so that we can choose the most appropriate method.” gox033 (2).pdf.

I highlight the role of genetics in some detail to illustrate just one of many complicated sets of contributors to the obesity crisis. As I was doing my community work in Hartford, Connecticut, a city with a high poverty rate, I literally witnessed the transformation of body sizes take place before my eyes. In the 1970s and 1980s, hunger and food insecurity, associated with rising food prices and poverty, were the dominant food threats. By the 1990s, overweight, obesity, and the increase in diet-related illnesses such as diabetes had eclipsed hunger. That made sense as we saw the city morph into a food desert and food swamp as the supermarkets exited and fast-food joints proliferated. Our response then was a multi-faceted strategy to effectively flood lower income neighborhoods with healthy, affordable food, accompanied by nutrition education. I can say in retrospect that our impact was limited because it was too narrow. Certainly, something more comprehensive was called for.

Into the evolving path of our growing understanding has stepped a variety of interesting and competing ideas about how to address the problem, including the possibility that obesity is not really a problem at all. In fact, terms like obese or overweight are being replaced by such descriptors as “large-bodied people,” and the belief that people of any size can be healthy, regardless of what their BMI levels suggest. Even the use of BMI as an indicator of anything has been called into question. One proponent of the concept of healthy at any size goes as far as to distribute cards to parents before their children’s doctor exams that say, “Don’t Weigh Me!” as a rejection of weight as a health indicator, and to protect children from stigmatization. One dietitian told me that she removed the word “Weight” from the title of a book she authored because she knew the word’s use had become too controversial.

Underlying much of the debate is the belief that by diagnosing someone as “obese” or “overweight” and prescribing a weight reduction plan and other interventions under the supervision, for instance, of a registered dietitian, brands the child with a Scarlet “F” (for “Fat”). Even more, any discussion or suggestion that someone or a group of people have weight issues can create, in the minds of some advocates, a “body toxic environment” where “weight-shaming” is one of the chief pollutants.

Health at Every Size (HAES) is one group that associates “weight-centered bias” and “policies discriminating against fat people” with racism and oppression of Black people. One of their principles is to “reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights” and, rather than dieting, recommends “eating for well-being,” and rather than physical activity, promotes “life-enhancing movement to the degree that they choose.” In other words, the celebration of one’s body is placed above any medical or cultural pressure to alter its size.

Returning for a moment to Davey, I don’t think I could find a better case study for the harm that stigmatization can cause. Having remained in contact with numerous schoolmates over the years, one hears—allowing for the hyperbole that old men are prone to—how Davey’s legend continues. There is agreement that he was expelled from junior high school for throwing a desk at a teacher. Similarly verified is how his childhood weight shaming and resulting rage were channeled into arguably acceptable uses including stints in the Marine Corps, CIA, and Drug Enforcement Agency.

Looking at the 600-plus beautiful teenage faces in my high school graduation yearbook, I couldn’t find more than a handful that had retained even a moderate amount of baby fat. A glance at randomly selected American high school yearbooks today would find 19 percent of the students obese and another 16 percent overweight, numbers that carry predictable population-wide health consequences. Along with gun violence, school lockdowns, anxiety, and mental health issues, including suicide, today’s young people face an ever-steeper climb to a healthy and productive adulthood. For the high school graduating class of 1968, the only “public health crisis” we faced, other than perhaps the Vietnam War, was teenage acne, a condition we referred to as our “zit-geist.”

While fat-shaming and body stigmatization cause harm, and even more to the point, may make the recipient of such messages unreceptive to any intervention (or worse, susceptible to eating disorders like bulimia), we cannot ignore the looming health crisis apparent in the nation’s soaring obesity figures. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the US obesity prevalence was 41.9 percent in 2020. (NHANES, 2021) Compared to 30.5 percent in 2000. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. (NHANES, 2021). Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. These are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion in 2019 dollars. Medical costs for obese adults were $1,861 higher than for people with healthy weight. The cost to the economy is estimated at $90 billion annually due to lost worker productivity. And since a public health crisis is a terrible thing to waste, opportunistic entrepreneurs have nourished a weight loss and diet management market reached now valued at over $84 billion in revenues for 2021 (projected to reach $130 billion in 2027). The demand is driven by increasing obesity and diabetic populations, fitness/diet companies’ promotional strategies, rise in disposable income, and affordable cost of bariatric surgeries.

As we’ve come to expect in a racially inequitable America, people of color get less of the good stuff and more of the bad stuff, particularly health problems. Non-Hispanic Black adults had the highest age-adjusted prevalence of obesity (49.9%), followed by Hispanic adults (45.6%), non-Hispanic White adults (41.4%) and non-Hispanic Asian adults (16.1%).

Those are the numbers, and as best as we know at this time, those are the facts. So why does it seem as if the lifeboat that should be rescuing our children can’t find a course? When I read and listen to child health advocates stress stigma avoidance over even the most modest of dietary and physical activity interventions, I often find myself incredulous, especially after reading the summation of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ statement on the problem of childhood obesity, which I quote here at length:

Childhood obesity adversely affects the endocrine, cardiovascular, orthopedic, gastrointestinal, and pulmonary systems. It’s associated with greater risk of CVD [cardiovascular disease] later in life. Two risk factors of CVD more common in obese children than in healthy-weight children are hypertension and elevated cholesterol. In one study, 70% of obese children had at least one CVD risk factor, and 39% had two or more. Other studies have shown increased risk of impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes. Childhood obesity also is associated with breathing problems, such as sleep apnea and asthma. Moreover, obese children are likely to develop joint problems and musculoskeletal discomfort. They’re at greater risk of having fatty liver disease, gallstones, and gastroesophageal reflux (i.e., heartburn). Many of these comorbidities that used to be considered “adult diseases” are now regularly seen in obese children.

If 70 percent of obese children have at least one CVD risk factor, how can we countenance such a low-key, almost passive approach to “large-bodied children” that in all likelihood will consign millions to a lifetime of ill-health and possibly premature death? I certainly loved my “look” in college, a filter-less Pall Mall cigarette dangling from my pouty lips that, with my long hair gave me the rebellious image that my classmates and I strove so hard to cultivate. But when it finally dawned on me that my pack-a-day image enhancers would put me in an early grave, I tossed them in the trash.

Fortunately, there are strategies that, when applied in a systems-like fashion, hold promise of stemming the tide of obesity and overweight. They can be found in a summary version in Today’s Dietitian CPE Monthly: Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment – Today’s Dietitian Magazine (todaysdietitian.com). In addition to what can be done at the individual or family level, the options for action include the need to eliminate food deserts, an increase in the availability of affordable, healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, and a vigorous push-back against the food industry which pumps ultra-processed foods into our nation’s veins. And what’s key in all of these approaches is the need for better collaboration between all of the stakeholders.

I’m also happy to see the Biden-Harris administration step up to the challenge with both the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and a proposed federal budget that puts our money where their mouths are. Food insecurity, a poor diet, physical inactivity, and ill-health often walk down the same road. It’s heartening to see the federal government making strong recommendations to attack these problems in a more or less joined-up fashion.

As I looked over the evidence of what works and the general attitudes and positions of the different camps, one theme appeared to loosely unite everyone’s perspective on child obesity—the role of parents/adults. The first interesting fact that struck me is that the prevalence of obesity is lowest among college graduates (26.3%) compared to those holding no more than a high school diploma (35.5%). While this does not imply that less educated people will be less healthy role models, it does underscore the need for parents to pay attention to their children’s health and even take an assertive position when necessary. Today’s Dietitian reinforces this notion by placing parents at center stage for developing healthy eating behaviors. They state that the “Prevention of childhood obesity should begin early in life, during the fetal period and the first two years of life. In addition to learned behaviors, long-term taste preferences are developed in utero and during breast-feeding. Children are likely to prefer the foods their mothers exposed them to at these stages.”

When we look at the way the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program operates, we see the emphasis for nutrition counseling placed on the mother. If mom has dietary issues, working with her to correct problems will hopefully spill over into their children’s eating behavior and physical activity patterns. A modest reduction in obesity among 2-to-4-year-olds in the WIC program (from 15.9% to 13.9% since 2010) gives this emphasis some credence. And with the focus of the Biden-Harris Administration on WIC bringing the number of eligible participants up from 50% to 60%, the positive health impacts of the program are likely to spread further.

A consistent emphasis on working primarily with parents seems to also be supported by the anti-stigma advocates. Registered Dietitian Jill Castle, director of the popular website and podcast “The Nourished Child,” is a strong proponent of a “whole child approach” to weight and health matters. While she strenuously opposes any messages or actions that might make a child feel “unworthy,” Castle stresses the need to help parents set up healthy lifestyles which will also influence their children. Like many nutritionists and dietitians who are focused on stigma avoidance, she’s not a big fan of doctors who don’t seem to use the correct language when discussing children’s weight and/or health issues. She says the doctor should talk only with the parent(s) about these matters and “keep the children out of the room!”

As I cast my eyes over what increasingly looks like a battlefield, but one on which everyone wants the same thing—the health and well-being of our children—one poignant memory comes to mind. Some 25 years ago, the organization I ran, the Hartford Food System hosted a job slot for a high school student doing community service work. In this case, the student was a young Black woman who happened to be very overweight. On her third day with us, she brought a liter-size bottle of Coke to work and put it in the office refrigerator. I passed her at a moment when she was taking a break and pouring herself a large glass of Coke. With little or no thought in advance, I said something to the effect that she might want to try water once and a while to quench her thirst. She looked at me funny, proceeded to finish her Coke, and when she left for the day, she never came back. I knew I had blown it, and I regret to this day saying what I said.

We cannot deny the long-term toll that childhood obesity will take on today’s young people any more than we can shame others for the size and shape of their bodies. At the very least, we know the latter doesn’t work, and for the sake of those who are obviously at risk for a lifetime of health complications, we as parents, health providers, and community activists are irresponsible if we tiptoe around our nation’s looming public health crisis. A culture of acceptance and avoidance is no substitute for a sensitive society committed to the health and preservation of their children. To that end, those with the most experience and the most evidence must collaborate on a plan to reduce childhood obesity and promote the healthiest children possible.

Several people provided assistance in writing this article. In particular, I would like to thank Theresa Yosuico Stahl, RDN (www.remindfuleating.com) and  Fern Gale Estrow, RDN for their timely advice.

Eggs and Honey: Taking Lessons from the Birds and the Bees

I was the only one in line for honey that morning at the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market. I found out why when I asked the young lady whose long braids were the same color as the stacked honey jars, how much for a quart. “$30,” was her reply. Stung by her answer, I replied, “Wasn’t it $25 last year?” “Yes, but we raised our prices.” I felt hot flashes coarse through my limbs; my throat went dry. Was this male menopause or a moral crisis induced by my eroding confidence as a committed local foodie? With trembling hands, I passed the cash to the sweetly smiling lass.

Things went from bad to worse when I moved to the egg farmers. I bought my usual large dozen from the Cruz Ranch stand and waited for change from my $10 bill. Geronimo, one of the ranch’s workers staffing the stand that day, looked at me quizzically. “They’re $10 now,” he said pleasantly. “Yikes! Is your boss getting greedy?” was all I could say.

When I caught up by email a few days later with the farm’s owner, Randy Cruz, I accused him of price gouging. Since we have a totally amicable, mutually insulting relationship, he fired back,

“ I have to run a business and everything has gotten very expensive. I no longer do the farmers markets myself. I have to pay for someone [Geronimo] to be there. Gas is expensive, car insurance just went up again. Product liability insurance went up. alfalfa prices went up. Grains are up. Electricity is up. I use to pay 700 a month now 1200 a month. Vehicle maintenance. I just ordered 1600 new baby chicks for February [that cost] $5439.00; one year ago it was $2400! Baby duck [are] $4000! Sorry mark but I am running a business. Check out grocery store prices. Things have really gotten very expensive. You have a good night. Randy.”

The omelet I had the following morning had a bitter taste.

I left the farmers’ market with a much-lightened wallet, clutching my honey and egg purchases hard to my chest to discourage would-be thieves from stripping me of these treasures. My cognitive dissonance was so intense it roiled my innards. Yes, I wanted to support the local farmers, but why was I experiencing so much price point pain? In hopes of resolving the conflict, I decided to investigate the underlying economics and conduct area price comparisons.

To aid me in my research, I consulted with two noted agricultural economists, Dr. Buzz and Dr. Cluck, the former outstanding in his meadow and the latter highly regarded in her coop. They both reminded me that rather than being anomalous food products that consumers can do without, honey and eggs have attained exalted seats at America’s table. Pointing to work he’s done as the first actual bee appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to the National Honey Board (“I had lived experience,” Buzz said, winking at me with one of his five eyes). According to Buzz and the Board, 2021 U.S. honey consumption was 618 million pounds, an all-time high surpassing the previous record of 596 million pounds in 2017. Currently, that puts per capita consumption at 1.9 pounds, up from 1.2 pounds in the 1990s. I confided proudly to Buzz that my personal consumption was about 5 pounds per year, well above the national average, which seemed to bring small tears to his eyes. Likewise, Dr. Cluck informed me that eggs were a big part of our diet with the average American eating 278 eggs per year, or about 6 a week.

Even though the US is second to China in total honey consumption, we only produce about a quarter of our own needs. Surprisingly, at least to me, North Dakota is the leading honey producing state with 33 million pounds in 2019, followed closely by their neighbor, South Dakota, with 19 million. That made me happy to hear that such “red states” were capable of producing so much sweetness. Argentina, India, Canada, and Mexico are among the largest honey exporters to the US.

With growing demand and a relatively stable honey supply US retail prices have risen moderately over past years to about $6.00 pound. This translates to about $18.00 per quart (it takes 3 pounds of honey to fill a quart jar). But as one can see from the graph that Drs. Buzz and Cluck have assembled (they apologized for their graphic—in spite of Cluck’s “hunt and peck” technique their appendages make it difficult to use a keyboard or mouse) * prices were all over the map. As one might expect, retailers with high-price reputations sold honey, including locally produced, at higher prices than those with low-priced reputations.

But even Dr. Buzz was nearly swarming over the high-priced farmers’ market honey. When I asked him for his thoughts, he suggested that it’s often typical for farmers’ market prices to be higher than other retail outlets since they are made up of smaller producers with higher per unit costs. I did note that I bought honey at New Mexico farmers’ markets for $20 and $25 per quart in 2022, but even with inflation, it was hard to justify a price today that was 60 percent higher than the national average.

Sensing my overheated state, Buzz vibrated his wings so fast that I cooled down, then he explained that local market conditions—supply and demand, the relative affluence of an area’s shoppers—strongly influenced those prices. There are other concerns as well that sometimes drive price variations. Buzz, who self-identifies as a social and environmental justice worker bee, couldn’t conceal his anger over the millions of his brother and sister bees that die every year from such events as colony collapse disorder. This has been associated with environmental factors such as neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides, and climate change. “You humans are biting the hand that feeds you!” he pronounced reminding me that one-third of the U.S. diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants.

The whole time Buzz and I were talking, Dr. Cluck was listening intently, affirming his remarks with repeated scratches in the dirt. “I, too, have seen millions of friends die over the past year, in our case from avian flu—58 million poultry birds including 43 million laying hens—the worst animal disease outbreak in US history. Those deaths are hard to take.” As my friend Randy’s rant confirmed, the high price he’s paying for replacement birds is a result of the flu and is one of a litany of reasons for elevated egg prices.

With ruffled feathers, Dr. Cluck said, “Humans give us a hard time. They wisecrack, ‘What’s the matter? You on strike? Why aren’t you laying more eggs? Isn’t the regular chicken feed good enough for you? You need the fancy organic stuff?’” Visibly agitated, Cluck screeched, “We’re not machines; we can’t just pump out more eggs at the push of a button!”

From my investigation, egg prices, like honey varied widely depending on where they were purchased and their respective claims to such attributes as organic, natural, cage-free, nothing artificial, pasture-raised, or just every day industrial eggs. But no matter how you pluck it, the base price of eggs has gone up 211 percent over the previous 12 months with the national average peaking in early February at $4.25 for a dozen large eggs. I did, however, find cheaper eggs at Albertson’s and even Whole Foods. And then there were the “golden eggs” at the farmers’ market.

Expressing my exasperation with the price of locally grown food, I told Cluck that I could get two-and-a-half Egg McMuffins at McDonalds with just the money I’d save from buying the cheapo, non-farmers’ market eggs. “Yes, but you are one of those rare birds, a special breed of values-driven shopper who will patronize a farmers’ market because you feel it’s the right thing to do,” she replied, comforting me with her soft wings.

Cluck was right. I rationalize that paying more now—though not in my short-term best interest given the available lower cost options—has numerous long-term benefits. I even confessed to not making tax deductible donations to the farmers’ market nonprofit partner because I know that I’m paying the farmers significantly more than I would by shopping at conventional outlets. Though no portion of my “farmers’ market premium” payment is tax deductible, I know I’m supporting local farmers who, as the pandemic proved, came close to being the last line of defense when national supply lines were disrupted. In other words, I see the larger project of buying local as an insurance policy against catastrophes that are now occurring more frequently, and may in fact be related to the industrial food system’s unsustainable model of food production. “The chickens are finally coming home to roost,” is how Cluck put it, though even she wasn’t sure what that meant.

Local agriculture’s other benefits and virtues have often been extolled: it keeps the region’s farmland open and working; it contributes to diverse local economies; it supports aesthetic values associated with open space and nature; it sustains centuries’ long cultural and agricultural traditions; it’s essential to protecting and enhancing food security and sovereignty. And to the extent that today’s high egg prices are associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the disruption of grain supplies, then they should be regarded by us as a small price to pay for the sacrifice Ukrainians are making to oppose the iron fist of authoritarianism.

If I had a quarter, however, for every time I said “WTF!” when looking at farmers’ market prices, I could actually afford that food. But as Drs. Buzz and Cluck so carefully instructed me, there’s a deeper and more complicated story behind my sticker shock, a story that links local to national to global; a thread that connects us to the environment, labor, and land; and a potentially tragic tale of how humankind harms the animals it depends on.

It might be wise to see these price signals not as a reason to go running for the shelter of Walmart’s bargain basement prices, but as signs of looming threats to our self-induced vulnerabilities, ones that are finding ways to reveal themselves ever more frequently. The time has come to heed the facts of life as told by the birds and the bees.

*A special thanks to good neighbor Jack McCarthy for his artistic acumen.

Sources:

All honey and egg prices, except for national averages, are from a survey conducted in Santa Fe, New Mexico on or about February 11, 2023New York Times (February 3, 2023) Why Eggs Cost So Much – The New York Times (nytimes.com)USDA, National Honey Board, “USDA Reports Demand for Honey Reaches All-Time High,” (August 17, 2022)USDA, National Honey Report, Volume XLIII – Number 1 (January 25, 2023)USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, (March 19, 2020)“The Bird Flu Outbreak Has Taken an Ominous Turn,” The Bird Flu Outbreak Has Taken an Ominous Turn | WIRED

Nonprofit Boards: Let’s Take Them Seriously

I remember my first nonprofit board of directors (BOD) meeting like it was yesterday—such is the power of trauma to send its shock waves across decades. I was 28, newly arrived with my young family in Hartford, Connecticut, to take the reins of a brand-new food organization. The board members, most of whom I had not yet met, held the meeting over lunch at Aqui Me Quedo, a local Puerto Rican restaurant, to welcome me to town and share an overview of our goals. Some pleasant words came my way, and a paper agenda was circulated, but as soon as the waiter was done taking our orders the knives came out.

Since the mind can cover ugly details in gentle clouds of forgetfulness, the precise spark that ignited the firefight is now lost to me. Suffice it to say that one board faction of two or three people had done something that another faction didn’t like. Rather than express their objections in a professional fashion, a nasty confrontation ensued that brought water glasses slamming to the table and insults lobbed like mortar shells across the room. Jaws jutted out and teeth were clenched—a testament to the pent-up anger seething among the group. Before I had a chance to enjoy my first ever plate of rice and beans, the meeting was adjourned without a motion, a second, or a recorded vote.

Besides wondering if it was too early for me to resign my position, this “meeting” set the stage for a career awash in the world of nonprofit organizations. They would be captained by boards of wildly varying competencies and motivations. Though I often chafed at both their actions and inactions, these boards became my prevailing reality, sine qua non, and classroom where the questions of the day were always, “Why are we here?” and “How can we do this differently?”

There are 1.8 million nonprofit organizations in the United States, according to Independent Sector (Health of the U.S. Nonprofit Sector 2022 (independentsector.org). With an average of 15 board seats per organization, that means there could be approximately 23 million people who serve on boards, not accounting for the enthusiasts among us who serve on two or more boards. In spite of their nonprofit designation, these organizations are not insignificant economic engines. Collectively, nonprofits make up 5.6 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, spend almost $2.5 trillion, and generate over $2.6 trillion in revenues annually.

But no one expects nonprofits to compete in the economic arena with for-profit corporations or government spending. In fact, the real purpose of nonprofits is to compete in the moral arena, which, given the competition with many corporate execs and politicians, isn’t particularly hard. “If you imagine society as a three-legged stool,” offers Mike Burns, a Connecticut-based consultant with over 45 years of nonprofit experience, “with the legs being the corporate, government, and the nonprofit/NGO sectors, it’s the nonprofit leg that carries most of society’s moral weight and simply cares the most about people.”

Indeed, depending on your politics and where you situate yourself along a pro- to anti-capitalist spectrum, corporations may/may not give a hoot about people (B corporations and the growing emphasis on environmental, social, and governance investing (E.S.G.) at least suggest that corporations’ have obligations beyond their shareholders). Similarly, government can be cynically viewed as nothing more than a siloed collection of bureaucratic functions often performed with little creativity, grace, efficiency, or sufficient funding.

When you think about the wobbly societal stool this way, you realize that all those nonprofits out there are much more than the sum of their individual services, programs, and advocacy efforts. The very future of the country with respect to equity, sustainability, and justice are at stake. In other words, you’re not just running a daycare center, a symphony orchestra, or a food bank, you’re also one of millions of oarsmen aboard a giant ship, using a moral conscience as your compass, to take the world and its people to a better place. In light of the immensity of that task, that nonprofit leg and the boards that steer those organizations better be hewn from the mightiest oak in the forest.

What are some of the impediments to nonprofits taking on this heroic effort? I’ll continue with my boats and oars metaphor to answer part of that question. In one disastrous attempt at board development and team building in Hartford, I organized a session for my board members to crew a rowing scull on the Connecticut River. With eight people rowing, one steering and shouting “pull,” and professional rowing coaches escorting us in a motorboat, we made it downriver about half-a-mile without incident. But as we attempted to turn this long, skinny boat upriver, the communication and coordination required to synchronize our oar sweeps proved our undoing. With crossed and splashing oars, erratic steering, and laughs turning to curses, we battled our way back to shore, soaking wet and demoralized. As we debriefed over beers at a nearby tavern, the power of the metaphor became readily apparent.

Like the direction of our rowing, the purpose of our organization was not fully understood or embraced by all board members. Some felt—often based on prior assumptions and personal preferences—that meeting farmers’ needs was our purpose while others thought the food security of the city’s residents came first. Another source of confusion was the belief that serving the organization came before serving its purpose. This led to placing undue emphasis, for instance, on fundraising while others assumed that they were there to support the executive director’s vision. Fundraising was indeed important, but the latent financial power of the board was not, say in grant writing—that took me 20 years to master—it was in their strength as a network with its large multiples of community connections. Through those contacts they could identify funding opportunities as well as needs and resources while also raising the profile of the organization. Again, their job was to support our purpose, not to be overly attentive to the organization.

With respect to vision, I will say that I have worked for or served on 15 nonprofit boards over my career, and the most successful ones, which also usually means the most successful nonprofits, are those that fully embrace their vision. The board and the staff share it; they own it and feel it in a visceral way. When the vision needs to be modified, they do it together. As I have experienced on several occasions, when the vision is the product of only the CEO and not successfully shared with the board, trouble ensues. What follows is a weak board, ambivalence over purpose, and a loss of accountability to the community. In one case, I accidentally found myself serving (fortunately for only one meeting) on a fake board that was the product of a charismatic leader who needed a “board” to give them cover for their questionable activities. Beware of the Siren’s song of some charismatic leaders. Look for substance (e.g., a strong organization and board, a shared and realistic purpose) over style. For more ideas see: The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership (ssir.org).

Besides clarity about board roles and the purpose of an organization, nonprofit BODs must address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In one way, shape, or form, a nonprofit’s constituents must be at the table (animal organizations are exempt from this requirement). The legitimacy of your mission will be undermined without that connection to the people and causes you serve; your board’s effectiveness as a network will be diminished if it does not reflect your community’s racial, ethnic, and economic profile. Granted, what constitutes diversity and who your constituents are will vary from place to place and sector to sector (on a humorous sidenote, in pre-woke 1980s Hartford, barely clinging to its label of “insurance capital of the world,” nonprofit board diversity meant having one person from Aetna, one from Travelers, and one from CIGNA!).

Based on a Board Source survey of 800 charities, there’s a lot of DEI work to do. Half (49 percent) of all chief executives said that they did not have the right board members to “establish trust with the communities they serve.” Only a third of boards (32 percent) place a high priority on “knowledge of the community served,” and even fewer (28 percent) place a high priority on “membership within the community served.” Furthermore, 78 percent of all nonprofit board members are white, and 19 percent of boards are all white. For some good tips on building diversity check out Diversity on Nonprofit Boards | National Council of Nonprofits.

But there is a fly in the ointment that is tipping the scales of many organizations out of balance. I’ll call it the curse of the single lens which, at the moment, happens to be DEI. By the single lens, I mean the assumption that all the issues and problems facing an organization, in this case nonprofits, can be reduced to one topic, one analysis, one cause, in other words, one lens. For instance, I’ve heard it said many times that if you fix an organization’s DEI problems, the resolution of all its other issues will follow, a notion that strains my credulity. Structure, fundraising, poor leadership and management, misunderstood roles and purposes, and other points I have delineated above require as much attention as DEI. At the very least, any assessment of a nonprofit’s effectiveness must be done through a comprehensive, systemic lens, not a single lens.

Based on an internal memo I received, one foundation that was poised to spend millions of dollars on pandemic-induced food insecurity in its region came perilously close to meltdown when some of its staff and board were seized by a paroxysm of white privilege guilt and a gnarly DEI debate. Funds were eventually disbursed but not without a substantial amount of bloodletting.

Given that foundations are often the source of funding for many nonprofits seeking outside technical expertise and training, there appears to be a trend of the DEI tail wagging the foundation dog. One community foundation I have knowledge of, that like many community foundations, supports a regional network of nonprofit oriented trainers and technical assistance providers, has focused nearly exclusively on DEI consulting. As a result, some consultants who offer a more comprehensive range of services dropped out of the network. Reflecting on his more recent experience with such foundations, Mike Burns says, “If foundations believe DEI is an answer to organizations that don’t adequately reflect their communities, then they must also work to [fund improvements in] their organizational structure and governance. Otherwise, nonprofits are going to fall grossly out of balance.”

One more point that I want to make concerns the question of nonprofit board responsibility and roles. As one executive director told me, “All I want is for the board to do its job and not meddle in the day-to-day business of management!” But how do they know what their “job” is, and more importantly, how do they become responsible and stay within their board member lanes? It starts with a generative discussion among board and staff about their theory of change and core values. This means being clear about what the bigger social problem is that they’re addressing and what kind of solution they’re looking for. Too often, boards and the organizations they lead don’t think about where they fit into the bigger universe; they see their role as ensuring that services are delivered. A food bank, for instance, that mitigates hunger by distributing food but doesn’t devote time and resources to addressing the underlying causes (e.g., poverty) probably hasn’t spent much time developing a theory of change.

When a consensus is arrived at—a process that is likely to take some work and possibly outside assistance—the board can then consider a range of interventions, including existing ones, and what is likely to happen as a result of each intervention. This will enable them to evaluate the organization’s performance in relation to its theory of change. In Mike Burns’ opinion, “training board members in this manner will keep them focused on what matters most to the organization.” (For more tips from Mike Burns on how to improve nonprofit boards of directors, see 3 Ways To Resolve Board Participation Challenges – NonProfit PRO)

Two big “aha” moments have informed my life’s work in the food movement and among its nonprofits and boards. The first is the realization that the positive impact of those organizations and the dozens of partner groups aligned with them have been huge—equivalent, perhaps, to climbing several Mt. Everests. We did that third leg of the stool proud, cared for people, the earth and its creatures, and asserted a moral authority when the other two legs were splintering and cracking. Sure, at times I felt like the guy with the shovel and the bucket at the end of the circus animal parade, asking myself why I was forming yet another nonprofit to clean up someone else’s shit. But as time passed, the solutions we deployed have ripped plates from the system’s armor that will yield bold and beneficial new breakthroughs over time.

The second realization stems from a nagging question: Why must we rely on this mishmash of millions of nonprofits, volunteers, and often underpaid staff to put Humpty Dumpty back together? While the nonprofit sector at times seems like a terrible idea, the alternatives—and you can imagine what they might be—are probably far worse. The endless hours required for the care and feeding of numerous boards, the petty squabbles, blind ignorance, never enough money, and raging egos left their mark on my sanity and torn asunder more than one relationship. “There must be a better way!” was the refrain that reverberated inside my head at the end of yet another stressful board meeting.

But against this gloom I don’t regret my persistence nor the extraordinary people—board members, staff, and community members—that I had the good fortune to work with. I look with hope to the young, brave hearts now forging new paths with innovations in the nonprofit and for-profit worlds, sometimes cultivating extraordinary “hybrids” between the two. There is no reason we have to slavishly serve the standard nonprofit model forever. Reinvention and reform should be our mantras, and our clearly articulated and shared purpose our North star. But until that glorious time arrives when we finally get it right, we owe it to ourselves, our boards, and our constituents to be the best nonprofit organization we can be.

Winne’s World in Weview: 2022–Phew!

Finally pulling out of the steep dive that was COVID-19, do we dare ask ourselves if we’re healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Fortunately for me, the only lingering effect has been the Zoomacron variant that has tenaciously kept us enthrall to technology and seems strangely resistant to promoting human contact. I think it’s why I hunger for a boisterous food conference where comrades-in-arms are hugging and kissing, swapping spit and spirits, and trading stories and advice at a reception replete with local beer and wine!

Unnoticed by many, I continued a slow transition from semi-semi-retirement to semi-retirement—the only indicator of which so far has been more naps. I signaled this shift with a kinda-sort-of goodbye to the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins this spring. Even though I threatened to return if they mess up (I understand a 23-year-old grad student has already designed an app to replace me), I attempted to impart some wisdom by suggesting to students that they place imagination and engagement over spreadsheets and surgically attached electronic devices. I invoked William Carlos Williams’s refrain “No ideas, but in things” and C. Wright Mills reminder, “that [social] discovery often occurs precisely when an imaginative mind sets itself down in the middle of social realities.”

At least college students listen politely, which is more than I can say for the rest of us. Just as technology keeps us physically apart, so does terminology—whether you’re on the Right or the Left. Increasingly, those who stake out extreme ends of the spectrum conform to idiosyncratic vocabularies, terms, and ideologies shaped inside echo chambers of their own making. Rather than expand the universe of diverse and interactive voices striving to be heard in a bustling marketplace of ideas, we have made the iconic 1967 Cool Hand Luke line, “What we got here is failure to communicate,” a present-day reality.

Sadly, our communication breakdown extends to the food movement where this year I saw too many dedicated and productive colleagues thrown under the bus due to an “incorrect” word choice or “failing to center racial equity” sufficiently within written or oral statements. I read how “we” at one food organization I formerly admired “uncover old vestiges and practices of white supremacy that must be uprooted.” I cringe at such language since it calls to mind events like China’s Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and the Chinese famine several years before that. Tens of millions of deaths were caused by the termination of freedom of speech, the uncensored flow of information, and simple human respect (Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine).

Early this year the New York Times (3/20/22) released the results of a survey that found 84 percent of adults said it was “very serious” or “somewhat serious” that Americans do not exercise their freedom of speech for fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. Interestingly, the survey noted that liberals were more likely to retaliate than moderates or conservatives. In a NYT guest editorial (3/7/22) by a graduating senior from the University of Virginia, the author, Emma Camp, said “…my college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity.” She cited a nationwide campus survey from 2021 that revealed 80 percent of students self-censoring at least some of the time. Over the past couple of years, my conversations with under-30s too often mirror this kind of lockstep, unreflective pattern, as if they are mimicking their professors and peers. Ms. Camp urged universities to do more “to foster appreciation for ideological diversity…and strong policies that protect expression in the classroom.”

None of this is say that there aren’t many thoughtful and necessary approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion taking place among institutions and businesses, both large and small. When it comes to understanding the “real story” of racial oppression in this country, it’s impossible to learn too much. But when the food movement (or any social movement) is divided by thoughtless speech, especially when loaded terminology is hurled like incendiary bombs rather than as healing balms, a significant self-correction is due.

Of course, the Right trumps the Left when it comes to purging those they don’t like, misappropriating facts, and carefully managing their ministries of propaganda. Seized by moral paroxysm, groups like Moms for Liberty are trying to take control of local boards of education while opportunist politicians like Ron DeSantis pass anti-LGBTQ+ state laws. According to a great article in the New Yorker, the “Moms” are hell-bent on rooting out vestiges of systemic racism instruction from public school curricula, even when that instruction has little to do with critical race theory.

Am I hopelessly naïve to suggest that instead of “rooting” each other out—right or left—we need to become re-rooted in a common soil of justice, one that might be tilled with respectful and open debate? And in case anyone is wondering what book is currently on my nightstand, I’m reading John Rawls’ 1971 classic A Theory of Justice in hopes of gaining some clarity into a word whose meaning has been made murky by overuse and misuse.

As I think, so I write, which is why my blog posts for 2022 offer at least partial antidotes for the troubling trends cited above. By focusing on the thing—my way of presenting facts from as close as I can get to our common soil—I penned three pieces about people and places firmly embedded in their food system struggles (all of my 2022 stories can be found at Mark Winne: Community Food Systems and Food Policy). In Kansas City, Missouri I reported on the deceptive practices of Anton’s Restaurant and Taproom that was scoring unearned PR points with its overstated claims of using sustainably sourced animal products. In fact, it was using beef from its own slaughterhouse that had been shut down by USDA for inhumane practices. Anton’s was also exploiting loopholes in wage and labor laws to take advantage of low-cost, hard-working ex-felons against a backdrop of a state legislature hostile to living wages.

If you are still in need of living proof that climate change is real, take a look at my journey through the burned-out forests of northern New Mexico and the impact on poultry farmer Randy Cruz. The fire destroyed 342,000 acres of land including Randy’s house. Less than three months later, floods took out his and hundreds of other farmers’ pastures, fences, and roads. Randy’s tale of resilience is inspiring, but his story of endurance is what we need to know if we want our regional food systems to one day reach scale.

The last of my trilogy of people and places was my interview and dinner with Kentucky’s unofficial Minister of Sustainability and Soul, Jim Embry. A meal with this life-long food and civil rights activist is a sacramental affair where truth and wisdom are the main courses, and there’s always room for a little revelatory dessert.

Good food and good talk may feed my body and soul, but good books feed my mind. I had the privilege this year of sharing the news of four new food publications including the lovingly revised and brilliant From Partnerships to Policy: Promising Practices for Food Policy Councils (Center for a Livable Future) which I will confess to having a hand in writing. To learn more about the benefits of purple food, take a look at Purple Earth Cuisine by the masterful chef and the Pope of Purple, June Pagan. Want to learn 52 easy ways to eat well and live better? Check out RDN and mind, body medicine guru Theresa Yosuico Stahl’s totally digestible I’m Full! Need a new take on the perplexing problem of rural development from the Japanese perspective? I’d strongly recommend Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection from the dynamic trans-Pacific duo of Richard McCarthy and Tsuyoshi Sekihara.

My piece on the White House Hunger Conference certainly got the most views of anything I wrote this year, which is not surprising. While I took the event to task for not positioning poverty and anti-poverty strategies front and center, I’ve softened a bit since then in light of the Biden Administration’s tenacious form of earnestness and persistence. As I keep telling myself and others, you work with what you got, make it better, and invent new solutions as required. Like tens of millions of Americans, I breathed a sigh of relief over the outcomes of the 2022 election. For the last two years I have sometimes felt like a participant in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan where the American army is getting cut to ribbons on the beaches of Normandy. Maybe this new lightness in my step is deceiving, but Biden’s slow and steady approach appears to have seized the beachhead shifting the momentum in favor of democracy, sustainability, and that still undefined word, justice. Fingers crossed!

In a similar vein, I concluded a series with a blog about USDA’s Community Food Project Competitive Grant Program (CFP). My intent in turning the spotlight on several former and current CFP grantees (Missoula, MT, New Mexico, Lexington, KY, and Bridgeport, CT) was to demonstrate how a modest sum of federal funds can have a dramatic and long-term impact on community food systems. Gratefully, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has included an expanded CFP initiative in its Farm Bill priority list. I urge everyone to keep an eye on the upcoming Farm Bill debate to ensure CFP’s inclusion and expansion.

And last but not least, and as a child of the Cold War, I had to weigh in on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I’ve never liked bullies, so I was glad to see Biden standing up to Putin, which is why I couldn’t understand why so many Americans were whining over high gas and food prices. After all, the Ukrainians were dying by the thousands in defense of their homeland. Well, now, gas prices are down, the Ukrainians are pushing the invaders back, and I gardened with extra fervor this season.

But just when things are looking up, the heavens remind you who’s in charge. A late July hail and rainstorm, the likes of which I’ve never seen in northern New Mexico, blasted my garden to smithereens. Thinking that the 40 or so tomato plants I had nurtured to perfection were history, I resigned myself to buying tomatoes from the farmers’ market. Lo and behold, every single plant regenerated, either in defiance of or in accordance with Nature’s plan. The photo above of canned tomato sauce and mincemeat (green tomatoes are the base) attest to the unexpected and overwhelming late summer abundance.

May you ride 2023’s ups and downs with aplomb; stay open to differing points of view, but don’t be afraid to argue with grace and respect, and when absolutely necessary, draw a line in the sand. Don’t hide behind jargon and ten-dollar words. Seek to be understood, not to stand over others. Climate change is real, so when Nature acts up, roll with the punches. You never know what mysteries and marvels will turn up!

Learning from Japan

I have wandered the countryside where I’ve wondered and written about rural America. Like a gawking rubbernecker passing the scene of a bad car wreck, I’ve turned my gaze in disbelief to the vacant buildings and collapsing trailers in abandoned villages and hamlets. I’ve stopped by the side of the road to raise my device to frame the desolation, only to lower it, unsnapped, recognizing the sins of my voyeurism. The imprints left on my heart by thousands of imagined lost souls from rural Kansas, New Mexico, or remote corners of Maine far outweigh the still images collected on my iPhone.

The miles I’ve driven, the dozens of interviews I’ve conducted, and the thousands of words I’ve posted have left little resolved. The out-migration of youth from small towns to big cities is exactly what I’d do under the circumstances; the intrepid efforts of enterprising individuals to rescue dying places spark our admiration but pale in light of the problem’s magnitude; the grim statistics of suicide, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse shock us and occasionally shake dollars loose from Washington, but they change little if the community’s underlying problems remain unaddressed.

As gloomy as I get about the prospects for those vast stretches of America that lie beyond the reach of suburban sprawl, I was yanked back recently from the cliff’s edge by the slim volume Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection. It made me ask myself if there weren’t other models of rural reinvention from elsewhere—in this case Japan—that might bring vitality again to these forgotten corners of America.

The book’s authorship is congenially shared between Tsuyoshi Sekihara, a community activist and advocate for rural Japan, and the eloquent and ebullient Richard McCarthy, also an activist as well as a food globalist of the highest order. I first met McCarthy about 20 years ago when he was organizing the Crescent City Farmers’ Market in New Orleans (he would later become the executive director of Slow Food USA). In my 2008 book Closing the Food Gap, I describe him as “…a stern Jesuit teacher and sophisticated gourmand …[who] can hold forth with ease on the tenets of Marxism and the Mondragon Manifesto, but prefers the simple pleasures of helping to restore people’s pride in their place, heritage, and food.” Fourteen years later, I wouldn’t change a word.

Together, Sekihara and McCarthy have conspired to translate the lessons learned from revitalizing rural Japan to struggling portions of America’s heartland. Along the way, they frame their stories against the backdrop of indifferent global market capitalism, always the hungry wolf at the door. The recurring themes of Japan’s rural communities mirror our own: out-migration to big cities (Tokyo is only four hours away from the book’s geographic focal point), a declining and aging population with access to fewer and fewer services, including food, and the breakdown of local governance. But rather than write off the snow-bound areas of northern Japan, or be content with the national government’s form of “benign neglect” which only places remote Japanese villages on life support, Sekihara becomes a tenacious uber-community organizer. Echoing a slogan that I heard from McCarthy when I first interviewed him, one he ascribed to the early 20th century Industrial Workers of the World, the purpose of Japanese rural organizing is to “Build a new world in the shell of the old.”

What Sekihara’s Japanese version of rural revitalization brings to the table is the concept of kuni, a self-contained community with a strong sense of identity and purpose. With kuni, size matters. Using a thoughtful process based on the realities of politics and group dynamics, Sekihara concludes that a population of between 500 and 2000 people is the Goldilocks “just right” sweet spot. More people, according to Sekihara, doesn’t allow for the kind of communication and democratic participation necessary for a high functioning community. On the other hand, not enough people breed two conditions: a kind of dictatorship of the few who make all the community’s decisions to the exclusion of others, and secondly, too few people available to provide both the formal and informal services required by any unit of community governance.

I find the latter condition more common in the U.S. than the first. Tragically, I recall the remote Adirondack New York hamlet I frequented in the summer as a child where buildings would burn to the ground because there were only two volunteers trained to operate the fire fighting equipment. And I’ll never forget the summer tourist I watched die in the parking lot of the town’s general store because it took 20 minutes for the hamlet’s defibrillator to travel one mile from the emergency service garage.

Where I think the notion of kuni takes a promising leap forward is with the Japanese administrative structure called the Regional Management Organization (RMO). Think of a a rural American county government serving a few thousand people scattered across several small towns and villages, none of which are large enough to offer necessary services efficiently. It assumes such functions as public safety and health (albeit, often underfunded) while public education is available through regional school districts. The U.S. system differs from the kuni model in that the RMO builds off the efficient scale of county service delivery—consolidating government functions across many villages—but extends the notion of cooperation by also raising up the cultural and spiritual attributes of the place. It encourages and administers a robust inclusion of repeat urban visitors who view the region as a second home where they stay longer and participate more deeply in the life of the community. During their stays, urbanites engage in various rituals, including agricultural festivals that celebrate the rice harvest, for example.

The RMO also promotes conservation and natural resource education programs for young people, and in a manner similar to the food movement’s embrace of regional food economies, stresses the use of natural resources—agriculture and forest products—for their core economic development strategy. Food figures prominently among the RMO’s functions, from meeting the nutritional needs of low-mobility residents living in Japan’s equivalent of food deserts, to the promotion of what’s called the Rice Covenant which enables both urban “voluntourists” and rural residents to benefit physically and spiritually from the harvest.

As I read Sekihara’s prescriptions for kuni development and McCarthy’s commentary, I began to sense something more comprehensive and integrative than I’m accustomed in U.S. rural development circles. Kuni respects place, culture, ritual, and the natural world. America employs a mix of non-profits, universities, and local, state, and federal governments to cobble together services and occasionally produce innovative initiatives. Do I dare say that kuni offered something more compelling and soulful?

Kuni’s circulation of rural and urban cross currents provides outside money, diversity, and a healthy renewal of ideas and values. At the same time, kuni has a confident commitment to its place and self-sufficiency that also feels emotionally satisfying. As Sekihara put it, “In a kuni, people meet and talk about the abundant harvest, the damage done by a typhoon, a newly born child, a death…the taste of vegetables picked that morning, the taste of spring water from the mountain, the scent of the wind, and the cold rain from yesterday.” Why do I find the notion of such conversations so appealing?

This lovely book is not without shortcomings. Given McCarthy’s obvious desire to make comparisons between kuni and American community economic development strategies, we would have benefitted from a broader discussion of the Japanese social, cultural, and political contexts. We need to know more because exporting ideas across several thousand miles of ocean is far more difficult than shipping millions of Subarus.

I’ll also add that McCarthy’s masterfully composed, silky prose collides at times with Sekihara’s terse, matter-of-fact writing style. The book’s structure alternates between one or two chapters authored by Sekihara, and one written by McCarthy who actively shares flights of philosophical fancy. These uneven transitions made me imagine an exchange between the silver-tongued William F. Buckley, Jr. and a bumptious labor union organizer. McCarthy is such a fluid writer and capacious thinker, and Sekihara is so riveted on the mechanics of organizing and governance, that they sometimes complement each other perfectly, while, at other times, they are like two trains passing in the night. Fortunately for the reader who’s willing to work a little harder, nothing will be lost, and there is much to be gained from putting in a little extra effort.

Most Westerners’ heads are filled with images of packed Japanese subways, bustling Tokyo streets, and the industrial juggernaut of Japan, Inc. They have given little thought to that country’s rural places. According to Sekihara, 300 Japanese villages disappear every year. Likewise, we Americans give little thought to our own rural places which only reinforces the nation’s yawning divide. Rather than take photos of our bereft country villages and landscapes, we might actively search for a mutuality of interests that brings the metropolitan world into a relationship with the non-metropolitan world. The community supported agriculture (CSA) movement, coincidentally imported from Japan several decades ago and reinvented thousands of times over in the U.S., offers one positive model. Kuni, as a more comprehensive and integrated approach to rural development, is also worth our undivided attention if not a whole-hearted embrace.

 

The White House Hunger Conference—Dispatch from a Man Who Wasn’t There

When did attending a conference about hungry Americans and the appalling state of our dietary health become so popular? It was easier to get a ticket this month for the upcoming Bruce Springsteen tour (seats priced over $1,000 in some venues) than it was to wangle an invite to the nation’s first big White House food confab since 1969 (Richard Nixon was President!). I guess the good news is that our appetite to resolve the problems of millions of food insecure Americans, as well as to address the 93 percent of us who are not healthy, is stronger than our desire for a joyfully cathartic night with the Boss.

In what can only be hailed as “Boss” Biden’s grand attempt to cast the public engagement net as far as possible, thousands of government officials, food industry staff, non-profit leaders, and just plain folks weighed in to shape the conference since it was first announced in May. By holding bi-weekly calls (30 minutes each), hosting four regional listening sessions, and accepting reams of letters, reports, and comments, the White House made an earnest effort to hear everyone.

But as we know, democracy has its limits. Though hundreds of people were on each call, time only allowed for 6 or 7 questions and comments per session. Like the listening sessions, the voices I heard pleaded for the application of equity and the inclusion of people with lived experience. In my listening session that was for the entire Midwest and Mountain states, 600 people vied for attention in a dozen or more breakout groups. Mine had 53 people, many of whom spoke up for better coordination between all food system stakeholders as well as better access to healthy and affordable food for all consumers. My two cents, that I squeezed into my one minute of participation, argued for more federal support for food policy councils. Like everyone else, my devout faith in the process led me to believe that my insightful intervention would become the top featured recommendation at the conference (wrong).

To the anguished ears of many, several people spoke up over the course of the past four months, sometimes listening in muted shock, when they realized that two big topics were left off the table. Because of a Congressional “deal” to fund the conference—you can guess what side of the aisle the push came from—the food system’s significant contribution to carbon emissions, and the food industry’s relentless need to manufacture and sell us megatons of highly processed crap were not part of the discussion. Yes, many progressive recommendations were presented to expand and enhance USDA’s food and nutrition programs and promote more access to healthy and affordable food. But avoiding action on these big food system problems is like having a car with four flat tires. You fix three of them but not the fourth, and your car limps down the road until an axle breaks. Along the way, the responsibility falls on the taxpayer to fund federal programs to close the food security (not economic security) gap as well as pay for tens of billions in additional health care costs associated with diet-related illnesses like diabetes.

When the irrigation water has dried up and the heat has withered the crops, it won’t matter how many food stamps you have. And when the food industry, who with some anti-hunger advocates oppose regulations and restrictions that would reduce the consumption of unhealthy food, you have to wonder if real health progress can ever be made.

Consider this choice: You can impose severe restrictions on what the food industry can manufacture, and which food items can be purchased with public funds (e.g., purchase restrictions on unhealthy items when using SNAP), or you can splatter nutrition education across the land and fund incentive-based approaches (e.g., Veggie Vouchers/prescriptions, etc.) designed to promote healthy eating behaviors. From a purely economic perspective, the latter policy choice shifts (externalizes) the costs (including dietary health) of unhealthy eating to the public sector, relieving the private sector of all but the most anemic of responses (I invite some ambitious doctoral students looking for a really big thesis topic to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of those two very different policy options).

Not to place a damper on the enthusiasm of those throwing this shindig, whatever achievements can be attributed to this conference will have little to do with the brilliance and boldness of “new” ideas. The Conference’s long-term success will be determined by what is politically possible in Congress—Republican- or Democrat-controlled—where big, bold social programs are about as popular as the pandemic. The 1969 White House hunger conference—referenced frequently during the 2022 conference—has been touted as a great breakthrough moment for food security because it catalyzed new and expanded federal nutrition initiatives like the Women, Infant, and Children Program (WIC) and School Meals. But what hasn’t been acknowledged about that historic moment is that back then, we had this word that looks like Greek today—bipartisanship.

Some of the past nutrition policy breakthroughs were the work of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs (1968 to 1977), chaired by Senator George McGovern (D) and strongly supported by Robert Dole (R). Just as significantly, the Select Committee’s report leap-frogged the thinking of many narrowly focused anti-hunger advocates when it said that 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 or near poor, more than a food stamp or child-feeding program is at issue.” When I read those words today, I’m struck dumb by why, nearly 50 years later, we haven’t done enough to act on this simple but truthful analysis. Instead, as 2022 Conference’s focus attests, we continue to lean on food assistance programs the way a drunk leans on a lamppost.

McGovern and Dole were also prescient in linking health, diet, and the food system. The Committee’s report Dietary Goals for the United States set the stage for expanded public and private efforts to reduce the consumption of fat, sugar, and highly processed food. But the soaring rates of obesity and diabetes since then only underscore how immense the problem has become, and likewise, how potent the pushback from the food industry remains.

Looking back over the Select Committee’s work, I was reminded of why we are where we are today. Rather than take robust action to address the root cause of hunger, namely poverty, the U.S. chose to create a mind-boggling labyrinth of food programs. This constituted a kind of moral middle ground that recognized a political consensus that hunger is abhorrent, therefore worthy of action, but that poverty is tolerable, and its eradication is a low priority. Additionally, racism, especially in the earlier days of nutrition programs, played no small part in driving this approach. As the 2022 White House Conference’s National Strategy to End Hunger points out, there are over 200 federal food, farm, and nutrition programs administered by 21 agencies. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), this situation promotes “…fragmentation, a lack of coordination and collaboration between government agencies that greatly reduces effectiveness of those programs.” Besides presenting a kind of bureaucratic imbroglio for those wanting to organize effective responses, they stand as a burning testament to our comfort treating the symptoms rather than their cause.

This became glaringly obvious when I reviewed the U.S. Census Bureau’s data that showed child poverty fell to a record low 5.2% in 2021. Why? The fast and effective modifications made to the nation’s safety net in response to Covid-19 demonstrated what can be done when policy makers choose to take action. While some of the changes improved and increased the flow of food and food dollars to eligible nutrition assistance recipients, the bulk of the credit for the lower poverty levels, according to the Bureau, goes to the Child Tax Credit which lifted 5.3 million people, including 2.9 million children, out of poverty in 2021. That initiative along with the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and various pandemic stimulus payments had a far greater impact on poverty reduction than SNAP, School Lunch, and WIC combined.

That analysis is not intended to diminish the impact of food assistance programs—SNAP’s entitlement feature along with the increase in benefits provided by Congress made an important contribution during the pandemic—but when you bear down specifically on what people’s individual needs and costs are, a stronger emphasis on direct forms of cash assistance, along with subsidized health care, point the way to a more progressive and effective approach to building social and economic well-being.

To their credit, the writers of the National Strategy to End Hunger did support making Child Tax Credits permanent and raising the national minimum wage to $15.00 per hour (it is and has been, since 2009, $7.25 per hour). But, of course, the Strategy makes no mention of a tax and redistribution plan that would narrow America’s yawning income and wealth gap. Instead, the lion’s share of the actionable recommendations are tweaks to existing food and nutrition programs. When I hear panelist voices rise in rhetorical flourish to say, “We can end hunger—we can do this!” wouldn’t it make more sense to say, “We can end poverty—we can do this!”

But one cynical thought I have is that the idea of hosting this Conference seems predicated on the notion that hunger is still a big deal in this country. The Conference organizers may be operating under the outdated assumption that if we just give our heartstrings a little tune-up, the people will once again rise up in collective outrage. Even using the word “Hunger” in the conference’s title is a thinly veiled attempt to arouse our emotions in a way that food insecurity, a more accurate and granular description of America’s food challenges can’t. But lacking the blockbuster equivalent of a “Hunger in America,” the 1968 CBS-TV documentary that shocked viewers with images of starving American children, it’s not likely that even a White House sponsored event will stir the sleeping lions of popular discontent. The only “food story” receiving top billing now is inflation which stokes the nation’s anger, not food insecure neighbors. One recent letter writer to the New York Post was nearly apoplectic over Fancy Feast cat food going from 52 cents a can to 74 since 2020! Biden’s feline favorability rating is no doubt in the litter box.

Where I break from my own tirade against federal nutrition programs as a useful substitute for an aggressive anti-poverty strategy is when it comes to school meal programs. Now that we no longer vilify school lunch ladies, likening them as we once did to the Wicked Witches of the West, our schools now have lunch programs we can mostly be proud of. Credit Michelle Obama, the Farm to School movement, or the Good Food Purchasing Program, but tens of millions of American school children are now eating nutritional, tasty, and increasingly locally sourced food. It’s been a journey for sure, but as one who can remember school lunch the way sailors of yore remembered hardtack, we can satisfyingly say we’ve come a long way, baby!

Clearly, the Strategy’s goal is to feed all children for free, thus doing away with the obnoxious school cafeteria payment categories of “free, reduced, and full-priced meals.” I may actually live long enough to experience the end of a practice that has no doubt traumatized millions of children who showed up a nickel short at the checkout line. Biden’s proposal is to bring nine million more children into the “free” category of school meals by 2032. That is a big step in the right direction and consistent with the one advocated a decade ago by Janet Poppendieck’s great book Free for All.

Another big step for school meals (local economies, health, and the environment as well) is the growing emphasis on purchasing school food regionally from farmers and local food businesses. As Donna Martin, school food service director for Burke County (GA) said during one Conference panel, “I’ll buy anything you can grow for me.”

We also heard from NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a vegan, who is promoting “meatless Mondays” and “plant-based Fridays” in his city’s schools. World Central Kitchen’s Chef Jose Andres told us to use the same dollar that we feed children with to also train and employ people and buy from local farmers. Given its size and all this momentum around school meals—breakfast, lunch, after school snacks, summer meals—they are fast becoming the biggest force for nutritional and economic change in the country.

As powerful as the school and child portion of Biden’s proposal is, and as helpful as the tweaks to food assistance programs are, I remain dismayed that we are once again going down the road more traveled. We know where it goes because its paths have been trodden now for decades—more food assistance programs and funding to assuage food insecurity; more incentives and well-intentioned “eat well” messages with dubious effectiveness; more pleading with the food industry: “Pretty please, Nice Mr. Food Executive, please stop manufacturing and marketing the food that has taken millions to an early grave.”

I’m not naïve; I fully acknowledge the political realities. I’m reasonably sure that if we had substantial Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress that the Biden Administration would pursue social welfare and nutrition policies that would truly be bold, possibly revolutionary, that would take a backhoe to the deeply rooted reality of American poverty. But from what I’ve read and heard from the Hunger Conference, the times, they ain’t a changing. That all we can squeeze from the Republicans is incremental change doesn’t mean that one can’t use the moment to articulate a vision of health and wellness that holds those responsible for our dietary sickness accountable, and that leans hard into the eradication of poverty—including a muscular redistribution of income and wealth–as our primary purposes.

Let’s take the road less traveled, if for no other reason than it’s time to break out of our rut. Let’s take the road that will end poverty. Let’s take it, not because we’re sure where it leads, but because we know that if we do end poverty, we’ll also end hunger, and at least a dozen other miseries that our world is heir to. Let’s also go down that less traveled side street whose storefronts are stocked only with healthy food, where fake food is consigned to fallen down “speakeasies” at the edge of town, a kind of “junk food red light district,” whose contents are priced exorbitantly, and their purchase expressly forbidden to anyone under 21 years of age.

Ultimately, our task should be to eliminate the necessity for another White House Hunger Conference 50 years from now.