Mark Winne's Blog, page 9

Mobbing the Issue (and More)

I’m sharing two brief excerpts below from Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement to give you a peek into what my third book has to offer. Just a reminder, you have until March 31st to purchase Stand Together directly from the publisher. Go to  https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5085C  and add to your cart. Be sure to enter Promo Code: Q11820 to receive your 20% discount. And of course there’s always Amazon.

Mobbing the Issue

In a phenomenon that I call “mobbing the issue,” foundations, other well-intentioned donors, and social entrepreneurs are stampeding to food waste (as they have to other issues in the past). I first observed this herd-like behavior, when I, like thousands of parents, put in my time as an assistant soccer coach. About the only thing that we amateurs hoped to teach our 10-year-old children was to spread out and play their positions. Short of nailing their little feet to the turf, however, there was virtually nothing we could do to keep them from “mobbing” the ball. The result was a giant, 44-legged insect crawling up and down the field pursuing the ball until by some freak of nature, it landed in one team’s net.

Over the course of my career, I’ve always been fascinated by how the interest in certain food issues suddenly soars to stratospheric heights as it has with food waste. Given that Americans supposedly do not consume at least 30 percent of the food that is produced in our food system—losing it along a food chain that stretches from non-harvested field crops to household plate waste—multiple spotlights have been turned on the issue. Presumably this is because food waste has the potential of addressing multiple problems, among them reducing greenhouse gas emissions, feeding the hungry, and responding to American’s innate sense of frugality.

While the issue has merit, it’s hard to make a convincing case as to why it should suddenly rise to the top of the play charts. Ferd Hoefner, the former policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a Washington-based food and farm advocacy group, told me in July 2016 that every major national environmental organization, for example, the Natural Resource Defense Council, have multiple staff (and sometimes whole divisions) working on the food waste issue. “There are so many more important issues than food waste that are under-resourced now,” said Hoefner, who is a 25-year-old veteran of national food and farm policy.

A 2015 Chronicle of Philanthropy article (Stiffman, November 18) identified food insecurity, obesity, and food waste as the top three food issues among funders. In spite of the fact that the nation’s 206 very large food banks and the 60,000-plus soup kitchens and food pantries have refined the art of receiving and redistributing hundreds of millions of tons of uneaten food every year—from farm field gleaners to tractor-trailer loads of unsaleable processed food to restaurant and cafeteria food recovery programs—there seems to be a new-found urgency to make food waste a the national food issue. If there was more than anecdotal evidence that more robust food waste reduction efforts would significantly reduce hunger, then perhaps the emphasis is warranted. But as we know, domestic food insecurity has remained at high rates even though the food banking system has grown larger and more highly efficient over the past 20 years.

Until there is a process by which funders, policy leaders, academics, and organization directors can rationally evaluate needs and coordinate appropriate responses—preferably within a food system’s and collective impact context—“mobbing the issue” will remain a problem.

The Dietary Guidelines: An Opportunity to Forge Unity

At the national level, food advocates have been struggling for two decades to join agriculture, environmental and climate, food security, and human health issues into one “joined-up” national food policy, most likely through the “Farm Bill.” While the realization of that goal could be years away, a glimmer of hope came during the spring of 2015 (and faded shortly thereafter) through another national policy moment, which is the five-year update of the nation’s Dietary Guidelines. Among its many progressive and insightful recommendations, the expert government panel stated, “Meeting current and future food needs will depend on two concurrent approaches: altering individual and population dietary choices and patterns and developing agricultural and production practices that reduce environmental impacts and conserve resources . . .” (Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2015). In other words, eat like your life and the life of the planet depend on it.

Additional recommendations addressed household food security and access to healthy and affordable food in so-called food deserts. Nothing this far-reaching in the annals of national food policy had ever been uttered before. But science can run into a brick wall when the truth it reveals threatens to gore another’s ox. That was the unfortunate outcome when the panel of 15 health and nutrition experts, assembled at the behest of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, presented its recommendations. The final guidelines, however, are approved and issued by the Secretaries, not the panel. They are the nation’s most important health promotion tool since they constitute “official” advice for ordinary citizens on what and what not to eat. Just as important, they strongly influence food regulations and education related to all federal nutrition programs such as Women, Infant, and Children Program (WIC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and school meals (Department of Health and Human Services, 2015).

In the 2015 process, it became clear that politics had as much sway as science. As reported in Time (Heid, 2016), various food industry groups, especially those that represent livestock and meat, were able to dilute the  recommendations that advised Americans to eat less meat. Again, these recommendations argued that more plant-based food and less meat consumption would reduce carbon emissions and conserve water, therefore benefiting the environment. Determining that sustainability—and agriculture’s impact on climate change as well—was outside the scope of the panel’s work, the Secretaries ruled that any discussion of the connections between food choices and their impact on the environment were out of bounds.

But don’t give up hope. There are reasons to believe that the guidelines present a serious opportunity to promote food movement unity, and that a publicly transparent, evidence-based process can override self-interested industry groups. Over 30,000 people and organizations provided official comment on the recommendations, about 10 times more than for the 2010 version (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2015, personal communication with Angie Tagtow). While many of those comments opposed the more far-reaching recommendations (e.g. the meat and sugar industries), there was more participation from every segment of the food movement than at any other time in recent memory. This was a rare moment of unplanned unity achieved through what, at least at the scientific level, was a powerful consensus about the validity of the food system connections. Though the results were not most people wanted once filtered through the political screen, the Dietary Guidelines give future food movement activists much to build on and common ground to till.

 

 

 

 

 

Stand Together or Starve Alone

I am pleased to announce the release of my newest book Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement. It is available directly from the publisher, from Amazon, and if you pout and stamp your feet long enough, at your independent book store. CLICK HERE to order directly from the publisher, and when you check out use promo code Q41720. You may also purchase it directly from Amazon.com.

The price is admittedly too high. Unfortunately, the only thing I can do about that is give you the 20 percent discount when you order it from the publisher. If you catch me at a conference or speaking event where I’m selling the book, well, I’ll do my best to give you a deal. But rather than apologize for something I can’t control, I can guarantee you that I’ve put my heart, soul, and 45 years of food system experience into writing this book. As an avid participant in and observer of the food movement, I’ve had a front-row seat in watching it evolve and devolve. So, with respect to the book’s price, my unalloyed opinion is that you’ll get more out of it than what you ultimately pay for it.

What will you get? Here’s a sample:

Thousands have wondered why the Community Food Security Coalition soared to such extraordinary heights only to crash and burn in 2012. As a participant in the life and death of CFSC, you’ll read my perspective on the perils awaiting those who dare to build a more united food movement.

After decades of work battling hunger, obesity and diabetes, and an industrial food system that often doesn’t give a damn, do you ever wonder why all the indicators of progress show none? I’ll give you a hint: try collaborating.

Nearly 90 percent of food activists feel strongly or somewhat strongly that the “food movement would be improved through greater food organization cooperation.” The book is chock-full of ideas, methods, and tips on how to make that cooperation happen.

Ever wonder why the food movement’s chief spokespersons seem to be a handful of chefs and journalists? So do I.

Have you given up trying to remember the acronyms for all the USDA food and farm programs? Join the club, but take heart in knowing that the way to a healthy, sustainable, and affordable food system doesn’t require that we drown in an alphabet soup of government programs.

Does race divide the food movement? Does money divide the food movement? Do big egos divide the food movement? Does bad communication divide the food movement? Yup.

Has the food movement produced some real-life, super action heroes? Absolutely, but most of us won’t recognize their names since they’ve been quietly trying to build bridges between the food movement’s sub-movements, sub-sub-movements, and sub….

Hear the confessions of a real-life do-gooder who didn’t always do good.

Maybe you’re in need of a few arcane food facts to amuse and amaze your foodie friends with at that next brew-pub gathering. Among other bits of trivia, you’ll learn about the insane number of food blogs, food flicks, and food books (including mine) that have come on the scene over the past 10 years.

Is there reason to be optimistic about the future of the American food system? You bet there is! Why? You’ll be able to answer that question for yourself after reading Stand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement.

Occupy Your Farmers’ Market!

My favorite farmers’ market essay is a short piece by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll that he wrote eight months after 9/11. As America was raining “shock and awe” down on Afghanistan, and our airports were becoming maximum security facilities, Carroll’s reflection on his own Embarcadero Farmers’ Market brought us some solace from the storm. He told us that his farmers’ market was, “the happiest place on earth [because] I had not seen any metal detectors…armed National Guard soldiers…no announcements…concerning unattended packages.” It was an oasis of tranquility in a world suffocating under a cloak of fear.

Dare I contrast Carroll’s elegant piece with John McPhee’s brilliant “Giving Good Weight” which first appeared in the New Yorker back in the mid-1970s? In it, McPhee describes the early days of NYC’s Union Square Farmers’ Market whose pioneering local food consumers, long denied the ecstasies of fresh sweet corn, engage in virtual hand-to-hand combat ‘neath clouds of flying husks and silk, salted with briny New York accents. Are these contrasting perspectives just a case of East Coast “edgy” meets West Coast “mellow,” or did McPhee and Carroll offer us competing visions of what farmers’ markets would or could become?

On a perfect June day this year in northern Idaho, a place known as much for nature’s beauty as it is for white supremacist militias, a man shows up at a way-popular Saturday farmers’ market hung stem-to-stern with guns ‘n ammo. His cause? He was there to protest the market’s publicly stated policy of “No Open Carry” of firearms. The following week, anti-abortion advocates stood at the same market’s perimeter with their graphic images of aborted human fetuses, assuming somehow that local food aficionados were also rampantly pro-choice.

In some ways, it’s inevitable that the snapping dogs of non-food interests would try to sink their chops into the lush haunches of local food marketplaces with their swelling weekly audiences of shoppers. Try growing from barely 200 U.S. farmers’ markets in the 1970s to today’s 8,700, and see how well you handle the adulation. Yes, time to celebrate their success, but time as well to recognize that farmers’ markets are becoming our de facto Hyde Park “Free Speech Corner.”

At a summer meeting of the Santa Fe Food Policy Council, one member who directs the city’s largest food pantry politely asked another council member who oversees the city’s highly successful farmers’ markets why their prices are so high. It’s a common question loudly whispered by many perplexed shoppers whose loyalty to the growers overrides their cognitive dissonance that Albertsons’ produce may be half the price. While this conundrum has given rise to by-now familiar accusations of elitism and the exclusivity of many markets, it has also led to innovative ways of balancing the playing field at no cost to local farmers, many of whom qualify for food stamps themselves. At a new Santa Fe farmers’ market that serves the low-to-moderate income side of town, I counted no less than five separate voucher programs that encourage WIC participants, senior citizens, SNAP beneficiaries, children, and diabetic health clinic patients to buy local produce.

There is yet another group, superficially referred to as Millennials, whose interest in farmers’ market are decidedly more social. Of these younger visitors, the Washington Post (6/21/16) said they “view these outdoor markets as more a lifestyle choice than an opportunity to support agriculture.” By itself their lifestyle choices may not matter, but while farmers are reporting more bodies at their markets they are not necessarily seeing more cash in the till. As reported by the Post, Zach Lester, a farmer selling at the Dupont FreshFarm Market, said, “A lot of people that walk through markets are not shopping. They’re there to meet. They’re there to socialize.” In other words, their passion for farmers’ markets is not always paying off for farmers, a problem which may have long-term financial consequences for them as well as for those of us who love local food.

We’ve come to expect so much from these once–humble gatherings of part-time and small growers circled around the town square in their mish-mash of dilapidated motor vehicles. As farmers’ markets get bigger, better, and more pervasive, is it fair to ask them to belly up to the public table where more voices are clamoring for access and attention? Is there room for the non-affluent shopper, those who believe – rightfully-so in many cases – that their point of view must be heard, and even for the politician trolling for votes among the market-day crowds?

Do we duke it out in the courts over constitutional questions of free speech and assembly with those whose ideas we find intolerable in hopes we can keep them at bay, or do we meet them foresquare on our own turf? Perhaps we should counter gun advocates, for instance, with “open-carry” of vegetables – baby carrots inserted into the cartridge holders of bandoliers, flagrant displays of vegetables of mass consumption (VMCs) such as zucchinis, tomatoes, and potatoes; apples attached rakishly to our vest’s hand grenade clips. Our camouflage wear will mimic bins of fruits and vegetables so that we can slip unseen in and out of produce stalls.

Likewise, graphic color photos of delicious meals made from home-grown ingredients should be printed big and bold on placards whose bearers shout “I am pro-local!” and “I am pro-healthy life for all!” And of course, coupons and tokens of many shapes and colors – funded by government, foundations, and higher-end shoppers – should falleth from the heavens like the gentle rain on those eager to become food elitists themselves.

To loosen the wallets of the Millennials, perhaps we could issue them coupons good for $10 of fresh produce and one life-changing experience. For those running for public office who insist on shaking my hand even though I’m frantically juggling three overflowing, hand-crafted veggie totes, let’s set aside a free-speech corner at every market where they can share their views on issues like local food, regional food systems, and how they will allocate billions for those causes. Concerned that farmers’ markets might be overrun by Republican office seekers if we institute liberal political access policies? Don’t worry, the highly regarded Winne Poll found that farmers’ markets shoppers who self-identify as Democrats outnumber Republican shoppers by 4 to 1 (poll margin of error: +/- 27%).

Farmers’ markets should embrace their de facto role as the new town square. We need a safe place where the rough and tumble world of democracy and our exercise of the Bill of Rights can ensue without provoking mass hysteria nor undercutting the “quiet enjoyment” of those who seek comfort in the market’s sensual delights. Likewise, the markets’ shoppers should look like the whole community. There hasn’t been any shortage of creative ways to engage a community’s diverse demographics. Let’s continue to crank new ideas out of our imaginative marketing minds.

The hustle and bustle of the Saturday market brings many joyful moments. Stand with your eyes closed amidst the hungry masses eager to be set free by fresh local food, and you can often feel an energy like no other. But success, growth, and the fulfillment of what increasingly looks like a larger destiny awaits those who can effectively manage the tidal wave of varied interest in today’s farmers’ markets.

The Most Important Word in “Community Gardening” is not “Gardening!”

I’ve always loved community gardens. I think it’s because they come in so many shapes and sizes. You can find them tucked into the oddest places like a pie-shaped city block, on the apron of an airport runway, or in the middle of a forgotten vacant lot. Due perhaps to my peculiar landscape aesthetic, I was very happy to give this year’s keynote at the 38th Annual American Community Gardening Association Conference in my old hometown of Hartford, Conn.

Almost 200 people gathered from across the country to explore and share the near-infinite ways we have contrived to cultivate “a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil,” to use Abe Lincoln’s words. The workshops were as intriguing as the enthusiasm was palpable as the variations were fantastical! So, let me share an excerpted version of the keynote I gave to these noble gardeners, all of whom had the best dirt I’ve ever seen lodged ‘neath their nails.

Hartford, Connecticut – July 28, 2017 – ACGA Annual Conference

Community gardening and urban agriculture play important roles in promoting food security, healthy eating, and a sustainable and equitable food system. For those reasons, I’m going to use my time today to explore three myths that are part of the community gardening conversation.

Myth Number One: Community gardening nurtures human tranquility, a oneness with nature, and a reduction in stress. Myth Number Two: urban gardens and farms will feed a hungry world and create a slew of good-paying jobs to boot. Myth Number Three: Such gardeners and farmers exist in such a singular state of purity and righteousness that they can float above the political fray eschewing any serious engagement with public policy.

Let’s dispense with the first myth – the supernatural power of community gardening to assuage the anxieties of modern life. When I lived in Hartford, I was a member of the Watkinson Community Garden. I loved going there because the 100 or so plots adjoined meadows and the Park River that were home to cardinals, finches, orioles, bluebirds, and swallows. The river banks were alive with muskrats, snakes, and the occasional skunk. Deer would sometimes vault the garden’s fence to dine on a few heads of lettuce.

But early one June, a gardener discovered a large woodchuck had taken up residence inside the garden and was munching on everything he could get his little paws on. The men mobilized immediately with the precision of a military unit. Three volunteers went on reconnaissance to locate each of the interloper’s points of access and egress where they stood watch with hoes and shovels at the ready. The platoon commander, carrying a gasoline canister, found the chuck’s main entrance to his den and filled it with petrol. Yelling “fire in the hole!” he dropped a full book of lit matches into the now saturated warren sending a fireball twenty-feet into the air, which threw the gardener/warrior onto his back. The singed, but still agile chuck darted for his life from one of his exits only to be greeted by shovel-wielding gardeners whose tools – plowshares now turned into weapons – soon dispatched the poor fellow in a most unsavory manner.

Murder and mayhem in the community garden; the finches and bluebirds sought refuge in a nearby housing project; man’s dominance over nature was restored, but tranquility came to a grinding halt.

A recent New York Times article stated that, “If you’re a human being living in 2017 and you’re not anxious, there’s something wrong with you.” Our children are over-scheduled and over-stimulated by “jiu-jitsu lessons, clarinet practice, and Advance Placement tutoring,” and their iPhones are surgically attached to their wrists. No wonder, according to the same article, that 36% of girls and 26% of boys between the ages of 13 and 17 suffer from anxiety disorder. Anxiety fuels marijuana purchases that are now a $6.7 billion industry. Those who voted for Trump did so because they were anxious; those who did not are now extremely anxious.

If we’re going to boast about the paradisiacal qualities of community gardens, we need to ensure that they live up to our hopes. Now more than ever, the world needs to slow down and sniff the zucchini blossoms, take a Zen walk along garden paths, and savor the deliciousness of the productions of the earth.

Myth Number Two: Community gardening and urban agriculture will feed a hungry world and create lots of jobs. First, let’s be clear about the causes of hunger and food insecurity. They are poverty, which is itself fueled by America’s enormous wealth and income disparities, particularly low wages. The stark facts are these:

The U.S. leads the developed world in income inequality
The top 1% took in 19% of all income while the 10% took in 48%
70% of all private wealth is held by the top 10%while the 1% control 35%

These numbers are hideous and won’t be altered by community gardens nor anything other than a radical restructuring of our tax code. They need our attention, and I hope the voices of community gardeners join those who hunger for social and economic equality.

My colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future looked at the benefits associated with urban agriculture for a bill that Senator Debbie Stabenow was working on. They combed through the literature, and based on the evidence, they found that urban agriculture:

Significantly increased social capital, community well-being, and civic engagement


Provides a number of ecosystem services to urban areas, e.g. one pound of food production displaces two pounds of carbon


Supports participants’ physical and psychosocial health


Supplements household food security


Is associated with increased property values
Offers opportunities for skills development, workforce training, and supplemental income (these benefits normally require subsidies to achieve).

In sum, however, no large-scale job creation benefits could be demonstrated.

That being said, there is evidence that gardens are associated with obesity reduction and better health outcomes, and reduce crime and municipal maintenance costs. Even though community gardens and small urban farms are not big food contributors, 30% of US agriculture production occurs in metro areas.

Of course, skeptics abound. Spokespersons for Big Farming have turned their noses up at these so-called “urban aesthetes” and “utopian farmers” whose acreage is so small it can barely support a rototiller. But with a billion of the globe’s people hungry, a billion undernourished, and another billion obese, conventional and industrial forms of agriculture have hardly earned bragging rights.

Urban agriculture and community gardens may not feed a hungry world, but they certainly can feed a hungry spirit and a hunger for both natural and human connection. As the world becomes less food secure every day, growing food in unconventional places will no longer be thought of as a nicety, like a flowerbox of petunias slung from a brownstone’s windowsill, but as a necessity born out of the looming realization that there will be 9 billion of us to feed by 2050. At the very least, one can think of urban farming as an insurance policy with a very small monthly premium.

Let’s consider myth number three: Community gardeners don’t need to work on public policy. Over 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln, speaking in favor of the newly formed land grant university system and the Department of Agriculture, said, “Our population [will] increase [which makes] the most valuable of all arts…the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression. Such a community will be independent of crowned-kings, money kings, and land-kings.”

By establishing a system of publicly financed education and technical support for agriculture, and for what would later become the epi-center of food-consumer interests, Lincoln joined the ideals of American self-reliance to the principle that our public interests could be advanced through a partnership with government.

Fast forward to the present and we see a plethora of food policy activity at the local, state, and federal levels of government. While I don’t necessarily want government to lead in the area of food, I do want two things. The first is to institutionalize government’s role in ensuring access to healthy and affordable food for all. In other words, food should be recognized as one critical government function. The second thing I want is for government to collaborate with private sector partners to ensure that communities, states, tribal organizations, and the nation are meeting their food-related goals.

It was for these two reasons that we established the Hartford Advisory Commission on Food Policy, a food policy council which is now the second longest continuously operating food policy council out of 250 nationwide.

You may have heard last year in Cleveland how their food policy council played a critical role in revamping the city’s zoning practices to support community gardening, allowing for the backyard raising of chickens and bees, providing financial support for food-related start-ups including urban farms, and changing the city’s food procurement practices to give premium pricing to food produced in or near the city.  

Los Angeles has added yet another dimension to municipal support for urban farming. Their food policy council was instrumental in passing an ordinance that allows property owners to lease their land to food growers in return for tax benefits. The ordinance is designed to turn vacant pieces of land into productive urban garden and farm plots to produce food for surrounding neighborhoods, especially lower income ones. But L.A. also sees this change as a way to expand green spaces, reduce blight, promote social cohesion and support economic opportunities. Here again, we see a multitude of purposes and outcomes enabled through public policy.

At the federal level, USDA’s Community Food Project (CFP) grant program has funded around $100 million in community food work since its inception in 1996. I don’t have the numbers, but I know that much of that spending has gone to a wide variety of community agriculture projects. It would be in the best interests of AGCA and its members to ensure the continued funding of CFP.

After policy, of course, comes collaboration. Working with other stakeholders whether through a food policy council or another collaborative mechanism is essentially how you secure more policy benefits. No matter how important you are or how necessary your organization’s projects, little will change in your communities unless you collaborate fiercely with those who share your larger purpose of promoting food security, sustainable food systems, and healthy eating.

I know that what I’m proposing isn’t easy. Building collaborations with people you don’t normally work with, connecting the dots within a complicated food system, and engaging public policy at all levels are hard work and can make us very uncomfortable. But as my therapist told me, embracing your inner discomfort is a necessary precursor to change.

When we do interact with others, we need to have a clear message. Here are a few ideas I’d ask you to please consider. First, community gardening, urban agriculture, and all of their amazing variations need a new name – something that conveys both the spirit of non-conventional food production, is all encompassing, and bridges geographic differences.

Second, I think we do our cause a disservice when we overstate the benefits of community gardening. it’s easy to wax poetic – I do it all the time. Gardeners aren’t shy about expressing their love for plants, veggies, flowers or the implacable joy of gardening. In our writings, reports, and public testimony, however, we’d be well-served by reining in some of our exuberance in favor of a more-sober rendition of community gardening’s cornucopia of good outcomes. To that end, let’s lean on the data, and let’s encourage more research that looks at the numerous values associated with community gardening.

My message boils down to this:

The most important word in “community gardening” is “community”


Build on the good work you are all doing, but link arms with others recognizing that none of you have all the answers


Engage government; the people and the policymakers must be on the same page. This is what they call democracy, and as a citizen, that is what I signed up for


If you don’t belong to a food policy council, join one. If you don’t have one, start one


Create a message that unifies your work and speaks to the proven benefits of community gardening
Poverty is the cause of hunger; the time has come to work toward the end of income and wealth inequality.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for your good work. Go ACGA!

2017 Appearances and Updates – Summer and Fall

Santa Fe is hotter than a Big Jim green chile right now. Like packs of thirsty dogs, people are slouching through the streets with their tongues dangling. They are finding relief by sipping cool margaritas, and waiting reverently for the summer monsoons to begin. And most certainly the cooling storms will arrive – just as I’m leaving town, no doubt, for the muggier corners of America. Here’s a look at the places I’ll soon be, as well as a brief look back at some places I’ve been. And as I’ve said before on this screen, I’m always willing to let you take me out for a beer if I happen to be in your neighborhood. Please stay in touch!

June 25 – 30, Baltimore, MD: I’ll be spending some time with my colleagues at the Center for a Livable Future. Among our tasks will be hosting two trainings in Silver Springs, MD. The first, on June 27, will be on food waste recovery policies led by the legal eagles at the Harvard Law Food Policy Clinic. On June 28, we’ll be offering a fundraising workshop. Both trainings are open to people in the Chesapeake Bay region engaged in local or state food policy work. For more information contact Karen Bassarab at kbanks10@jhu.edu.

July 27 & 28, Hartford, CT: The American Community Gardening Association is bringing me back to the streets and gardens of my former home town for a keynote address at their annual conference. For more information go to https://communitygarden.org/.

Santa Fe Soda Tax Fizzles

Little towns seem to only get national attention when something goes dramatically wrong. Such was the case with Santa Fe which ran the wrong way against the prevailing trend of cities passing soda taxes, e.g. Philadelphia and Boulder. Soundly defeated by a margin of 58% to 42%, Santa Fe’s two cents per ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages drowned in a sticky cauldron of Coke cash and voter backlash. The public’s rejection garnered numerous national headlines and questions about what went wrong in a place as “progressive” as Santa Fe. As I pointed out in my March blog post http://www.markwinne.com/should-the-food-movement-embrace-soda-taxes/ the Santa Fe tax would not have provided a dime to healthy eating campaigns as both Boulder’s successful ballot measure did and, more recently, as Seattle’s will.

My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Santa Fe’s voters were confused. A typical thought process went like this: “All the tax revenue will fund early childhood education programs; you want me to drink less soda, right, which is the reason for the tax, but if I drink too much “less” soda then you have less money for education, right? And, by the way, the people who drink more soda are low to middle income residents who would presumably benefit the most from more childhood education programs. In other words, like all sales taxes, this one is regressive. And none of your campaign literature said anything about preventing obesity and diabetes which also does more harm to lower income people than it does to higher income. I don’t get it!” A stronger link to positive health outcomes might have turned the tables. Maybe.

So, who were the winners? No one other than Santa Fe’s economy which took in about $3 million for ads and other campaign promotions from groups such as the National Beverage Association (anti-tax) and the Michael Bloomberg Foundation (pro-tax).

Arizona Food Summit

As I said in my April blog post http://www.markwinne.com/winne-banned-in-arizona/ the Arizona Department of Agriculture “disinvited” me from speaking at the statewide anti-hunger summit in late April. My thanks to Gary Paul Nabhan who organized a boycott of the Summit. After getting the news, Nabhan said in a blog post, “We must respectfully ask ADA Director Mark Killian to reinvite Mark and apologize to him, and to finally put Native American, Hispanic, Black and women farmers on its governing board, its staff (in greater numbers) and its grant decision-making review committees, not just on ‘tokenist’ advisory committees.”

No luck on the “reinvite” or apology, but I do hope that AZ’s food advocates have success with remaking a good-ole boy department packed to the gills with ranchers and corporate food interests into a public body that truly looks like the people who make up Arizona’s food system. One less than respectful Summit attendee posted a question on a digital board located directly behind the speaker’s podium. Just as Director Killian was addressing the smaller than expected crowd, a message flashed, “Where’s Mark Winne?”

August 10 – 13, Atlanta, GA: Netroots Nations. I’ll be doing a workshop with other panelists on turning a food desert into a food oasis. Thanks to Kwabena Nkrono of Atlanta Food and Farm PBC for bringing this together. Check out https://www.eventbrite.com/e/netroots-nation-2017-registration-24407407212 for more information.

September 25 & 26, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana Cooperative Extension is hosting an Indiana Food Summit Workshop on food policy that I will lead. For more information contact Jodee Ellett at jellett@purdue.edu.

November 9, Jefferson County, Colorado: The Jefferson County Food Policy Council is hosting a one-day planning event called “Imagine Jeffco’s Food Future.” I will be giving a keynote and facilitating the discussion. For more information, contact Marion Kalb at mlkalb@co.jefferson.co.us.

November 13, Portland, ME: The University of Southern Maine in Portland will be inaugurating its Food Studies Program with a speakers’ series that I will join. For more information contact Lisa Lindenschmidt at lmlinden@maine.edu.

December 5 – 7, Boston, MA: Community Food Systems Conference, Boston Park Plaza Hotel. My CLF colleagues and I will be running a pre-conference session on Dec. 5 on local and state food policy and food policy councils. For more information about the conference contact Kristen Irvin at Kristen.irvin@tufts.edu.

Seoul South Korea Announces its Food Charter

Over the past 12 years I have had the huge honor of going to South Korea on three different occasions to work with government officials and non-governmental food advocates. Past blogs have chronicled my adventures from eating live seafood to meeting with numerous politicians on all sides of Korea’s vibrant political spectrum. Korea is a beautiful country that takes its food security deadly seriously – no square foot of land goes unplanted and people have died in this century to protect the country’s food sovereignty. So, it is with a proud sense of shared accomplishment that I announce that the country’s capital, the City of Seoul, has put forward a food charter. I don’t know the details, nor do I have much contact information, but you can see a little more on my Facebook page as well as at http://news.kbs.co.kr/news/view.do?ncd=3501266&ref=A. Good luck to my good friends in South Korea!

Books that Sow the Seeds of Change

Markwinne.com’s rigid subject selection criteria only allow reviews of books that include a substantial contribution by me or mention my name a minimum of five times. In this age of narcissism, the reasons should be obvious: these may very well be the only books worth reading, plus reviewing them allows me to dispense with any pretense of objectivity.

As riddled with ethical concerns as these policies may be, I’ve chosen to adhere to their self-serving line of reasoning in the interest of presenting two food books that have nothing in common, other than me of course. The first is Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups by Andy Fisher. The second book is Seasoned with Gratitude by Kathryn Lafond.

After my second reading of Big Hunger (MIT Press, 2017), it dawned on me that if Andy Fisher hadn’t written this book someone else would have to. There’s been tension in the U.S. food movement for far too long around the subject of collusion between major anti-hunger sectors and the food industry for someone not to call the question. That Fisher has done so with a scrupulously well-researched book that includes tales that will make your hair stand on end is a credit to his scholarship and the simple necessity that the truth be told.

Depending on its context, collusion may only be a minor sin, as in the collusion between my younger brother and me to deceive our mother into thinking we’d eaten our vegetables. Collusion’s more elevated cousin, collaboration, is often necessary to achieve some goal that two or more partners could never achieve alone. And if good ends must sometimes be reached by traveling down dark corridors, then the pure among us may have to occasionally accept low transparency and the company of unsavory partners.

But when the goal that collusion is purportedly designed to achieve never materializes, then one has to ask what’s going on. If, as Fisher points out, U.S. food insecurity has increased since the turn of this century from 10.5 percent to 12.6 percent today, that obesity and diabetes levels are at all-time highs, that the economies of many parts of the nation are still in the toilet, then even the non-Republicans among us must raise questions about the direction of food banking and SNAP, supposedly our two strongest hunger fighting tools.

There’s more than enough shock and awe about what Fisher refers to as the “anti-hunger industrial complex” to keep readers uttering strings of “WTF!” Annual salaries for food bank CEOs may range from between $200,000 to $400,000. Using a form of research that would leave the most-healthy among us cross-eyed and crazy, Fisher found that 25 percent of the board members of food banks come from the ranks of Fortune 1000 corporations or from privately owned companies of similar size. And the story about the confrontation between some members of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Food Research Action Center (“FRAC” – the nation’s primary anti-hunger advocate) over SNAP nutrition issues is by itself worth the price of the book.

The cozy relationship between some of the nation’s anti-hunger leaders and corporations, whose labor practices are one cause of American hunger, is certainly a big part of this nation’s soap opera. But Fisher’s larger purpose is not to tell titillating tales of who is sleeping with whom. As a long-time food justice advocate (Fisher was a co-founder and executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition), he, like a growing number of food system activists and leaders in North America, have a different vision for how people should be fed.

Quite simply, Big Hunger puts forward the proposition that people should be able to feed themselves with adequate wages and only limited emergency assistance from food banks and supplemental nutrition sources. This would be an entirely reasonable expectation if it not was for the fact that the leading anti-hunger forces have lost their edge – if indeed they ever had it – dulled by their growing dependence on corporations who keep wages and other compensation, including health insurance, as low as possible.

Fisher relates findings from the House Committee on Education and Workforce that estimate the annual cost to the U.S. taxpayer for Walmart’s low wages as $6.2 billion in public benefits such as SNAP and Medicaid. But rather than address this externalization of employer costs as a grave injustice, anti-hunger groups, especially food banks, stand in line like lap dogs for the $2 billion in “donations” that Walmart dishes out. Once again, corporate America has bamboozled us by swilling about in the public trough while still smelling like roses because of their so-called charity.

If there is a flaw in Fisher’s book it’s in his timing. Unlike mean-spirited politicians who simply see the world of federal food assistance programs as worthy of nothing but the axe, Fisher and the innovative anti-hunger programs that he highlights want reform. SNAP should be as much about promoting healthy eating and local economic development as it is about providing an economic safety net. Feeding America and FRAC should work with labor unions and other groups who are struggling for better incomes for food and farm workers. But neither Republicans nor Democrats have the political courage or the policy insights to turn the $100 billion in federal food assistance into a powerful force for health and economic empowerment. The anti-hunger lobby’s only strategy is a tenacious defense of the status quo, and they will no doubt unfairly criticize Fisher for playing into the Republican Congress’ hands.

I was reading Big Hunger in a restaurant recently, scribbling notes like mad in the margins, when my waiter saw the book cover and asked me about it. I gave him my best 30-second elevator speech as he scanned the inside flap and back cover’s endorsements. Writing down the title and author on a cocktail napkin, he said, “sounds like something we need to hear more about.” He’s right.

Seasoned with Gratitude

The best part of food movement debates is that one can retreat from dark discussions of hunger into the effulgent light of delicious food. Rather than viewing this as some kind of cop out, I see it as a blending of one’s responsibility for addressing the world’s challenges and our personal need to show gratitude for our food. Kathryn Lafond’s lovely addition to our cook book shelves, Seasoned with Gratitude (Greater Nourishment Publishing, 2017), takes a novel approach to the world of recipes by placing blessings, graces, and bowed heads at the center of our plate.

Deliciously free of sanctimony, Seasoned with Gratitude reminds us that the devotional pause before digging in deepens our empathy for the plight of others and the productions of the earth. The act of planting seeds, after all, often begins with one’s knees on the ground, and a prayerful gesture of gratitude before a meal places us symbolically on our knees with those who produced our food.

From Seasoned with Gratitude we hear the words of the Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh who asks us to respect nature’s gifts: “When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the living.”

I will acknowledge, of course, that my only qualifications for reviewing a cookbook (aside from the fact that I contributed this book’s forward) is the ease with which I can follow the recipes and the ensuing edibility of my creation. In both cases, I succeeded admirably with my small test sample. Lafond’s writing is clear, her orientation is local and sustainable, and the ingredients are easily obtainable (no need to parachute into the jungles of Borneo to stalk the rare wee-jee berry for that upcoming dinner party). A few short chapters that precede the blessings and recipes (250 in all) offer a nice tutorial on cooking, the stocking of one’s kitchen, and the sourcing of food. All in all, Seasoned with Gratitude is a holistic cookbook flavored with just the right amount of holiness.

How we share the treasures of the Lord crosses my mind as a unifying theme for these two seemingly disparate books. Big Hunger reminds us that the lessons we learned about sharing in kindergarten are often forgotten by the time we became adults, otherwise hunger and poor nutrition in the most prosperous nation on earth would be nothing more than footnotes in American history books. Likewise, the practice of offering up thanks for our food not only sends a stirring drumbeat through our souls, but acknowledges a collective responsibility to share our blessings with others.

It seems as if the Franklin Delano Roosevelt grace from Seasoned with Gratitude sums up our current dilemma best: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Winne Banned in Arizona!

On February 23rd, I received an email from Tim Thomas of the Arizona Food Marketing Alliance asking me to speak at the Arizona Food Summit on April 28th. I enthusiastically accepted the invitation and participated two weeks later in a lengthy planning call with other speakers and conference organizers. I even bought an airline ticket for Phoenix.

On April 12th, I got a call from Laura Oxley, a staff member at the Arizona Department of Agriculture, one of the Food Summit’s sponsors. Speaking in a trembling, but practiced bureaucratic voice, Ms. Oxley told me that I was officially disinvited from speaking at the summit. According to her, some of my website’s industrial agriculture and GMO references over the past few years had offended the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association, the Arizona Farm Bureau, and her department’s director. She told me that one of the cattleman was a “third-generation rancher, and the department’s director is a fifth-generation rancher…and they think that your presence at the summit would be divisive and prevent some members of Arizona’s agriculture sector from attending.”

I was flabbergasted, especially since my role at the summit was to speak only on the topic of “creating an equitable food system,” one that would provide healthy and affordable food to everyone. I had no intention to discuss production agriculture of any kind.

The “dissing” disinvite was particularly infuriating because anyone familiar with my writing would know that I take a relatively moderate position on industrial agriculture, letting the evidence and the need for transparency inform my remarks. Anyone familiar with my career would know that I have worked well over the years with several different state Farm Bureaus, and that I was a founding member of the Southwest Grass-fed Livestock Alliance, where, in spite of my poor horsemanship, I got along pretty well with the cowboys on our board. That Arizona ranchers would perceive me as a threat strongly suggests that their “third-generation and fifth-generation” status is nothing more than the on-going degeneration of their already sun-bleached intellects.

I could go on spilling invective across the rangelands of the Southwest – making inappropriate comparisons between Arizona’s ranchers and their cattle, and challenge the department’s director to a draw at the AZ/NM state line. As good as those actions would make me feel, it would only drag us all a few more steps backwards into the cave. The truly sad story, like most of what is passing for critical thinking in “post-fact” America today, is that Arizona’s ag-industry representatives are making judgments based on painfully little information. Rather than enter into a meaningful dialogue with those who may hold differing views, they use what they think they know to take hostile action against their “enemies.” Montaigne’s admonition rings true: “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which a man knoweth least.”

The summit might have been a great place to share a range of opinions and strategies – a forum for robust debate – that could bring a greater measure of food security to Arizona. Instead, it will be dominated by an ag-industry that controls the agenda and speakers, and mirrors our national inability to think straight. In study after study, as recounted in a recent New Yorker article (“That’s What You Think,” February 27, 2017), researchers consistently find that people hold on to their beliefs long after the evidence has thoroughly refuted them. “Once formed,” the article quotes researchers as saying, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.” Large swaths of the food and farm sector retain their stereotypes of the so-called alternative food movement with the tenacity of a pit bull.

Much of the large-scale, commercial farming community displays classic symptoms of what human psychology researchers refer to as “confirmation bias.” Simply put, this is our normal inclination to agree with the people we hang out with, whether their opinions are correct or not. God help the one Arizona rancher who might have the independence to say, “You know that Winne guy might be a little loopy, but maybe we should hear what he has to say.” If she persisted in challenging the pack, she’d probably experience an unexplained increase in cattle rustling.

To be fair, all quarters of the food movement are guilty of confirmation bias and spend sadly little time considering the evidence. “Small food” is good, “big food” is bad (what about the in-between, i.e. “bigger food?”). Organic farming is good, conventional farming is bad (what about sustainable farming practices that use integrated pest management techniques?). Hanging out with no one other than the members of the local food coop leads to the same mind set – albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum – as the ranchers who only hang out with each other at the local café. At best, we exist contentedly in our own undisturbed universe nursing our respective market shares; at worse, we feed the dangerous polarity that has rent an abyss between large segments of society and stalls the evolution of human knowledge.

As the New Yorker article put it, “If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion you get, well, the Trump Administration.” And, I would add, the Arizona Farm Bureau, various classes of ill-informed “foodies,” and conferences like the one planned for Arizona in late April. A commitment to remaining clueless not only means that one will dwell forever in Socrates’s land of the “unexamined life” but that my “enemies” will grow more distant, intransigent, and fearsome. A deeper understanding of the facts and the other side’s world views are necessary precursors to finding answers to the genuine threats of global warming, food insecurity, and declining human health. As we sink together into the cauldrons of Hell, one last “I told you so!” won’t make much of a difference.

Should the Food Movement Embrace Soda Taxes?

Sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life…and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.  Adam Smith

In his The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith displayed an uncanny sense of fairness and proportionality. He considered the progressive and regressive attributes of various forms of taxation, which included singling out “sugar, rum, and tobacco” for public levies. The highly influential economist wasn’t basing his product selection on moral grounds (a pre-cursor to “sin taxes”) or current health data – Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Surgeon General warnings were still a couple of centuries down the road. He knew, like everyone else in the eighteenth century that human well-being did not rely on these three profitable commodities. To tax them would harm no one’s ability to purchase essential goods.

Of these three wicked sisters, however, only sugar has escaped the tax collector’s purse. Science and public health proponents long ago made an air-tight health case against the overconsumption of alcohol and tobacco, branding them once and for all with scarlet letters. Only recently, aided and abetted by the diabolical brilliance of the food and beverage industry’s marketing campaigns which have pushed American soda consumption to the top of world’s charts, has sugar joined the rogue’s gallery of bad stuff. It is now squarely in the sights of the tax authorities’ guns as we see from the imposition of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in Berkeley, Boulder, Mexico, Philadelphia, and the Navajo Nation. And now America’s mayors, starved for new sources of politically palatable revenue, have set off on a gold-rush of sorts to tax every ounce of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).  

But as I look at this flurry of soda taxing activity around the nation, I have to ask myself, why are we suddenly emboldened to take on Coke, Pepsi, and the nation’s other sugar pushers? Do we want to raise municipal revenue, reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, or really improve human health? Can we in fact have it all; can turning SSBs into SOBs and taxing them until Big Sugar bleeds out be the silver bullet we’ve all been searching for?

The evidence on the deleterious health effects of sugar is virtually ironclad. When a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola contains 65 grams of sugar, and health experts tell us that we shouldn’t consume more than 50 grams per day (25 grams being the more desirable level); when our obesity and overweight rates have risen two- to three-fold since 1994 due in large part to an overconsumption of calories, a disproportionately large share of which are derived from beverages; and when dental caries, diabetes, and host of other human illnesses are linked to the overconsumption of sugar, we shouldn’t have to waste any more time making the case against sugar.

Already the public thrust and parry of soda’s attackers and defenders have raised America’s consciousness sufficiently to lower sugar-sweetened soda consumption by 25 percent, as reported in an Alternet article quoting the New York Times. In spite of this decline, we maintain the highest rate of soda consumption in the developed world, and much of that decline can be attributed to a higher income, well-educated demographic whose recent arc of history bends unwaveringly toward self-improvement. The poor and people of color, with an unjust consistency, drink more sugar-sweetened beverages, suffer from higher rates of overweight and obesity, diabetes and hyper-tension, and of course have less money to purchase higher quality, nutrient-dense foods. And due to the regressive nature of all sales taxes, they will pay more as a percentage of their household food budgets if and when soda (and any other food products) is taxed.

All income groups drink too many SSBs – and a considerable amount of high-calorie, high-fat food items as well. But the good news is that most of us are also eating more healthy food such as fruits and vegetables. Most of us, that is, except lower income households. There, we continue to see diets that fall far short of the recommended amounts of healthy food. According to the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity as quoted in the Washington Post), “Americans are pretty poor eaters, but SNAP participants have particularly bad diets. They don’t eat nearly enough fruits or vegetables, and they consume too many fats and sugars.” Herein lies the rub with public policy’s earnest attempt to tackle a glaring health problem through taxation; yes, we must deter the consumption of unhealthy food, but we must, even more stridently, empower people to eat healthier food.

So, is the emphasis on soda taxes the right one? Is it what we need to have a major impact on health, especially among populations that suffer most from unhealthy food choices? The scientific consensus appears to be answering affirmatively, though there is one BIG BUT.

In a journal article in Obesity Reviews, 2013, “Assessing the Potential Effectiveness of Soda taxes… the authors conclude, “The revenue generated from a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would be considerable and could be used to help support childhood nutrition programs, obesity-prevention programs, or health care for the uninsured or to help meet general revenue needs. A national tax of 1 cent per ounce on sugar-sweetened beverages would raise $14.9 billion in the first year alone.” Given that some cities are proposing 2 cents per ounce, the revenues – along with the quality of healthy eating programming – could be considerably more on a national basis.

An article in Preventive Medicine (April 2011) echoes the same conclusion: “The public health impact of beverage taxes could be substantial…. To the extent that at least some of the tax revenues get invested in obesity prevention programs, the public health benefits could be even more pronounced.” In other words, those in the nutrition and public health fields, including community food activists and other practitioners, have come to recognize the value of multiple interventions. As we have seen with efforts to bring new supermarkets to neighborhoods that are poorly served by healthy food retail outlets, simply loading up brightly lit aisles with lots of fresh and colorful produce isn’t enough to radically change eating behaviors. A single intervention, whether building a supermarket or slapping a tax on a can of Coke, needs to be accompanied by numerous healthy eating initiatives such as food education, labeling, cooking programs, and other evidence-based strategies.

Early evidence of the value of multiple interventions recently surfaced in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The article describes a 20 percent reduction in SSB purchases over three years (2012 to 2015) in Howard County, Maryland as a result of a series of interventions that included:

Strengthening the school system’s wellness policy to eliminate sugary drinks in student-accessible vending machines and increasing access to water
Enacting a 2014 state law that improves healthy drink offerings at licensed childcare centers and encouraging breastfeeding
Enacting a 2015 local law making healthier food and drinks more widely available on local government property
Engaging nearly 50 community organizations in the effort to improve the food and beverage choices they offer 
Healthy food marketing through TV ads, social media messages, and online ads
Disseminating public health information about the risks associated with consumption of sugary drinks directly to local residents at community and athletic events, local swimming pools, and health fairs
Training healthcare professionals to improve patient counseling on the dangers of sugary drink consumption and the diagnosis and treatment of children with obesity

Noteworthy by their absence were taxes or levies on SSBs. Though a significant reduction in SSB purchases was achieved without benefit of a tax, just imagine what the size of the soda reduction might have been if a tax was part of the whole package.

As we see all too often, new revenue sources are the bright and shiny objects that mesmerize our elected officials with their potential to fund pet projects. And when those sources are “nowhere necessaries of life,” all the better. The more mayors can avoid raising property taxes or cutting popular programs to fund their wish lists, the more they can ensure their future electability.

Not that mayors don’t have nice pets. In my town of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the mayor wants to use SSB revenues to make room for 1,000 lower income children in an early childhood education program. In Philadelphia, a 1.5 cents per ounce levy on soda is starting to be used for a similar early childhood program, and will hopefully generate enough funds for the renovation of parks and recreation centers. Seattle’s proposed two cents per ounce tax will also be used to fund education.

But in Boulder, Colorado, the two-cents-per-ounce tax must be used, according to the language in the ballot measure that passed by 8 points, for “the administrative cost of the tax, and thereafter for health promotion, general wellness programs and chronic disease prevention.” The ballot also noted several examples of appropriate uses, including improving access to clean water, healthy food, nutrition education and physical activity. In California, Assembly Bill 2782 would use a two-cents-per-ounce “health impact fee” on the distribution of sugary drinks to establish the California Health Fund which would “address the epidemics of Type 2 diabetes, dental disease and heart disease and stroke in California.” Projections show that the tax would generate $3 billion annually.

Meanwhile, back in Santa Fe, the well-intentioned Mayor Javier Gonzales has rallied support for a SSB tax around a complex proposal to expand pre-K education. He and a team of well-funded supporters (foundations have been pouring money into the Santa Fe campaign, though they don’t come close to matching the $2 million that the beverage industry is allegedly spending to defeat the tax) have turned pre-K into a mantra that has worked its proponents into a lather. As much as the campaign has trashed SSBs, hardly a word of support for healthy eating campaigns or a single dime of the proposed revenue stream will go to obesity reduction efforts. The Santa Fe Food Policy Council (I am its co-chair) was asked to support the initiative, which requires a special referendum vote. It did vote in favor of the proposal but recommended that funds be used to fund healthy eating education. More than likely, the Food Policy Council’s concerns will become roadkill in the frenzy to raise money for pre-K.

That’s an unfortunate outcome for the large number of this community’s Hispanic and Native American children whose overweight and obesity rates are nearly double those of white/Anglo children. Cities across the nation may be falling into the same pattern of neglect as the mob rises up to stone Coke and Pepsi while turning its back on this generation’s victims of Big Soda. At the very least, cities that steer all their potential SSB tax revenues away from nutrition programs, no matter how inherently worthwhile the other options may be, are missing a gigantic opportunity to mount a massive assault against this country’s greatest public health crisis.

Taxing the bejesus out of those empty calories that have stacked up the nation’s dead, like cordwood, is the best thing we can do short of banning SSBs outright. But if we don’t back up those public policies with the multitude of proven healthy eating interventions, then we will squander our best opportunity to stem obesity’s deadly toll.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Thank You, Survey Respondents!

Thank you to the 193 people who responded to my December food movement survey. Let me also thank the couple of dozen others who responded late thinking I was just joking about the deadline. The information, especially the responses to the open-ended questions, was incredibly useful. My son Peter, for whom the survey was a way of helping me as well as completing requirements for a graduate school class, is compiling the final results. But in the meantime, here’s a brief look at some of the compilations:

67 percent of the respondents currently belong to a food coalition, food network, or food policy council
64 percent said their awareness of the work of other food organizations in their region has increased “a lot” as a result of belonging to one of the above groups.
57 percent said that belonging to one of these groups has helped advance their own organization’s mission
87 percent either strongly agree (61 percent) or somewhat agree (26 percent) that their region would benefit from organizations working together more closely
89 percent either strongly agree or somewhat agree that the nation’s food movement would be improved through greater food organization cooperation
Respondents said that conferences (57 percent), online forums (54 percent), and more extensive leadership (69 percent) would improve cooperation among food organizations

The final results will be posted in a future blog.

Do We Gotta Deal for You!

As I look ahead at my 2017 appearance schedule, I see some openings big enough to drive a truck through. So, fueled by an itch to get out on the road and be of service, I want to let folks know that I’m for hire. Need a speaker for a conference, annual meeting, or campus speaker series? How about some consultation and training for an emerging food policy council or even an existing one that might need a little tune-up? Let’s call it Mark Winne Associates 2017 White Sale – all reasonable offers will be considered; money talks, nobody walks; discounts available as long as they last. And for some limited resource communities, we might just surprise you with what we can do to make a deal work! Give us a call or send us a text (860) 558-8226, or email us at win5m@aol.com. I also respond particularly well to handwritten notes.

Campus Hunger Shows No Sign of Abating

Last spring I posted a blog about the rise in food insecurity at our nation’s colleges and universities. From endless tuition hikes to rising housing costs, students have been forced to forgo meals to pay the bills that allow them to attend class. As I stated in that post, too much reliance has been placed on the time-honored but wholly ineffective solution of student-sponsored food pantries. Rather than finding systemic solutions such as reducing the costs associated with attending college, well-intentioned young people are earnestly helping their own by distributing donated food.

Now another report, Hunger on Campus: The Challenge of Food Insecurity for College Students, which draws on what the authors claim is the broadest student sample to date, offers yet more data on the worsening problem. Over one in five students who responded indicated that they suffered from very low food insecurity – 25 percent at community colleges and 20 percent at four-year schools. The rates are considerably higher for students of color. While the authors recommend “creative ways” of addressing the problem such as developing more campus food pantries and gardens, they did stress that the primary focus of college policymakers should be on connecting students to federal food programs such as SNAP. This is obviously a problem/symptom that’s not going away anytime soon. Students and the organizations that represent them should keep the pressure on policymakers until they focus more intently on the structural economic problems that face higher education in America.

Trump’s Plan to Mess with Immigrants Will Mess with Idaho Agriculture

Not too long ago I posted a piece about my recent trip to Idaho which, of course, required me to note how conservative that state is. Well, according to a piece in the Idaho Statesman, Trump could do something that would really piss off the state’s conservatives to say nothing of Big Ag. The President-elect’s plan to deport undocumented workers would likely damage Idaho’s multi-billion dollar agricultural industries, particularly its factory dairy farms. Idaho agriculture “employs more than 40 percent of Idaho’s undocumented immigrant population, and more than 25 percent of all state ag workers are undocumented,” reports the Statesman. As a result, Trump’s deportation agenda is likely to hurt Idaho’s farms more than those in any other state. Irma Morin, CEO of the Community Council of Idaho, an anti-poverty agency that works extensively with the state’s Latino community, told me that she “was shocked to hear how many people feel fear about the new administration – not just Latinos but also LGBT, women, and people of color.” Maybe we can now add large scale, arch-conservative farmers to that list.

Need a Lift? Here Are a Few Words from Wendell

I was very fortunate to participate recently in the celebrations surrounding the Center for a Livable Future’s 20th Anniversary – an occasion that was deliciously marked by quality-time with Wendell Berry. He and his wife, Tanya, made themselves generously available over three days for presentations, interviews, seminars, and small group discussions. Being the Wendell Berry “groupie” that I am, I tried to capture as many precious utterances as possible. Here are a few that stuck with me:

Speaking of climate change: “Everywhere we’re running at very high temperatures; we’re too comfortable.”

During the early part of his career, Wendell held a teaching position at N.Y.U. “But I left to go back to Kentucky because I decided I needed livestock.”

Quoting his father, Wendell said, “If you want people to love their country, let them own a piece of it.”

Referring to his own Kentucky mountains: “The first time I saw a bulldozer strip a hillside to expose the coal I was shocked.”

“Mother Nature is a munificent mother, but not a forgiving one. If you let Her work for you, She works at a minimum wage. If you force Her to work against you, She charges a fortune.”

Speaking of politics: “I’m still on the losing side, and that’s where I’ve taken up residence.”

“Hope? I can’t give anyone hope; it has to come out of you. This is a beautiful world, so there’s a lot worth hoping for.”

“People are trained to be consumers. When a new product comes along we stand up like a dog on our hind legs and snap at it.”

“I always work hard to validate my prejudices.”

“Fear is the worst form of appeal. It has a short shelf-life. We need to appeal to love.”

Take this Survey — Please!

Dear Reader,

Over the course of markwinne.com – a blog that I have been posting for nearly five years – I have been happy to share with you my views, experiences, and insights concerning both the trials and beauties of our food system. This time, however, I’m asking you to share something with me, namely, your views, experiences and insights concerning the food movement that most of you belong to in one way or another. To that end I would kindly request that you indulge me for a few moments by taking a short survey. The results will be used for my upcoming book on the food movement which will be published by Praeger Press. When? The sooner you return the survey, the sooner the book will be released! To that end, please complete and return the survey by December 18.

I am being assisted with this endeavor by my son, Peter, whose on-going graduate school education is being diligently applied to this project. To the best of my knowledge, he has no desire to make this blog a father and son operation – he’ll get the course credit for designing and implementing the survey, I will get a wealth of information for my book, and you, dear reader, will hopefully get some useful guidance on how to strengthen our food movement.  Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey!

To get started please follow this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z8HFR59

With Gratitude,

Mark and Peter Winne