Healthy: Support A Ban On Trans-Fats

I don't know that you need a megaphone, but it's time again to talk to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA recently decided that trans-fats, the former darlings of highly processed foods, cannot be "generally recognized as safe". They are proposing a ban on the use of trans-fats in foods manufactured and sold in the United States. This seems reasonable for a substance that isn't recognized as safe. Or as actual food.

But, of course, Big Food and Big Ag are likely to fight this new rule and they have lots of money to bring to the fight. So the FDA needs to hear from citizens-who-are-not-corporations. The public comment period for this rule change lasts for 60 days from the announcement, which came early last week. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is providing a template for those wanting to lodge a comment on the regulation. 

You can learn more about trans-fat and the proposed ban on the FDA's website.

Civil Eats: Policy Dinner

Several weeks ago, I gave money to a Kickstarter campaign to support the website Civil Eats. The site provides news and special interest stories around food, farming, and activism and I wanted to help it continue.

Their campaign was successful, so this resource will be around for a while. It seems right to share news from it occasionally. This morning, I read about a meal hosted by the James Beard Foundation.  JBF is an organization perhaps best known for giving awards for excellence to chefs and restaurants, but it is much more than that. Their mission is "to celebrate, nurture, and honor America's diverse culinary heritage through programs that educate and inspire."

Recently, they hosted a dinner prepared both physically and philosophically by Chef Maria Hines, chef-owner of Tilth in Seattle. When asked to cook for this dinner, Hines saw a chance to weave food policy into her menu and named each course for a pending piece of food and farming legislation. The food was inspired by the bill. You can read the full article on Civil Eats.

What struck me in the article was a reference Chef Hines made to a food policy boot camp she attended, put on by the Foundation. These boot camps bring together 15 chefs for three days to gain media and advocacy skills needed to improve our food system. Chefs have direct ties to food and farming issues, so who better to take a lead in fighting for better policies? If you know a chef who cares deeply about food and demonstrates that care on their menu (and I do!), consider forwarding the boot camp link to them. We can't have too many chefs pushing for change -- the more the merrier!

Healthy. Sustainable. Affordable. FAIR. (Part I)

I may have mentioned this already, but in case you missed it, October 24th marks the third annual Food Day, organized nationally by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The four-word tagline for Food Day is "Healthy. Sustainable. Affordable. Fair." It will be on our local Food Day posters this year, and I wanted to write a little bit about what each of those words mean in terms of our food system.

(As it happens, this tagline has some of the same themes as the official Mission of the Community Food Council for DNATL: "The Community Food Council for Del Norte and Adjacent Tribal Lands will build a vibrant, sustainable local food system through opportunity, education, innovation, advocacy, and promotion.")

This blog post will look at what it means for a food system to be FAIR.

A lot of people might automatically think of the Fair Trade labels that show up on coffee, chocolate, and other imported products. Fair Trade USA describes Fair Trade this way: "Fair Trade goods are just that. Fair. From far-away farms to your shopping cart, products that bear our logo come from farmers and workers who are justly compensated."

There are a lot of debates right now about what constitutes "just compensation". Minimum wage laws in many states, including California, are raising the minimum wage significantly above the federal minimum wage, and the Obama administration is asking Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00/hour. One of the arguments for this is that a person working full-time at the current federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour) would still fall below the federal poverty line for a two or three person household. So all those working single parents? If they make the minimum, their family lives in poverty.

But in many parts of our food system, the situation is much worse. Federal minimum wage for farm workers can fall below even the federal minimum wage if they are paid by the "piece". Piece work means that pickers are paid for every crate or box of produce picked. For example, the going rate for orange pickers in Florida is 85 cents per 90 pound box. An average harvest rate for a worker is 64 boxes in an 8-hour shift, equivalent to 5,760 pounds of oranges, and yet the hourly rate works out to just $6.80/hour.

Picking almost 6,000 pounds of fruit in 8 hours is back-breaking work, and fruit picking is not as "unskilled" as many people believe. I've picked both apples and persimmons on a commercial scale and it's not fun. Persimmons, particularly, like many other softer fruit, take a light hand to avoid bruising. In my case, I was also expected to make split-second decisions about whether each individual fruit was export or domestic quality. And yet farm workers are paid so poorly that a full third of farm worker families live below the poverty line. (This is made much worse due to the seasonal nature of much farm work, of course, because workers may not be able to find full-time work year round.)

So what about the rest of the supply chain? It doesn't get a lot prettier as you move through the slaughterhouses, processing plants, and food service industries. 

Consider the front of house in food service as an example. Tipped workers (think wait staff in restaurants) can make as little as $2.13/hour (the federal minimum cash payment). Most states (but not all) have at least slightly higher minimums for tipped workers, but many are still under $3.00/hour. Now, the theory is that these workers will make at least minimum wage once their tips are factored in and this probably works for wait staff at higher-end restaurants where a bill for two people could be 50 dollars or much more. But what about diners and other inexpensive restaurants? If you walk in and order the $2.99 breakfast special, how much are you leaving as a tip? Will the collective tips on inexpensive meals raise that $2.13/hour to a livable wage? (And this leaves out the fact that many wait staff have to "tip out" to busboys and sometimes kitchen staff who do not otherwise benefit from tips.)

I haven't even mentioned farmers and how little of the price of a loaf of bread or box of cereal goes to the person who grew the grain, but trust me, it's not a lot.

So, FAIR. For our food system to be fair, the producers in the system would need to earn a decent (not extravagant, but decent) living for working full-time in jobs that are almost always physically demanding. All consumers would need to have equal access to healthy foods, no matter where they live and how much they make (I'll write more about this when I discuss AFFORDABLE).

That's my opinion, of course, and yours may differ. Please join the conversation in our comments section.

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

Small and mid-sized farms create more jobs than large scale farms. The USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative has been re-tailored this year to stress this point, with hopes to make it into the Farm Bill again. The initiative got it's start in 2008, and was met with oposition, as it has been associated with giving federal funding to niche farms that don't feed a large percentage of the population.

But every million dollars spent on food from local and regional sources, goes to support 13 jobs. That's in significant contrast to the three jobs supported by every million dollars spent on foods from farms without a regional focus.

The USDA is working to strengthen the connection between farmers and consumers. They're not just doing the obvious, providing funding for smaller, regionally-funded projects. They've provided an interactive map that shows the local projects they've helped along since 2008, which could potentially connect a consumer to a farmer in his or her region. Consumers and farmers alike have also been invited to take part in the discussion on local agriculture and job creation, using social media. On March 5, they held a forum on the key themes of the Know Your Farmer Compass:  local food infrastructure, stewardship and local food, local meat and poultry, farm to institution, healthy food access, careers in agriculture,  and local food knowledge. Hundreds of people used the Twitter hashtag #KYF2 to join the discussion, and asked questions of the Agriculture Deputy Secretary, Kathleen Merrigan, and 60-some others - experts on food policy and local food practioners. All of this is aimed at getting people connected with their food, the producers, the consumers and the policy-makers together.

Food Deserts and the Farm Bill

Did you know that despite our months of solid rain, Del Norte County is considered a desert by the USDA? We are! According to USDA definitions, almost all of Del Norte County qualifies as a food desert. The USDA working group defines food deserts as "low-income census tracts where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store."

Food deserts often have lots of food -- just not the healthy kind!

Food deserts are a hot topic in the food world, with First Lady Michele Obama taking them on as part of her focus on healthy foods and obesity. USA Today recently featured an article about some projects trying to bring water to some of the deserts around the country. At this year's Food Justice conference in Oakland, CA, there are many sessions dealing with both rural and urban food deserts in California and around the nation.

A small provision in the 2008 Farm Bill directed the USDA to study the "food desert" phenomenon. The Food Desert Locator pictured above is one of the outcomes of the research. To view Del Norte's food deserts or to check out food deserts across the country, check out the Locator. You can zoom in on northern California to see our region up close.

So what's next? Will the 2012 Farm Bill follow up on the research mandated in 2008? Will it include funding and policy priorities that will help alleviate food deserts? Some programs with the potential to mediate local droughts -- such as the Farmers Market Promotion Program grants, the Community Food Project grants, and the Financing for Local Food Enterprises program -- will end without specific reauthorization in the 2012 Farm Bill.

Farm Bill Conversations

It's that time again! Every five years, Congress debates and re-authorizes America's Farm Bill in what is always a lively debate on Capitol Hill and the public arena. The Farm Bill is one of the omnibus spending bills that Congress passes to dictate funding on a wide variety of food and farming programs for five years at a time. Debate on the 2012 Farm Bill has already begun and may be contentious with Congress and President Obama focusing on deficit reduction.

We were lucky enough to have Mark Winne with the Community Food Security Coalition in Crescent City for two days last week, and one of the sessions he offered was an open conversation about the Farm Bill. Why should you care about the Farm Bill if you're not a farmer? The Farm Bill is about so much more than farms and farmers:

• The SNAP program (that was once called food stamps) is the biggest part of Farm Bill spending and brings over half a million dollars into Del Norte County every month -- that's money that is feeding our neighbors, being spent in our stores, and supporting local jobs.
• Support for crop-based energy solutions is also part of the Farm Bill, with provisions in the 2008 version encouraging corn production for ethanol rather than human or animal consumption.
• Commodity crop supports help determine what crops will be grown on millions of acres of farmland. Support for corn and soybeans, for instance, help provide the underpinning for cheap, heavily-processed foods that some have linked to the current obesity crisis.
• Small programs like the Farmers Market Promotion Program grants help promote local and regional food systems and infrastructure. The FMPP grant won by CAN last year is buying local radio and newspaper ads, supporting our Crescent City Farmers Market, and encouraging the purchase of locally-produced, fresh, healthy foods by SNAP (in California, CalFresh) recipients.

The Farm Bill sets farm and nutrition policy for five years. It will affect what we eat and how much we pay for it. It affects every resident of the United States every single day and now's the time to have a say in how it will affect us over the next five years. To learn more, check out some of these links:

The Community Food Security Coalition's 2012 Farm Bill Priorities

Seattle's Farm Bill Principles

The Environmental Working Group's Top 10 Things You Should Know About the Farm Bill

Good News for Local Foods A listing of programs that help local producers and consumers that were included in the 2008 Farm Bill. Some may be in jeopardy for 2012.