policy

Take A Stand

scleaver — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:45:21 -0400

If you’re going to add your signature to one food petition this year, check out the Food Declaration or the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, started by Roots of Change. The Declaration, as the Eat. Drink. Better. blog explained, “calls for a visionary 21st Century Food, Farm, and Agriculture Policy” by moving away from the current industrial-ag system and into a cleaner, healthier system that’s more about health, accessibility, and affordability than the bottom line.

It’s currently in draft form, so check it out, comment on it, endorse it, or suggest your own declaration. You have until November 30, 2008. Next year, look for Slow Food International to be collecting signatures for the final Declaration that will, hopefully, end up in next year’s food policy agenda.

Image from Food Declaration.

Solving The Food Crisis

scleaver — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Food riots, protests, and rising food prices across the globe are now common news fare. But, even as food prices force Americans to eat more peanut butter or eat out less, there are larger discussions at stake, like: how do we farm and is that contributing to food unrest?

The Associated Press ran an article on just that subject over the weekend (David Koop’s “Behind the Food Riots: A Debate On How Best to Farm”). Governments, writes Koop, are applying “Band-Aid” solutions left and right—sending in troops, raising wages, banning exports, suspending trading, promising food aid—when what we should be doing is figuring out how to change how the world gets its food so that we’re not re-bandaging the food industry in the future. “However,” writes Koop, world leaders are “deeply divided about which way to go.”

1. Invest in small farmers, not in “letting them sink in a free-trade world.” The U.N. would “level the playing field” by cutting subsidies to agri-business, reducing tariffs, and upping investment in small-farms, one at a time. "This could be a window of opportunity for governments to relaunch the small-farming sector and traditional farming," Fernando Soto, the policy chief for Latin America and the Caribbean with the [Food and Agriculture Organization’s], told the AP.

2. Increase free-trade policies like NAFTA so that the current farm subsidies don’t increase and make everything worse.

Whether you’re for free-trade or against it, small farmers seem to get the brunt of this—they’re growing food, but can’t afford foreign food imports, and eventually leave farming as a result. In Mexico, since NAFTA, 200,000 Mexicans leave the country each year for cities or the U.S.

3. Get used to it: biofuels, oil prices, huge developing countries will keep demand and prices for food high.

4. Innovate: After the last 1970s food increase, the “green revolution” reduced costs. “If we don’t mess this up,” Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University told the AP, “we can expect the same today.”

In the meantime, “the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 820 million people go hungry in the developing world, and … the crisis could force as many as 100 million people deeper into poverty,” according to the AP. The world has 420 million farms that are smaller than five acres, out of 525 million farms total. So, what should we do with those small farms and the farmers who work them, and how?

Photo from a World Bank article about Food Prices in Africa.

Global Food Crisis Reaches Code Red

scleaver — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:00:00 -0400

The world’s food crisis has become an emergency, and a crisis that we’ll likely face for a while. The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development released a United Nations-sponsored report this week that presents a disturbing promise: the world will continue along the path of social unrest and environmental disaster unless and until we reform our food system.

Poor countries have staggering numbers of hungry citizens, 850 million people are hungry or malnourished, and each year four million more are added to that roster. If we continue our current production and distribution practices, according to the report, we will “exhaust our resources and put our children’s future in jeopardy.” This is a global issue: “the increasingly globalised food market and ever-increasing food imports mean that no country can assume itself to be immune.”

The report advises that farmers focus on producing food for local markets and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, rather than focus on trade, which can have long-term negative effects on alleviating poverty and food security. Right now, the UN needs more money to address the current crisis—the UN food program received $14 million after asking for $500 million to deal with higher food prices.

Read an article about the report from the Gulf Daily News HERE.

Learn more about the UN World Food Program and donate HERE. (Photo taken from the WFP website’s Fill the Cup donation page: http://www.wfp.org/english/.)

Take it to your community with 40 ways that individuals, local governments, and others (grocery stores, colleges) can help address the food shortage in their areas by growing and eating local at the 100-Mile Diet’s How to Change the Food System.

Corn-Based Ethanol Is Causing Hunger Around the World

scleaver — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:00:00 -0400

If you've noticed that food prices are rising every time you go to the grocery, you are not alone. It's happening around the world, resulting in serious shortages and social unrest. And some poeple are pointing the finger at something we heoped would solve some of our energy problems -- corn-based ethanol.

The Wall Street Journal just reported on this inflation of food prices (Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders by Bob Davis and Douglas Belkin). Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said that 33 countries are at risk of social unrest and upheaval because of the rising price of food staples like rice and beans. Already, there have been protests over rising food prices in Haiti, Cameroon, and Sengal, among other countries.

And people aren’t rioting over a small increase: according to the Journal, food prices have increased 83% in the last three years. Why are food prices rising so fast? U.S. policies emphasize and encourage corn-based ethanol and other biofuels and are using what could be food into energy instead.

It costs more to transport food and pay for energy overall. Countries that are developing rapidly (China) have ever higher demands for food (and, I’m sure, there’s no reduction in the demand for food from countries that are already highly developed, like the U.S.).

So far, there’s no consensus about how to approach the problem. Zoellick asked rich countries to add more money to the UN World Food Program, but so far has only received commitments for half of the $500 million that he wanted.

Some other possible solutions:

1. Working together: The U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan got together last week to discuss the food problem and possible solutions, including trade, technology, and short-term aid for poorer countries.

2. Import and export policies: Fifty eight countries have adjusted their own trade policies (reducing food import tariffs whileincreasing export tariffs) to try and move to self sufficiency.The problem: export barriers increase food prices even more.

3. Cutting deals: Countries are cutting deals with other countries to share land or maximize exports. So far, China is working with New Zealand, Ukraine with Libya, Brazil with Egypt, and Uganda is working with India.

4. More, better subsidies: Zoellick wants to target food subsidies to better provide food for those in need, like giving food in exchange for work, or targeting school programs so kids can bring food home with them.

5. Develop new biofuels that use grass or agricultural waste, not corn or food, to produce energy. Whatever the causes or solutions, this issue isn’t going away, so get in on the discussion at the WSJ poll: Are you surprised by the prices you're paying for food lately?Photo credit: the Farm Policy Blog where you can learn more about corn policy.

Locavore Governments

scleaver — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:31:42 -0400

I recently came across a Governing Magazine article that peaked my interest. The article, Fresh Fight: Governments Want Local Food From Family Farmers on the Menu. It's Not Easy to Find. by Zach Patton shed light on how local governments are joining (or trying to join) the local food movement.

The article showcases Woodbury County, IA, a town in a state that’s a U.S. leader in production of pork, eggs, corn, and soybeans. Still, Woodbury officials have mandated that food bought by the county for use in its jail, juvenile detention facility, and cafeterias come from a 100-mile radius. Even in a region where it seems that every spare inch is used to grow food, large companies are farming the land, shipping the food they grow around the world, and imported, not local, food fills local grocery stores. All the while, family farms are going out of business. Currently, according to Governing, “Woodbury County residents spend about $250 million a year on groceries, and only 1 percent of that spending goes to local food.” Shifting more money into local food could bring $300,000 a year to local farms, so it’s no wonder that Woodbury County is jumping on board the local food movement. (Fun fact: “locavore” is now an official word in the New Oxford American Dictionary).

More and more local governments want to encourage local food, by increasing the number of farmers’ markets, setting up Food Policy Councils to create and strengthen local food chains, creating farm-to-school programs that connect growers with school cafeterias, and raising public awareness. (For example, Chicago started an Eat Local Live Healthy program that aims to increase fresh local produce in the city.)For governments, the benefits are more than nutritional: keeping food close to home keeps farmland viable, reduces suburban sprawl, boosts the local economy by keeping money spent on food circulating in the region instead of sending it across the country or overseas, and helps reduce the overall carbon footprint.

Local efforts are easily stymied by federal policies. If a city wants to increase farmer’s markets, for example, they may butt up against restrictive policies about food processing and cleanliness (livestock must be slaughtered in a federally inspected facility, and supervisors who are growing “organic” food must have a costly permit, for example). Many of these are mandated at the federal level, and small local farmers may not be able to comply. Obviously, state and local governments have a big part to play in the local food movements, what is your local government doing to get on the 100-mile diet?

For more about how Detroit is approaching this topic, check out this week's Metro Times Food Issue at www.metrotimes.com.

Photo Credit: A photo of my local farmer’s market the Downtown Rochester Farmers’ Market.