Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Liz" <liz@allslash.org>]

Excellent article, and I'm glad to see how it refutes the points of the 
Newsweek article. I had read that and while I sympathized with the emotions 
of the author, I felt that it did little to dispell the myth that "organic, 
sustainable, pasture-fed" etc. basically equated to food snob.

One point--not that it makes a lot of difference as far as this particular 
article is concerned, but might help avoid confusion for anyone wanting to 
accept food stamps in their co-op or farmers' market: States and localities 
don't control who accepts food stamps. That side of the program is 
administered by the USDA. Anyone selling in a farmers market or co-op who 
wants to accept food stamps can go to the USDA website and apply online to 
participate in the program.

Liz

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 10:31 PM
Subject: [Livingontheland] Op-Ed America's good food fight



"the sustainable food movement is characterized as uncaring and elitist."

Op-Ed America's good food fight
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-niman-food-20110109,0,5
891428.story
By Nicolette Hahn Niman  January 9, 2011

It's agribusiness vs. the sustainable food movement. And reform advocates
say it's possible to make delicious, nutritious, safe food available to all
people of all income levels.

Our holiday table got quite tense. We are a mixed family - Jewish,
Christian, Republican, Democrat -- but the tension wasn't from
differences over religion or politics. It was about food.

At one end of the table sat my husband's nephew, who runs a food bank. He's
an earnest man who spends his days seeking nourishment for the hungry, and
favors almost anything that increases food's availability or lowers its
price. My husband and I occupied the other end. We operate a pasture-based
ranch, and spend much of our time advocating for farming grounded in
ecology and stewardship. The food we raise is less readily available and
more expensive than most of what's found at typical grocery stores.

Other family members sat between us. They enjoy eating well but, especially
in these tough economic times, want their meals as cheap as possible.

Our family dynamic mirrors an emerging national debate about how America's
food should be produced. The controversy is often framed by agribusiness
and food companies, heavily invested in maintaining the status quo,
claiming that a globalized, industrialized system is the only way to
produce enough food to feed the world's growing population, and to do so
affordably. Reform advocates working to transform the system to one that's
more locally based and isn't dependent on chemicals, mechanization and
cheap fossil fuels are pitted against the world's poor, working class and
hungry.

In other words, the sustainable food movement is characterized as uncaring
and elitist.

A recent Newsweek piece titled "What Food Says About Class in America"
described "a national phenomenon" of people seeking non-industrial foods
because they believe that eating organically and locally helps farmers and
farm animals while contributing to the health and well-being of their
families and the planet. The author confessed a discomfort with such
intense focus on high-quality food while "less than five miles away, some
children don't have enough to eat; others exist almost exclusively on junk
food."

Of course, similar concerns could be voiced regarding cars, housing or
healthcare. But more to the point, our experience as ranchers and reform
advocates belies the notion that today's good food movement is either
callous or elitist. Making delicious, nutritious, safe food available to
all people inspires much of the passion of those laboring to reshape
America's food system. We've met them in every region of the country. They
are young people setting up diversified farms; chefs dedicated to local
sourcing; ordinary citizens establishing farmers markets; mothers and
fathers remaking public school lunch programs, and on and on. They come
from all walks of life, all incomes and every ethnicity.

It's ironic that spokespersons of multinational corporations paint this
broad-ranging, truly grass-roots movement as exclusive. Yet the criticism
resonates to an extent because sustainably produced foods are often more
expensive.

Commodity foods - from large-scale, industrialized agricultural
production - seem cheap by comparison because they're produced without
bearing their true costs, which are passed on in the form of pollution,
virulent infectious diseases and animal suffering.

"If the full cost of externalized environmental and health costs were taken
into account, those same products would be far more expensive," the Pew
Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production concluded in a 2008 report
issued with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Agribusiness also benefits from billions of dollars of annual federal farm
subsidies, along with other tax breaks and incentives from state and local
governments, while a negligible portion of these public moneys aid
non-industrial farming. And decades of anemic enforcement of environmental
laws have allowed agribusiness to escape shouldering responsibility for its
pollution.

Together, these public subsidies largely explain why food can be much
cheaper at Wal-Mart than at your local farm stand. But what about the
criticism that sustainable farming can't feed the world?

This is simply a myth. People are not going hungry because of a shortage of
food. Currently, the world generates nearly 4,000 calories a day (about
double what's nutritionally required) for every man, woman and child on the
globe.

"Hunger is a political and social problem," writes food security expert
Martin McLaughlin in his book, "World Food Security." "It is a problem of
access to food supplies, of distribution, and entitlement."

Moreover, here and abroad, the corporatization of agriculture has taken
wealth from the hands of many and placed it in the hands of a few, often by
driving farmers off their land.

American farm policy aggravates the problem by encouraging overproduction
of U.S. commodity crops, which are mass produced and subsidized, and then
dumped on developing nations, thereby impoverishing their farmers. Former
U.N. Development Program head Mark Malloch Brownhas said that wealthy
nations' farm subsidies, estimated in the tens of billions annually, hold
down "the prosperity of very poor people in Africa and elsewhere."

The good news is that sustainable farming can feed the world. Productivity
comparisons of organic crops versus conventional crops have been hotly
contested for decades. But recent years have seen mounting studies showing
that organic crop yields are catching up and even surpassing chemical-based
agriculture.

Nonetheless, there is no denying that foods from sustainable farms carry a
higher price tag for the U.S. consumer. Most of us can actually afford it.
Americans spend about 9% of their incomes on food, according to the
Agriculture Department, one of the smallest percentages in the world.

The real challenge now is making good food available to people at every
income level. Currently, the financially strapped single mother has a hard
time buying local and organic. This is precisely where hunger advocates and
good food advocates can and should unite to make wholesome food more
accessible.

Individually, farmers and consumers can do little to fix this systemic
problem. Collectively, however, we can demand important changes. For
starters, our government should immediately stop enabling industrial food
producers to shift their environmental and health costs to the public. This
means full federal and state enforcement of environmental laws and
regulations governing agriculture; federal legislation banning the use of
sub-therapeutic antibiotics at agricultural operations; and a redirection
of federal farm subsidies away from overproduction of commodity crops and
toward environmentally beneficial farming of healthy foods.

Longer-term policy changes should include reinventing government food,
farm, education and nutrition programs to make healthy eating easy and
affordable. A few examples: States and localities should facilitate the
acceptance of food stamps at farmers' markets; school districts should
create lunch programs that offer healthier meals and purchase from local
farms; federal and state agriculture departments should help beginning
farmers set up sustainable farming operations and reestablish programs that
teach citizens skills for cooking, canning and growing some of their own
food.

For many people, sharing a festive meal with family and friends is at the
center of holiday celebrations. The awkward moments around our own table
reminded me of the importance of pushing for public policies that will help
bring good, wholesome food to every American.

Nicolette Hahn Niman is a rancher in Bolinas, Calif., and the author of
"Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms."

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