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  • From: Pat Meadows <pat AT meadows.pair.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Food Security Starts at Home
  • Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 12:29:20 -0500


I think this will be of interest to members of this list.

Pat

--------------------------------------------------------------



Published on Thursday, December 23, 2004 by the San
Francisco Chronicle
Food Security Starts at Home
by Brian Halweil


Earlier this month, outgoing Secretary of Health and Human
Services Tommy Thompson ruffled his bosses' feathers when he
admitted, "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the
terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is
so easy to do." Administration officials quickly disavowed
and denied the concerns. But Thompson isn't the only
high-ranking politician to acknowledge this Achilles' heel.

Over the last few years, the Department of Defense and the
Department of Agriculture have run a series of war games to
assess how our nation would fare against an act of
agricultural terror. With code names like Silent Prairie and
Crimson Sky, these exercises imagined what might happen if
someone walked onto a western cattle ranch with a sample of
foot-and-mouth disease, or dropped corn-leaf blight out of a
plane over the Midwest, or dumped a deadly strain of E. coli
into the mixer at a food-processing plant.

These simulations generally conclude with billions of
dollars in economic losses, tens of millions of imaginary
animals destroyed and more than a handful of farmers and
civilians shot by the National Guard after trying to break
quarantines. From this perspective, the American food
system, perhaps the most technologically advanced and
economically competitive on the planet, resembles the
proverbial sitting duck. In particular, the long-distance
hauling of food that has come to define how Americans eat --
the average food item now travels more than 1,500 miles from
farm to plate, according to a Worldwatch Institute estimate
based on a survey of wholesale food distribution centers
around the nation -- creates endless opportunities for
unfortunate contamination and rapid spread of biological
agents.

Yet, military and agricultural officials have ignored this
reality and generally turned their attention to logistical
remedies -- more effective interstate communication between
veterinarians; biological surveillance markers throughout
the countryside; better quarantine procedures.

Fortunately, millions of Americans are taking matters into
their own hands. They are swarming farmers' markets, asking
about the origins of restaurant ingredients and demanding
homegrown fare at their favorite grocer, declaring
independence from the globe-trotting food chain.

Some large food companies are already embracing an
allegiance to place, as the hunger for homegrown fare pushes
beyond the culinary fringe. Leading food-service firms, such
as Bon Appetit and Sodexho, have started offering meals
based on regional produce to their university and corporate
clients in the Pacific Northwest.

There isn't a major school district in the country that
shouldn't consider a program to make its meals tastier and
healthier by including more ingredients raised nearby. An
experiment that started six years ago to put a "farmers
market salad bar" in all of Santa Monica's schools has grown
to include more than 700 school districts in two dozen
states, where a half million students regularly eat local
food. The Edible Schoolyard program that started in Berkeley
has inspired parents around the nation to ban junk-food
vending machines, take back cafeteria contracts from
fast-food providers and regain control over their children's
health.

Kaiser Permanente, the largest health-care provider in the
United States, is hosting farmers markets at some of its
facilities, and the hospital chain is exploring the
possibility of using locally grown produce for its salad
bars and serving only antibiotic-free meat in its
cafeterias. The Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center in Santa
Cruz is already buying nearly 20 percent of its fruits and
vegetables from a 110-acre community farm about 15 miles
from the clinic.

Local food can even accommodate the fast-food model.
Burgerville, a chain of 39 fast-food restaurants in
America's Pacific Northwest, features a menu nearly
identical to that of McDonald's, but it buys the bulk of its
ingredients from farmers in Oregon and Washington.

The Holy Grail for local cuisine seems to be the heavily
guarded supermarket shelves, where Americans do 90 percent
of their shopping. But some avant-garde stores, trying to
distinguish themselves from Wal-Mart and Costco, have
already shown how much can be done. On New York's Long
Island, King Kullen has committed to buying Long Island
fruits and vegetables when in season for its 50 stores. Five
years ago, it spent $100,000 on produce from Long Island
farmers. In 2004, it spent $4 million.

New Seasons Market, a chain of six stores in Portland, Ore.,
has introduced a Pacific Village label to denote foods from
Northern California, Oregon, Washington or British Columbia,
and right now, as we enter winter, about half of its produce
and virtually everything in its meat case carries that
label.

At a time when our food travels farther than ever before,
this surging interest in "eating local" is the most
significant and encouraging change in the American diet. Not
simply because less food shipping makes the nation less
vulnerable to oil shortages, transportation disruptions or
large-scale food contamination. Buying local food means
tastier and fresher fare, and could be part of the dietary
solution to our obese nation's addiction to processed foods
loaded with fat and sugar. Eating local supports our
neighbors and keeps cash in the local economy. Eating local
combats sprawl and saves oil. (A typical meal put together
from long-distance ingredients uses four times the energy of
the same meal put together from local ingredients, and often
much more.)

Which raises an interesting question: When Republicans,
Democrats and people of all political persuasions can agree
that it's unwise to depend on foreign oil, why haven't we
come to the same realization about something we put in our
mouths?

So the next time a cynic tells you that shopping at a farm
stand or lobbying your child's school cafeteria to serve
local veggies or getting your supermarket to do the same is
quaint or romantic or a waste of time, just tell them that
you're doing your part for homeland security.

Brian Halweil is a senior researcher with the Worldwatch
Institute and author of "Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown
Pleasures in a Global Supermarket" (W.W. Norton, 2004).

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1223-02.htm
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