When Is Enough Enough?

Not knowing what is “enough,” says Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, is a recipe for spiritual disaster.

Tuesday morning began the study series entitled, Enoughness: How Shall We Live on God’s Earth? Co-hosted by the Center for Livable Future (through the Baltimore Food & Faith Project) and the Institute for Jewish & Christian Studies, the main topic of conversation on Tuesday was that of sufficiency, and, in particular, how does one define “enough”—and then, once defined, how does one go about trying to live within the bounds of what “enough” is? Read More >

Healthy Farms, Healthy People: You Can’t Have One Without the Other

This November, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future joined with fellow members of the Healthy Farms, Healthy People coalition steering committee to officially launch the Healthy Farms, Healthy People coalition—“a broad-based collaboration of organizations committed to achieving a healthier nation in tandem with a strong farm economy through policy reform at the local, state and national level.”

The Coalition will work on short-term targeted policy efforts, as well as long-term goals centered on policy change and information-sharing across sectors. The Coalition brings together stakeholders from the health, agricultural, anti-hunger, environmental and economic development communities, whose diverse expertise is necessary to make such reforms to the food system a reality. Read More >

USDA People’s Garden Grant Awarded to Baltimore City Neighborhood

Also contributing to this post is Rachel Pinson, an MPH student focusing on food access, food policy, and program planning.

One of Baltimore City’s most underserved neighborhoods received funding for a facelift recently in the form of a $60,000 grant from the USDA. The grant, known as the People’s Garden Grant, was designed “to invest in urban and rural areas identified as food deserts and/or food insecure areas, particularly those with persistent poverty” (USDA).  Cherry Hill—a neighborhood without a full-service supermarket and where more than 90 percent of non-married families live below the Maryland Self-Sufficiency Wage (an index of how much income is needed for a family to adequately meet their basic needs without public or private assistance)—is a quintessential food insecure area.  Read More >

Q & A with Olivier De Schutter on the Right to Food

Olivier De Schutter (center) with Brother David Andrews (left) and Robert Lawrence.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter recently spoke at the Bloomberg School, as the Center’s 11th Annual Dodge Lecture. In his presentation, he re-framed hunger by redefining the hungry and by identifying the roots of hunger, which are more often than not political (as opposed to technical). De Schutter insisted that hunger—and famine—is not a crisis of productivity but a crisis of power. “We’ve produced hunger over the years by depriving peasants of their ability to produce,” he said. CLF correspondent Leo Horrigan and I were able to talk with him about his research and recommendations.

What does the “right to food” mean to you, and how does the idea of accountability play into that?

The right to food is primarily about an obligation of governments to explain decisions that they make in light of the impact of these decisions on the most vulnerable segments of the population…. The right to food is, essentially, showing that hunger is not a purely technical question that agronomists or economists should answer to, but a political question that shall only be sustainably addressed if governments are held to account, and if independent bodies, including courts, can step in, to censor decisions that are not going in the right direction. Read More >

Nutrition Programs: How Many Spending Cuts Can We Afford?

U.S. National Archives | 1941

In the midst of economic instability, it’s become clear that funding for major federal programs will be subject to cuts, and nutrition programs are no exception. Perhaps cuts are unavoidable, but it is essential that we examine their potential impact on public health.

According to a recent USDA Economic Research Service report, more than 50 million Americans, including 17 million children, were food insecure in 2009, meaning they were uncertain of having enough food or unable to acquire enough food for their household members. Food insecurity and hunger can have far-reaching consequences—numerous studies suggest that children in food-insecure households have higher risks of health and development problems than children in otherwise similar food-secure households. Any changes to these nutrition programs must not undermine the safety net they provide for millions of Americans. Read More >

A Blow to Industrial Dairy Farming in the U.K.

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Just over a week ago, I received a phone call from Katharine Mansell, the Media Relations Manager for the U.K. World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). What she told me was without doubt excellent news for both sustainable agriculture and public health in Western Europe. The proposal to build the Nocton Dairy, which was to be the first U.S.-style industrialized dairy in Western Europe, is officially no longer under consideration. On February 16, 2011, the farmers withdrew their application, ostensibly after continued objections from the Environmental Agency of England and Wales. However, it is clear that the advocacy campaigns undertaken by groups such as the WSPA also played a critical role in the ultimate withdrawal of the application.

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As part of the Not in My Cuppa campaign, volunteers dressed up as cows in orange prison jumpsuits

While the Nocton Dairy debate received relatively little attention here in the U.S., it was a consistent topic of media coverage inthe U.K. since its initial proposal to the North Kesteven District Council in December 2009. The initial plan for the facility, formally known as the Nocton Dairy Ltd., included over 8,000 cattle almost entirely confined to large barns and featured two 24-hour milking parlors. In a statement that ended up giving ample fodder to groups opposing the dairy, one of the farmers behind the dairy noted that “cows do not belong in fields.” Soon after the proposal was made, both neighbors of the proposed facility and environmental and animal welfare groups began to express serious misgivings about the project. By April 2010, 150 MPs had signed an Early Day Motion (the equivalent of a resolution in the U.S. Congress) declaring their opposition to the construction of the dairy and stating that the House “…believes that the proposed unit is taking U.K. dairy farming in the wrong direction…” While the proposed number of cattle was eventually reduced to 3,770, serious concerns about the dairy remained.

Realizing the importance not only of preventing the construction of this particular industrial dairy, but also of preventing the further encroachment of U.S.-style industrial farm animal production in Western Europe, a number of advocacy groups came together in an unprecedented alliance of environmental, animal welfare, and rural protection groups. Read More >

Increasing global food security: The next gold rush?

melissa-poulsen-guest-bloggerWhat do Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, Monsanto, Kraft Foods, and Wal-Mart have in common?

Some of the most financially successful companies in the world? Absolutely. Exploiters of workers and the environment? Some say so. The newest solution to global food insecurity and natural resource conservation? Apparently so.

These seven global companies, along with ten others spanning the agricultural value chain (including BASF, Bunge Limited, General Mills, Metro AG, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, and Yara International) are at the center of a new strategy presented at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland on January 28th. Announced by Rajiv Shah, Director of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the strategy is called “Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A roadmap for stakeholders” and aims to increase food production in an environmentally sustainable way while spurring economic growth. Each decade, the initiative aims to: (1) increase agricultural production by 20% to eliminate hunger and undernourishment; (2) reduce greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of production by 20%; and (3) decrease rural poverty by 20%.

Why is a “new vision for agriculture” needed? First and foremost, even in our world of plenty, nearly a billion people remain undernourished, 98% of who live in developing countries. The world’s population continues to grow at a rate of about 200,000 people per day, putting greater pressure on food production systems. At the same time, the intensity of food consumption is growing in emerging markets such as China; as people’s incomes rise, so does their demand for meat and dairy products, foods which are much more land and energy-intensive to produce. Another challenge arises as urban populations grow. We passed the point at which just as many people live in urban areas as do rural areas in 2007. This trend of urbanization will likely continue, requiring additional resources for packaging, shipping, storing, and distributing food to urban populations.

More food is needed, but it must be produced in environmentally sustainable ways if we expect the earth to continue to support us. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment revealed the horrifying extent to which humans have degraded the natural environment through our efforts to secure food, water and fuel (most of this damage has occurred over the past 50 years). One of the most alarming repercussions of human activity on the environment is global climate change, which will have dire consequences for health – including food security – in the coming years. Agriculture both contributes to and is threatened by environmental degradation and climate change. Additionally, the current agricultural system is heavily reliant on oil, and considering that oil is believed to have reached global peak production, the food system must undergo a massive transition if it is to function in a world of energy scarcity. Read More >

Yakima Valley Releases Draft Air Quality Policy for Dairies

Unlike agricultural water discharges which are regulated for large farms defined as CAFO by the EPA and the Clean Water Act, most agricultural air emissions are not regulated. Water discharges and air emissions that are related to industrial scale agricultural operations in rural areas are big concerns for local communities. The Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington State is one of these areas.  The historical use of this irrigated valley for agriculture has left a legacy of wells and groundwater contaminated with nitrates, chemicals and biological agents. At this time there is disagreement among local stakeholders about the source of these contaminants.  There are no swine or poultry operations in the valley and dairy practices in the valley have changed in the last 20 years from small pasture based operations to industrial scale operations. The EPA and Washington Department of Ecology are currently conducting a groundwater study which was developed in 2008 using a community based research plan.  Many individuals in the community are certain that the extent of the groundwater contamination is due to the expansive dairy operations in the Valley.  Additionally it is becoming more apparent that large scale operations can have dramatic effects on regional water and air quality.

Leah Beth Ward presented a three-part series, “Hidden Wells, Dirty Water,” in the Yakima Herald Republic which explored the dairy industry, governmental agency policy and community concerns about the adverse environmental and public health effects associated with exposures to Yakima Valley dairy operations.    Another YouTube video exposé of the area, “Dairyman Blues,” explored some of the concerns of community residents and the work of local activist groups in response to the change in dairy processes. Read More >

Looking at Food System Issues through a ‘Food Justice Lens’

I first came upon the term “food justice” from an organization in Oakland called People’s Grocery led by Brahm Ahmadi and others who were fighting against an unjust food system in the “food desert” of West Oakland. At the time, it was an area that left residents with liquor stores and corner stores instead of grocery stores, a high prevalence of obesity and diet-related disease, and food dollars from hard-earned incomes that left the community through “leakage.” In fact, it was this food justice term “leakage” that really tweaked my economic and social justice sensibilities. A 2004 study showed that for every dollar spent at a locally-owned business, 68 cents stayed within the local community, while only 43 cents of every dollar spent at a chain store stayed within the community. Ahmadi lives these numbers, working hard to bring a grocery store into West Oakland, which will create jobs and build the local economy, all while providing healthier food to the residents.

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Gottlieb and Joshi’s book title, Food Justice, is the rallying cry of organizations like People’s Grocery and many others, and this book offers a fresh perspective on some of the food system issues that advocates in the various wings of the food movement have been writing about for a long time. The new angle that Food Justice takes is to examine those food system issues through a “food justice” lens. The authors explain what that means: “A food justice orientation critiques and assesses the changing nature of food production and processing. It focuses on the need to reverse the disappearance of small farmers and farm-workers, along with the need to craft a different way to relate to the land and grow food. At the center of the food justice ethos is the demand for justice in the fields and work-places that produce and process foods, and for recognition of the dignity of work and basic human rights for those who have been denied such rights.” Read More >

Fair Food in Our 21st Century Economy

Last Wednesday, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) held the last of a series of joint workshops on “Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy.” This particular workshop was held at the USDA in Washington D.C. and focused on the issue of price margins - the discrepancies between prices received by farmers and ranchers for the food they produce and the prices paid by consumers for that food. Panelists and public commentary explored potentially anticompetitive conduct in the agriculture sector and discussed the possible need for the application of antitrust laws to address this conduct.

Secretary Vilsack and Attorney General Holder

Attorney General Holder and Secretary Vilsack

This workshop series was the first ever to bring the DOJ and USDA together around competition and regulatory issues in agriculture industries. The attention being given to this subject was reflected in the participation of senior staff at the USDA and DOJ, including Tom Vilsack (Secretary of Agriculture, USDA) and Eric Holder (US Attorney General). In addition to senior-level representation, the panels were well balanced to reflect the viewpoints of producers, processors, retailers and consumers. Read More >