Last week, USDA did a graceful end-run around the Farm Bill, benefiting both SNAP participants and the farmers who sell at farmers’ markets.
As the Farm Bill is being negotiated by the House, Senate, and their respective agriculture committees, the earliest that we can expect resolution on the bill is late July—and that’s a very optimistic estimate. But on Wednesday, May 9, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced that USDA will fund—to the tune of $4 million—efforts to purchase EBT machines for some of the farmers’ markets that lack them. Read More >
Yesterday the New York Times ran an article that raised the idea that poor urban neighborhoods are not food deserts. Citing recent studies, the author, Gina Kolata, quoted researchers who found that low-income neighborhoods have plenty of options for buying fresh, healthy food, and that obesity has no correlation to food access.
These studies add another layer of understanding to the complex issue of equitable access to healthy food. Working with the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, my colleagues and I have re-defined what constitutes a food desert in Baltimore. Here, as in many urban areas, food deserts are not just about supermarkets. Back in 2009, we looked at household income and access to supermarkets. For the 2012 Baltimore City Food Environment Map, we looked at more subtle factors, such as distance to the nearest supermarket, and what kind of transportation options were available in households. Read More >
Winona LaDuke | April 2012
In a true sense of the words, Winona LaDuke is a force of nature.
An environmentalist, farmer, activist, writer, and advocate for native communities and ways of life, she is an Anishinaabe force to be reckoned with. As the Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year (1997), Ralph Nader’s vice presidential running mate on the 1996 and 2000 Green Party tickets, and recipient of the International Slow Food Award, her contributions have been widely recognized. But in January she was honored by an unlikely party—the Tucson United School District board, which became infamous for banning Mexican-American studies. Her response to the ban: “Recently, I had the distinction of becoming one of a select list of authors banned by the Tucson United School District. Now this is no small feat.” She went on to name the essay that had been specifically banned, and then wrote, “Interestingly enough, if I were going to ban one of my essays from a public school, this would probably not be the one.”
A few days ago, I was lucky enough to spend some time with Ms. LaDuke and ask which of her books is more ban-worthy. Read More >
This story by Sarah Rodman and Lainie Rutkow has been cross-posted from Corporations and Health Watch.
In August 2011, the Rhode Island Department of Human Services launched a pilot program in the Providence area that allows some elderly, homeless, and disabled households to buy “hot prepared meals” using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits – but only at Subway sandwich shops. Read More >
Will Allen is proof that the phrase “down to earth” can be as literal as it is figurative. His ongoing relationship to soil and compost, and all the processes that produce them, keep him literally grounded.
The founder and CEO of the Milwaukee-based community food center known as Growing Power spoke to an audience of about 300 recently at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While he’s very much at home in front of a crowd, you could get the impression he was missing his worms back home. In his slide show or on the Internet, you can find pictures of Allen with hundreds of worms in his giant hands (definitely Google-worthy). He gives much of the credit for his food production successes to those humble creatures. Read More >
Will Allen and Dave Love at CLF Aquaponics Project, 2012
Today, for a change, I will gush.
Why the gushing? Because I’ve been hanging around Will Allen, an urban farming pioneer with nearly cult-hero status among foodies and farmers. He’s an inspiration, an overflowing font of information, and the picture of humility.
The son of a sharecropper, Mr. Allen swore as a young man that he’d never return to farming—now he’s the CEO of a Milwaukee-based community food center that’s doing so many bold things with food systems that it’s hard to keep track of all his good works. (He’s also a former professional basketball player, a MacArthur fellow, and a spokesperson for First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.) Read More >
After six weeks of engaging in thought-provoking, interdisciplinary discussions on challenging topics ranging from waste to land use to the economy, we finally had the opportunity to step outside of the classroom and experience first-hand these issues in the greater Baltimore community. [This was the seventh and final session of the Baltimore Food and Faith Project’s Enoughness series.] Angela planned an ambitious agenda, consisting of an early morning trip to the Maryland Food Center in Jessup, followed by a visit to Prigel Family Creamery in Glen Arm, concluding with a stop at Eastern Sanitary Landfill in White Marsh—all before 1:30pm, when we would gather for a celebratory pot luck lunch. Read More >
Q & A with D’Ann Williams
Several years ago, CLF fellow D’Ann Williams, DrPH, was traveling through Yakima Valley, Washington, and was struck by an indescribable smell. The Valley is home to a great number of dairy cows in high-density operations—72 percent of the dairy facilities in the Valley have more than 500 cows each. (A point of reference: in the nation as a whole, only three percent of all dairy operations are that big.) The smell inspired a study, with colleagues Patrick Breysse, PhD, and other Center affiliates*, and it was published last fall in Environmental Health. The study measures the concentration of airborne pollutants in homes close to dairy operations, and the pollutants include particulate matter (PM) and ammonia. Many airborne contaminants are unregulated, and the health effects of exposure are unknown. Recently, I was able to talk with Williams about her research and her recommendations. Read More >
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino
Sometimes it’s worth reflecting on where we’ve been, if only to show ourselves that we’ve actually gotten somewhere.
Case in point: Recently, mayors from across the U.S. initiated a Food Policy Task Force to “focus on issues including reducing obesity, increasing access to healthy affordable food in low-income communities, and increasing local food procurement and entrepreneurship in cities.”
This might sound like the normal everyday work of mayors, until you consider how far it is from the policy environment that existed a few decades ago regarding food issues. Read More >
This is the ninth blogpost in the series, “Corn-Fed Cars: On the Road with Ethanol.”
Innovations in biofuels are becoming more important than ever. We can expect a perfect storm of predicaments that make this even more true. Recent predictions are that gasoline prices will continue to rise steadily, perhaps reaching $5 per gallon by mid-summer. Corn prices also are projected to be at record highs. Projections of a major drought in the Midwest promises to raise corn prices even higher, perhaps to the point where corn ethanol production will be curtailed for lack of a profit in spite of the high gasoline prices. And of course, fossil fuels can last only so long, even if new discoveries are temporarily delaying the more drastic effects of peak oil and gas. Read More >
