The Health of the Nation: New Article on Regional Foodsheds

After recently attending a Food Empowerment conference at Rutgers in Newark, I was left to consider the necessity of  cities to secure sustainable and resilient foodsheds and the types of policies that would go hand in hand with supporting these structures.  In researching ideas I came across a new 2011 law review article from the Fordham Environmental Law Review: Regional Foodsheds: Are Our Local Zoning and Land Use Regulations Healthy?  The article explains some of the reasons why its so important to focus on agriculture as a solution to our recent environmental, health and social equity issues and also inventories some local communities efforts (within the USA) and the policies they are experimenting with to create and sustain local foodsheds.

The most crucial point the article makes, and one which policy makers, activists and local communities should take note of, if they want to create an inclusive, broad reaching and sustainable foodsystem, is the idea that planning for regional foodsheds should be a collaborative process: “Regional foodshed planning must be comprehensive, and it should ―approach food not just [as] a commodity but as an infrastructural system. . . that needs to be managed and considered in all urban and regional planning efforts.”

Currently, in most situations, food is viewed exclusively as a commodity.  This understanding of food is as unsustainable and unhealthy as it is  incorrect, and we should be as concerned about the present dysfunctional state of our food supply system as we are with other forms of our crumbling infrastructure - roads and foreign-oil dependence.  Consider our current dependent on foreign oil and how stressful the situation has become, now imagine being dependent upon foreign food.  We would soon find ourselves in the situation faced by the majority of the global south, where crops are grown for export and the farmers growing these crops cannot afford to buy imported staple crops to feed themselves.  It is past time to consider how we can improve our current food system structure, and our relationship with food itself.

The article begins by providing an overview of local and regional foodsheds, reviewing not only the environmental and public health benefits, but also highlighting the economic benefits:

In 2009, U.S. households spent more than $526 billion on food produced outside of the home, indicating a significant economic market for locally grown and processed food. Local sourcing can supply a significant amount of food. A recent Michigan State University study posits that by converting vacant urban land to a host of urban agriculture related…, Detroit residents could be supplied with 76% of their vegetables and more than 40% of their fruits… Strong regional food markets economically support labor-intensive small and medium sized farms, which have been overtaken in the past several decades by mechanized, large-scale industrial agricultural operations. Local economies are also reinforced as the foodshed movement spurs the need for local food processing facilities and agri-businesses providing supplies, equipment and services… In addition to job creation and economic development, regional food markets reduce transportation costs and provide some insulation from volatility in the global food market. Furthermore, regional markets for production and processing can decrease costs for healthy foods, which can in turn produce economic benefits by preventing health care costs from diseases associated with poor diet and obesity.

Following this overview, the authors go on to detail strategies that local governments might attempt: creating food policy councils/task forces and incorporating food policies into their comprehensive planning.

Some local comprehensive plans contain sections…that touch on regional food policies, such as agriculture, sustainability, or economic development elements. For example, in Marin County, CA the plan supports “the production and marketing of healthy, fresh, locally grown food.”

The article also delves into a number of other policies being tried across the country, including policies that many larger cities (including NYC) have begun to explore: employing the purchasing power of local governments (and also large institutions):

Procurement policies that favor locally grown foods can help establish a market to support regional food production. In Cleveland, for example, an ordinance was passed in 2010 that requires the commissioner of purchases and supplies and each contracting department to develop a list of local food producers and businesses and to ―endeavor to maximize purchases from these sources. It also favors contract bidders that are locally based and purchase twenty percent of their food locally. Albany County, New York, has also enacted a policy to increase the percentage of local food consumed at the county‘s residential healthcare and correctional facilities. The policy recognizes that locally produced food supports the regional economy, requires less oil and gas, and provides nutritional benefits. Furthermore, in early 2011, a proposal was introduced in New York City to increase purchases of New York state food by city agencies.

The article is a great general starting place for anyone wanting to view a broad array of possibilities for their local communities.  It is also an invaluable tool for those in Newark’s city government and others involved in the redevelopment of the city’s food system and the new sustainability plan.

The Future of Farming: Oxfam Release and Olivier De Schutter's Address to Congress

Today Oxfam launched it's GROW campaign with a panel is Washington, D.C. with special guests Academy Award-nominated actor Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, In America), UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter, bestselling author on world hunger and cofounder of The Small Planet Institute Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet is celebrating its 40th anniversary), Dr. Cheryl Smith, President of Trillium and immediate past Chair of the Social Investment Forum, and Oxfam America President Ray Offenheiser.


Click here to listen in: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/grow-campaign


Tomorrow De Schutter  will present the findings from his report on agroecology and the right to food to the US House of Representatives.

Growing Community In Newark: Ground Breaking Event

Sunday marked the groundbreaking event for the Tabernacle Garden in Newark, New Jersey.  A community building venture hosted by the Tabernacle, the Garden will be open to the entire community and will be based in a partnership with the local Team Academy and Peshine Schools.

Some of the participants, including Tabernacle and community members, Planting Seeds of Hope members and local students.

Students choosing what to plant and learning why we were planting it now.

Cleaning out the beds for planting.

Planting our herb borders (Dill, Parsley, Basil, and Cilantro!)

Getting our fingers dirty at a young age: Community Mini-Gardeners!

More to Come Soon!

State of Global Hunger: Global Hunger Index 2010

It has been suggested that global hunger, rather than being halved in pursuit of the Millennium Development goals is actually getting worse. However, according to the 2010 Global Hunger Index (GHI),  published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),  hunger and food security in many nations has not changed over the last decade.

The GHI is calculated for 122 developing and transition countries countries and it’s rates are based on three equally weighted indicators: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and the child mortality rate. Twenty-nine countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, have levels of hunger that are "extremely alarming" or "alarming." Of the nine countries in which hunger levels rose eight were in Africa, including: Liberia, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). North Korea was the only country outside Africa to show an increase in hunger levels, which has been blamed on negative trends in economic growth and food production.

The report claimed that "the high prevalence of child under-nutrition is a major contributor to persistent hunger," the biggest contributor to the global figure, accounting for almost half of the score.

Addressing issues during pregnancy and the first two years of life could provide critical opportunities for preventing future health problems among children, as undernourishment during early childhood (those first two years) can cause irreversible, long-term damage.

“In order to improve individual GPI scores “countries must accelerate progress in reducing child malnutrition. Considerable research shows that the window of opportunity for improving nutrition spans from conception to age two. After age two, the negative effects of under-nutrition are largely irreversible" said Marie Ruel, director of IFPRI's poverty, health and nutrition division and co-author of the report. Furthermore, the need to attend to the health of all women, but specifically mothers was also highlighted as “crucial to reducing child malnutrition” by Bärbel Dieckmann, the chair of the German NGO Welthungerhilfe, who explained that “Mothers who were poorly nourished as girls tend to give birth to underweight babies, perpetuating the cycle of under-nutrition.”  The report estimated that the burden of child undernutrition could be cut by 25-36 percent by providing universal preventive health services and nutrition interventions for children under two and their mothers during pregnancy and lactation.

While major gains have been made over the last 20 years in reducing hunger and undernourishment (hunger levels fell by one quarter), the number of hungry people has recently begun to rise. The report defines world hunger levels as "serious" and notes that recent spikes in food prices has pushed the number of undernourished people in the world beyond one billion.

To download the Data, click here. 

An Issue of National Food Insecurity

According to a report released this month, food insecurity, an issue long seen as a bane of developing countries, is reaching an alarming level in the United States in the recent post-recession years. The report "Food Security in the United States 2009" found that 17.4 million households in America had difficulty providing enough food due to a lack of resources.

The report, published by the US Department of Agriculture, looked at household food access and security in the U.S. and revealed that 14.7 per cent of American households were food insecure at least some time during 2009, including 5.7 per cent with very low food security. While the latest figures for overall food insecurity and ‘severe’ food security remained close to their 2008 levels (14.6 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively) they remain the highest recorded levels since the first national food security survey was conducted in 1995.

Highlighting the significant inequalities in food resource availability across U.S. households, the USDA report noted that the typical food-insecure household spent a whopping 33 per cent less on food than the typical food-secure household of the same size and composition. Furthermore, in households with “severe range of food insecurity” resource constraints were often the cause of eating pattern disruptions, with the food intake of members often dropping over the course of the year.

Another worrying fact uncovered by the report was the large racial divide in food security outcomes, with rates of food insecurity among African-American and Hispanic households remaining substantially higher than the national average. Insecurity was also notably higher among households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line and a single parent headed households. 

The USDA report was based on data from an annual food security survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and covered about 46,000 households.  Adult respondents were asked a series of questions covering experiences and behaviors typically noted to indicate food insecurity - such as being unable, at times, to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals or being hungry because of too little money for food.  Household food security status was then designated based on the number of food-insecure conditions reported.

To read the full briefing click here.

For more on world food security in 2009, click here.