Understanding S.N.A.P: Myth-busting the U.S Food Aid Program

This video was made by the SNAP Alumni Project

According to USDA data, in 2013 some 47,636,085 people participated in the SNAP program - somewhere between 4-5% of the population. SNAP disbursed some $76,070,295,282 in benefits, with the average person receiving about $133 per month and the average household receiving $275.

Controversy has long been part of SNAP's history. Food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have been the center of a battle about personal responsibility and the right to food, as well as budget wars from overall social welfare spending to specific Farm Bill dollars.  

The list of complaints by the general public runs the gauntlet; people who don’t actually need aid are defrauding the system, recipients are in the program for too long, families use the money to buy non-food items such as alcohol and tobacco, people buy the wrong kinds of food with their benefits (i.e. junk food), and finally the idea that people can/ are disincentives from working because they can rely on a government program to feed them.

Some quick points to address those complaints:

1) Fraud

Currently, the USDA estimates that fraud is contained at 1% - compared with 4% in the 1990s (still a very low amount) when SNAP issued paper coupons as food stamps. Since 2002, SNAP recipient have received their monthly allotments on debit cards, ending the illegal selling and trading of stamps.  The current investigative process involved in determining who gets SNAP has also evolved and further insures that only those actually in need of food aid receive assistance in buying food.  Eligibility is limited to households with a gross income of equal to or below 130% of the federal poverty line, however the majority of households receiving benifits have income well below this maximum level.   83% of SNAP households have gross income at or below 100% of the poverty guideline (i.e. $19,530 for a family of 3 in 2013), and these households receive about 91% of all benefits. 61% of SNAP households have a gross income at or below 75% of the poverty guideline ($14,648 for a family of 3 in 2013).  Arguably, these are people who are in need of aid.  (In fact, a meager 14% of food-stamp households have incomes above the poverty line.)

Rather than a plethora of un-qualified people collecting benefits, it is estimated that over 2/3 of people actually eligible for the program are not currently enrolled.   The general bureaucracy involved in applying, personal shame, and a lack of understanding about eligibility are often listed as reasons that eligible families are not served by this program.  Furthermore, in recent years it has become increasingly difficult for even people who are completely qualified and understand the program to get SNAP, as many states are cutting back on the workers who process these applications.

Although we have seen growth in the number of beneficiaries in recent years, this has largely been due to the fact that the program is doing what it was designed to do – aid those in poverty who are unable to meet/ afford their basic food needs.  Historically SNAP participation follows unemployment with a slight lag.  Program growth has been due to an increasing number of people who have slipped into, or further into, poverty throughout the recession.  As the number of unemployed people increased by 94% from 2007 to 2011, SNAP responded with a 70% increase in participation over the same period. 

2) Length of Time on Benefits

While the myth of the 'Welfare' and 'Food Stamp Queen' lives strong, in reality, very few people receive food aid long-term.  At this time most recipients rely on federal SNAP funding for less than a year (with most recipients remaining in the program for between 8-10 months).

3) Use of SNAP Funds to Buy Non-food Items

There are very strict rules governing what can be purchased with snap.  Non-food items in general are prohibited, such as cigarettes, tobacco, and even items like paper towels, disposable plates, or toilet paper.  Furthermore, alcoholic beverages – liquor, wine, and beer – are all forbidden purchases as well.   Even vitamins, prepared food that can be eaten in a store and/or takeaway foods (in fact the use of SNAP on any restaurant is not allowed), and pet food are on the list of items that are not available for purchase with SNAP dollars.

4) SNAP can be Used to Buy Unhealthy Foods
There has long been an argument that SNAP funds should only be usable on healthy or nutritious foods.  However, cakes, cookies, soft drinks and other unhealthy options remain available.  Both New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Philadelphia Mayor John Nutter recently attempted to regulate the overall purchases of soft drinks. (Bloomberg attempted to regulate the size beverage that could be sold in specific establishments and Nutter attempted attach a citywide tax on soft drinks.) Both mayors share a strong belief that – given soft drinks contribution to obesity – food aid dollars shouldn't pay for soda. (Especially as studies increasingly show this and other diet-related diseases to be more prevalent among the poor.)

However, the USDA has ruled against such attempts, explaining that the issue of determining which foods should be banned would be too complex a process – largely because many healthy foods have higher sugar or fat content than other unhealthy options.  This makes it difficult to define a clear standard or category for proper amounts of fat, salt, or sugar. (e.g. a flat ban on food items with high fat content would be relatively arbitrary, as some healthy foods, such as granola bars, often have higher fat content than soft drinks.)  This idea was elucidated in a 2007 USDA paper that explained the rules in use - "No clear standards exist for defining foods as good or bad, or healthy or not healthy."

Beyond the difficulty of categorization, there remains the socio-political issue of who gets to decide what the diet of another person should be.  Many anti-hunger, anti-poverty, and food justice advocates take the view that micromanaging the poor (because they rely on taxpayer dollars) is not only offensive, its also inappropriate and wrong.  The argument is multi-faceted: 1) we (the American public) don’t ask other groups who receive money from taxpayers to relinquish their dietary choices to the public (e.g citizens on Social Security, government pensions, or those with federal contracts); 2) the assumption that the poor are incapable if making healthy dietary choices is offensive and incorrect; 3) if a population is making uninformed, or unhealthy choices, limiting those choices rather than working to educate and inform is narrow-minded and creates a missed opportunity for developing an important skill-set.

Studies have shown that given additional dollars, people are more likely to increase spending on nutritious foods, rather than snack or junk foods.  Studies have also shown that many families faced with tough budget constraints turn to unhealthy snacks and fast foods as low cost, high calorie options to feed their families when healthier foods remain out of their price range.  In response to this information, many larger cities such as New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Portland offer incentives for spending on healthy foods – each of these cities have farmers' market program where SNAP recipients are encouraged to increase their purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables by offering additional dollar amount coupons for varying incremental SNAP dollars spent. (In NYC the Greenmarket stands offers a $2 "Health Bucks" coupon for every $5 in benefit dollars spent.)  

5) SNAP Funding is Sufficient to Pay for All of a Person or Families Food Needs and/ or receipt of food stamps is keeping able-bodied people from working.

Not only do food stamps not provide all the money necessary to support or even feed an individual or household, they definitely do not keep people from looking for work, or needing to work.   

First, it’s important to understand who is receiving benefits.  The primary recipients of food stamps are children, elderly, disabled or temporarily unemployed – 76% of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person or a disabled person, and these vulnerable households receive 83% of all SNAP benefits (according to Feeding America).  Of the SNAP recipients who do not fall into the previously mentioned categories are working – USDA statistics show that over 30% of SNAP households had earnings in 2011 and 41% of all SNAP participants lived in a household with earnings.  

SNAP has a strict time limit for unemployed workers. Adults who are able-bodied and without dependents (ABAWDs) may only receive 3 months of SNAP benefits during any 3 year period, unless they are working a minimum of 20 hours per week or participating in a job training program. Additionally, the benefit formula itself provides a strong work incentive.  Within the formula there is not a dollar for dollar loss as income increased - for each additional dollar a SNAP participant earns, their benefits decline by 24 to 36 cents, not a full dollar, so participants have a strong incentive to find work, work longer hours, or seek better-paying employment.

Second, SNAP is a supplemental program, and has always operated as one, and there is little chance that any individual or family could survive on these benefits without other income.   In 2013 benefits amounted to an average of $1.40 per person per meal; the average recipient received $133 per month, and most families received an average of about $275.

Recent cuts to the SNAP program, due to the end of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s maximum monthly benefits boost, have resulted in significant losses for nearly all SNAP participants. In opposition to the assumption that recipients are somehow “living large” on taxpayer dollars, the cuts to these benefits will most certainly curtail each individual and households’ ability to purchase basic food.    In 2014 overall national SNAP funding will shrink by almost $5 billion. At an individual and household level this represents a serious decrease. Without the ARRA’s increase in allotted funding, SNAP benefits will average less than $1.40 per person per meal this year; the cut is the equivalent of taking away 21 meals a month for a family of four (calculated using the $1.70 to $2 per meal allotted by the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan).  These reduced benefit levels are likely to cause hardship for many SNAP participants – including some 22 million children (10 million of whom live in “deep poverty,” with family incomes below half of the poverty line) and 9 million elderly or seriously disabled persons.  While recent studies have found that SNAP funding allowed some 50,000 families to move out of very high levels of food insecurity – where one or more members are skipping meals or otherwise reducing the amount of food they eat – these cuts will undoubtedly reverse this trend.

A final thought on the effects on the broader economy, SNAP dollars not only help low-income people buy much needed groceries, it also frees up money for other expenses, such as medical care, clothing, home repairs and childcare. These flexible purchases benefit local businesses and their employees, which can serve to boost the economy as a whole.  Unlike higher-income families who are more likely to save additional income, low-income families often have unmet needs, which means that additional cash flows directly back into the economy.  In fact, many economists consider SNAP one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus.  Moody’s Analytics estimates that in a weak economy, every dollar increase in SNAP benefits generates about $1.70 in economic activity; the USDA has shown this number to be slightly higher - an increase of $1 billion in SNAP expenditures is estimated to increase economic activity (GDP) by $1.79 billion. (In other words, every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates up to $9 of economic activity.) Similarly, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) rated an increase in SNAP benefits as one of the two most cost-effective of all spending and tax options it examined for boosting growth and jobs in a weak economy. Unemployment insurance came in second, at $1.62, whereas most tax cuts yielded a dollar or less.

Think about this in terms of the recent cut to SNAP or in terms of low income people who were eligible but did not apply – this loss of benefits to individuals is also a loss for their local communities, which do not benefit economically from their participation. SNAP is the one of very few public benefit program that also serves as a direct economic stimulus to the local economies where these benefits are redeemed. By generating business at local grocery stores, new SNAP benefits trigger labor and production demand, ultimately increasing household income and triggering additional spending.

For more information about SNAP:

USDA Site, click here.
USDA: The Business Case for Increasing SNAP:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/outreach/business-case-increasing-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap-participation
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Podcast: The Food Stamp Program

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3008

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Chart Book: SNAP Helps Struggling Families Put Food on the Table

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3744

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: SNAP Is Effective and Efficient

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3239

CBO: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43173

Food Research and Action Center: SNAP Provides a Real Stimulus

http://frac.org/initiatives/american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act/snapfood-stamps-provide-real-stimulus/

Congressional Research Services: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Categorical Eligibility

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42054.pdf

Feeding America: SNAP (Food Stamps): Facts, Myths and Realities

http://feedingamerica.org/how-we-fight-hunger/programs-and-services/public-assistance-programs/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program/snap-myths-realities.aspx

*The SNAP Alumni project champions successful Americans -- citizens who once received food stamps and are now leaders in the arts, government, business, sports and education. With a temporary lift from this government program that continues to help feed millions of Americans every day, these people have persevered to accomplish great things. The program also seeks to debunk myths and common misperceptions about SNAP.

In Defense of Urban Agriculture

In recent years urban agriculture has become more popular across the western world, [1] with increasing numbers of city farms, allotments and urban gardens being used as planning tools in large cities.

There has been controversy surrounding the benefit of urban farms; suggestions that these spaces only serve an urban elite, complaints about the snobbery of foodies, and claims that these spaces are little more than gentrification and land-grabbing tools.  Alongside these complaints it has been suggested that these spaces will never be able to feed the cities where they are being established – so why bother?

At the same time there has been a parallel focus on programs that 'green the ghetto' - trying to make environmental fixes in deprived areas.  While these projects should be applauded for trying to beautify public space and for their desire to create more inhabitable neighborhoods, they often come up short as a comprehensive response to poverty.  

Many new food-growing projects are trying to take on multiple goals, with more nuanced plans to attack the various problems presented by the 'ghetto'.  We now see urban agriculture projects that try to address the economic disparities that lead to the environmental problems, as well as a multiplicity of social problems - Bad health, joblessness, poor education, and a basic lack of opportunities.  In this way these projects stop being hobbies, and become tools for creating urban resilience.

For the last 4 years I have been working on urban food issues and food justice projects across the Tri-state area.  The largest of these projects is an urban farm and food justice project in the South Ward of Newark.  I would like to use my experience with this project to introduce some information about the potential benefits that urban farms can provide, and why we should value these spaces.

SWAG Project (www.facebook.com/SWAGProject) started in 2010 when Planting Seeds of Hope, a NJ based NPO partnered with my planning consultancy Amplify to build an urban farm and educational space on the property of a local Hebrew Israelite Tabernacle. SWAG Project serves it’s surrounding neighborhood by supplying fresh organic produce, offering hands-on education in agriculture and nutrition, piloting entrepreneurial activities, and building stronger community ties among neighbors.

First, some quick background on the area surrounding the farm.  Newark is the 2nd poorest city in New Jersey, with 30% of its residents living below the poverty line[2].  Since the 1960’s, it has experienced urban decline similar to other northern industrial cities; a shrinking job market, followed by a shrinking population and white flight, deterioration of housing stock, and crime and joblessness rates well above the state and national average. Food poverty is also rampant, with high numbers of the population receiving SNAP/WIC assistance (food stamps), and a high incidence of residents dipping in and out of food insecurity.   Much of Newark can also be considered a food desert or swamp.[3]

Our specific neighborhood, Weequhaic has a high poverty rate, underfunded and understaffed local schools and lack of quality jobs and activities for young adults.  It’s residents also face unhealthy food choices and inadequate nutrition knowledge. There are few restaurants, corner stores, or groceries and most sell high calorie and/or fast foods.  Furthermore, few of them are within walking distance (less than a mile). Our neighborhood also lacks a local community center or emergency food center within a 2-mile radius. 

Enter SWAG Project.  In our 4 years in the community, with a shoe-string budget, but an excellent volunteer base, we have: built a ¼ acre farm growing a combined 3,400 lbs of food (1,500 last year alone) begun renovations on our building to act as a community center, hosted over 150 group education visits, engaged over 200 non-Newark visitors and volunteers, brought our community together for farm dinners and harvest celebrations, beautified our local neighborhood, and completed planning for a commercial greenhouse that will make us more financially self-sustaining by 2016.  In this way able to address some of the problems facing our community. The goal of the following sections is to give you a brief overview of how my farm, and really, any urban farm, can be valuable to the community.  I will talk about the benefits across 4 areas:  healthy food production and provision, Educational opportunities, community building, and community beautification. 

Healthy Food Production and Provision

For a small farm, we are very productive.  Last year was our 3rd year, and we managed to grow 1,500lbs of fruits and vegetables (that's 680 kilos) on about 800 sq ft of space.  This year our space has tripled and we are hoping to grow over 4,000 lbs of food.  That's almost 3,750 servings of fruit and vegetables.[4] While this is not enough to feed our entire neighborhood, we are able to supplement the local food supply.  We run an onsite market for the neighborhood and donate the remainder to local emergency food providers.  Last year we had over 200 visitors to our market and were also able to provide all the fresh food for our 80-person farm dinner.  We do this at a fair price, charging less than most corner stores do for the produce, and well below what boutique groceries in more affluent neighborhoods charge.

An additional benefit to our being a food producer for our local residents is that the food doesn’t need to travel far to reach the table.  This gives people with low levels of access to food a direct source in their neighborhood, saving residents travel time (often upwards of 45 minutes), and providing them access to fresh, organic foods that most of the local corner stores do not carry. We are a source of chemical free and GMO free, organically grown fruits and vegetables. There is no organic market or store in our neighborhood, nor, as previously explained, a real full-scale grocery store.  Furthermore, since our fruits and vegetables haven’t traveled for weeks to reach their destination, they maintain their full nutritional value.

Educational Opportunities and Training

In the last 4 years our farm has partnered with the two local schools and hosted over 150 hands-on education classes (engaging with over 1,500 children from the local area alone) and run ongoing youth farmer workshop for 3 consecutive years.  Our classes focus on getting the kids to understand the importance of farms, where their food comes from, and also encourages them to work and get dirty.  (Most schools in our local area no longer have gym classes or a recess.)  Over the winter we focus on cooking and nutrition workshops to get the kids excited about eating and to teach them what’s healthy and how to prepare it.

Nutrition and farm education extends to adults as well.  We realized that many of our residents had lost touch with cooking their own food, or, weren’t sure what it really meant to eat healthy, or how to translate family recipes and cultural favorites into more nutritious meals.  We spent the last few years working with one of the local chefs to set up cooking and nutrition classes for adults.  We have also run a healthy living campaign extending our activities on site to include yoga and hip-hop dance classes to get the community involved and active, and partnering with the local YMCA to talk about obesity and other local health issues.

The final part of our education piece is farmer training.  Many local adults have come by to learn how to grow their own food.  We have managed to create two paid (part-time) jobs on the farm - a farm manager and an education assistant.  In the following years we will be building a hydroponic greenhouse and offering local adults and teens the opportunity to learn business and farming skills that will allow them to move into the green economy.

Creating Cohesion and Building Community

One of the biggest challenges we have faced is breaking down barriers in a distrustful community faced with crime and disenchanted with the idea of the friendly neighbor.   When we started the farm, the residents in the surrounding neighborhood did not interact much with one another and there was a large fence that surrounded the entire property to keep residents out.  It took us a year to convince the property owners to take it down.  This effort proved to be more than symbolic, although it took us another 3 years to get the majority of the community involved. 

In the beginning, people were wary of the religious group we work with, now they trust us and have become familiar with the Hebrew Israelites who host the farm.  Now residents bring their kids in to see our vegetables grow and attend our community dinners and classes.  In spring, students from a local mosque came and planted trees with our team, and the Baptist church nearby raised funds to help build our second farm. Sharing stories about food from their countries lead our Guianese and Jamaican neighbors to bring seeds for our farmer to plant; it lead the congregation to put together a cookbook with recipes from local residents. All this in a community where people didn’t say hello to us or their neighbors 4 years ago.  Although the police still stop by to check on me as a woman (and a white one at that) in a ‘dangerous’ neighborhood, they now also stop by to get food from the market.  Food did this; Farming did this.  Working hard side-by-side to move dirt, build berms, plant seeds and maintain the farm allowed our neighbors to get to know each other on their terms.

Community Beautification

One of the nicest benefits to our direct community has been the addition of a safe, open space for people to visit.  At the farm we have been able to create a space where the local school children can visit, and a place where neighbors feel comfortable stopping by to chat with members of the project.  We have also managed to get a number of the young men who had previously been hanging around the block, smoking and drinking, to come in an volunteer, as well as keeping an eye on the property while our team members cannot be there.  The kids who we worked with the last few years at school now feel ownership in their community.  Two years ago we painted a mural with the help of a local artist, and the farm now stands as a place in the community that people are proud to talk about.  Moreover, our work on the property has encouraged the congregants to raise money to fix the deteriorating building, and other homeowners have come to us for advice on planting their own gardens and how to improve their yards.  In this way we have had an effect on the larger community, encouraging others to begin caring more for the neighborhood as well.

Our end goal is to build a community development corporation and launch a combination of green economy and food-based commercial initiatives to ensure a financially sustainable future of community development activities. By creating a local food and health oriented CDC, we will ultimately be able to continue to support the projects broader objectives; improving health, economic activity, education, and strengthening community ties.

I am not giving our organization as an example of what every community should do, nor am I purporting that our project has solved all the problems within our community.  Rather, I would suggest that community run urban farming projects can be, and grow into, institutions that take on the myriad of problems facing many impoverished inner cities.  I suggest that these spaces have value to cities in their ability to improve health, provide educational and economic opportunities, and also to beautify and bring together communities.

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[1] People in the global south have long grown their own food in urban areas and continue to do so, the new media and social phenomena of the urban garden or farm is only novel or ‘new’ the western and northern hemispheres

[2] According to 2010 ACS data (U.S. Census American Community Survey)

[3] Food Deserts are areas with little to no access to food (aka restaurants, grocery stores, etc.  Food Swamps were are areas where people have high levels of access to unhealthy, calorie dense foods.

[4] The USDA recommends that youths eat 2 cups of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, and adults between 2-3 cups.

Vertical Farming on the Rise in Cities and in Classrooms

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According to Nestle, Water isn't a Human Right

Recently, Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck made the astonishing claim (while being interviewed for the documentary We Feed the World), that water IS NOT a human right. He goes on to attack the idea that nature is good, and details what a great achievement it is that humans are now able 'to resist nature's dominance.'  While there are a plethora of arguments against the above summary of his claims, and in fact against the detailed views he describes in the interview, I would like to take time quickly to posit the main issues/ questions I have with his arguments (on both an environmental and social level):

 
1) Are human beings not both a part of nature and dependent on nature (our environment) to live? Have we not moved past the archaic thought process that believes man was put on earth to dominate nature? Do we continue to think that nature is here to be bent to our will or suppressed under our feet?  At what point did our Judeo-Christian paradigm fail to capture the more subtle message of humans as caretakers and stewards of the earth?  (See any of Wendell Berry’s writings on agrarian lifestyles.)


2) Are we really to blind to see that we, as individuals and groups, are truly powerless to control nature, and that in most of our manipulations we only serve to make the environment worse for ourselves? 


3) If we do not believe that human beings have a right to clean, drinkable water, one of the only things we truly need to remain alive, then what sort of rights do we actually believe in? And how can they possibly matter? If we do not believe that people have the basic right to things that will allow them to live, what sort of a farce are all the other tenets we set up to guarantee people other basic freedoms?

4) Will we continue to back the 'right' of corporations to do whatever they like in the noble name of capitalism and wealth accumulation?  Have we really not reached a point where we can weight the rights of human beings over corporations, and our wellbeing over that of a small group of people’s ability to profit?  Nestle is the biggest distributor of bottled water the world over.  Mr. Barbek has stated, correctly, that water is the most valuable resource worldwide.  However, his idea that privatization will make sure it is most fairly distributed is nonsensical.  Since when have markets actually ensured an equitable distribution of any good?

I posit these questions more as a jumping off point for a more nuanced conversation about what our rights and responsibilities are to one another and to our environment.  

To view the trailer for the documentary, We Feed the World, click here.

God made a Farmer: How Current Commercial Ideals About Farming Channel the Dominant Food Narrative

The below text is a reproduction of a letter and article by Eric Holt-Giménez

The spoofs on the “God Made a Farmer” Super Bowl commercial are starting to go viral. Their takes on Dodge RAM’s two-minute homily suggest the automaker may have irked as many people as it pleased: God made a (factory) farmer, God made a (woman) farmer, God made a Farm (worker).

The commercial is based on a speech given thirty-five years ago to the Future Farmers of America—about the time half of the country’s family farmers were going bankrupt. It was the onset of “free” markets, giant feedlots, GMOs, global warming, obesity epidemics, the massive migration of Third World farmers and the unprecedented rise of the great global food monopolies. It was the dark dawn of the corporate food regime.

None of this, of course, is addressed in the commercial. Commercials are for selling products, not for educating us about the food system. Right?

Wrong.

Commercials are about winning hearts and minds in order to sell things.  They tap in to our desires and our belief systems from a very early age. In this sense, they are part of our ongoing ideological education. They reinforce the mythologies that shape our understanding of the world.

In “God made a Farmer” Dodge RAM tapped into national agrarian nostalgia by wrapping its product in one of our society’s great mythologies: the Dominant Food Narrative.

The Dominant Food Narrative goes something like this:

Through rugged individualism, entrepreneurship, technological superiority and free markets, today’s industrial food system is the most productive in history. While not perfect, it is the best way to feed the world.

This set of assumptions contains an important, unspoken assumption:

Without the industrial food system, we’re all going to die.

The unspoken assumption is the most powerful of all because it holds all the others together with the sticky glue of fear. The Dominant Food Narrative allows a broad set of myths and claims to be presented as facts. (First exposed in Frances Moore Lappé’s “12 Myths About World Hunger.”)

The Dominant Food Narrative is good at selling products, and not just trucks. It sells GMOs, CAFOs, and agrofuels.  It sells policies like the Farm Bill and global campaigns like the new Green Revolution and Feed the Future. It sells plenty of politicians…  

The other important thing that the Dominant Food Narrative does is to make things invisible.  For example, “God made a Famer” makes farmworkers, women, land grabs and factory farming all invisible. It also makes alternatives to the industrial food system—like agroecology, CSAs, and urban farms—invisible by denying their achievements in hopes that no one will take them seriously. This reinforces the other unspoken assumption crafted thunderously into the Dominant Food Narrative:

“There is No Alternative.”

Practices that deviate from industrial agriculture (read: do not consume its products), science that is not at the service of the industrial food system (agroecology) and experiences that contradict the dominant food narrative (Campesino a Campesino, Cuba , Rodale), must be dismissed as non-existent, impractical or even “elitist” in order to ensure the dominance of the industrial food system.

But the Dominant Food Narrative is crumbling. It is harder and harder to hide the superweeds, diet-related diseases, land grabs, racism and global suffering intrinsic to the corporate food regime. More and more people can see the Food Emperor had no clothes. The Dominant Food Narrative may sell trucks, but it is getting harder to sell GMOs, processed food and the beneficence of Wal-Mart,

Other food narratives are emerging from other practices that not only challenge the old narrative, they make us realize that there plenty of alternatives to the industrial food system. Around the world, communities are showing that the practices and the narratives can be changed to serve other purposes rather than food for monopoly profit.

The next step will be to change the rules and institutions governing our food system so that these “alternative” practices become the norm.

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THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF PAUL HARVEY TALKING ABOUT THE AMERICAN FARMER:

And on the 8th day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So, God made a farmer.

God said I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer.

I need somebody with strong arms. Strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry and have to wait for lunch until his wife is done feeding and visiting with the ladies and telling them to be sure to come back real soon...and mean it. So, God made a farmer.

God said "I need somebody that can shape an ax handle, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And...who, at planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Then, pain'n from "tractor back", put in another seventy two hours. So, God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop on mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So, God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees, heave bails and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combed pullets...and who will stop his mower for an hour to mend the broken leg of a meadow lark. So, God made a farmer.

It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight...and not cut corners. Somebody to seed and weed, feed and breed...and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody to replenish the self feeder and then finish a hard days work with a five mile drive to church. Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who'd laugh and then sigh...and then respond with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life "doing what dad does". So, God made a farmer.

Farm to School: USDA supports local foods in schools

The Agriculture Deputy Secretary, Kathleen Merrigan, today announced more than $4.5 million in grants for 68 projects, spanning 37 states and the District of Columbia, to connect school cafeterias with local agricultural producers. “When schools buy food from nearby producers, their purchasing power helps create local jobs and economic benefits, particularly in rural agricultural communities,” Merrigan said. “Evidence also suggests that when kids understand more about where food comes from and how it is produced, they are more likely to make healthy eating choices.”

The first-ever USDA Farm to School grants will help schools respond to the growing demand for locally sourced foods and increase market opportunities for producers and food businesses, including food processors, manufacturers, distributors. Grants will also be used to support agriculture and nutrition education efforts such as school gardens, field trips to local farms, and cooking classes.  The funding will serve more than 3,200 schools and 1.75 million students, nearly half of whom live in rural communities. Projects are diverse, and consider multiple ways to tackle the task. Some award recipients, such as the Lawrence County District in Walnut Ridge, Ark., are using grant funds to coordinate efforts with other school districts to aggregate buying power and attract new producers to the school food service market.

Other funded projects, such as Weld County School District 6 in Greeley, Colo., will expand kitchen facilities to serve local products year-round through processing and freezing techniques. Some schools in New Mexico will receive grant funding to increase the types of products it buys from local vendors. Local cattle farmers already supply the school district with 100 percent locally produced beef; USDA grant funds will be used to develop relationships with local fruit and vegetable producers to serve a full meal using locally sourced products.

This year’s funding also includes:

• Twenty-five programs that create jobs by hiring new farm to school coordinators, with 43 projects supporting and maintaining existing staff. In New Haven, Conn., CitySeed, Inc. will hire a procurement specialist to help New Haven School Food Programs increase the amount of regionally grown produce in the meals of more than 20,900 urban public school students. (Nearly 80 percent of them qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch).
• Thirty-one programs that use food hubs, or partner with mainline distributors. In California, the Community Alliance of Family Farmers will work with a local distributor to create a new line of local produce, making it easier for schools to source products through current distribution channels.
• Forty-four projects that will result in development of new products and menu items. For example, the Lake County Community Development Corporation, in Ronan, Mont., will coordinate with regional lentil farmers to procure protein and fiber rich lentil patties.
• An estimated 47 projects will develop new partnerships by working with and educating farmers and ranchers new to the school food market. For example, the Washington State Department of Agriculture will conduct regional "mobile tours" in which agricultural producers and school food service directors tour the state together, learning about agricultural specialties, identifying opportunities for partnership, and solidifying regional networks.
• Three projects support American Indian communities, including the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Cloquet, Minn. The reservation will implement a program to improve access to local and traditional foods to increase local economic benefits for producers as well as promote a healthy diet among their youth.
• More than 50 projects support hands-on learning activities, such as field trips to farms and creation of school gardens. The Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, Inc. will coordinate tours of nearby farms for its 35 school partners, serving nearly 21,000 students.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA) amended Section 18 of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (NSLA) to establish a Farm to School program in order to assist eligible entities, through grants and technical assistance, in implementing farm to school programs that improve access to local foods in eligible schools. Farm to School grants are administered by USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. The full list of awards granted for fiscal year 2013 is available here.

Farm to School is one component of USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, launched in 2009 to coordinate the Department’s work on local and regional food systems and create new opportunities for farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural communities. An interactive view of USDA programs that support local and regional foods, including farm to school and farm to institution, is available in the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass. The KYF Compass consists of an interactive map of USDA-supported local and regional food projects and an accompanying guide to our programs and results on the ground. In October, the map was expanded and now includes projects from nine other federal agencies.

Green Bronx Machine: Growing Opportunities in NYC

In recent years there has been a growing focus on programs that 'green the ghetto' - trying to make environmental fixes to deprived areas.  While these projects are to be applauded for trying to beautify public space, and for their desire to create more inhabitable neighborhoods - they often come up short in the face of the real, and multifaceted, problem - poverty.  Many new food growing projects are trying to take on multiple goals, with more nuanced plans to attack the various problems presented by the 'ghetto'.  We have seen urban farming projects popping up all over NYC and other large cities, which try at some level to address the economic disparities that lead to the environmental problems, as well as a multiplicity of social problems - Bad health, joblessness, poor education, and a basic lack of opportunities.

All in a days work. Steve, The Graham Windham crew and I behind our second finished wall!

Enter Steve Ritz and and his Green Bronx Machine.  Steve is a teacher in the South Bronx, where he and his kids grow lush gardens for food, greenery -- and jobs.  His unique mix of community greening, education, mentoring, and job opportunity creation is going a long way to addressing the aforementioned problems.  GBM centers around the idea that the greening of America starts with the greening of hearts, minds and wallets rooted in triple bottom line orientations. THe project is dedicated to changing mind-sets and landscapes while harvesting hope and cultivating opportunities inclusively.  The project works to better interconnect the cities neighborhoods, and focuses on creating opportunities for youth of the Bronx.  Steve works with the kids to teach them different methods of community greening, but with an eye for the fact that they need jobs.  Through various partnerships he has been able secure jobs and funding for his students so they can remain focused on developing careers.  His team works to feed themselves, their school and their community - they grow in classrooms and in the Hamptons, they install green roofs and green walls, build greenhouses in Harlem and install turf on Randall,s Island - in short they do it all. Behold the glory and bounty that is Bronx County! 

I spent the last month in Harlem with  Ritz  building vertical growing walls and working to expand his project into new territory - namely Brooklyn.  We worked with the young men from Graham Windham to build growing walls for their center as well as one of our sponsors. It was incredible and inspiring work.  The group that showed up learned a lot and loved it.  Fingers crossed that we'll be able to continue with Graham Windham and expand the Green Machine across all 5 boroughs! 

“Kids should not have to leave their community to live, learn and earn in a better one.”

The Graham Windham crew and I learning to mix growing medium for their centers new growing wall!

“The greening of America starts first with the pocket, then with the heart and then with the mind.”


Here's Josh and George learning how to make a big paycheck in a clean green way - planting ivy for the indoor growing walls in one of our sponsors' houses!

“Black field, brown field, toxic waste field, battlefield — we're proving in the Bronx that you can grow anywhere.”

Steve, TJ, Alex, Alexandra, and Josh with our first finished wall.  Si Se Puede!

To learn more about the Green Bronx Machine, 'like' them on Facebook or click here.