Time to get tray serious: Get involved with a Child Nutrition Act campaign

School’s out for the summer, but there’s a food fight going on in the cafeteria. In Washington, Congress is turning up the heat on the policies that determine what 30 million children will eat once the lunch bell rings.

Want hormones out of kid’s milk? Pesticides off the tomatoes? Local lettuce in the salad bar? Candy bars and snack cakes to be considered junk food? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then I urge you to step into the lunch room and learn what this food fight is all about.

What our kids see on their lunch trays is a snapshot of our national food system: fresh, baked, breaded, or fried. What we feed them affects how they learn, how they grow, and what kind of future citizens we’re nurturing. A formidable new combatant has just joined the kid-food fray: our country’s Mom-in-Chief. Last Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama stepped up her support of local, fresh foods, invoking community gardens and the Child Nutrition Act, while enjoying a harvest picnic with the Bancroft fifth-graders. (Read or watch Michelle Obama’s speech.)

The current Child Nutrition Act expires September 30, 2009, meaning it’s up for reauthorization, and in that process we have a chance to really improve on how food for our smallest citizens is funded, sourced, defined, and prioritized. Remember in 1981, how under Reaganomics ketchup was classified as a vegetable and 2 million children were dropped from the National School Lunch Program? The Act has far-reaching impact, beyond school lunch, to the WIC, Child and Adult Care Food, and Summer Food Service programs, and others.

During the last reauthorization cycle five years ago, there was a scarcity of grassroots pressure and media around this policy. Thankfully, times have changed. There is a bountiful buffet of campaigns you can participate in: you can take five seconds and sign your name to a petition to demonstrate support, or you can dedicate your life to the cause like the indefatigable Ann Cooper (aka the Renegade Lunch Lady). Or you can grab a tray and get in line on one of the following efforts.

Today, the Healthy School Food Brigade, comprised mostly of moms, marched the halls of Congress to, you guessed it, voice their support of healthy food choices in schools, from hot lunches to less junk-filled vending machines. Basically they want to get junk food out of schools. Sounds simple, but au contraire. Think water is better than high-fructose-corn-syrup-laced fruit juice? Take this quiz to see what the standards for “healthy” currently are.

This group is specifically advocating for HR 1324 and S.934: “Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2009,” which amends the Child Nutrition Act to require the Secretary of Agriculture to establish science-based nutrition standards for foods served in schools other than foods served under the school lunch or breakfast programs. Today’s day of lobbying is the culmination of the new film Food Inc.’s social-action campaign, organized by Participant Media for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization. They joined forces with the Center for Science in the Public Interest in advocating for the proposed bill.

Food, Inc.’s campaign doesn’t stop at the end of the brigade today. Turn on your computer’s sound and take a noisy wander through the Hungry for Change cafeteria, which links to various organizations’ child-nutrition-focused campaigns. Among them:

• Food & Water Watch is working to get rBGH out of school milk and stopping the practice of irradiation to kill bacteria
• Pesticide Action Network pushing for decreasing pesticide use on the food, particularly endosulfan
• Center for Science in the Public Interest standing up for nutrition standards
• National Farm to School Network restoring the connection between children, food, land, and place One Tray at a time

Representing the Farm to School programs, One Tray’s premise is that school food can not only improve the health of kids, but it can also offer new marketing opportunities for farmers and support the local economy. A joint project of the Community Food Security Coalition, National Farm to School Network, and School Food FOCUS, One Tray will officially launch when it’s time to take Congress “Back to School” in the fall.

The 2004 Child Nutrition Act included one provision on Farm to School (section 122): a seed grant program with $10 million in discretionary funding. It has failed to receive an appropriation. One Tray requests that Congress enact $50 million in mandatory funding for section 122. This would fund 100 to 500 projects per year, up to $100,000 each, to cover start-up costs for Farm to School programs.

Also in support of Farm to School, Slow Food USA launched a Time for Lunch campaign yesterday, to organize a national day of action on September 7 with grassroots Eat-Ins around the country, reminiscent of their monumentally successful event in San Francisco last year. Their message is simple: Real food in schools. Check out their top-notch organizing tools to plan or join an Eat-In.

These are all relatively new campaigns. The Child Nutrition Forum is the lunch monitor of this policy push. Formed in the late 1970s by former Senator George McGovern (D-S.D.), the CNF is co-led by the School Nutrition Association (which has a set of amazing, frequently updated resources) and the Food Research and Action Center, and includes more than several hundred diverse organizations, such as the American Dietetic Association, Congressional Hunger Center, National PTA, and the National Education Association. They have a petition to sign, too.

Petitions, eat-in’s, brigades…so many choices of ways to work on improving our future. What are you going to do?

pruning, pitchforks, and poverty: three faces of agriculture

Today I ran across three articles that highlight very different facets of the nation’s farming economy.

The first is a profile of our own Debra Eschmeyer in her local news paper.  Deb and her husband are converting a 13 acre farm to organic production.

Meanwhile, the House Agricultural Committee that nominally looks after the interests of the Eschmeyers as farmers is proving to be one of the most serious barriers to a decent climate change bill. The climate change skeptic chair Collin Peterson, joined by all of his democratic colleagues (and presumably all republicans as well) has in his words “thrown down a pitchfork in the sand” to weaken the already anemic Waxman- Markey bill-  proving once again that Big Ag ruins everything it touches.

Finally, closer to L.A., there was a heart breaking article in the Times about farmer workers picking grapes in the heat of the Coachella Valley. Adjusted for inflation, their wages are lower today than when the UFW led grape boycotts 40 years ago.  Conditions are also abysmal:

Table grapes have been the valley’s biggest crop for more than a century. Each year, some 100 million pounds are picked by an army of laborers during an epic harvest against which the ugly realities of global agribusiness stand in vivid relief.

The work is hard, dirty and dangerous. It begins at dawn when the air is sweet and moist and stretches until midafternoon, when temperatures can top 120 degrees and the sun feels like a steel-toed boot to the head.

I’m not sure if there’s much that could be said to untangle the complications and contradictions of a food system that simultaneously feeds and inspires; corrupts and pollutes; and hides and exploits the people who work for and oversee it. So I’ll let these links speak for themselves.

Trayless summer

Today was the first day this summer that I saw any trays in the Occidental cafeteria. There was a big group of 5th graders using them. I had suspected that campus dining was going trayless and saw signs up today to confirm it.

Eliminating trays from cafeteria settings means that the institution saves water (they don’t have to clean the trays). In a southern california drought, that makes all the sense in the world. Customers may have to walk a bit more between the service area and tables to get food, drinks etc.  Plus, in an all-you-can-eat environment like the Oxy cafeteria in the summer,  you’re not as tempted to load up a tray with all kinds of food items that you won’t finish. So trayless also promotes health and prevents waste.

Congrats to campus dining for trying trayless this summer. I hope they adopt it permanently.

Planning to Support Urban Agriculture

Urban agriculture is everywhere we turn these days. On rooftops, vacant lots, and school yards. As discussed on this blog before, Los Angeles was a city founded on agriculture. With an ideal growing climate, the city should lead the nation in adoption of progressive policies to support growing and producing food locally.

L.A. Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa is committed to establishing Los Angeles as the center of a new green economy. What better way to achieve this than by encouraging residents to grow and sell sustainably raised fruits and vegetables at their homes, in farmers’ markets, and through other food access points?

In order to get there, cities like L.A. must explicitly allow the production and sale of homegrown foods through municipal and zoning codes. These codes set parameters for allowable uses in all developed areas, and ostensibly are in place to maintain health safety. However, many codes work as explicit or de facto bans on urban agriculture. Ironically, urban agriculture is much less likely than conventional agriculture to  negatively affect human health environment. Urban farmers can grow food without having to rely upon synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; these highly polluting inputs are in use only to make up for the failures of the industrial agriculture system’s unnatural and unsustainable monocropping methods. In a biodiverse small urban farm, integrated pest management techniques would be used, keeping the environment unpolluted and the farmer safe. Taking advantage of small plots of land would allow residential agricultural crop production to provide true access to healthy, safe, local, and tasty foods while utilizing limited land in a most efficient manner.

Recommendations

To create an environment where residential level urban agriculture is allowed and more simply implemented, cities should consider adopting the following recommendations:

• Explicitly allow commercial gardens, orchards, and greenhouses in all residential zones.
• Require that all new multi-family residential developments create spaces for residents to grow and raise food.
• Allow vending of homegrown products through farm stands or farmers’ markets.
• Revise landscaping regulations to include a preference for fruit trees.
• Stipulate that landscaping associated with growing food adheres to the city’s definition of what is “neat, clean, and in healthy condition.”
• Allow poultry keeping on residential properties. Limit distance requirements to 25 feet, so that residents living in standard 50 foot wide lots may take advantage.
• Allow goat and pig keeping on residential properties that are ¼ acre or larger. For each additional animal add ¼ acre.
• Require or incentivize food and animal waste composting for all households and businesses.
• Establish a certification program where urban farmers learn best practices in organic farming and integrated pest management techniques.
• Establish an Urban Agriculture division to oversee programs and address complaints and concerns.
• Impose a nominal tax on sales of homegrown food products to fund urban agriculture-related programs.
• Create 1 public garden plot for every 2,500 residents. Include communal chicken coops where residents without adequate land may keep chickens.
• Implement an animal waste composing program.
• Establish a local food exchange where homegrown foods may be traded, bartered, or donated.

Southern California has always been a place where residents have lived alongside agriculture. Unfortunately, short-sighted land use policies have resulted in the current environment where not only have most urban/suburban dwellers lost any connection to agriculture, but they have lost an appreciation for its importance as well. Now that the negative effects of our unsustainable lifestyles are being widely felt, old ideas, such as producing food at home, are becoming attractive once again. This is the time to take advantage of changing ideas and implement meaningful policy changes that affect how we will live and consume now, and in the future.

A more just and sustainable region is possible, but we must overcome longstanding cultural biases that prevent people from rethinking how land can be used. Residents need to push their city planners to ensure that zoning and municipal codes contain clear language to support the activities of urban food producers.

Community Transformation in draft health care bill

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee just released a draft of a health care reform bill (minus the ‘public option’ that will hopefully be part of the final plan).

Section C of Title III is entitled Creating Healthier Communities, with “Community Transformation Grants” as a centerpiece. (Page 382-387 of the draft.)

Up with Mayor Villaraigosa, Down with NBA’s David Stern

Friends,

The Jewish Journal this week pasted the word “Success” over a photo of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on its cover this week.  This was a rebuke to LA Magazine, which put the word “Failure” (and a less flattering photo of the mayor) on its cover story in its current issue.  You can read my Jewish Journal article, “Judging Mr. Mayor” and compare it with the LA Magazine piece, “Dear Mr. Mayor.”

If you watch the NBA finals on TV tonight, you might not hear the sounds of human rights and labor protestors outside the Amway Arena in Orlando, where the Lakers play the Magic. But they will be there, and they’ll be outside Staples Center on Tuesday night if a 6th game is necessary.  I just posted a piece on the HuffingtonPost website about the protest, because I doubt the mainstream media, including NBC, will cover the demonstrations.

United Students Against Sweatshops is targeting the NBA for its $125 million contract with Russell Athletics, a clothing company that produces much of its apparel in Honduran sweatshops and has an outrageous track record of anti-union harassment and intimidation of
workers. It wants a meeting with NBA Commissioner David Stern to discuss Russell’s labor abuses.  Last month 65 members of Congress signed a letter to Russell complaining about the company’s labor practices in Honduras.  Russell is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, run by Warren
Buffett.  My article has a link to websites where you can learn more about this issue and send a letter to Stern voicing your concern. It also reports that over 70 universities have cut their ties to Russell to protest the company’s abuses.

Peter Dreier

Governor aims to terminate state parks

Fellow humans, the situation is dire. The fanaticism of the Republican machine in the California Legislature is allowing a minority to wreck the golden state.

Their super-rich, former action star and body builder leader, last seen racing internal combustion vehicles along a channelized stretch of the Los Angles River and riding a horse into the glass elevators in the Hotel Bonaventure, has an apocalyptic plan to shut down over 200 state parks, including the new Los Angeles Historic State park and the Rio de Los Angeles State park. We wrote a report on the need for and potential of these new urban parks.

As a social darwinist cyborg, he perhaps hopes to disconnect us from nature and to close public spaces where people from all walks of life can hike and picnic on an equal footing.

To counter this menace, we need two brave volunteers. One will travel back in time to 2003 to stop Schwarzenneger from seizing power. The other will venture further backwards in the timestream, to 1973, to prevent proposition 13 from passing and condemning the state to a boom-bust budget process tied too closely to income tax receipts. Due to the complex paradoxes of the time-space continuum, neither of you will be able to return to the present. But we will memorialize your contributions to humanity, and, to assist you in your task, take action ourselves to save the state’s parks.

justice vs. just enough

Blogging in the New York Times, Mark Bittman argues that real food can be cheaper than junk food,  and that by buying healthy items like dry beans and cooking at home, low income people living in ‘food deserts’ can eat cheaply but healthily.

This is obviously true, if not the whole story. Helping poor people live better under tough circumstances is critical. For instance, the community groups we work with on food access issues train health promoters to encourage their peers to cook healthfully with ingredients that are available and affordable. The USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan was designed to help low-income people shop for and cook healthy recipes on a budget.

The comments to Bittman’s entry do a good job of laying out some of the obstacles that people face in terms of time, work, stress, demands of family and child care, transportation — even if they can buy dry goods and some vegetables and have a kitchen to cook in.

I’d just add that while we need to simultaneously encourage healthy living strategies and improve the food environment that influences peoples’ options, there’s something mean about Bittman’s emphasis.  Not mean as in cruel so much as parsimonius, stingy in its ethical vision.  A difference, perhaps, between justice and just getting by.

Encouraging people living in food deserts to make do/ survive like people have in difficult circumstances throughout human history doesn’t live up our potential as a society. That’s why we have focused on promoting food justice. Food justice is being defined every day by the efforts of communities to make food fairer, greener, and healthier. Roughly speaking, it’s the notion that everyone deserves healthy food and that the benefits and risks associated with food should be shared fairly. The concept borrows its distributional equity framework from the environmental justice movement, its focus on access to food from the community food security and community economic development movements, and its interest in food environments from research in the public health and food systems fields.

June 4: Free Screening of Food, Inc.

The California Farm to School Program, a project of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute (UEPI) is co-sponsoring a free screening of the new film, Food, Inc. Food, Inc. exposes America’s industrialized food system and its effect on our environment, health, economy and workers’ rights.

Following the film, there will be a brief panel discussion with staff from UEPI. We will be speaking about the work we do in Southern California to build a stronger local food system and increase access for all to healthy, safe, and affordable foods. Please attend the screening with your family and friends to learn more about the American food system and the role you can play in changing it.

What: Free Screening of Food, Inc.
When: Thursday, June 4th, 7:00 PM
Where: Whittier Village Cinemas – 7038 Greenleaf Ave, Whittier, CA 90602  (map)

RSVP: Call (323) 341-5091 to RSVP. This event is free and open to all, but RSVPs are required.

Click here for more information about the film and about the event hosts.

About the Film

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Business “crying wolf” on credit card reform and labor law reform

Friends and Colleagues:

My occasional coauthor Donald Cohen and I would like to solicitic your help.  Perhaps you’ve noticed a regular theme in some of our recent articles — the tendency of business lobby groups to “cry wolf” whenever liberals and progressives propose new laws and regulations that would require corporations to be more responsible in terms of consumer, employee, and environmental protections and conditions. Donald and I would like to ask for your help in identifying more examples of this “crying wolf” syndrome.  We are starting the Crying Wolf Project to point out the numerous times that business warnings — claims that government action on regulations, taxes, and wages would destroy the economy and kill jobs — proved to be wrong.  (For example, that raising the minimum wage  will destroy jobs or enacting local “inclusionary zoning” laws will kill housing development).  We can already see the business-sponsored “crying wolf” machine rehearsing for upcoming battles over health care reform, energy and environmental policy, and labor law reform, among many other issues.We intend to create a Crying Wolf Project website and to use this information to challenge business propaganda that sometimes intimidates politicians and sways media coverage. Until we have our website up-and-running, we’d appreciate your sending us any “crying wolf” examples, from the past or from contemporary policy debates. You can email them to me and I’ll forward them to Donald, executive director of the Center for Policy Initiatives in San Diego.

Our latest piece on this topic, “Credit Card Sharks Crying Wolf,” was published yesterday on the Talking Points Memo Cafe website. In recent weeks, the banking industry lobbied Congress to thwart legislation eliminate many abuses and rip-offs by credit card companies. The claimed that the bill would result in less available credit for consumers, but thankfully Congress didn’t buy their “crying wolf” warnings and passed the bill anyway.

The battle for labor law reform — passage of the Employee Free Choice Act — is likely to be one of the most important struggles for justice in a generation.  America’s business community is waging a full-scale lobbying effort to kill EFCA, including “crying wolf” warnings that it will destroy the business climate and kill jobs. The Labor Center at UC Berkeley has just published a comprehensive report, Academics on Employee Free Choice: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Labor Law Reform, that addresses many of the issues. The report — edited by John Logan, with an introduction by Robert Reich, and including articles by economists, sociologists, historians, and political scientists (including yours truly) — is available on the Labor Center’s website.