[Pollinator] SF Chronicle: The new food crusade

Tue Jul 10 10:16:42 PDT 2007

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQIT1.D
TL

The new food crusade

Organic farms, conservation, fruits and veggies in schools -- the Bay Area
leads the charge to change how Congress subsidizes farming

Carol Ness, Chronicle Staff <mailto:cness at sfchronicle.com>  Writer

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQIT1.
DTL&o=0&type=printable> Michael Pollan, a UC Berkeley professor and writer,
is am...
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQIT1.
DTL&o=1&type=printable> Kristina Feldman (left) sells produce at the
Bayview-Hunt...
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQIT1.
DTL&o=2&type=printable> States with the Most Subsidies. Chronicle Graphic
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQIT1.
DTL&o=3&type=printable> Helping Farmers. Chronicle Graphic

It was almost accidental activism. Acme Bread's Steve Sullivan was on a
class trip to Washington, D.C., with his 13-year-old daughter when their
flight home was canceled. A scramble to rebook ended with the Berkeley food
artisan and his family seated almost across the aisle from California Sen.
Dianne Feinstein. 

So he handed her a copy of his new favorite book, "Food Fight," by Sonoma
County author Daniel Imhoff. The book is a call to arms, urging Congress to
use the 2007 farm bill to put more healthful food on people's plates. 

The bill, which in recent years has totaled about $70 billion annually,
comes up about once every five years. Although the farm bill has
far-reaching consequences for the food supply, most people outside the
Midwestern Farm Belt, which gets huge farm bill subsidies, have ignored it. 

This year, things are different. Sullivan's trip down the aisle, and the
book, are part of a wave of populist activism, much of it centered in the
Bay Area, that is trying to change how a big chunk of farm bill money is
spent. 

The short version of the argument -- and nothing is short when it comes to
the mind-numbing, complex farm bill -- is that the bill subsidizes the
overproduction of corn and soy in the Midwest, which is driving up obesity
and diabetes and polluting the land. Instead, they say, the farm bill should
put more money into sustainable and organic food production, agricultural
conservation and efforts to put a higher priority on fresh, local fruits and
vegetables. 

Their slogan: It's the food, health and farm bill. 

"I want you to realize how many people in the Bay Area are talking about
this," Sullivan said he told Feinstein. 

Earlier, when the class visited a Feinstein constituent breakfast, he'd
asked her the key question fueling the push for change: Have you ever
considered using the farm bill to improve childhood nutrition, public
health, pollution problems, environmental quality and farmer incomes? 

"I don't know if she's just a good actress or what," Sullivan recounted.
"But she stopped, her jaw dropped, and she said, 'I haven't. That's a really
good way of thinking about it.' " 

What happens to the farm bill this time around could turn on such moments.
This year's burst of activism rises from the national trend toward local,
sustainable and conscious eating -- consumers who want to know what they're
eating, where it comes from and how it is produced. 

Michael Pollan, the sustainable food movement leader and UC Berkeley
professor and writer, has led the charge, starting with his best-selling
"The Omnivore's Dilemma" and in articles and public appearances. A
Pollan-moderated forum on the farm bill attracted a crowd of 700 to UC
Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium this year. 

Similar forums have sprouted at farmers' markets and community halls all
over the country. Influential voices such as health guru Andrew Weil and
author Barbara Kingsolver have taken up the cause and attracted overflow
audiences. 

Imhoff, a food policy writer whose "Food Fight" is in its second printing,
was a guest on National Public Radio's "West Coast Live" in late June,
broadcast from San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. 

These writers are the public face of a movement being worked from the inside
by broad coalition of farm, environment and anti-hunger groups, including
the Watsonville-based California Coalition for Food and Farming and the
Venice-based California Food and Justice Coalition. 

California, long a sleeping tiger when it comes to the farm bill, has
awakened, too. Although it's the biggest agricultural state, California
grows mainly fruits and vegetables, which aren't considered commodity crops
and have never been subsidized. But now the administration of Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger and 26 members of California's congressional delegation are
pressing for farm bill reform. 

Cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles have hopped on board, too. San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom got the U.S. Conference of Mayors to pass a
resolution urging farm bill reform at its recent meeting in Los Angeles. 

"This is the first time that the farm bill is being scrutinized by people
outside the farm block," Imhoff said in an interview. "To change it, people
have to realize how it affects their lives on a daily basis, and that's
what's happening." 

The juicy prize that's arousing new appetites is the subsidy program, which
has totaled about $30 billion a year in recent years. Nutrition programs,
including food stamps, consume another $30 billion-plus of the bill's
funding. Conservation's share has risen to $8 billion. Champions of
sustainability, organics and the like have always found themselves competing
for crumbs around the edges. 

Farm Belt politicians defend the subsidies as necessary to keep family
farmers in business, secure the food supply, fuel the engines of trade, and
keep the agribusiness economy revving high. 

The reformers argue that the subsidies amount to price supports for junk
food. They say subsidies encourage commodity growers to plant an oversupply
of low-priced corn and soy, which is processed into high-calorie
high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil and fed to feedlot animals bound
for burgerville. The result: cheap food full of added sugar and fat. 

The retail price of fruits and vegetables doubled from 1985 to 2000, but the
cost of added fats and sugars remained the same, according to a paper by
University of Washington public health specialist Adam Drewnowski, published
June 24 in Epidemiologic Reviews. The paper drew a direct connection between
cheap corn- and soy-based food and the obesity and diabetes epidemics. 

California's interest has been piqued, among other things, by the fact that,
dollar for agricultural dollar, the Golden State is shortchanged. 

California rice and cotton farmers pulled in $5.9 billion in subsidies
between 1995 and 2005 -- but that put it behind nine other states, according
to a searchable database published by the Washington- and Oakland-based
Environmental Working Group, a key player in farm bill reform. Only 9
percent of California's farmers get any subsidy at all. 

An interactive map on the site dramatically shows where the money goes --
and where it doesn't. Having the database online has been a major weapon for
reformers, because it shows where the subsidy money is concentrated. The
environmental group's own analysis concludes that two-thirds of the subsidy
money for 2003 through 2005 went to just 10 percent of all recipients. 

For all the family farms that subsidies help support, many corporate farms
rake in more than $250,000 a year in subsidies, and a few earn more than
$500,000. 

"This is a food fight, but it's really a fight about money," the
environmental group's executive director, Ken Cook, has said. 

The farm bill reformers stopped short of pushing for subsidies for broccoli
or peaches. 

The ethanol craze has pushed corn prices up so high that projected subsidies
have been reduced by $7 billion to $8 billion a year -- but the
congressional budget process already has stripped that money out of 2007
farm bill. 

Various proposals would further limit subsidies, a little or a lot. That
would free money for programs that make it easier and less expensive for
people to buy fruits and vegetables, for farmers to develop local markets
for their crops, and for research into organic and sustainable farming
techniques. 

A model is the tiny farmers' market in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters
Point, which got a rare community food project grant from the farm bill for
startup costs. The money also pays the handful of vendors $50 a week to
underwrite low prices and to keep coming back, though they can't earn much.
It's one of a very few such markets to get farm bill money. 

On one recent Wednesday morning, market neighbor Mary Charles loaded up. For
just $10, she bought four baskets of pesticide-free Yerena Farms
strawberries as well as carrots, garlic, summer squash, lettuce, spring
onions and chard grown in the neighborhood and at nearby Alemany Farm, which
is the kind of program that could benefit from changes in the farm bill. It
held its own farm bill forum this year. 

Charles could buy lots more food energy -- calories -- if she bought
processed food across the street at the corner store. But she is diabetic,
and she cooks for her four kids and two grandkids. Putting fresh produce on
their plates is the best thing Charles can do for her family's health, she
says, and she stops by the farmers' market every week. 

"It's a good thing to have in the neighborhood to change people's ideas
about how to eat," Charles says. 

Another example is a pilot program, rolled out in the 2002 farm bill, that
gives schools $92 extra per child to be spent just on fruits and vegetables.
The program hasn't reached California, but a change being pushed in the 2007
farm bill would extend it to all 50 states. 

In the 2002 farm bill, community food projects like the Bayview market got a
total of $5 million -- about one-third of the amount that a single Arkansas
rice cooperative earned in crop subsidies in 2005. The community projects'
share could rise to $30 million under changes proposed in the 2007 farm
bill, but final action is far off. 

Conservationists also embraced broad reform this time around, according to
Ralph Grossi, a Marin County beef rancher and president of American Farmland
Trust. 

"This time, our group made the determination that just focusing on
conservation is not enough," he said. 

Another reason is that while Congress has approved many conservation
programs in principle, it hasn't come through with the money to fund many of
them. 

How far the reform movement can push Congress will start to play out late
this month, and if it's not exactly a summer blockbuster, the lobbying has
been intense. 

California has extra muscle in this time around, with Democrats back in
power, San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker and Rep. Dennis
Cardoza, D-Atwater (Merced County), sponsor of the reformist Eat Healthy
America Act, sitting on the Agriculture Committee. 

Yet, last month, the commodities subcommittee -- the one in charge of
subsidies -- refused to consider any changes and voted to extend the current
farm bill for another two years, past the next presidential election. 

That set up a showdown, scheduled for July 17-19 in the House Agriculture
Committee. The Senate's Agriculture Committee will have its own go-round.
Later, the appropriations committees of both houses will decide which
programs will actually be funded. 

And this is where Feinstein comes in -- and, potentially, "Food Fight." 

"People hand her things all the time," her spokesman, Scott Gerber, said
Monday. "She hasn't had a chance to read it." 

But, he added, "It's still early." 

  _____  

States with most subsidies 

These states received the most money for commodity subsidies from 1995 to
2005. Total subsidies for that period were $164.7 billion. 

  _____  

Helping farmers 

Here's a quick look at the number of farms in various states, according to
the 2002 USDA Census of Agriculture. 

  _____  

To learn more 

Online resources for farm bill information: 

U.S. Department of Agriculture: www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome 

California Department of Food and Agriculture: www.cdfa.ca.gov/farmbill07 

Environmental Working Group Interactive Farm Bill Database:
farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/index.php 

California Food and Justice Coalition:
www.foodsecurity.org/california/Farm_Bill.html 

California Coalition for Food and Farming: www.calfoodandfarming.org 

Food Fight: www.watershedmedia.org/foodfight_overview.html 

Community Alliance With Family Farmers: www.caff.org 

American Farmland Trust: www.farmland.org 

Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: www.msawg.org 

Western Growers: www.wga.com 

Organic Farming Research Foundation: www.ofrf.org/index.html 

E-mail Carol Ness at cness at sfchronicle.com. 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/10/MNGNUQTQIT1.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Jennifer Tsang
Coevolution Institute <http://coevolution.org> 
423 Washington St. 5th Fl.
San Francisco, CA 94111-2339
T: 415.362.1137

F: 415.362.3070

www.nappc.org

www.pollinator.org

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