The Obamas’ Food Un-Policy
September 20th, 2009 · 6 Comments · Posted in food news
Can the Obamas change the way we grow food?
Pollanistas everywhere are ecstatic that First Lady Michelle Obama is using her celebrityhood to focus attention on real food. First it was a White House vegetable garden. This week it was the opening of a farmers market near the White House. In both cases, advocates of healthy agriculture have found good reason to cheer.
The Obamas seem to have calculated that a rear guard action employing public relations tacticts–rather than a frontal assault on the Capitol’s actual policy apparatus–would be most effective in combating the nation’s bad food habits. And who could possibly complain about that? Of all the issues Michelle Obama could have chosen to focus on, she has decided to shine a light on the dangers of America’s lousy diet. Yet her very success illuminates a tragic reality: our federal government’s total embrace of a corrupt and destructive agribusiness system.
Congress continues to funnel billions of dollars into unsustainable agribusiness practices that are making people fat and helping to destroy the planet. Not only has the Obama administration failed to provide any kind of road map for how this might change, the president supports a policy of growing food crops to make ethanol for automobiles, a policy that delivers a double whammy of higher food prices and more carbon emissions.
At the Agriculture Department, meanwhile, a schizoid approach to food prevails. Secretary Tom Vilsack reprises the roll of pitchman-in-chief where the nation’s agribusiness is concerned, while underlings put new wheels on old programs to make them more amenable to growing real food. Recently, USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan issued a memo (pdf) outlining how potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and loans could be available to local farming and food programs if they just applied. Last week the USDA announced it would spend $65 million to encourage development of local food systems.
Again, what’s not to like? Two important urban agriculture initiatives right here in the District of Columbia–Common Good City Farm and the Neighborhood Farm Initiative–are both beneficiaries of USDA grant-giving. It’s great to see the USDA adopting a friendlier attitude toward small farmers and sustainable agriculture.
But let’s be realistic. All these efforts–the White House garden, the farmers market, the warmed-over grant programs–are a mere fly speck on the agricultural landscape. They make food activists ecstatically happy, but represent a only a tiny fraction of the nation’s trillion-dollar food economy. For a bit of perspective, the Washington Post dispatched its master of the telling detail, reporter Dana Milbank, to cover the farmers market opening this week. Streets were closed. Cheering crowds lined the sidewalks. The First Lady arrived in a convoy of black sedans and flashing lights from the White House just a block away.
And what did Millbank’s eyes behold? Baby arugula at $20 a pound. Nineteen-dollar bison steak. Twelve-dollar dandelion greens. Artisanal cheese at $29 a pound. A $4 slice of “walnut dacquoise.” An $8 loaf of canberry-walnut bread. A $32 bolt of yarn.
Charges that urban farmers markets are elitist do grow tiresome. It’s also worth noting that this particular market saw hundreds of customers pass through on its first day, and they were buying. That helps keep local farmers in business. No, the question isn’t whether there’s a Gucci quality to the farmers market movement (there certainly is) it’s whether local farmers are really capable of feeding the local population. And can all those farmers driving hours to market in their individual trucks do so any more sustainably than polluting, fossil-fuel guzzling agribusiness? When?
The great consuming public will not simply migrate to locally grown broccoli and tomatoes. They will read about Michelle Obama’s White House garden in People magazine and smile all the way to the produce section at Walmart. Americans love their bargain food. It will take some intervening force–a great government push, or perhaps a climate disaster such as global warming–to change the way we grow our food. And for that we cannot wait decades for small measures to pollinate the entire landscape. We are, after all, a nation of 300 million people. Does anyone really think we can feed the whole country at farmers markets between the hours of 10 am and 1 pm on Saturday?
If we are really serious about making dramatic changes to the nation’s food supply, President Obama very soon will need to confront the agribusiness monolith in Congress head-on. That is a day we will certainly cheer.
I think that before global warming becomes a real issue in agriculture, we’ll be forced to face the realities of peak oil. Many legitimate scientists have already said it came and went in 2008, which means we’ve got about 15 more years of so-called “cheap” oil left. As oil prices rise, cost of industrialized food will rise with it. People will rebel by growing their own food or buying more local, organically-grown food simply because it will be cheaper!
(At least, that’s my personal favorite theory of how it will all pan out.)
As always, thanks for the thought-proving post.
Cheers,
KristenM
(AKA FoodRenegade)
Kristen, thanks for mentioning peak oil. I didn’t think to bring that up, but it should be factored in as well. Fossil fuels are a big issue where food is concerned.
A worthwhile read to ponder with my “elitest” pot of single-source fair-trade sustainably-farmed French press coffee. Thanks, Ed.
Since profit-driven industry seemingly rules government policy, I would like to say that we should put our money where our mouth is and buy directly from small producers or plant our own gardens to cut off the lifeline of these corporate giants. What would that do? Ideally through our purchasing power we would shut down these corporate giants. Or our beloved “real” foods would be Wal-Martized. Or more likely they would fight back by making up policies that would take away our freedom of food choice (H.R. 875 & S.510).
I have also wondered about how these small local producers would get food to us with a shortage of cheap fuel. Perhaps we need more regional distribution centers where producers deliver their goods and where their goods would be delivered or picked up by multiple restaurants and stores?
And we certainly need more accessibility to these foods. I love going to farmers’ markets but I’m also obsessed with eating only locally-produced foods. We can’t ask people not only to change what they eat but change their entire lifestyle to accommodate the schedules of farmers’ markets (although they’re becoming more abundant and successful) and think that we’re making a difference. And of course this doesn’t address the cost of nutrient-dense and artisanal food, which for most is unaffordable no matter how much a person supports this ideal.
I dare say the very government that made these food policies in the first place may have the only solution that could turn this ship around by supporting WIC and food stamps at farmers’ markets, re-writing the Farm Bill, re-distributing subsidies, etc. But they always have a tendency to screw things up. You’re right, we can’t wait until it’s too late but I’m not sure if we can rely on Congress or the administration to make the right decisions. We may have to ultimately resort to damage control when the solutions may be clear as day. Until then, we’re on our own I guess…
Chef, can I suggest some elitist, sustainably raised, grass-fed cream in that coffee?
Kim, if we are serious about local food, then we should be developing a more sensible business model than having individual farmers driving all over creation in their trucks for markets that last only a few hours. We need permanent, indoor sites like regular supermarkets where we can by local produce every day, all year long.
Agreed! That’s why I’m delighted about a small new market that opened up in my very own hometown, Vienna VA. Maple Avenue Market sells all local meat, dairy, produce and snacks. Needless to say I’m a regular and they’ve only been open 3-ish weeks 🙂