Food Sovereignty and Our Work

Food sovereignty is a very important, emerging concept and movement these days.  

According to Wikipedia,

"Food sovereignty", a term coined by members of Via Campesina in 1996, asserts the right of people to define their own food systems. Advocates of food sovereignty put the individuals who produce, distribute and consume food at the center of decisions on food systems and policies, rather than the corporations and market institutions they believe have come to dominate the global food system.

Sometimes food sovereignty is spoken of by name.  More often, however, it is lingering just below the surface in the great work so many people are doing in the local, fair, organic, sustainable and good food movement.  

Organic and sustainable farming organizations, community farms, farmers markets, school and college gardens and farms, home gardens, food policy councils, permaculture, cooking classes, community gardens and so much more are all essential ingredients of food sovereignty.  

The incredible number of people who are working to get labels on food containing GMOs are also part of the movement for food sovereignty. Former Congressman Rob Simmons traces that sovereignty in this country to our Constitution which starts "We the People."  If the people want to know what is in their food, that is their right. The agricultural institutions and organizations which oppose labeling, roughly the same folks who have opposed organic farming for over 30 years, miss this point.  They are not friends of food sovereignty.

Last weekend (September 14-15, 2013) Yale University hosted an academic conference on Food Sovereignty with speakers from all over the world.  (See the schedule and many of the papers that were presented here.)

The next day I was fortunate to hear one of those speakers, Eric Holt-Gimenez, the executive director of Food First who was also a conference organizer, at a Master's Tea at Yale's Morse College. His message and description of food sovereignty was powerful.  

See one of his blogs here.

The next day there were two stories relating to food sovereignty on NPR's Morning Edition.

The first was about the idea of American farmers "Feeding the World." That phrase is especially common among those involved with industrial scale production of monocultures of genetically engineered corn and soybeans, the basis of the American Industrial Food System.  

On its face that claim is ridiculous since 40 percent of the corn goes into cars and much of the rest of the corn and soybeans feeds confined animals in factory farms.  And the grain that is exported to poor countries often has the side effect undercutting prices for local farmers and driving them off the land into cities.  Be sure to follow the link to Mardi Mellon's blog on the topic.  She suggests "helping the world feed itself" as a better approach.  

The second story was about the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) whose proponents would have, among many other things, Japanese rice farmers abandon their traditional rice growing for their communities and country and start growing fancy rice for export to China and then have Japan import cheaper rice from other countries.

The powers that be, the entire industrial food system, make that money-based decision sound so sensible.  But that approach puts large corporations between the earth and our mouths.  Those corporations have one mandate-profits. As they have followed that mandate, the results have been eroded and degraded soils all over the planet as well as degraded health in those who depend on the corporations for food.  We have never produced so much food and there has rarely if ever been more hungry people on the planet.

As the industrial proponents solve for just profit, and more sales of whatever they produce, even if it gives us diabetes, heart disease and obesity, proponents of food sovereignty and good local food solve for environmental restoration, slowing and adapting to climate change, for health, education and strong communities.

Keep up the good work. I welcome your thoughts.

Bill Duesing

Old Solar Farm

September

Bill

Saving for the Future, Part II

First broadcast on WSHU/WSUF-FM
December 8, 1995

Last week, I recounted our discovery of the sorts of investments that Suzanne's mutual fund held. Maybe because we both are former cigarette smokers, her investments in tobacco companies jumped out as incongruous in today's world. We both started smoking well over 30 years ago, when as teenagers we had no idea that cigarette smoking was anything other than cool. Cigarette packages danced on television. For both of us, it took years of struggle to kick this very addictive habit.

Apparently, a similar freewheeling attitude toward cigarettes now exists in Asia, where American tobacco companies use rock and sports stars and other US cultural icons to convince youth and women there that smoking is "cool."

"Thanksgiving was different this year. Nobody smoked and there was much less drinking." Suzanne's daughter Kira was talking about the celebration with her fathers' family that she has attended most of her 27 years. "The floor of the New York Stock Exchange is different," said Erin when we saw her over the holiday. "Nobody smokes there anymore." And I heard a Delta airlines commercial last week boast that their flights are smoke-free around the world.

These three bits of information were very encouraging. To find solutions to many of our problems, we need to create a widespread change in attitude-toward our food, our cars, each other and the environment. Seeing such a dramatic attitude change in my adult life gives me hope.

The New Haven Register recently had a front page graphic that reinforced the reality behind these Thanksgiving anecdotes. It showed that average cigarette consumption in this country went down from over 4,000 in 1972 to about 2,600 in 1992. This is the lowest level of consumption in fifty years.

But still, these figures got me wondering. They are for cigarettes per person, not per smoker. That equals 132 packs of cigarettes for each of us, every year. According to Connecticut's Attorney General and the Centers for Disease Control, every pack of cigarettes sold produces over two dollars in medical costs to our society. In other words, each time someone buys a package of cigarettes, we all get a bill for more than the cost of those smokes.

This brings the per capita cost of smoking to nearly $300. Multiply that by the quarter of a billion people in this country, and we come up with some real money - over $50 billion! Given the high cost of health care, and the wide ranging ill effects of smoking, this is probably a reasonable number.

Then I got to thinking about the companies in which Suzanne's mutual fund is invested. The world's largest tobacco company sells about 45% of the cigarettes in this country, which would suggest that it enables nearly $25 billion of those health costs. Its 1992 annual report says that it took in $12 billion in revenue from domestic tobacco, which produced just over $5 billion in profits (some of which were presumably passed onto Suzanne's retirement fund). So its total income from manufacturing and selling cigarettes is just one fifth of what those cigarettes cost us for health care. (No wonder we have a problem paying for it.)

It is interesting that its international tobacco sales bring in more money but produce less than half as much profit. Maybe that's because of the high costs of flying those American celebrities to Asia to promote smoking and getting the US State Department to fight for its right to advertise freely there.

So I begin to see why we may have some serious financial problems in this country. We've got a system in which well-meaning school teachers invest in a company which works to eventually hook the very students these teachers strive to point towards a healthy future. And, those widely encouraged addictions will produce shared health care costs many times greater than the investment returns.

It's not an accident that many of the investments that produce high returns are those which also produce the greatest widespread social costs. Automobiles, chemicals, violent entertainment and junk food come to mind.

We need to find ways to invest for the future which don't create social costs, but rather produce social benefits, such as better health, cleaner environment, relevant education, and strong communities.

I suspect that gardens and small farms may be one of the best bets for such investments.

Saving for the Future, Part I

First broadcast on WSHU/WSUF-FM
December 1, 1995

For years, I've heard from national financial experts that we Americans need to save more, so there is more capital to invest to increase productivity and boost the GDP.

When Suzanne began teaching school in Bridgeport several years before our marriage almost five years ago, she began saving with a government tax break for encouragement. She arranged to make regular transfers from her paycheck into a mutual fund. Her taxable income was reduced, her retirement nestegg increased, and her money was out there growing the economy.

On the recommendation of another teacher, Suzanne invested in a fixed yield fund and a stock growth fund with a well-known company. As one of the many automatic financial transactions in our lives, it just kept happening. Every two weeks, another chunk of her money (less when we were paying college costs) went into the system.

Teaching school is tough work, especially if it's done with the creativity, enthusiasm and dedication required to maintain some kind of sanity when you are caught between a big bureaucracy and a classroom crowded with needy students.The destructive and violent consumer culture (propagated universally by movies and television), a malfunctioning healthcare system, absent or overworked parents struggling just to survive, and a low level of support and remedial services make a teacher's job a real challenge.

So, imagine our surprise when we took the time to pay attention to where Suzanne's money was invested, and then to understand the connections between her retirement fund and the problems with which she deals every day.

Her mutual fund's semi-annual report listed its ten largest holdings right up front, and was proud of them, too! These included the world's largest tobacco company, the largest maker of smokeless tobacco, and the world's biggest cable company. Other top investments are the discount store chain that is bullying its way into area towns and two insurance companies involved in health care and investing. Two corporations which process investments for financial institutions, an insipid publisher, and a transportation/fossil fuel company complete the top ten. About 20 percent of Suzanne's funds are invested in these companies. Four of them (two insurers and two financial processors) are very involved in the ongoing, large-scale transfer of the control of money from individuals to large corporations. Tobacco sales build Suzanne's portfolio in two ways: with greater profits from tobacco and from health care.

Suzanne's mutual fund owns smaller amounts of stock in approximately 200 other companies. Her money helps Rupert Murdoch's media monopolies and Coca Cola's sugary drinks conquer new markets around the world. It also helps McDonald's build four new restaurants every day and PepsiCo get fast food into school cafeterias and fat-laden, salty chips into children's stomachs everywhere. Her little nestegg funds almost every player in the entertainment industry. It helps produce MTV, Beevis and Butthead, gangsta' rap, violent movies, trashy talk shows, and commercials for all sorts of rubbish. And if that's not enough, it even helps deliver them into her students' homes over the air and through a cable. She's invested in all three of the American tobacco companies which were recently cited as the most active in promoting smoking among Asian women. The health of her retirement fund is in part tied to the success of Joe Camel, the Marlboro man and the Exxon tiger.

We ask ourselves, is this a way to contribute to the creation of a healthy, sustainable future? Imagine being a party to such widespread damage with one little weekly contribution. Meanwhile, the portfolio manager seems proud of a three percent increase in value, that is, of course, before expenses are deducted.

We've decided we have to stop participating in such a dysfunctional system.We're not going to give them any more money. We'll evaluate our options for getting out of this retirement fund entirely, although it seems like we're trapped for a while. The company and the government both penalize early withdrawals. Is this some sort of conspiracy, we wonder?

This country will continue to be in big trouble until we learn how to save without simultaneously diminishing our prospects for a healthy future.

Does anyone out there know how to do that?

Free Turkey

First broadcast on WSHU/WSUF-FM
November 24, 1995

FREE TURKEY! screams the headline of the supermarket flyer from a nearby Fairfield county suburb. Spend $300 or $450 at that supermarket in the month before Thanksgiving and you'll receive a small or medium turkey, free. If you don't spend enough to get a free turkey, you can buy one for just 49 cents a pound - nearly free. Pasta, sugar and paper towels are also free.

A volunteer at a church food pantry in the north end of Hartford says "If we gave away turkeys, we'd have a riot." She had just finished handing out special bags of Thanksgiving food which included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and corn bread mix. This pantry normally provides a three days' supply of basic foodstuffs to needy families just once every three months. It regularly helps 900 families and is one of a great number of soup kitchens, pantries, and other dedicated volunteer efforts to feed those who would otherwise go hungry. Many recipients say they never thought they would find themselves visiting a food pantry. Often, half or more of their income goes to pay the rent.

Near the suburban supermarket which is giving away turkeys, another store sells a wide selection of dog and cat food scientifically formulated for the health of these animals. In contrast, in the cities, fat-laden fast-food outlets and small stores selling salty, sweet, and artifically colored and flavored foods in small plastic packages are the most convenient places for children to get a snack or a meal.

What's going on here?

We're doing a fantastic job of producing food in this country. There is such bounty that some of it is given away free in the suburbs. It costs so little that overconsumption of calories, saturated fat, salt, and low-fiber processed foods is linked to the three leading causes of death in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer and stroke. Too much of the wrong foods can also cause or aggravate diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and obesity. The wrong kinds of foods are the ones most readily available in the suburbs and in the cities. They are the most profitable to produce and sell. These unhealthy foods take greatest advantage of vast agricultural and energy subsidies. They produce the greatest health costs and the most trash.

The growing number of hungry people face a rough future, however. Government funded and volunteer feeding programs currently serve more and more Americans including families, children, single moms, the elderly, the disabled, and the long-term unemployed. In the last six years, participation in Connecticut's food stamp program has grown 67 percent. Benefits which are based on low national average prices wind up being spent in very expensive urban stores. Yet, all indications from state and federal governments are that funding is going to decrease.

There are a lot of related issues that effect food availability. One of the most glaring is the lack of supermarkets, with their wide selection of free and low-priced food, in the cities. Poor public transportation to take urban dwellers to suburban markets is another problem. (There are ten large supermarkets, many of them very new, within ten miles of our rural farm, but nearly none in the big cities.) The lack of public transportation, and the nature of Connecticut's economy also affect the availability of jobs for the urban poor. Bill Collins has eloquently pointed out the greatly inflated tax and insurance costs of owning a car in Connecticut's cities. Apparently, big cuts in funding for public transportation are also on the way.

Connecticut farmers produce the fresh, fiber and vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables which build the health of all of us. Yet they are being pushed out of existence by suburban sprawl, large chain supermarkets and by subsidized farm production in other parts of this country and the world.
And the giant food distribution companies continue to gain tighter control, larger market share and a larger percentage of our food dollar.

What are we going to do and where do we begin?

Local food production should be at the center of our problem solving strategies. Urban and suburban small farms, school, community and home gardens all have enormous potential to improve the health of our communities and ourselves.

Thanksgiving Bounty

First broadcast on WSHU/WSUF-FM
November 17, 1995

It's been a great fall in the garden. We were still harvesting tomatoes the first weekend in November. The wonderful rains have been much appreciated by gardeners and by vegetables. We had great harvests of red norland and carola potatoes that I planted after we pulled up the garlic in July. Broccoli, celery and assorted greens keep on producing their healthful and delicious bounty. We've just started eating the Brussels sprouts, made sweeter by the recent hard frosts. And, we still have Eastham turnips, mangels (those are big beets), parsnips and other roots to harvest for storage in the root cellar. The beds of garlic are just about all planted and mulched, and the winter rye cover crop already brings a bright green to the fields.

Next week on Thanksgiving, we'll celebrate the harvest in a tradition that began in 1621, the second year that the Europeans lived in the New England region. The winter before, their first here, was deadly for many of the newcomers. They didn't have enough food. Historian William Cronon writes that many of the colonists arrived on this shore believing this was a land of plenty where very little work was required in order to live. They had heard reports from early visitors (in the spring and summer) of the abundance of animals, delicious plants and wondrous large trees. Early visitors spoke of natives who seemed to lead a relaxed life -hunting, fishing, gathering and tending gardens.

Indeed, in his fascinating book, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England, Cronon concludes that pre-invasion New England really was a land of plenty, an abundant and rich ecosystem. Much of the area was covered with a magnificent old growth forest filled with wildlife. There really were incredible numbers of turkeys, elk, bear, deer, salmon, shad and trout. The waters off the coast were brimming with clams, oysters, cod, flounder, and many other fish. Chestnut, hickory, and oak trees dropped delicious nuts; maples provided sweet syrup. Clearings were filled with strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, shadberries, or blueberries, depending on the region and the season.
Cronon makes it clear that the paradise the Europeans found was the result of the way the natives had lived here for thousands of years. They made use of fire and selective clearing to encourage the plants which were useful to wildlife and humans. They respected the large trees.

However, the natives were also aware that to every thing there is a season. Their nomadic communities of fewer than two hundred people moved around to take advantage of the running of the shad or the ripening of the berries. They preserved the surplus when it was available, to get them through lean times, all within the carrying capacity of this ecosystem. Except for those who lived in the north of Maine, the natives also grew gardens including corn, beans and squash, the three sisters. These foods could be dried and were then easily stored in order to provide concentrated energy and nourishment in the winter. Living within this bounty, it's not surprising that the natives were helpful and generous to the invaders.

The first Thanksgiving meal was probably a hybrid of American and European foods as the newcomers began to establish European agriculture in the new world. Certainly the turkey, cornbread, cranberries, and squash came from the natives.

Just 51 years after the first Thanksgiving, the wild turkey, formerly in great abundance, was described as rare in Massachusetts. Eventually, the European system prevailed, and in just over 200 years, 80 percent of the trees had been cut down, and much of the farmed land had been exhausted. Erosion, silted streams and changed weather were common.

As farmers and loggers abandoned this region for unplowed fields and uncut forests further west and around the world, the woods and its inhabitants began to return. New England is more forested now than it has been in over a century. I frequently see wild turkeys on our farm and in New Haven.

As the continuing thrust of European-style domination and exploitation of forests and farmland plays itself out with devastating results around the world, it makes more and more sense to wisely use and celebrate the bounty this region can provide.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Power of a Place

The Power of a Place

First broadcast on WSHU/WSUF-FM, November 10, 1995

It was just a bit of asphalt, undistinguished from the acres of contiguous asphalt that made up that Bridgeport school yard and the streets around it. Then a 25 by 40 foot section of blacktop was removed.

That was just four and a half years ago, the beginning of the Hallen school community garden. Now it is a place of magic and wonder, a 1,000 square foot oasis of ecological diversity. The honey locust tree the first class planted is big enough for the fifth graders to climb, and to provide welcome shade. Last week the students discovered a salamander under one of the rocks they've used to outline the growing beds. Frilly red and bright green lettuce, as well as pac choi and mustard are growing beautifully this fall despite the nip of frost.

The physical change was abrupt but simple. The asphalt was torn up and taken away. Then dirt and some pretty fresh manure were brought in as a gift, by the contractor, who was a gardener himself.

It is the kids, plants and compost that have worked this magic. The beginnings of a forest emerge. One volunteer oak tree is now about ten feet tall. A half dozen other young tree seedlings (including a beautiful apple and more oaks) have grown up on their own in the perennial border on the north and west sides of the garden. These trees remind us that underneath most of the asphalt and lawns in this region, a magnificent mixed hardwood forest is waiting to grow.

From the very first day in the garden, there was a sense that this was going to be great for Suzanne's fifth graders. We had one thousand square feet covered with smelly manure. None of the kids was going anywhere near that dooky, so Suzanne and I started turning it over. Before long, one by one, the kids wanted to help. Soon we didn't have enough shovels. Everyone wanted to participate.

The first spring, besides the honeylocust tree, the students planted a lilac, daylilies, raspberries and enough greens to have a salad party. They also planted sunflowers, tomatoes, broccoli, herbs, collards and more.

When the students came back to school the next fall, they found 10 foot tall sunflower plants with big heads full of delicious seeds and lots of red ripe tomatoes, where just one year before there had been asphalt.

Every year, Suzanne's class has been able to plant and harvest enough greens to have a salad party in the fall and in the spring. For the past three years, the other fifth grade teacher, Ginny, has also worked in the garden with her class, so there are 50 to 60 children regularly involved. This year the students seem better then they've ever been at the fine work of weeding and transplanting.

All this has come about with two hours work, one afternoon a week, weather permitting. Grubs and worms fascinate the children. A salamander or a snake are real treats, but even the peppermint, lemon balm and winter rye are exciting to many of the students. This 1,000 square foot area is an ecosystem now. It evolves as ecosystems do, toward greater fertility, diversity, complexity and stability. Its success has inspired school gardens in Wilton, New Haven and elsewhere. The garden reaches out to the neighborhood around it, too. Kids garden at home.
They take cuttings, plants and seeds to grow in their yards. Hardly a week goes by without a former student stopping by on the way home from middle school to visit while we work. Many of them are proud of their gardens. The last several years, some fourth grade boys with a special passion for plants, have gotten permission to join us, too.

Educationally, using a garden as a context for learning is a wonderful strategy for accomplishing the objectives of the curriculum. It abounds in hands-on science lessons and math problems. Selected literature involves farming and native and early American topics, which connect well with the garden. Education is integrated and meaningful for the students. For many of them, the garden provides a connection to their grandparents who grow vegetables in Bridgeport, down south, or in the Caribbean.

So, if the state of things has got you down, try gardening with children. Their interest, curiosity and enthusiasm, and nature's response to their care build my hope every week.
There's lots more asphalt and lawn we could tear up and begin to turn things around.

The Barnyard

First broadcast on WSHU/WSUF-FM, November 3, 1995

There's nothing quite like kids and animals together. On many weekday mornings this fall, I am farmer Bill at West Rock's Educational Farm in New Haven. I get to show visiting students the animals in the barnyard and experience their joy. What a great job! Most of the visitors have been kindergarten, first or second grade students from New Haven. We've had more than a thousand visit so far. But I've also given tours to New Haven high school students, Bridgeport fifth graders, some home-schooled children and private school classes from the suburbs.

Here's the picture. Nestled between a metal maintenance shed and a bit of woods at the back of the West Rock Nature Center is the fenced-in barnyard. It's about 30 feet by 50 feet, and has been built over the years by high school students studying ecology and the environment, and the New Haven Ecology Project. The barnyard residents include: Angelica the Nubian goat and Beatrice the lamb, both born the same day last winter on a farm in Glastonbury, three giant bronze turkeys (raised here from day-old babies), Howard the duck and his three female companions (Howard's the one with the curl at the end of his tail), an aloof goose, five laying hens, a gentle banty rooster with feathers on his feet, two dozen young barred rock chickens, TLC the "attack" rabbit, and some baby rabbits. Then there's 20 to 30 children, several adults, and me to help the visitors and the animals have a rewarding experience. This is not difficult.
Most of the kids take to the animals like a, well, like a duck to water. We all have an exciting time. The baby rabbits are the most popular, both with tough high school boys and with five year olds. The young animals need to be treated with care and respect, and they must be held so they feel secure. The kids catch on quickly. Actually, the animals calm them down.

It's both astounding and a powerful example of the need for more of this kind of education, that one day I had two children unable to tell me what kind of animal the lamb I was holding a foot or so away from them was. Other students can't tell a chicken from a turkey, or think that the goat is a dog.

There is intense interest in the fresh eggs, and in the differences between eggs to eat and the eggs that become baby chicks. Even many of the adults don't understand that hens don't need a rooster in order to lay an egg. The male is needed only to fertilize it, just as it is with humans.

Mostly, the children connect the eggs in the nest box with hatching to make baby chicks rather than with the eggs they eat. This is sadly ironic because in today's world, a machine is the mother for almost all chickens.

These children have wonderfully diverse backgrounds. Many of them have strong connections to the land and small-scale food production. In one class, there were children whose relatives have farms in Poland, Jamaica and Guyana. Many of the Hispanic children seem to have a kind of natural grace in handling the animals. I was amazed that some big teenaged boys were more afraid of touching the turkey than most kindergarten students are.

A group of second and third graders from an innovative private school visited and cleaned out the pens where the animals spend their nights. What energy and enthusiasm these students had as they composted the bedding to provide fertility for the gardens.

The children and teachers understand and accept that several of the turkeys will have a major role in Thanksgiving dinner, and that the young male chickens will provide the makings of a fine soup and a good dinner.

If we are going to eat meat, an animal must die. This brutal fact makes us appreciate the relationship with the females of the species, our goat, lamb and hens, who will live for many years, producing milk, wool, eggs and babies as well as manure for the gardens. This is the basic farm economy.

The rapidly emerging reality for most farm animals today, however, is a short life in very large scale confinement facilities, with steady doses of drugs and hormones. Amazingly and unfortunately, many of the same elements may be the future reality for too many of these children.

As the electronic images on television, computer and game screens become a larger part of reality for these students at home and at school, they seem to hunger for and appreciate real experiences.

It seems like it'd be good for the animals and the children to work toward a more humane and local, ecologically-based food system.