America we need to talk

I love living in Brooklyn, especially when it comes to food. My apartment is just three blocks away from the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, one of the best in the country, where you can shop for seasonal heirloom tomatoes, squash blossoms, and garlic scapes just harvested from upstate New York and New Jersey farms; wild-caught Long Island scallops; and crisper than crisp Hudson Valley apples. My neighborhood has it all, including fake local maple syrup. Elsewhere in Brooklyn, I can go to any number of weekly food festivals and gorge on homemade sausages, artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches, hand-crafted cold sesame noodles, and neighborhood-fermented kombucha. I can get Polish pierogies in Greenpoint, Salvadoran pupusas in Red Hook, Bosnian burgers in Bushwick, or Chinese dumplings in Sunset Park—all of which are world-class in quality.^a

Today’s Brooklyn is indeed “Foodie Heaven.” I—and many others of my middle- and upper-income neighbors—can obtain all those tidbits because we have enough money and time to do so. Yet many of our fellow Brooklynites aren’t so fortunate. In the years 2012 to 2014, an average of 569,659 Brooklyn residents (about the combined populations of Des Moines and Wichita) were living on the brink of hunger, unable to afford enough food. One-quarter of Brooklyn children lived in these food-insecure homes. For them, Brooklyn is a food hell.

America, the rest of the nation is equally populated by food “haves” and food “have nots.” I won’t give you a complete plan to end hunger here (because I’m running out of pages in this book and I want to force you to buy my first volume, which does have such a strategy), but beyond just the hunger issue, here is a basic outline of what we need to do to ensure that all Americans—of all income levels—are able to access a cornucopia of affordable, nutritious, sustainably-grown food:

Let’s also move beyond the counterproductive, class-biased efforts to micromanage what low-income people can eat or drink, America. Let’s reset the obesity and hunger debate in order to develop a more comprehensive plan for enabling Americans in poverty to obtain more nutritious food.

Even though I believe that all of us, low-income or not, should be able to occasionally choose a sweetened beverage or have other snack foods as a small part of an overall balanced diet, there is no question that Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds drink far too much soda. The over-consumption of unhealthy foods is surely one of many contributors to the nation’s high obesity, heart disease, and diabetes rates and the accompanying skyrocketing healthcare costs. I hold special contempt for food industry efforts that target its unhealthiest products to low-income neighborhoods, children, and communities of color.

The reason I opposed attempts by then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others since then to ban the ability to purchase of soda with SNAP benefits is that it was based on a false diagnosis of the problem, which then resulted in a misguided treatment. Supporters of the ban, as well as the numerous (mostly unsuccessful) proposals to levy additional taxes on certain foods (including soda), thought that the root of the problem was that low-income people always choose to eat junk food because of ignorance or apathy, thereby requiring coercive or even punitive measures.

In reality, the main reason that low-income people don’t eat more healthfully is that nutritious food often doesn’t exist in their neighborhoods, and when it does it is frequently too expensive or too time-consuming to obtain and prepare. When those barriers are overcome, low-income people flock to consume better food. Low-income families, for instance, heavily utilize subsidized farmers markets and CSAs when they are available in their neighborhoods.

That is why we should accelerate efforts to increase the availability of healthier food choices in low-income areas. The Obama administration, as well as many state and city governments, have worked with the private and nonprofit sectors in recent years to provide incentives to open more supermarkets, CSAs, and farmers markets in underserved rural and urban communities. For example, New York City has launched a pioneering program to place “Green Cart” fresh produce vendors in food deserts (areas where there is a dearth of healthy, fresh foods). Such efforts should be accelerated and expanded and should ensure that all vendors accept SNAP and WIC benefits.

We should also increase the purchasing power of low-income Americans to buy nutritious foods. As of 2016, SNAP benefits provided, on average, only a little more than $31 per person per week. According to the USDA, non-hungry American families spend about $50 per week per person on food, $12.50 more than food-insecure families. Studies prove that when families have more money for food they will use it to buy healthier, fresher food. Thus the simplest way to increase such food purchasing is to increase the average monthly SNAP allotment and expand the number of low-income people eligible.

Given that struggling workers are so often strapped for time, food that is better for you should also be made more convenient. I challenge entrepreneurs to open truly nutritious, affordable fast food shops and food trucks in low-income neighborhoods and towns across the country.

Tens of millions of Americans need more nutritious, more affordable food. Tens of millions need better jobs. Just as the federal government gave some support to “green jobs” initiatives to simultaneously fight unemployment and protect the environment, they should also launch a “Good Food, Good Jobs” project.

Low-income areas across America that lack access to nutritious foods at affordable prices—the so-called “food deserts”—tend to be the same communities and neighborhoods that, even in better economic times, are also “job deserts” that lack sufficient living-wage employment. A concurrent problem has been the growing concentration of our food supply in a handful of food companies that are now “too big to fail.” A Good Food, Good Jobs program can address these intertwined economic and social problems.

In partnership with state, local, and tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector, a federal food jobs initiative would bolster employment, foster economic growth, fight hunger, cut obesity, cut poverty, improve nutrition, and reduce spending on diet-related health problems.

In the best-case scenario, such a program could create large numbers of living-wage jobs in self-sustaining businesses even as it addresses our food, health, and nutrition problems. But even in a worst-case scenario, the plan would create short-term subsidized jobs that would provide an economic stimulus, and at least offer low-income consumers the choice of more nutritious foods in the areas where they live—a choice so often denied to them.

A Good Food, Good Jobs program could provide the first serious national test of the effectiveness of using food partnerships to boost the economy and improve public health. The new initiative should:

For a community to benefit from good nutrition, three conditions must be present: food must be affordable; food must be physically available and convenient; and individuals and families must have sufficient knowledge about good nutrition with time and ability to act on that knowledge by obtaining, preparing, and eating healthier foods. These comprehensive proposals, when enacted at once, would accomplish all those objectives.^e

Starting in the 1930’s, anti-poverty advocates backed farm subsidies in exchange for agriculture interests backing food support for people in poverty.

In the first few decades of the coalition’s existence, it served a useful purpose. True family farmers were aided by such policies, and in exchange, low-income Americans received increasing food aid. But over time, pushed by campaign donations, Congress gave increasingly large portions of assistance to massive agricultural enterprises that fouled the environment and harmed public health, and less of it went to small family farmers.

Still, anti-hunger advocacy organizations remained tied at the hip to the interests of massive agribusiness. We had an implicit deal: the corporations, most of which were run by conservatives, would hold their noses about all the funding going to poor people, and the anti-hunger groups, usually headed by progressives, would continue to acquiesce to ever-larger corporate welfare. As long as there was enough money for both sides, the deals rolled on.

Yet with each passing year, as concerns over both public health and deficits increased, the pork-laden farm bills became harder to defend as policy, and more difficult to sustain politically. When there was no longer enough money for both hungry Americans and enormous corporate agribusinesses, each lobbying camp of the coalition started whispering to Congress behind closed doors that cuts should come from the others, not from them. At the same time, Congress started losing its willingness to accept, without serious amendment, massive pieces of costly legislation written by a handful of agriculture committee members, who were mostly white men from a few states and districts (and who were the largest recipients of the agriculture campaign donations).

When, in 2013, the House of Representatives tried to pass a farm bill that took SNAP out of the bill entirely, it put a final nail in the coffin of the old-school coalition. Good riddance.

The collapse of the old coalition should prompt us, when next a farm bill is considered by Congress (around 2019 or so) to truly go back to the drawing board to craft an entirely different kind of measure—a comprehensive food bill that reduces hunger, bolsters nutrition, aids family farmers, protects the environment, boosts rural economic development, strengthens food safety, and cuts down on unnecessary spending. To pass it, we’ll need an entirely different farm bill coalition, one which forces anti-hunger campaigners and food systems advocates to team up with other activists on all those issues. Recent farm bills have represented the worst of American politics. It’s time to build the movement necessary to pass a food bill that represents the best.

Once we make food a right, a joy, and a reality for all Americans, I can go back to happily stuffing my face in Brooklyn’s never-ending food jamboree with no remorse.

^a When I go overboard, I become the fat anti-hunger guy. [No picture available].

^b I’ll be waiting by Hunger Free America’s mailbox to receive that mammoth new federal grant to expand our CSAs in low-income neighborhoods.

^c The way GMO monopolies have been used by massive multinational corporations has certainly harmed small farmers worldwide. GMOs may—or may not—be harmful to the environment. But there is not one iota of proof that they harm human health. None. Sorry foodies, that’s scientific truth. Your term “Frankenfoods” is an irresponsible scare tactic. If you believe in Frankenfoods, next you’ll be taking your vaccine advice from a former actress from Three’s Company.

^d Believe it or not, in the heart of urban Brooklyn, in the basement of a Brooklyn College building, resides the Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center, which has experimented in breeding tilapia. Yes, a fish grows in Brooklyn, in that deep, dark tank, and it’s edible.

^e Too many well-intentioned, but class-biased people—usually upper-middle-class, and white—think the one and only answer to hunger is better nutrition and shopping education. But unless healthier food is more affordable, convenient, and physically available nearby, all such education efforts will fail.