Last weekend, I traveled to Santa Fe to attend a workshop one of my newest favorite authors, Mark Winne, and his partner in crime, Keecha Harris. (If you'd like, you can check out my recent review of Mark's book Closing the Food Gap for more info about him).

What's a Food Policy Council????

Months and months ago, I asked bloggers for ideas for a 2008 Netroots Nation food panel and someone responded that we should address hunger. Someone else seconded it. Then Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally suggested we invite Mark Winne to speak.

That seems like forever ago. Hunger wasn't the topic of quite so many newspaper headlines at the time. Which isn't to say it wasn't in the news. This year hasn't been a good one for anyone economically, and when our pocketbooks get hit, so do many people's tummies.

Holy you-know-what. 10% of Ohio is on food stamps (almost double from 2001), and even more people are eligible for them but not receiving them. 1.1 million Ohioans receive food stamps, and 500,000 more are eligible.

This is BAD. Look at the requirements for food stamp eligibility. Over 14% of Ohioans live with these conditions or WORSE:

I'm on the winning side of an issue! What happened? Am I dreaming? <pinches self> No. Am I becoming a Republican? OK, absolutely not. And yet... an issue I care deeply about, the freedom to label rBGH-free milk, seems to be going my way. How could that be?

I should be upfront about a few things here. First of all, you don't have to wait for the stars and the moon to all line up before progressives win on issues among regular Americans. How many people out there want affordable health care for all Americans? And how many of them want mercury in their tuna fish? On the issues, we win.

Keeping you up to date ...

- Population pressures and biofuels are cramping food production capacity, while climate change isn't helping matters.

If you could identify a father of America's organic standards, Harry MacCormack would be it. He's been farming organically since before the term existed. Of course, during his childhood in upstate New York, there was no need for the term. No one used chemicals yet, so there was no alternative to what we now refer to as "organic farming." Back then, they just called it "farming."

In the last days of January, I got an email with an undercover video of cow torture in a beef plant. Probably some crazy PETA thing going around I figured. I ignored it. Not that cruelty to animals isn't a valid issue, but there are ALWAYS videos of animal abuse and they aren't news.

Then, I got a Washington Post article about the video in my inbox. This video WAS news! It was news for a few reasons. The cow torture was illegal and its result was sick animals getting into the food supply. AND - those particular sick cows were going to feed school children!

Yesterday I spent an hour speaking with David, a former meatpacker at a Tyson hog plant in Iowa. The conversation left me near tears, and I wonder at how David has been able to pick himself up and move on - or for that matter, do anything other than curl up in a fetal position and cry.

Please read this for David. He wants people to know what happened to him. If you are reading this and you are a member of the media, contact me and I will put you in touch with David if you'd like to cover his story too.

Chicago

The House and Senate versions of the bill have roughly the same funding increases for anti-hunger programs in the nutrition title. However, due to the different measures that were used to pay for these increases in both bills, the House funds the programs for ten years while the Senate version only funds them through 2012. If the Senate funding prevails in conference, benefit levels would return to current law after 2012, effectively reducing the benefits of 10 million people.

This week I attended a local food conference in Eau Claire, WI, and a woman from the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute handed out an urgent action alert.

The USDA proposed a "naturally raised" label that doesn't provide for animal welfare or environmental stewardship at all. The label simply means "no hormones, antibiotics, or animal byproducts." Is that what the word natural means to most people? Who knows.