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????
Back in late January, I attended a local food convention where someone from Growing Power, a well-known community garden in Milwaukee, spoke. He was an urban planner before he got involved with Growing Power, and he noted that city planners plan out EVERYTHING - except for food.
The result of that? Food deserts, for one thing. Those are urban or rural areas where residents have no healthy food options. Perhaps you can shop at a liquor store or a Krispy Kreme, but you won't find a grocery store anywhere.
Grocery stores, like most businesses, prefer to serve wealthy communities. It's a rational decision for a business, whose only goal is profit, but it's not an okay decision for a community to let all of the grocery stores abandon low-income residents and leave them to scrounge up dinner from their choice of fast food restaurants. It's similar to the idea that banks can't offer services to rich people only. That's where a food policy council comes into play.
A food policy council is a group - which may or may not be officially part of a local or state government - that looks at ALL of the food issues in the area and recommends policy to improve the health of the food system.
What Sorts of Things Do They Do?
Step One for any council worth its salt is a food assessment, to determine what exactly is going on in their city, county, or state (whatever area the council represents). But after that, they advocate changing the rules to make fixing the food system possible.
They might:
- Help bring grocery stores or food cooperatives into areas that have none
- Work on farm to school programs to bring farm fresh food from local farmers into school cafeterias
- Get laws passed to allow residents to keep chickens for food
- Work to get farmers' markets to accept food stamps as payment
- Change government purchasing rules so they give preference to local farmers over out of state food suppliers
- Work to preserve farmland from development into subdivisions
- Link up land owners with wannabe-farmers who can farm their land
- Reconnect with sustainable practices of Native Americans (in areas where many Native Americans live)
- Survey food prices in different stores so people can compare prices without driving around
- Remove junk food from schools
- Prevent the city from selling ads for junk on the side of city busses
- Improve access to school breakfast
- Expand the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Farmers' Market Nutrition Program (FMNP), a program that gives WIC participants vouchers to buy fruits & veggies from farmers' markets
Mark defines their purpose as:
The Pop Quiz!
Mark and his co-trainer, Keecha Harris, kicked off our training with a pop quiz. Each of the answers taught a lesson that we then discussed. Here are a few highlights.
Q: Which of the following local or state government functions has absolutely nothing to do with food or agriculture?
A: All of the above: Transportation, public health, sheepherding, economic development, recreation and parks, waste management, and traffic planning.
One of the examples given in Mark's book is that underserved areas often ALSO don't have public transportation that will easily get residents to and from a decent grocery store. In some cases, it may make sense to work with the public transportation people to put in bus routes to fill that gap and make it easier for people in those areas to get to the grocery store.
Q: Which of the following words or concepts pose the most difficulty when presenting a proposal for a food policy council to policymakers and the public?
A: All of the above: Sustainability, food security and insecurity, the obesity epidemic, local food, and food policy.
The point here is that we should never assume that people know what we're talking about. Always consider your audience and put your thoughts into English for them. I can personally attest the blank stares I've gotten when I tell people I'm into food policy.
Q: Which of the following organizations would never support any of your policy proposals? Which one would always support your proposals?
A: None of the following: The state Farm Bureau, the state Hunters Assocation, State Anti-hunger Coalition, Organic Growers Assoc, State Growers Assoc, State Principals Assoc, State Food Bank Assoc.
The lesson here? Never count anyone IN and never count anyone OUT. You can find allies in unlikely places - and sometimes the most sensible ideas (to you) will get pushback from a group you usually expect to support you.
Q: Every year the U.S. loses enough farmland to equal which geographic area?
A: Delaware
Mark wasn't trying to show that loss of farmland is a problem (even though it is). The point he was making is that giving people numbers without context is meaningless. Translate it into something they understand. You can't picture a large number of acres, but you can look at a map of the U.S. and see Delaware in comparison to the size of the whole country.
Finding Allies
The next segment of the training was an exercise to help us expand our idea of who we should collaborate with to work toward our goals. They asked us to make a list of the typical and atypical people we would work with and then identify WHY we miss those atypical people. Here's are some examples of what my group thought of:
The typical suspects: Farmers, nutritionists, educators, land conservation groups, food banks, sustainable ag groups, food justice groups, food-related businesses, and the government.
The atypical suspects: Low income people, groups like the Farm Bureau or cattlemen, parent-teacher associations, youth, students, museums, the media, churches.
Why we don't work with them: They lack time/transportation, cultural/language barriers, we assume we won't agree with them, we don't publicize our work in places where they would find out about it
Keecha made the point that you need everybody to state very clearly up front what their goals are, what they expect to put in, and what they expect to get out of your work. If you can approach a group that you may not usually work with and communicate what they have to gain from a collaborative effort and what you hope to get from them, you might find new allies.
Mark chimed in with a great anecdote of a food policy council that actually partnered with (sit down for this one) Fox News. Honestly. Fox News gave them LOTS of PSA time for free as a result of the collaboration. Crazy!!!
How Do You Form a Food Policy Council?
There are three basic methods for forming a food policy council, and examples of each of the three are in place around the country. (Currently there are about 100 food policy councils in the U.S.) The three methods are:
1. Have your legislature pass a resolution or bill calling for a food policy council.
2. Have your governor make an executive order forming a food policy council.
3. Create a food policy council privately/independently.
Each method comes with advantages and disadvantages. When the government forms the food policy council, it also sets how the council members will be appointed... that could be a good thing or a bad thing.
On the other hand, a food policy council founded privately could peter out if the members stop showing up. And if the governor starts the council but forgets to re-appoint members, then that's no good either. This could happen particularly when one governor leaves office and a new governor who doesn't care about the food policy council comes in. For this reason, the councils formed by legislative statute are the most permanent.
The flipside is that the councils formed by legislative statute can take a long time to get going, because they have to actually be passed by a group of people. An independently formed council can be started up immediately.
Examples of councils started by city ordinance are those in Hartford, CT and Knoxville, TN. The Hartford council gets limited funding and support from the city and staff support from the Hartford Food System.
Those begun by executive order are the councils in Iowa, Michigan, and New York. The vulnerability of this method is underscored by the fact that the New York council was formed by Eliot Spitzer... and he ain't in charge no more. Michigan gives us a more successful example, as Gov. Jennifer Granholm won re-election and stayed current with food policy council appointments. Unfortunately, Iowa can't say the same - Vilsack forgot to re-appoint council members before leaving office and his successor isn't doing much either.
The last type of council - independently formed councils - is exemplified by New Mexico's food policy council. It was organized by a group called Farm to Table. The New Mexico legislature passed a resolution in 2003 calling for state agencies to participate in the council, but state government participation can be irregular.
One last type of food policy council to note - regardless of how it was formed - are dual-jurisdictional food policy councils. These tend to be city-county councils, like those in Portland, OR and Multnomah County and Santa Fe city and county.
Want to find out if your city, state, or county have a food policy council already? Find out here.
Forming Santa Fe's Food Policy Council
During the trainer, we had four guests join us in the afternoon to tell us about their own experiences. First, I'll share a bit about Santa Fe. Our guest speaker (whose name I hope I spell right) was Sherri Cooper from Food Depot, a food bank.
Santa Fe city and county are in the process of forming their council right now. Sherri traced their founding back to 2006, when the community wanted to hold an event about hunger. They decided to hold a community conversation. A year later, they repeated the event and at that time, they introduced the idea of forming a food policy council.
From there, they had to work with the city and the county to draft the resolution. The work took a year, and by now they've held their third community conversation. At that time, they began brainstorming issues for the council to take on as well as recommendations for council appointees.
Sherri said that they had successes by getting support of their mayor very early on and identifying members of the city and county governments to champion their ideas. They invited members of the city and county governments to tour the food bank and at that time they explained the benefits a food policy council would provide.
They also went around Santa Fe to get support of all of the local stakeholders. There are over 50 food-related programs in Santa Fe alone, so that meant a LOT of support (in the form of letters and phone calls). Sherri also noted that it didn't hurt to have an expert like Mark Winne around while they went through this process :)
What didn't work? Well, it turns out that the city and county governments don't always play well together. Another problem was that some people within the government resisted because they were afraid the food policy council would take away their jobs or authority.
Other problems were more logistics-based: the people involved were volunteers with full-time jobs, and the food policy council, once formed, will need a source of funding.
One last tip from her? Make sure to emphasize that the council advises policy, it doesn't make policy. Sometimes governments can get fussy about that distinction, even to the point where they will not allow the food policy council to include the word "policy" in its name.
Food Policy in Missoula, MT
Probably the most instrumental part of the training for me was hearing a speaker from Missoula, MT's council, Bonnie Buckingham. The council in Missoula, which is now about 3 years old, represents both the city and the county.
Back in 2003, they began by conducting a food assessment. They wanted to know what it would take for farming in Missoula to be viable and what people's concerns about access to food were. All in all, they spent about 2 years working with a university to do this and they published their findings in late 2004.
The council is organized into three committees: one covering food security access and consumption, one about land use and farmland protection, and one for education and outreach.
First, Bonnie spoke about their efforts on food security and access. They've made it a project to get local farmers' markets to accept food stamps and by doing so, they created a model for the whole state. In the first year, $5000 in food stamps were spent at their markets - and they anticipate that number will double this year.
Food stamps are now distributed electronically via "EBT cards." It isn't economical for each farmer at a market to have the equipment to read these cards, so instead, they have a central kiosk where people can use their EBT cards and receive tokens in exchange. They spend the tokens at farmers' booths, and the farmers trade in the tokens for cash.
When they wanted to work on farm to school programs, they came up against a barrier: they weren't able to go into the classrooms or send information home with the students. To solve this, they went to the school board and got these two things approved.
They had less success working with the school wellness groups to get local food specifically stated in the wellness program - BUT they do have a growing number of vendors who grow crops for the schools, so the kids are getting some local food at school even if it isn't in the policy.
They also took up one of my pet causes - changing the laws to allow residents to own chickens. In this case, people can have up to six hens, provided they register them and pay a fee.
Last, they conducted research about barriers to a healthy food system from both a consumer and producer's point of view. They did this via town hall meetings and surveys with the help of university researchers.
An interesting point was that they got a grant to pay for people's time at their meetings ($10/hr) and to provide childcare and a meal. This way, low income people who might not otherwise be able to give their time were able to participate.
Moving on to their farmland conservation initiatives, they described a HUGE success they've had. One problem in Missoula is the effect of their fast growth on their farmland. When new houses go up, developers pick nice, flat land - the same land that is ideal for farming.
First off, they changed the law to define farmland as not only land where crops are currently growing but also land with soil available for farming. Then they began challenging developers' proposals for new subdivisions that threatened farmland.
About six months ago, for the first time, a developer's proposal was actually denied based on their complaints. Now, the Office of Planning sends all proposals to the food policy council for their opinion, and it includes their feedback in the report that goes up for approval.
Because of this, developers now contact the food policy council in advance before making their proposal so they can agree on something that works for everybody! (An example of what the group is doing is asking that houses are clustered together instead of scattered about, making more land overall unfarmable. Their goal is a 1:1 ratio of land developed vs. land saved within the same zone.)
A Lesson in What Not to Do
Our last guest was a woman whose name I did not catch from Oklahoma. She works with a group trying to re-establish the sustainable agriculture practiced by Native Americans prior to the mid-20th century.
She showed us a publication that had a lot of information about indigenous foods and where to purchase them. The booklet was put together by a large number of groups - with absolutely no Native American input whatsoever. Why anyone would publish something about a group without contacting that group is a mystery.
In this particular case, Native Americans whose contact information and even pictures appeared in the booklet weren't even aware of the booklet's existence. But that's not the worst part.
The real kicker is a map in the book. It's a map of the U.S. and it's divided into so-called "nations." To Native Americans, what is referred to in elementary school textbooks as tribes are considered nations. So what did the map show? Each "nation" was named after a food eaten in the region: "cornbread nation," "gumbo nation," etc. To the Native Americans, this was very offensive.
The lesson here? If you're trying to discuss, help, or report on a particular group of people, make sure you get their input!
One Last Note: The Missoula council got a $200,000 grant from the USDA under the Community Food Projects program. This is a fantastic program - obviously you can see all the good the Missoula council has done - and right now it's basically on hold. The reason? The 2007 farm bill got stalled from its initial deadline in Sept 2007 until May 2008.
The good news? We finally have confirmation that CFP won't die. The Senate version of the bill gives CFP $10 million in mandatory funding. The House version gives it nothing. In the end - with much calling, begging, and pleading by food activists - the joint bill gave CFP $5 million in mandatory funding for 10 years! Despite the good news - this program could definitely benefit from more money, so the fight isn't over.
Vote Result
Score: 10.0, Votes: 1