The Poor Get Diabetes; The Rich Get Local and Organic

Months and months ago, I asked 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.

Since then - as the news about world food shortages grows louder and more desperate - Mark Winne agreed to speak at Netroots Nation and Netroots Nation accepted our food panel proposal! Also, I read Mark Winne's new book, Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty.

Hopefully this diary provides enough info so you'll get an idea of what we'll be talking about at the food panel (although, keep in mind, Mark's one of four absolutely phenomenal panelists so this isn't the only topic). If you find this interesting, I HIGHLY recommend reading his book before NN08!!!

I fell in love with Closing the Food Gap by page 6 at the latest. And the book starts on page 3. Winne's writing style would hold a reader's attention even if he were writing, say, an 800-page treatise on slime mold. As it so happens though, the topic he write about is urgently vital to building a better society.

I don't know how to put it other than: Mark Winne is the real deal. He's been working to end hunger in our country since before I was born, and trying just about every single tactic imaginable to do it. That is not to say that he's been 100% successful. I think he'd be the first to point out that there have been a few failed experiments here and there. But as he shows in the book, he's learned from each of his experiences (good or bad) and he will always pick himself back up and try again.

What's the food gap the book's title speaks of? In the past, it was the fact that the rich ate and the poor didn't. Today, as Winne puts it, "the poor get diabetes; the rich get local and organic."

Winne points out that Americans cannot seem to put a hunger program in place solely for the purpose of feeding hungry people. In the past it was because draftees were failing their military physicals due to malnutrition, or as a subsidy to Big Ag. But feed the hungry just to feed the hungry? Not so much. And when someone needed to be thrown under the bus in these programs, usually it was the hungry.

A point he makes early on in the book is the effect Reagan had on hunger in America. When Reagan cut food stamps significantly, Winne witnessed the effects with his own eyes. Real people were hurting because of the numbers some Republican appointee in a budget office somewhere moved around on a spreadsheet. Winne writes:

I met Alice M. in 1983, just two years into the first administration of Ronald Reagan. She was seventy-nine years old, living alone . . . She received $256 a month in Social Security and an additional $32 a month in Supplemental Security Income (SSI), making her yearly income $3,456. This placed her significantly below that year's official federal poverty level of $4,680 for a single-person household.

Because she had a pacemaker and as generally nervous about being out in her high-crime neighborhood, Alice rarely traveled more than two blocks from her apartment building. Not able to drive, she did her food shopping by walking to a small nearby grocery whose high prices and lack of bargain brands kept mobile shoppers away. Since a nearby A&P Supermarket with better prices and more selection had recently closed, this store was Alice's only choice. . .

Before 1983, Alice's meager food budget had been stretched by her allotment of $44 a month in food stamps. In October 1982, however, her food stamps had been cut to the minimum allotment of $10 a month as a result of a Reagan administration measure reducing food stamps when Social Security payments increased. . . The first month that Alice's food stamps were cut, she was so mad she sent them back.

The private sector responded, of course, doing their best in a constant game of catch-up. Winne describes the food banks that sprung up, serving a dual purpose of disposing of food that would otherwise be wasted and feeding the hungry. Unfortunately, people often confuse the food bank's primary purpose as being the former, not the latter. Here's a particularly memorable paragraph about his work at a food bank:

No donation was too small, too weird, too disgusting, or too nutritionally unsound to be refused. I remember the load of nearly rotten potatoes that we gratefully accepted at the warehouse's loading dock and then promptly shoveled into the dumpster once the donor was safely out of sight. One of our early board meetings included a cooking demonstration by a group of local entrepreneurs who were trying to develop a market for horse meat. The product's name was Cheva-lean, which of course was taken from the French word for horse, cheval. The promoters reminded us that the French, the world's leading authorities on food, ate horse meat and, therefore, that our poor clients could certainly do the same. And to top that, I still have the recipes from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service that helped us use the moose parts that were proudly donated by representatives of the Connecticut Fish and Game Division when an unfortunate moose met its end jaywalking across I-84.

Another point about food banks is that the more food they have to provide, the more people show up to receive it. You'll never find the equilibrium where the food bank has enough food to feed all of the hungry because it doesn't exist. Winne notes that of course the way to end hunger is ending poverty - and a food bank hardly does that - but he also details a number of other strategies to fight hunger.

One thing he describes that I've lived through personally is that poor neighborhoods often have no access to grocery stores. Not only that, but bus routes are often designed very poorly for someone trying to go from a low-income neighborhood to a grocery store and back. Often it involves spending a long time waiting for buses and traveling in the wrong direction to catch a bus that can then take you where you are actually going.

Winne described a successful story in which he worked with his city to create a bus route to bring low income residents to a grocery store. He also talks about efforts to bring either co-ops or for-profit grocery stores into low income neighborhoods. It makes sense that a grocery store wants to locate itself where the profits are, but it doesn't make sense that a city government should allow entire neighborhoods to have no local access to healthy food.

Winne also talks about bringing farmers markets into low income areas. Like the grocery stores, farmers want to get the most bang for their buck when they choose where to sell their food. Winne's done some work dealing with this and he's found some strategies for success which he describes in the book.

The book does not give the 100% perfect solution to ending hunger and/or poverty because there isn't one, but he does give a thoughtful explanation of the methods he's tried and the lessons he's learned in his over three decades of work on the subject. I think the best summary of the book is the quote from Jane Goodall on the front:

It's heartening to find a book that successfully blends a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor.

I can't recommend this book more highly and I'm thrilled that we'll all have a chance to meet Mark Winne and hear him speak at Netroots Nation this summer. Additionally, The Fat Lady Sings and I are going to attend of Food Policy Council training Mark is leading in Santa Fe next Monday. I look forward to sharing what I learn with you next week.