Welcome and Introduction by Jim Bloyd, MPH
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Welcome Sustainable Food Systems: Building the Foundation for Prepared Communities Illinois Public Health Association 70th Annual Meeting, Lombard, Illinois June 14, 2011 12:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
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Welcome and Introduction by Jim Bloyd, MPH
- 1. Welcome Sustainable Food Systems: Building the Foundation for Prepared Communities Jim Bloyd, MPH Chair, Food & Nutrition Section Illinois Public Health Association 70 th Annual Meeting, Lombard, Illinois June 14, 2011 12:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
- 2. Youth Development, Jobs, Community Owned Solutions
- 3. Fresh Moves mobile produce store
- 4. Fresh Moves mobile produce store
- 5. Green Youth Farm Chic Botanic Garden
- 6. Sustainable Food Systems Model Source: 2007 ADA Primer on Sustainable Food: Healthy Land, Healthy People
- 9. Retail food-price increases, 1985 to 2000 Source: Muller (2004) cited by Wallinga (2009)
- 10. Source: Wise, T. cited by Wallinga (2009)
- 12. Source: Color of Food; Yvonne Yen Liu and Dominique Apollon, Ph.D. Applied Research Center arc.org
- 13. White House Garden 2011 KGI.org Kitchen Gardeners International
- 15. Observed changes in growing season temperature for crop growing regions for 1980-2008.
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to the workshop hosted by the Food and Nutrition Section of the Illinois Public Health Association. Today’s gathering is the result of many people’s commitment of time, thought, and care. I want to thank them right now: Tiye Hayes and Simon Swartzman provided invaluable assistance with every aspect of today’s event. Noel Chavez, Denise Boyd and Bettina Tahsin, who join me for the upcoming year as office holders for the Food and Nutrition Section, helped conceptualize and guide the process. Cheryl Galligos has provided leadership for many years to the Section. Yuka Asada, Jim Braun, Kevin Lindley, Meredith Conn, and Susan Avila have provided important time discussing policy and documented comments in a public policy forum. The staff of IPHA have stayed on top of numerous details and provided important support, guided by the Executive Council of IPHA. A special thanks to my friend and coworker Valerie Webb for valuable advice, and for her leadership of IPHA over the last two years. I also want to recognize our panelists who are here to help us learn, to think critically, and to give us an honest presentation of their insights into a complex and often charged topic, an extremely important topic, that addresses a core human need, and a human right, that of access to healthy food. We are lucky to hear from them. Unfortunately, I am very sorry to say that John W. Boyd, Jr., due to circumstances beyond our control, is not here with us today. Only a few hours ago, I spoke with his assistant Shannon Chapman, who informed me that Mr. Boyd will not be here. I have the understanding that he is ok, but I am unable to speculate on the reason for his absence. I am sorry. I know that he would have had many important things to tell us. However, we have a wonderful panel and film on our agenda this morning. New Orleans and preparedness and food deserts One of the most important and tragic disasters in the more recent history is the flooding of New Orleans in 2005. While the victims included people of all colors races and walks of life, the people hardest hit who faced the rising flood waters, those who were left behind, were people of color and low income. The inequities of race and class in America were laid bare for all to see. A recent article published in the American Journal of Public Health made an important connection in my mind, between the need for equity and sustainable food systems as the foundation for prepared communities. The article measured access to supermarkets in New Orleans at three points in time: before Hurricane Katrina and then in 2007 and again in 2009. Donald Rose and colleagues compared the number of supermarkets in predominantly African American neighborhoods to other neighborhoods. The main finding is that residents of African American neighborhoods had 40% less likelihood to have an additional supermarket in their neighborhood before Katrina, then the disparity got worse –in 2007-African Americans were 71% less likely than other city residents to have access to an additional supermarket-- and then in 2009 the disparity returned to the pre-Katrina levels. In other words, there was unequal access to supermarkets in New Orleans by race, then it got worse, then it returned to the same level of inequality that existed before the flood. I suggest that the implications of this study for preparedness are important to consider: if our organizations and institutions are not able to provide equitable access to one of the most basic of human needs, it is prudent to assume that other important resources are also inequitably available. If the distribution in New Orleans of resources such as water, emergency food supplies, medicine, planning, shelters, evacuation infrastructure, and leadership is characterized by the same inequity as supermarkets, is it implausible to consider the likelihood of another disaster response that resulted in such a disproportionately high toll on black lives?
- On the other hand, from a sustainable food systems perspective, eliminating food deserts provides the opportunity to create local wealth, employment opportunities for adults and youth, and neighborhood and institutional organization that can increase resiliency in the face of disasters. This is being done in Buffalo, where the Massachusetts Avenue Project has trained more than 350 young people in gardening, food systems, and business while using vacant lots to grow and sell more than 5,000 pounds of affordable fresh produce to residents in the community. MAP packages its own chili starter and salsa, sold in grocery stores throughout the region, and a new aquaponics facility will yield 25,000 tilapia in the coming year. Notes below: MAP at a Glance: Buffalo, New York (third-poorest city in America) Source:; and http://www.mass-ave.org/ Massachusetts Avenue Project, The Massachusetts Avenue Project proudly hosts the Growing Green Program , a youth development and urban agriculture program about increasing healthy food access and improving our communities. Our program and policy work is all about making our food system more local and inclusive. We focus on employing youth to work in the areas of: Urban Farming and Aqua-ponics Healthy Eating & Accessing fresh local food, Supporting local farms and businesses Sustainable food production and Social Enterprise. Growing Green's current projects include a seasonal urban farm, a youth-run enterprise, a farm to school initiative, a mobile market and various community educational events and workshops. Check out the Growing Green Youth Blog Source: Sally Kohn “A New Grassroots Economy” The Nation. June 13, 2011 p. 25 MAP has trained more than 350 young people in gardening, food systems, and business while using vacant lots to grow and sell more than 5,000 pounds of affordable fresh produce to residents in the community. MAP packages its own chili starter and salsa, sold in grocery stores throughout the region, and a new aquaponics facility will yield 25,000 tilapia in the coming year. *Community based economy *local grassroots alternatives *”a new economic philosophy for America, where we the people aren’t owned by business and capital; instead, we the people own the economy.”
- Fresh Moves is a local initiative in Chicago that is providing opportunities to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables for residents of food deserts.
- Fresh Moves employs people from the neighborhood.
- Fresh Moves Partners with several organizations, including the Green Youth Farm of the Chicago Botanic Garden. The Fresh Moves bus is in the background on the right.
- Let me briefly describe what a sustainable food system is, some of the problems we face today, and, and how using the food system approach will allow us to improve the situation, if not fix it. I want to recognize the work of several authors including David Wallinga, Michael Hamm, Mary Story, and others, from the special, 2009 free issue of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition. I quote extensively from their work here. “ A systems approach recognizes the existence of a complex interaction of processes with outcomes and results that influence one or more of those processes. , it is not one factor that makes for optimal function or dysfunction of the whole. A much broader and deeper understanding of health derives from looking at the food system as an entire system, from consumers back to food processors and farmers, and not only at the food itself but at the health implications of how that food is produced, processed, marketed, and distributed. In addition, the food system is a naturebased system: food and agriculture are inexorably rooted in the natural cycles.” Wallinga challenges public health workers to understand this. “Other wise we run the risk of one policy negating another policy’s effectiveness: Community incentives for more fruits and vegetables in convenience stores could be overwhelmed by federal policies that create a favorable business environment for the production of highly processed foods.” (Muller et al example 2009) Problems: Hunger in IL-- 11.1% of Illinois Households face food insecurity. Almost 2 million Illinois Children are eligible to receive free and reduced lunch; 1.6 million people participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) in February 2010, this is a 14% increase in the number of households participating from the previous year Source: Healthy Land, Healthy People: Building a better understanding of sustainable food systems for Food and Nutrition Professionals: A Primer. March 2007 American Dietetic Association
- Food deserts in IL (USDA food desert calculator, Block, Chavez and Birgen report);
- http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/ The USDA had a web page that provides maps of places where people live who are far from grocery stores.
- high cost of recommended fruits and vegetables; the obesity epidemic, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses that are related to diet; struggles to provide healthy foods to students in school; Adapted using a CPI increase of 57% over that time period, from Putnam J, Allshouse J, Kantor LS. U.S. per capita food supply trends: More calories, refined carbohydrates and fats. FoodReview 2002; 25(3): 2-15.
- The struggle for farmers to make a living. FIGURE 4 US gross and net farm income, 1929–2008 ($2000 dollars). Source: Used by author's permission. From Wise T. Global Development and Environment Institute Working Paper No.05-07: Identifying the Real Winners From U.S. Agricultural Policies. Global Development and Environmental Institute, Tufts University. 2006. Author updated to 2008, using data from USDA/ERS, Farm Income and Balance Sheet Indicators, 1929–2008.
- A report The Color of Food indicates that there are 11 million people in the food chain working full-time earning an income women and people of color earn anywhere from 50 to 23 % less than white men working the food chain. (Applied Research Center, 2011) Behind the Kitchen Door: ROC Chicago Roc United http://www.rocunited.org/files/Chicago_BKD_lores_edit0119.pdf Senate Bill 840, the bill to address farmer’s market and cottage food industry operations.
- women and people of color earn anywhere from 50 to 23 % less than white men working the food chain. (Applied Research Center, 2011) For the entire nation to meet Dietary Guidelines’ recommendations with domestically produced fruits and vegetables, acreage devoted to growing produce would need to increase by approximately 13 million acres. In 2003, more than twice as many fresh vegetables were imported as were exported. By Yvonne Yen Liu and Dominique Apollon, Ph.D. White men earned the highest wages of all race and gender groups working in the food system. For every dollar of median income a white man earned, men of color made 20 to 40 cents less (see Figure 6). Being a woman posed a severe penalty in wages for food workers. White women earned 63 cents for every dollar in median wage that a white man made. Women of color fared much worse: Asian women made 68 cents, Black women made 53 cents, and Latina women made 50 cents. In our post-industrial society, more jobs are available in the low-wage service sector, which require little to no skills, than there are in manufacturing and distribution.19 Union membership in manufacturing and distribution was higher, at 10 and 29 percent respectively, than the national rate of 12 percent in 2008.20 Food production and service/retail had few unionized labor, at 3 and 2 percent. More than 60 percent of food workers are employed in the service sector, and less than 15 percent in food manufacturing. Collectively, people of color are overrepresented in food production and processing occupations (see Figure 4). Disaggregated, a disproportionate number of workers of color hold these bottom-tier jobs, especially Latinos. More than 70 percent of workers who grade and sort through farm yields are Latino. Food service workers labor in a gloves-off economy, where labor abuses are rampant.21 Our findings were that food service workers as a whole made low wages, but in most of these occupations, people of color made less than whites (see Figure 5B). For example, half of all white bartenders earned $11.41 an hour, while the median hourly salary for bartenders of color was 77 cents less per hour than that of their white counterparts.
- A good graphic representation of a disconnect between public health goals and agricultural policy is created by Kitchen Gardeners International. They show the layout of the White House Garden in Spring 2011. It is planted with a wide range of vegetables: spinach, lettuce, pak choy, turnips, blueberries, collards, beets, peas, kale, radish, rhubarb, kohlrabi, herbs, mint, raspberries, swiss chard, arugula, broccoli, …
- The comparison garden is called AmericasSubsidy garden. In it 4 commodity crops get 90% of the 11 billion per year subsidy: Corn, Wheat, Cotton and soybeans. Fruits and vegetables receive 0.5% of the total subsidy, equal to $50 million. It is a tiny part of the garden in terms of square feet on the layout. The American industrial food system consumes fossil fuels intensively, accounting for about 19% of the nation’s fossil energy.
- Industrialized food production greatly impacts climate, therefore, and a changing climate will more greatly impact food production. Climate change will change weather patterns and increase extreme weather, and the resultant increases in heat, drought, and downpours will have significant regional impacts on farming. A study by Stanford researchers shows that in many regions we are already seeing effects on crop production. “ Industrialized animal production is intensive in its use of antibiotics, in addition to other resources. As much as 70% of all antimicrobials in the United States are given to otherwise healthy beef cattle, swine, and poultry in their feed as a routine part of their production50; half of these antibiotics are thought to be from 7 drug classes important to human medicine, including penicillins, tetracyclines, erythromycins…” D. Wallinga Figure 1. Observed changes in growing season temperature for crop growing regions for 1980-2008. Values show the linear trend in temperature for the main crop grown in that grid cell, and for the months in which that crop is grown. Values indicate the trend in terms of multiples of the standard deviation of historical year-to-year variation. A value of two, for example, indicates that the ex-pected growing season temperature in 2008 was two standard deviations above the expected value in 1980. Grid cells with less than 1% of land area covered by maize, wheat, rice, or soybean, are omitted for clarity. Climate leads to crop declines worldwide US farmers dodge the impacts of global warming -- at least for now Research The United States seems to have been lucky so far in largely escaping the impact of global warming on crop production. But for most major agricultural producing countries, the rising temperatures have already reduced their yields of corn and wheat compared to what they would have produced if there had been no warming, according to a new study led by Stanford researchers. Authors David Lobell - Stanford University Wolfram Schlenker - Assistant Professor in Economics at Columbia University Justin Costa-Roberts - Stanford University Production effects have likely contributed in part to the rise in global food prices. The significant global effect on maize and wheat production has meant that global supply has risen slower than it otherwise would have. Using prior studies of economic responses to a shift in the supply curve, we estimate that the warming ef-fects on production have led to a roughly 20% increase in global market prices for these commodities. If one accounts for the beneficial effects of increasing CO2 during the study period (due to the fertilization effect) the net effect of cli-mate and CO2 changes has been a roughly 5% increase in prices. At current market prices and global production le-vels, this translates to roughly an additional $50 billion per year spent on food. Source http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu/publications/climate_trends_and_global_crop_production_since_1980/
- Four national associations, the American Dietetic Association , the American Nurses Association, the American Planning Association, and the American Public Health Association, are endorsing seven guidelines or principles: The healthy sustainable food system should be Health promoting; Sustainable; Resilient; Diverse; Fair; Economically balanced; and Transparent. What is meant by sustainability? : Meeting the current food and nutrition needs while conserving, protecting and regenerating of water, soil, and other resources. Now we will have a special preview screening of a new working progress, a film by Sarah Carlson “Food Deserts In A Land of Plenty,” followed by some remarks from Sarah Carlson.