Category Archives: Food Policy and Advocacy

Farming, Food Policy and Advocacy

Old MacDonald had a farm – and then the neighbors sued

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by Scott Pitman and Michael Pill

Published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly: May 16th, 2013

Growing up in Iowa, and now living in the fertile Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, co-author Michael Pill appreciates the American Farmland Trust bumper sticker: “No Farms No Food.”

John Gerber, professor of sustainable food and farming at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says one reason he has a big garden, raises chickens, collects honey from his backyard bee hive, and harvests greens throughout the winter in an unheated greenhouse is “the reality of our current global situation, which in my mind includes the ‘perfect storm’ of climate change, peak oil and economic downturn.”  Gerber believes there is a need for more community and family-level self-sufficiency in the face of “this global crisis.”

Most of us depend on supermarkets with only a few days’ inventory replenished by petroleum-fueled trucks that deliver food from hundreds or even thousands of miles away. It is a complex, fragile system that we take for granted.

So who’s right in attorney Gerald Nissenbaum’s ongoing legal battle with Ingaldsby Farm, next door to his home in Boxford? The latest chapter in the conflict was summarized in Lawyers Weekly (“Lawyer loses latest round in bout with neighboring farm,” April 1).

To survive in an age of large-scale industrial food production, the family farm at issue advertises “[f]resh produce, frozen fresh foods and baked goods. Kids can feed rabbits, goats, pigs, sheep and chickens, play on a large wooden train, watch a puppet show, or just play in the large sand box.”

The Boxford battle turns on the limits of the protection afforded to farm stands under G.L.c. 40A, §3, which grants a zoning exemption (numbers in brackets added to aid in parsing statutory language) to:

“[F]acilities for the sale of produce, wine and dairy products, provided that either

[1] [a] during the months of June, July, August and September of each year or

[b] during the harvest season of the primary crop raised on land of the owner or lessee,

25 per cent of such products for sale, based on either gross sales dollars or volume have been produced by the owner or lessee of the land on which the facility is located, or

[2] [a] at least 25 per cent of such products for sale, based on either gross annual sales or annual volume, have been produced by the owner or lessee of the land on which the facility is located and

[b] at least an additional 50 per cent of such products for sale, based upon either gross annual sales or annual volume, have been produced in Massachusetts on land other than that on which the facility is located, used for the primary purpose of commercial agriculture, aquaculture, silviculture, horticulture, floriculture or viticulture, whether by the owner or lessee of the land on which the facility is located or by another … .”

Chapter 1128, §1A defines “farming,” “agriculture” and “farmer” as follows (numbers in brackets added to aid in parsing statutory language):

“‘Farming’ or ‘agriculture’ shall include farming in all of its branches and

[1] the cultivation and tillage of the soil,

[2] dairying,

[3] the production, cultivation, growing and harvesting of any agricultural, aquacultural, floricultural or horticultural commodities,

[4] the growing and harvesting of forest products upon forest land,

[5] the raising of livestock including horses,

[6] the keeping of horses as a commercial enterprise,

[7] the keeping and raising of poultry, swine, cattle and other domesticated animals used for food purposes, bees, fur-bearing animals, and

[8] any forestry or lumbering operations, performed by a farmer, who is hereby defined as one engaged in

[a] agriculture or farming as herein defined, or

[b] on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, including preparations for market, delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market.”

Based on that definition, G.L.c. 40A, §3 provides that municipalities cannot through zoning “prohibit, unreasonably regulate, or require a special permit for the use of land … for the primary purpose of commercial agriculture, aquaculture, silviculture, horticulture, floriculture or viticulture … .”

Where agriculture is permitted by local zoning, this statutory exemption applies to parcels of any size. In areas “not zoned for agriculture, aquaculture, silviculture, horticulture, floriculture or viticulture,” the exemption applies “to parcels of 5 acres or more or to parcels 2 acres or more if the sale of products produced from the agriculture, aquaculture, silviculture, horticulture, floriculture or viticulture use on the parcel annually generates at least $1,000 per acre based on gross sales dollars … .”

The Ingaldsby Farm owners chose pumpkins as their path to farm-stand exemption heaven (see [1][b] in G.L.c. 40A, §3 above), while neighbor Nissenbaum contends that apples should be deemed the primary crop, with rather different consequences.

The multi-year fight continues. Given the foregoing and the following, the ground is fertile for battle. Oranges, anyone?

A raft of other legislative and regulatory provisions make challenging farms and farm stands a daunting proposition. For example, G.L.c. 111 includes provisions protecting farming operations from local boards of health, beginning with the following definition in G.L.c. 111, §1:

“‘Farming’ or ‘agriculture,’ farming in all of its branches and cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing and harvesting of any agricultural, aquacultural, floricultural or horticultural commodities, the growing and harvesting of forest products upon forest land, the raising of livestock including horses, the keeping of horses as a commercial enterprise, the keeping and raising of poultry, swine, cattle and other domesticated animals used for food purposes, bees, fur-bearing animals, and any practices, including any forestry or lumbering operations, performed by a farmer, who is hereby defined as one engaged in agricultural of farming as herein defined, or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, including preparations for market, delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market.”

Chapter 111, §125A includes a provision “that the odor from the normal maintenance of livestock or the spreading of manure upon agricultural and horticultural or farming lands, or noise from livestock or farm equipment used in normal, generally acceptable farming procedures or from plowing or cultivation operations upon agricultural and horticultural or farming lands shall not be deemed to constitute a nuisance.”

Legislation providing for abatement of private nuisances grants immunity to farming operations (as defined by G.L.c. 128, §1A) in these words:

“No action in nuisance may be maintained against any person or entity resulting from the operation of a farm or any ancillary or related activities thereof, if said operation is an ordinary aspect of said farming operation or ancillary or related activity; provided, however, that said farm shall have been in operation for more than one year. This section shall not apply if the nuisance is determined to exist as the result of negligent conduct or actions inconsistent with generally accepted agricultural practices.”

If a local board of health nevertheless determines under G.L.c. 111, §125A that “a farm or the operation thereof constitutes a nuisance,” that statute requires written notice which can be appealed within 10 days to the local District Court. If an appeal is filed, “the operation of said order shall be suspended, pending the order of the court.”

If that weren’t enough, agricultural activities are also exempt from the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act and Regulations (G.L.c. 131, §40 and 310 C.M.R. 10.00). The definition of “Agriculture” in 310 C.M.R. 10.04 authorizes and defines “[n]ormal maintenance of land in agricultural use” that does not require an order of conditions from the local conservation commission.

Under 310 C.M.R. 10.04, “land in agricultural use” within a wetland or buffer zone must be “primarily and presently used in producing or raising one of more of the following agricultural commodities for commercial purposes”:

“1. animals, including but not limited to livestock, poultry, and bees;

  1. 2. fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts, maple sap and other foods for human consumption;
  2. 3. feed, seed, forage, tobacco, flowers, sod, nursery or greenhouse products, and ornamental plants or shrubs; and
  3. 4. forest products on land maintained in forest use … .”

The exemption is lost if agricultural use lapses for more than “five consecutive years,” unless the inactivity is under a U.S. Department of Agriculture contract or the land is used for “forestry purposes.” Id.

That becomes an issue when land allowed to lie fallow for more than five years is brought back into agricultural production. If hay has been cut to keep fields from returning to forest, one can argue to the local conservation commission that the haying constitutes “agricultural use.”

The wetlands exemption for agricultural use is reviewed in detail in “Farming in Wetland Resources Areas: A Guide to Agriculture and the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act (January 1996) (mass.gov/dep/water/laws/farman.pdf) by the state departments of Environmental Management (now Conservation & Natural Resources), Environmental Protection, and Food and Agriculture (now Agricultural Resources).

The Massachusetts Endangered Species Act grants similar protection, defining “land in agricultural use,” G.L.c. 131A, §1, to include the following activities:

“[R]aising animals … for the purpose of selling such animals or a product derived from such animals in the regular course of business … raising fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts and other foods for human consumption, feed for animals, tobacco, flowers, sod, trees, nursery or greenhouse products and ornamental plants and shrubs for the purpose of selling such products in the regular course of business; or when primarily and directly used in raising forest products … .”

Definitions and exemptions in the Endangered Species Act Regulations, 321 C.M.R. 10.02 and 10.14(1), are similar to those in the Wetlands Protection Act Regulations, 310 C.M.R. 10.04.

The bottom line is that attorney Nissenbaum, and others who may not want a farm next door, have an uphill battle in the face of the extensive legal protection for farming in Massachusetts. Perhaps next time we won’t get to compare apples to pumpkins. We’ll miss that.

Scott Pitman practices at the Law Offices of William V. Hovey in Boston. Michael Pill is a lawyer at Green, Miles, Lipton in Northampton.

Complete URL: http://masslawyersweekly.com/2013/05/16/old-macdonald-had-a-farm-and-then-the-neighbors-sued/

Reprinted with permission of the authors.

Food Policy and Advocacy

The Plight of the Honeybee

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Jennifer S. Holland for National Geographic News – Published May 10, 2013

Bees are back in the news this spring, if not back in fields pollinating this summer’s crops. The European Union (EU) has announced that it will ban, for two years, the use of neonicotinoids, the much-maligned pesticide group often fingered in honeybee declines. The U.S. hasn’t followed suit, though this year a group of beekeepers and environmental and consumer groups sued the EPA for not doing enough to protect bees from the pesticide onslaught.

For the last several years scientists have fretted over the future of bees, and although research has shed much light on the crisis, those in the bee business—from hive keepers to commercial farmers—say the insects remain in deep trouble as their colonies continue to struggle.

The current crisis arose during the fall of 2006 as beekeepers around the country reported massive losses—more than a third of hives on average and up to 90 percent in some cases. Bees were flying away and simply not coming back; keepers would find boxes empty of adult bees except for a live queen. No bee corpses remained to tell the tale. The losses were unprecedented and fast.

Now it’s five years later, and though colony collapse disorder (CCD)—the name given to the mysterious killer condition—has dwindled in the manner of cyclical diseases, bees are still battling for their lives and their colonies are weaker than ever. The latest data, from the 2012-2013 winter, indicate an average loss of 45.1 percent of hives across all U.S. beekeepers, up 78.2 percent from the previous winter, and a total loss of 31.1 percent of commercial hives, on par with the last six years. (Most keepers now consider a 15 percent loss “acceptable.”)

Unprecedented Pollinator Crisis

Why keep worrying over the fate of a bunch of pesky stinging insects? Bees in their crucial role as pollinators are paramount. Western nations rely heavily on managed honeybees—the “moveable force” of bees that ride in trucks from farm to farm—to keep commercial agriculture productive. About a third of our foods (some 100 key crops) rely on these insects, including apples, nuts, all the favorite summer fruits (like blueberries and strawberries), alfalfa (which cows eat), and guar bean (used in all kinds of products). In total, bees contribute more than $15 billion to U.S. crop production, hardly small potatoes.

No, we wouldn’t starve without their services—much of the world lives without managed pollinators. But we’d lose an awful lot of good, healthy food, from cherries and broccoli to onions and almonds. Or we’d pay exorbitant costs for farmers to use some other, less efficient pollination technique to supplement the work that healthy natural pollinators could do. Plus, bee health can tell us a lot about environmental health, and thus about our own well-being.

 Collecting honey from a honeycomb of the giant honeybee using smoke.

A man uses smoke to harvest honey from a honeycomb.Photograph by Tim Laman, National Geographic

 

Today’s pollinator crisis, which has also hit Europe and now parts of Asia, is unprecedented. But honeybees have done disappearing acts on and off for more than a century, possibly since humans began domesticating them 4,500 years ago in Egypt. In the United States, unexplained colony declines in the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1960s baffled farmers, and in 1995-1996 Pennsylvania keepers lost more than half of their colonies without a clear cause. The 1980s and 1990s saw various new parasites that hit bees hard; Varroa and tracheal mites became major killers, and they continue to plague hives and keep beekeepers up at night.

When CCD appeared, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture joined forces to study and fight the assailant, but a half-dozen years later they still lack a smoking gun. Recent work reveals higher loads of pathogens in the guts of bees from collapsed colonies versus healthy ones—making viral infections a likely culprit.

But this isn’t a case of one cause, one effect. Bee expert Dennis vanEngelsdorp of the University of Maryland likens the situation to HIV/AIDS in humans. “You don’t die of AIDS; you die of pneumonia or some other condition that hits when your immunity is down,” he says. Today’s bee mortalities may be behaving slightly differently. “But we’re pretty sure in all these cases, diseases are the tipping point” after bees’ immune systems are compromised.

So what makes bees vulnerable to those diseases, what’s killing their immunity, continues to be the $15-billion question.

Problems Piling Up

Zac Browning is a fourth-generation beekeeper based in North Dakota. His mostly migratory commercial operation runs about 22,000 hives in three states—meaning he trucks his bees to different locations at different times of year, renting out their pollination services to big farms like those producing almonds in California and canola in Idaho.

CCD devastated his hives a few years back, but “we’ve seen losses more recently from everything imaginable,” he says. “Pests, parasites, pesticide exposure, starvation, queen failures, you name it.”

In addition to these problems piling up, “our inputs have gone up one-and-a-half times in the last decade,” he says. “We now have to try to sustain bees [with extra food] when natural food is scarce, dearth periods that didn’t exist before.”

Part of the problem is keepers have to boost hive numbers to meet demand, “but the carrying capacity of the environment hasn’t changed.” In fact, it’s gone down. The amount of undeveloped land with good bee forage just isn’t enough to sustain the masses, he says.

Meanwhile, studies have shown that colonies with access to the best pollens (with more than 25 percent protein plus essential amino acids), which occur in diverse plant habitats once common across the landscape, are more robust and more resistant to disease than those in pollen-poor environments.

The Threat From Pesticides

Another adversary in the bees’ battle, as the EU reminds us, is pesticides. Pesticides themselves aren’t necessarily a death sentence for bees—and debate rages over whether, when properly applied, these chemicals can be used safely among pollinators. But exposure to them seems to open the door to other killers.

For example, bees exposed to sublethal doses of neonicotinoids—the type the EU is banning and that are used routinely in the U.S. on wheat, corn, soy, and cotton crops—become more easily infected by the gut parasite Nosema.

Meanwhile, last year a French study indicated that this same class of chemicals can fog honeybee brains and alter behavior. And a British study on bumblebees, a natural pollinator in decline in many places, reported neonicotinoids keep bees from supplying their hives with enough food for queen production.

 A queen bee.

A man shows his hive’s queen bee.Photograph by Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP

 

“Honeybees are complex,” says Browning. “If you reduce their lives by even just a few days, the colony itself never thrives, never reaches its maximum potential. Sublethal effects that don’t kill adults outright may still render hives weak and lethargic. And those hives might not survive the winter.”

What takes down the individual bee doesn’t necessarily wipe out the colony, vanEngelsdorp explains. And pesticides, like other factors, do their worst when combined with other chemicals or stressors, not necessarily all by themselves. “It’s synergism,” he says. “One plus one may equal 10 with the right two products or insults together.” (Samples of bee-collected pollen typically contain residue from numerous pesticides.) In the end, then, an immune-suppressed colony faces a downward spiral, unable to cope with stressors that weren’t a problem during healthier years.

The chemicals of modern agriculture have long been vilified, and they certainly represent a vital and active line of inquiry: The number registered for use in the U.S. exceeds 1,200 active ingredients distributed among some 18,000 products, and state pesticide use records are mostly unavailable, leaving a lot of question marks. No one knows much about how low-level exposure to various chemicals over time or how various combinations affect the insects. Meanwhile, migratory colonies likely have very different chemical exposure than those who stay put. The landscape is messy.

A New Concern

In newly worrisome findings, a study from a team at Penn State has revealed that “inert” ingredients (adjuvants) used regularly to boost the effectiveness of pesticides do as much or more harm than the active “toxic” ingredients. In one study adjuvants were shown to impair adult bees’ smelling and navigation abilities, and in a separate study they killed bee larvae outright.

The formulas for these other ingredients “are often proprietary information and not disclosed by the companies,” says Penn State’s Maryann Frazier, who wasn’t an author on the study, “so they cannot be independently tested and assessed for toxicity. When [the] EPA screens pesticides for registration, they only consider the active ingredient,” she says.

In addition, “there are no requirements by [the] EPA for companies to test the impacts of pesticides on immature stages of pollinators,” she says, “only adults.”

The EPA participated in a stakeholder conference last year to discuss honeybee health (a report is just out from that event). An EPA spokesperson declined to comment on the pending lawsuit but noted that the agency has been working to speed up its review of research related to neonicotinoids and their effect on honeybees. It is also tweaking existing regulatory practices to address various concerns including pesticide dust drift, product label warnings, and enforcement of bee-kill investigations.

Barrage of Stressors

So in addition to a changing climate and bizarre local weather systems, bees are threatened by chemical exposure in untested and unregulated combinations, disappearing foraging habitat with increasing monoculture that requires trucking bees from place to place, and fungal and viral intruders, plus the dreaded Varroa mite.

Meanwhile, nature is not sitting still. The diseases that are taking out immune-suppressed bees are quick to evolve resistance to farmers’ attempts to protect their bees. “Based on our management surveys last year, not one commercial product against Varroa worked consistently,” says vanEngelsdorp, citing numerous examples.

With the barrage of stressors bees face, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re no longer as resilient as they once were. And honeybees, vanEngelsdorp points out, are among the most robust pollinators. The native insects, such as bumblebees, stingless bees, and flies, may be in worse shape, though their plights—and role in the ecosystem—are far less well known.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit against the EPA is just revving up (the first hearing was March 15), and scientists continue to push hard to get more information on the unregulated ingredients in agrochemicals that are proving harmful. “Unless we can get at what’s actually being used on fields, we can’t analyze their effects,” says toxicologist Chris Mullin, a co-author of the Penn State adjuvant study. And some products, he says, “are nearly 100 percent adjuvant. Illogically, they are considered safe until proven otherwise.”

Other voices have risen strongly against current land use practices. “Honeybees need habitat,” Browning says. “That’s any floral source with good nutrition. And that’s not wheat, corn, or soy, crops that take up well over 60 percent of U.S. farmland.” We’ve traded bee needs for biofuel, he laments, and we’re paying the price.

“We also need good cooperation from [the] EPA—and from farmers and pesticide applicators—to implement and enforce best management practices,” he says. Also on his wish list: a better battery of tools to effectively combat the Varroa mite, the bane of all beekeepers.

“Bee culture has adapted to fit monoculture, and that’s not healthy,” says Browning. “If we can instead invest in good sustainable practices in agriculture, we can still thrive.”

But his confidence in the future, along with that of many of his fellow beekeepers, is declining with his hives. “We’re just about tapped out,” he says. “Without some real action we’ll see this industry dwindle away.” And as the industry goes, so go the little yellow insects that put so much good food on our plates.

Jennifer S. Holland, a contributing writer to National Geographic, wrote about pollinators in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic.

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Food Policy and Advocacy

NYT Editorial: Eating With Our Eyes Closed

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opinion-logo-smallThe food that comes from factory farms is ultimately consumed by the public, which gives the public an interest in knowing how that food is produced. But in most of the major agricultural states, laws have been introduced or passed that would make it illegal to gather evidence, by filming or photography, about the internal operations of factory farms where animals are being raised.

The precedent was set by Iowa in 2012, when Gov. Terry Branstad signed a law that makes undercover investigation of animal abuses in these facilities a crime. Utah and Missouri have passed similar laws. Some states already exempt factory farms from animal cruelty restrictions. Now these proposals would make it almost impossible for anyone to gather the kind of information that might provoke enough public outrage to get these exemptions modified.

Factory farms, like all homes and businesses, are already protected by law against trespassing. The so-called “ag-gag” laws now being considered by several states, including California, Illinois and Indiana, have nothing to do with protecting property. Their only purpose is to keep consumers in the dark, to make sure we know as little as possible about the grim details of factory farming. These bills are pushed by intensive lobbying from agribusiness corporations and animal production groups.

The ag-gag laws guarantee one thing for certain: increased distrust of American farmers and our food supply in general. They are exactly the wrong solution to a problem entirely of big agriculture’s own making. Instead of ag-gag laws, we need laws that impose basic standards on farm conditions and guarantee our right to know how our food is being produced.

Meet The New York Times’ Editorial Board

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For more on the downside of cheap meat

Food Policy and Advocacy

Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat

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A few weeks ago I wrote a blog titled “Antibiotic Resistance at Factory Farms “Scares the Hell Out of” Scientists.”   I mentioned this story in a class I had been invited to speak in last week and the response from most of the students was either disbelief or “where’s the science?”   Interestingly, today’s NY Times had a letter from a credible source asking a similar question.  David A. Kessler was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997.  Here is what he has to say.

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SCIENTISTS at the Food and Drug Administration systematically monitor the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets around the country for the presence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. These food products are bellwethers that tell us how bad the crisis of antibiotic resistance is getting. And they’re telling us it’s getting worse.

But this is only part of the story. While the F.D.A. can see what kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are coming out of livestock facilities, the agency doesn’t know enough about the antibiotics that are being fed to these animals. This is a major public health problem, because giving healthy livestock these drugs breeds superbugs that can infect people. We need to know more about the use of antibiotics in the production of our meat and poultry. The results could be a matter of life and death.

In 2011, drugmakers sold nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics for livestock — the largest amount yet recorded and about 80 percent of all reported antibiotic sales that year. The rest was for human health care. We don’t know much more except that, rather than healing sick animals, these drugs are often fed to animals at low levels to make them grow faster and to suppress diseases that arise because they live in dangerously close quarters on top of one another’s waste.

It may sound counterintuitive, but feeding antibiotics to livestock at low levels may do the most harm. When he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1945 for his discovery of penicillin, Alexander Fleming warned that “there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to nonlethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.” He probably could not have imagined that, one day, we would be doing this to billions of animals in factorylike facilities.

The F.D.A. started testing retail meat and poultry for antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 1996, shortly before my term as commissioner ended. The agency’s most recent report on superbugs in our meat, released in February and covering retail purchases in 2011, was 82 pages long and broke down its results by four different kinds of meat and poultry products and dozens of species and strains of bacteria.

It was not until 2008, however, that Congress required companies to tell the F.D.A. the quantity of antibiotics they sold for use in agriculture. The agency’s latest report, on 2011 sales and also released in February, was just four pages long — including the cover and two pages of boilerplate. There was no information on how these drugs were administered or to which animals and why.

We have more than enough scientific evidence to justify curbing the rampant use of antibiotics for livestock, yet the food and drug industries are not only fighting proposed legislation to reduce these practices, they also oppose collecting the data. Unfortunately, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, as well as the F.D.A., is aiding and abetting them.

The Senate committee recently approved the Animal Drug User Fee Act, a bill that would authorize the F.D.A. to collect fees from veterinary-drug makers to finance the agency’s review of their products. Public health experts had urged the committee to require drug companies to provide more detailed antibiotic sales data to the agency. Yet the F.D.A. stood by silently as the committee declined to act, rejecting a modest proposal from Senators Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, both Democrats, that required the agency to report data it already collects but does not disclose.

In the House, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Louise M. Slaughter of New York, also Democrats, have introduced a more comprehensive measure. It would not only authorize the F.D.A. to collect more detailed data from drug companies, but would also require food producers to disclose how often they fed antibiotics to animals at low levels to make them grow faster and to offset poor conditions.

This information would be particularly valuable to the F.D.A., which asked drugmakers last April to voluntarily stop selling antibiotics for these purposes. The agency has said it would mandate such action if those practices persisted, but it has no data to determine whether the voluntary policy is working. The House bill would remedy this situation, though there are no Republican sponsors.

Combating resistance requires monitoring both the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in our food, as well as the use of antibiotics on livestock. In human medicine, hospitals increasingly track resistance rates and antibiotic prescription rates to understand how the use of these drugs affects resistance. We need to cover both sides of this equation in agriculture, too.

I appreciate that not every lawmaker is as convinced as I am that feeding low-dose antibiotics to animals is a recipe for disaster. But most, if not all of them, recognize that we are facing an antibiotic resistance crisis, as evidenced by last year’s bipartisan passage of a measure aimed at fighting superbugs by stimulating the development of new antibiotics that treat serious infections. Why are lawmakers so reluctant to find out how 80 percent of our antibiotics are used?

We cannot avoid tough questions because we’re afraid of the answers. Lawmakers must let the public know how the drugs they need to stay well are being used to produce cheaper meat.

Food Policy and Advocacy

Walmart’s Death Grip on Groceries Is Making Life Worse for Millions of People

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For my own thoughts on the first announcement that the world’s largest food chain would support small, local and sustainable farmers, see my blog post from October 2010.

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March 26, 2013  |

This article was published in partnership with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance [3].

walmartWhen Michelle Obama visited a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, a few weeks ago to praise the company’s efforts to sell healthier food, she did not say why she chose a store in Springfield of all cities. But, in ways that Obama surely did not intend, it was a fitting choice. This Midwestern city provides a chilling look at where Walmart wants to take our food system.

Springfield is one of nearly 40 metro areas where Walmart now captures about half or more of consumer spending on groceries, according to Metro Market Studies.  Springfield area residents spend just over $1 billion on groceries each year, and one of every two of those dollars flows into a Walmart cash register.  The chain has 20 stores in the area and shows no signs of slowing its growth. Its latest proposal, a store just south of the city’s downtown, has provoked widespread protest.  Opponents say Walmart already has an overbearing presence in the region and argue that this new store would undermine nearby grocery stores, including a 63-year-old family-owned business which still provides delivery for its elderly customers. A few days before the First Lady’s visit, the City Council voted 5-4 to approve what will be Walmart’s 21st store in the community.

As Springfield goes, so goes the rest of the country, if Walmart has its way. Nationally, the retailer’s share of the grocery market now stands at 25 percent. That’s up from 4 percent just 16 years ago.  Walmart’s tightening grip on the food system is unprecedented in U.S. history.  Even A&P — often referred to as the Walmart of its day — accounted for only about 12 percent of grocery sales at its height in the 1940s.  Its market share was kept in check in part by the federal government, which won an antitrust case against A&P in 1946.  The contrast to today’s casual acceptance of Walmart’s market power could not be more stark.

Having gained more say over our food supply than Monsanto, Kraft, or Tyson, Walmart has been working overtime to present itself as a benevolent king. It has upped its donations to food pantries, reduced sodium and sugars in some of its store-brand products, and recast its relentless expansion as a solution to “food deserts.” In 2011, it pledged [4] to build 275-300 stores “in or near” low-income communities lacking grocery stores. The Springfield store Obama visited is one of 86 such stores Walmart has since opened.  Situated half a mile from the southwestern corner of a census tract [5] identified as underserved by the USDA, the store qualifies as “near” a food desert. Other grocery stores are likewise perched on the edge of this tract.  Although Walmart has made food deserts the vanguard of its PR strategy in urban areas, most of the stores the chain has built or proposed in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. are in fact just blocks from established supermarkets, many unionized or locally owned.  As it pushes into cities, Walmart’s primary aim is not to fill gaps but to grab market share.

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The real effect of Walmart’s takeover of our food system has been to intensify the rural and urban poverty that drives unhealthy food choices.  Poverty has a strong negative effect on diet, regardless of whether there is a grocery store in the neighborhood or not, a major 15-year study [6] published in 2011 in the Archives of Internal Medicine found. Access to fresh food cannot change the bottom-line reality that cheap, calorie-dense processed foods and fast food are financially logical choices for far too many American households.  And their numbers are growing right alongside Walmart.  Like Midas in reverse, Walmart extracts wealth and pushes down incomes in every community it touches, from the rural areas that produce food for its shelves to the neighborhoods that host its stores.

Walmart has made it harder for farmers and food workers to earn a living. Its rapid rise as a grocer triggered a wave of mergers among food companies, which, by combining forces, hoped to become big enough to supply Walmart without getting crushed in the process. Today, food processing is more concentrated than ever.  Four meatpackers slaughter 85 percent of the nation’s beef.  One dairy company handles 40 percent of our milk, including 70 percent of the milk produced in New England.  With fewer buyers, farmers are struggling to get a fair price. Between 1995 and 2009, farmers saw their share of each consumer dollar spent on beef fall from 59 to 42 cents [7]. Their cut of the consumer milk dollar likewise fell from 44 to 36 cents.  For pork, it fell from 45 to 25 cents and, for apples, from 29 to 19 cents.

Onto this grim reality, Walmart has grafted a much-publicized initiative to sell more locally grown fruits and vegetables.  Clambering aboard the “buy local” trend undoubtedly helps Walmart’s marketing, but, as Missouri-based National Public Radio journalist Abbie Fentress Swanson reported [8] in February, “there’s little evidence of small farmers benefiting, at least in the Midwest.”  Walmart, which defines “local” as grown in the same state, has increased its sales of local produce mainly by relying on large industrial growers. Small farmers, meanwhile, have fewer opportunities to reach consumers, as independent grocers and smaller chains shrink and disappear.

Food production workers are being squeezed too. The average slaughterhouse wage has fallen 9 percent since 1999.  Forced unpaid labor at food processing plants is on the rise.  Last year, a Louisiana seafood plant that supplies Walmart was convicted of forcing employees to work in unsafe conditions for less than minimum wage. Some workers reported peeling and boiling crawfish in shifts that spanned 24 hours.

The tragic irony is that many food-producing regions, with their local economies dismantled and poverty on the rise, are now themselves lacking grocery stores. The USDA has designated large swaths of the farm belt [9], including many agricultural areas near Springfield, as food deserts.

***

One might imagine that squeezing farmers and food workers would yield lower prices for consumers.  But that hasn’t been the case.  Grocery prices have been rising.  There are multiple reasons for this, but corporate concentration is at least partly to blame.  For most foods, the spread between what consumers pay and how much farmers receive has been widening.  Food processors and big retailers are pocketing the difference.  Even as Walmart touts lower prices than its competitors, the company’s reorganization of our food system has had the effect of raising grocery prices overall.

As Walmart stores multiply, fewer families can afford to eat well.  The company claims it stores bring economic development and employment, but the empirical evidence indicates otherwise.  A study [10] published in 2008 in the Journal of Urban Economics examined about 3,000 Walmart store openings nationally and found that each store caused a net decline of about 150 jobs (as competing retailers downsized and closed) and lowered total wages paid to retail workers.  Other research [11] by the economic consulting firm Civic Economics has found that, when locally owned businesses are replaced by big-box stores, dollars that once circulated in the community, supporting other businesses and jobs, instead leak out.  These shifts may explain the findings of another study [12], published in Social Science Quarterly in 2006, which cut straight to the bottom line: neighborhoods where Walmart opens end up with higher poverty rates and more food-stamp usage than places where the retailer does not expand.

This year, Walmart plans to open between 220 and 240 stores in the U.S., as it marches steadily on in its quest to further control the grocery market.  Policymakers at every level, from city councilors to federal antitrust regulators, should be standing in its way.  Very few are.  Growing numbers of people, though, are drawing the line, from the Walmart employees who have led a string of remarkable strikes against the company, to the coalition of small business, labor, and community groups that recently forced Walmart to step back [13] from its plans to unroll stores across New York City.

Back in Springfield, as Michelle Obama was delivering her remarks, framed by a seductive backdrop of oranges and lemons, a citizens group called Stand Up to Walmart [14] was also at work, launching a referendum drive to overturn the City Council’s vote and block Walmart from gaining any more ground in the city.

Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/stacy-mitchell
[3] http://www.ilsr.org/
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/us/21food.html?_r=0
[5] http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2013/02/michelle-obama-talks-business-at.html
[6] http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1106078
[7] http://www.ilsr.org/infographic-walmart-food/
[8] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can-small-farms-benefit-from-wal-mart-s-push-into-local-foods
[9] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-desert-locator.aspx%23.UVCXMb-i8W8
[10] http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dneumark/walmart.pdf
[11] http://www.ilsr.org/key-studies-walmart-and-bigbox-retail/%231
[12] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2006.00377.x/abstract
[13] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/business/a-respite-in-efforts-by-wal-mart-in-new-york.html?pagewanted=all
[14] https://www.facebook.com/groups/300521090064564/
[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/walmart
[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-0
[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/poverty-0
[18] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B


 

Food Policy and Advocacy

The “superstars” of the food movement honored on International Women’s Day

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Did you know that 60% of the students in the Sustaianble Food and Farming major at the University of Massachusetts are women. 

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March 8 was International Women’s Day – a day to recognize the steps that have been taken to improve gender equality and to acknowledge that much more needs to be done to level the playing field for women in all sectors, including agriculture.

Olivier De Shutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, The Feminization of Farming, drawing attention to the need to empower women farmers and remove the obstacles that hold them back from improving agricultural productivity, nutrition, and incomes. He says that “the most effective strategies to empower women who tend farm and family — and to alleviate hunger in the process — are to remove the obstacles that hinder them from taking charge of their lives.”

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, 40 percent of agricultural laborers in developing countries are women – and in some countries, they are as much as 80 percent of the agricultural work force. But women farmers’ yields are roughly 20-30 percent less than male farmers.

If gender barriers were eliminated and women farmers were able to match the yields of male farmers, global malnourishment could be reduced by 12 to 17 percent. And a study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute found that almost 55 percent of the reduction in hunger from 1970 to 1995 could be attributed to improvements in women’s status in society. In our guest post on Ecoagriculture Parners Landscapes for People, Food, and Nature blog, we highlight how providing better access to credit and inputs can not only improve the livelihoods of women farmers, but translates to better nutrition for their families.

In honor of International Women’s Day, Ellen Gustafson and I want to highlight seven women working to change the food system:

Jeomek Bak
Bak is the Chairperson of the Korean Women Peasants Association. The Korean Women’s Peasant Association (KWPA) is a national organization of women farmers based in Seoul, South Korea. In 2012, Bak accepted the Food Sovereignty Prize, which recognizes the Association for its work “promoting food sovereignty, women’s rights, and the survival of small-scale Korean farmers.” KWPA helped create the National Campaign Task Force, which focuses on defending food sovereignty in  South Korea. In addition, the group organizes training programs, runs the Our Sisters Garden linking women farmers and local consumers, and their Native Seed Campaign focuses on preserving Indigenous seed varieties.

Barbara Buchner
Buchner is a member of the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Advisory Board and is the head of CPI Europe. Her work focuses on international climate finance and market-based mechanisms and other policy approaches to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Her experience is important to Barilla’s research, making sure that agriculture is brought into the discussion of climate change at the international level.

Debra Eschmeyer
Eschmeyer is the co-Founder of FoodCorps and an organic farmer. FoodCorps helps connect kids to the food system by placing leaders in communities for a year. They teach students about  where food comes from and healthy eating habits, and they establish school gardens. Eschmeyer is a recipient of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award and serves on the advisory board of AGree.

Wenonah Hauter
Hauter is the Executive Director of Food & Water Watch. Her recent book Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America looks at corporate consolidation of the food system and the impacts on producers and eaters.From 1997 to 2005 she served as Director of Public Citizen’s Energy and Environment Program, focusing on water, food, and energy policy. She was also the environmental policy director for Citizen Action, where she worked with the organization’s 30 state-based groups, and she coordinated sustainable energy campaigns at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Saru Jayaramane
Jayaraman is the Director of the Food Labor Research Center and co-Founder of theRestaurant Opportunities Centers United. In the book, Behind the Kitchen Door, Jayaraman and co-author Eric Schlosser, highlight the need for foodies to recognize that sustainable food is not just about eating local or organic–a truly sustainable restaurant is one in which wait staff and cooks are treated fairly and make a living wage, and where workers and eaters alike have a positive experience.

Sophia Murphy
Murphy is a Senior Advisor for the Institute on Agriculture and Trade Policy. Her work focuses on U.S. trade and agricultural policy and the impact of trade rules on farmers in developing countries. She has also written about the impacts of international trade on development and food security, corporate concentration in the food system, the affect of biofuels on poverty, and the impact of aid programs.

Lindiwe Sibanda
Sibanda is the Chief Executive Officer of the Food and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) based in Pretoria, South Africa. Sibanda has led FANRPAN’s development strategy and is currently coordinating policy research and advocacy programs in Africa to improve food security in the region. In addition, she is Board Chair of the International Livestock Research Institute and she’s part of the Guardian Global Development advisory panel. Sibanda also led the No Agriculture, No Deal global campaign in 2009 to advocate for the inclusion of agriculture in the United Nations Framework on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

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Food Policy and Advocacy

Don’t let food marketers profit from your poor diet

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Interestingly, this editorial was in the local newspaper the day after the new UMass FARE (Food Access Research and Engagement) Project held a forum on this topic. 

fare

PHILIP KORMAN and MARGARET CHRISTIE                      Wednesday, March 7, 2013

SOUTH DEERFIELD — Last month, on the same Sunday, the Boston Globe and the New York Times both ran stories on food. Each presented a vision for the future, and each spoke to us about the power of marketing to influence culture — for good or for ill.

The Globe portrayed Northampton and the many green initiatives it supports. The New York Times ran a story titled “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” describing the major food companies’ use of both science and marketing to override our bodies’ instinctive avoidance of overeating.

The Globe’s story on Northampton focused on food and community: our vibrant farmers markets, our community farm and the Pedal People’s full circle, bicycle-powered services Continue reading Don’t let food marketers profit from your poor diet →

Food Policy and Advocacy

Michelle Obama: The Business Case for Healthier Food Options

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By MICHELLE OBAMA

For years, America’s childhood obesity crisis was viewed as an insurmountable problem, one that was too complicated and too entrenched to ever really solve. According to the conventional wisdom, healthy food simply didn’t sell—the demand wasn’t there and higher profits were found elsewhere—so it just wasn’t worth the investment.

But thanks to businesses across the country, today we are proving the conventional wisdom wrong. Every day, great American companies are achieving greater and greater success by creating and selling healthy products. In doing so, they are showing that what’s good for kids and good for family budgets can also be good for business.image

Take the example of Wal-Mart WMT -1.23% . In just the past two years, the company reports that it has cut the costs to its consumers of fruits and vegetables by $2.3 billion and reduced the amount of sugar in its products by 10%. Wal-Mart has also opened 86 new stores in underserved communities and launched a labeling program that helps customers spot healthy items on the shelf. And today, the company is not only seeing increased sales of fresh produce, but also building better Continue reading Michelle Obama: The Business Case for Healthier Food Options →

Food Policy and Advocacy

Twelve Reasons Why Globalization is a Problem

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Globalization seems to be looked on as an unmitigated “good” by economists. Unfortunately, economists seem to be guided by their badly flawed models; they miss  real-world problems. In particular, they miss the point that the world is finite. We don’t have infinite resources, or unlimited ability to handle excess pollution. So we are setting up a “solution” that is at best temporary.

Economists also tend to look at results too narrowly–from the point of view of a business that can expand, or a worker who has plenty of money, even though these users are not Continue reading Twelve Reasons Why Globalization is a Problem →

Business, Food Policy and Advocacy

How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy

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coooppic
Andrew Dwyer and Shawn Seebach are in their first year at Equal Exchange, where they are learning the business of coffee as well as how to work in a cooperative.

Our little group of a dozen families was running out of time. After meeting every weekend for three years to plan our hoped-for cohousing community, and after investing much of our savings to acquire a few acres of land, it looked as though our dream would fail. We couldn’t find a bank that would finance a cooperative.

It was our local credit union that saved us. “You’re owned by your members? What’s
so odd about that? We’re owned by our members,” the president of the Kitsap Credit Union mused.

With that financing, we were able to build 30 affordable homes and a common house, and Continue reading How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy →