The Birmingham-Jefferson Food Policy Council: New Opportunities

I apologize for ignoring this blog for so long.  Since October, I've starting writing my dissertation, and most of my writing energy is taken up there.

 I do, however, want to weigh in on the creation of a new food policy council, a process which I have observed rigorously and hopefully played a minor role.  The food policy council is a great idea and I sincerely hope for its success.  FPCs tend to run the gambit from completely independent of any government entity to completely run by departments of health.  The BJFPC is a public-private partnership, which bodes well for both independent thinking and actually influencing policy, provided it doesn't devolve into gridlock.

As the agenda is not set, I wanted to provide some directions for the food policy council to take in hopes to that it will contribute to a more robust, diverse discussion of the food system in Jefferson County.


1.  While the food policy council pulls from a diverse cross section of the food system, it lacks racial and class diversity.  Only 5 of the 21 members are people of color and all of the members are professionals - it lacks representation from the working class.  Because of this, the council will be significantly limited in perspective.  To rectify this, the council must develop a strong relationship with the neighborhood associations in Birmingham and with black church leaders throughout the region.  It also must adopt anti-racism as a stated goal.

2.  The largest problem facing urban farms and community gardens in the region is lack of funding.  Few national foundations fund urban agriculture programs, and local funding is a very small with many feeding at the trough.  The council must devise programs that can be passed by local municipalities that will help fund these struggling farms.  Most of these farms and gardens are trying to provide green jobs in areas that have little employment opportunity, which can be an important selling point to local politicians.

3.  One way to fund such a program would be the creation of a soda tax.  A rough estimate of revenues from a one cent soda tax in Jefferson County is 25 million dollars.  This would be more than enough to fund urban agriculture and recycling, both dire needs in the region. Developing robust ties to low-income and communities of color would be even more imperative, given that pushing a soda tax would be initially unpopular.

And here are the things that it should not do:

1.  The focus on health falls on deaf ears for many in the region.  I have critiqued the discussion of obesity in a previous blog and I believe this to be a highly depoliticized and extremely problematic approach to the food movement.  Everyday people in Jefferson County's communities are focused on getting grocery stores and creating employment, not on issues that demean their body-type and lifestyle.  The obesity discussion is unfortunately highly evangelical.

2.  The BJFPC should also avoid solely focusing on creating profitable markets for rural farmers, though this is important.  Jefferson County is largely an urban county and the BJFPC should reflect the needs of an urban county.  While delivering fresh, healthy food is important, job creation is more important.  The fastest way to get someone to eat better is to give them a job or a better job.

3.  And please, please abandon any discussion of food labeling.  It costs money, has virtually no effect, and shows a very rudimentary view on how to change behaviors.

I sincerely hope that my suggestions don't fall on deaf ears, and I wish the BJFPC the best of success in the future.

A review of Weighing In (Julie Guthman, UC Press, 2011)

As anyone in the food movement can tell you, obesity has become the singular issue of the movement. In her new book Weighing In, geographer Julie Guthman of the University of California, Santa Cruz, sets her sights squarely on the singularity of this issue, arguing that "Those who want to redress the problem [of obesity] put a great deal of effort into educating people to make better choices rather than into reforming the policies that allow bad food to be produced or mitigating the consequences for those harmed."

She does not stop there.  She goes on to lambast BMI (body mass index) as a blunt instrument and to skewer obesity alleviation programs that focus too much on individual choice.  Guthman argues that something called "healthism" - the attachment of a moral or ethical component to decisions made regarding health, and especially food - has turned the food movement into a sort of evangelical effort to influence the lifestyle of individuals.  That lifestyle, Guthman argues, will have very little effect on obesity, because the most likely culprit for the increase in obesity is not overeating and lack of exercise, but obesogens - environmental toxins and other substances thought to cause obesity by disrupting the endocrine system and stimulating estrogen production.

Her arguments hold together thus far; it is convincing that individual choice is much too central in the food movement today, particularly with the dearth of policy oriented work, and her arguments for environmental obesogens are backed by convincing evidence.  However, her assertion that the creation of alternative food institutions should be abandoned in favor of policy and anti-capitalist work rings of the ivory tower, a quality unfortunate in much Marxist critique.

While Guthman is correct to attempt to move the food movement away from individual choice and towards more traditional social movement interventions, she fails to see the wisdom in creating the alternative institutions necessary to replace capitalist agriculture.  Both anti-capitalist and policy work need to be a central focus of the food movement, because the institutional context in which food is produced creates obesogens and other types of toxic food.  Guthman gets this right.  However, it is also necessary to create an alternative institutional context that can eventually replace the existing ones.  Together, these are the creation and destruction of social change.

Guthman's book is a necessary read for anyone in the food movement.  It tackles the cutting edge questions of the day, undermines much of the institutionalization (and probably co-optation) of the local food movement, and provides a strong anti-capitalist vision for the future of the movement.  Hers is a timely and profound voice calling the movement back to its justice-oriented roots. Listen to her.

Food access is not the answer

Today's LA Times article on food access and obesity confirms what I have been suggesting throughout this entire blog.

Eating healthy is a question of having money, not of having access to food outlets. Poor folks are going to buy the cheapest food even if a conventional grocery store with healthier options exists. The quickest way to improve people's diet is to increase their income. 

The food movement up to this point has centered on technical fixes to obesity - namely, increasing access to healthy food - but what is needed are interventions that combine community economic development with increased food access. Main Street Birmingham and Project Hopewell are developing public markets in Southwest Birmingham for precisely this reason, but this project is only one piece of the solution.

Birmingham needs comprehensive community economic development beginning with food production through urban farms and possibly aquaponics cooperatives, proceeding to value-added products such as cakes, breads, and jams, and ending with the public markets that are being created.  Comprehensive projects like these will increase access to healthy food, raise incomes, provide employment, and integrate food within every aspect of community life.

These projects are inherently political in the sense that they challenge dominant economic development paradigms that center on financial power, instead devolving control to individual entrepreneurs and in ideal cases, worker-owners of a cooperative.  This stands in stark contrast to the ill-conceived and ineffective focus on access.

The pieces are in place to do real community economic development around food, and the time is now to shift the movement from technical fixes to revolutionary projects.

Let's stop talking about obesity.

I'm glad Eric Schlosser has publicly adopted the food justice paradigm in his recent Washington Post op-ed, Why being a foodie isn't 'elitist.'

I'm saddened that it took criticism from industrial food advocates to finally gain acknowledgment that food justice is the only acceptable paradigm for the food movement, and that years of criticism from food justice advocates went ignored.  Unfortunately, because of this, Schlosser appears to wield the poor as a political tool instead of having a true dedication to the plight of the oppressed. Anyone with any significant involvement with the food movement (I have been involved in both Alabama and North Carolina) should recognize that the movement has absolutely no answers for the poor and that most movement interventions are targeted at the privileged-lifestyle left.

Leaders like Schlosser may finally be understanding the necessity of addressing injustice for a movement to be successful, but the practices of the rank-and-file in the movement only reinforce its elitist status. Farmer's markets in trendy neighborhoods, $800-a-year CSAs and cooking demonstrations are no substitute for a robust policy agenda that genuinely remakes the food system.

While I'm glad Schlosser is on the right side, I'm cynical about his motivations. I wonder how much work he has actually done in poor neighborhoods and his argument seems like one of political convenience. Furthermore, to suggest that the food movement has any workable answers (i.e. empowerment not charity) to issues of hunger and food insecurity is to either be completely naive or outright lying.

The fact of the matter is that the industrial food system produces affordable food, and the food movement does not. Industrial food advocates are right - the food movement is elitist, but Schlosser's arguments are a step in the right direction. I have another step to suggest.

Let's stop talking about obesity.  Medical professionals have long branded the poor and oppressed as deviant, alternately disciplining that deviance with punishment and working to change that deviance through medical intervention. All the talk about obesity serves the purpose of branding the poor as deviant because they are poor - it further "others" them. Moreover, the BMI was developed using white bodies as the norm, meaning as usual, whiteness becomes the standard by which all others are judged.

The poor deserve good food because they are human beings, not because it is our ("the privileged's") job to ensure that they meet some standard of bodily normality. They also deserve the option to be allowed to choose bad food.  In fact, this line of reasoning calls into question whether largely white leaders like Michael Pollan and Schlosser (and myself for that matter) should have any say at all about how food is produced, distributed and consumed among the poor. Food sovereignty should be the goal, not technocratic fixes to bodies constructed as deviant by medical science.

Schlosser's op-ed is a step in the right direction. Now the question is, are the poor going to serve as a political volleyball, or is the movement going to bend towards a real justice paradigm?

Race, Integration, and a Unified Food Movement

The local food movement has a race problem.

In recent years, many academics have pointed this out, the foremost being Julie Guthman at UC Santa Cruz.  The crux of the issue is that the abstract aims and goals of the movement, such as ending GMOs and dealing with obesity, fail to resonate with communities of color; and, when white groups try to address issues like food security that are more resonant with these communities, they often lack the multicontextual skills to garner any support.

Furthermore, those pulling the triggers on food policy at the local level are very often white and college educated. The dominant narrative (think Michael Pollan) within the local food movement represents only the interests of the lifestyle left and has a very elitist bent. The movement addresses structural issues in regards to small rural farmers, but fails to address structural issues on the consumption side as well and the connection between food and wider justice concerns.

This blog aims to articulate a different vision of the local food movement, a vision that I call food justice. While lifestyle and cultural issues are very important and should not be ignored, the food justice approach pays close attention not only to structural issues in regards to farmers but also structural issues in regards to food consumption and production in general. In other words, the agribusiness food system destroys the small family farm and produces hunger, food insecurity, and obesity. Moreover, the larger economic system produces conditions of poverty which lead to hunger, food insecurity and obesity. A food movement that is a real movement addressing issues of justice must understand the structural causes of and connections between small farm decline, food hardship, obesity and poverty.

This is not to say that lifestyle choices and culture are unimportant. However, food related behavior is connected to structural injustices produced by the system. Consider that many low income people eat at fast food restaurants regularly because of the inexpensiveness of the menu items. These people develop lifestyles and cultural norms surrounding food through repeated engagement with cheap food, creating what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called a “culture of necessity.” Of course, there are ways to eat well on the cheap, but certainly these aren’t culturally “normal” with low-income people or even well-off people for that matter. Ultimately, the lifestyle change to better food for low-income people is complicated by the high cost of good food.

The local food movement must therefore work on both structural issues of poverty and access and cultural/lifestyle issues surrounding food consumption because changes in culture/lifestyle have an effect on structures and changes in structures have an effect on culture/lifestyle – they are mutually constitutive.

What does race have to do with this? Two things.

First, though not all black and Latino community gardens are addressing the broad structural issues, the only organizations addressing these issues at all are black and Latino community gardens. There are a number of reasons for this.

• White community gardens do not have the first-hand experience with food hardship, and to address it would be a significant step outside their self-interest. 
• Addressing structural injustices compromises hard-won alliances that white community gardens have developed with moderate and conservative white folks and organizations. Simply put, issues of justice are threatening to white community garden’s constituencies.  

In this criticism, I do not mean to argue that white community gardens should be making justice related arguments. In general, they should serve their people's needs and interests. However, if white community gardens move to create institutions that claim to be for everyone, they cannot shut out the critical discourse of black and brown community gardens.

Second, it has been my experience that the solutions provided by the food justice faction of the local food movement differ from those of the movement broadly. The white side of the movement has basically consumption-oriented solutions – food labeling, "eat local" campaigns, farmer’s markets and CSAs, while black and Latino gardens are focused on production-side solutions such as job creation, novel urban ag systems that include aquaponics, solar power, and soon vertical gardening and cooperatives. Ultimately, these two approaches are complimentary, and it would behoove whites and people of color to work together in this regard.

To sum up, the local food movement can be enriched by the holistic approach of food justice.  Food justice understands the dialectical relationship between food culture and the structure of the food system and attacks on all fronts.  Race has been a primary divider between the food justice movement and the larger local food movement, in some respects because of self-interest and in others because of exclusion. Activists and participants in the food movement would be served well to integrate the interests of everyone into a broader, more comprehensive justice-oriented narrative.