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.

Why Health is Really a Stand-in for Class

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu reveals in his seminal text Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste that lifestyle is a function of an individual's position in society.  In "America's Fittest Cities," Atlantic blogger Richard Florida shows how those lifestyles are a function of uneven economic development in the US. In the rankings of the fittest Americans, "fitness" tracts roughly onto the division of labor between American cities.

Working class, poorer cities are "unfit," while wealthy cities with heavy knowledge industries are "fit."  The lifestyle dubbed healthy by the CDC and others is the lifestyle most appropriate to the labor market best characterized as post-industrial, information-oriented, and "creative," while the least "fit" lifestyles are associated with heavy industry and manufacturing, remnants of an older economic paradigm.

Think of it this way: the assembly line nature of fast food is more congruent with vertically integrated heavy industry or Fordism, while farmer's markets are more in line with creative, flexible, knowledge-based industries.  Foodies are more or less producing the food system of neoliberalism and flexible accumulation.  In other words, the people who have the "healthiest" lifestyle are the most affluent and they use the notion of health to legitimate and generalize the culture and lifestyle associated with affluence.

Simply put, the idea of an objectively healthy lifestyle serves more to legitimate the wealthy than it does to actually address the health needs of the exploited.

As I have said in previous posts, good food is a human right, and what counts as good food or a healthy lifestyle should be determined by those living that lifestyle - not by technocrats at the Health and Human Services and the Center for Disease Control.  These organizations base the assumptions of fitness for their research on the lifestyles of the elite.

For instance, the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (creepy name), on which the AFI is based, opens the exercise section with the question "During the past month, other than your regular job, did you participate in any physical activities or exercises such as running, calisthenics, golf, gardening, or walking for exercise?"  So the activity of an auto mechanic or construction worker during their regular job doesn't count as exercise?  Obviously, the question is remarkably biased in favor of those who do sedentary work and exercise for leisure - biased in favor of the lifestyle of the wealthy.  By the very structure of the survey, a working class person cannot be as fit as an elite.

Of course, there are negative health effects to not being wealthy, such as lack of adequate food and stress, but food activists should connect these to the unevenness associated with economic development and not try to generalize one, elitist culture of health and fitness for everyone.  At its root, food injustice is economic injustice.  This should be the starting point.

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?

Constitution Reform Coopted?

In an admirable display of political dexterity, Alabama Republicans may have demobilized an entire movement and successfully co-opted their agenda, all while delivering for their powerful friends.

What am I talking about? Alabama State Senator Del Marsh's (R-Anniston) plan to remake the Alabama constitution in favor of his buddies. Naturally, the tax code is way off limits, meaning that our current tax code which punishes the poor will remain firmly in place.

Home rule makes the cut, but with a commission made entirely of Republicans, it is fair to say county commissions won't be given too much more power, especially in the realm of taxation.

I can just see Marsh now, running for governor, claiming the mantel of bipartisan reformer and raking in donations from the new plantation owners (timber) - who seem to be cut from the same mold as the old plantation owners (cotton).

Sadly, the response from the Alabama left has ranged from adulation to giddiness.

Nevertheless, this represents an opportunity and possibly even a significant misstep by Republicans, if played right by reformers. No longer is constitution reform a fringe issue of the left, but a mainstream reform on which everyone agrees. All that remains is to determine the rules engagement.

Republicans have fired the first salvo. Liberals and leftists should waste no time firing back. They should make it known that constitution reform is only legitimate if it includes:

1. Tax code reform
2. Limited but significant home rule
3. The commission should be composed of leaders from civil society, business, and government, not just government.
4. The commission should consist of a group representative of Alabama's diversity of opinions and backgrounds, not just Republicans

There is plenty more, but what I'm trying to say is that the left needs to quickly produce a counter plan that questions the very framework set up by the Republicans and attempt to push constitution reform onto more friendly turf.

Reformers have worked for years to get to this point and, as Yoda said on the eve of the Clone Wars, "now the time is."

[Ed. note: Zac is a nerd.]

Reclaiming our Right to the City

Influential French philosopher Henri Lefebvre argued that justice in late capitalism is about the "right to the city."  In this he meant that not only outcomes are important, but more so control over the processes that produce those outcomes.

As this blog makes abundantly clear, I am concerned about control over the processes of food production, particularly by those made hungry by the food system. There are many ways to do this: experiments with food policy councils produced mixed results, some effective but undemocratic, some democratic and ineffective, and so on. Still, the notion that city dwellers - the racially, economically and socially oppressed especially - should control the process of food production can be expanded to an understanding of related and parallel processes and should provide opportunities for alliance building.

Take, for example, housing. Substandard housing exists in areas that have been abandoned by whites and capital. Because poverty almost always corresponds with these areas, real estate investors are dis-incentivized to put money into housing in those neighborhoods. Why invest in an inner city when the suburbs are much more profitable?

Now, consider the phenomena of food deserts - geographic areas that lack traditional grocery stores or outlets for healthy food in general. These areas are served primarily by convenience stores and fast food restaurants. The process behind the production of food deserts and the production of substandard housing are exactly the same. Like real estate investors, grocers see no need to invest in inner city neighborhoods when suburbs offer a larger market.

What is clear is that substandard housing, food deserts, and poverty are located spatially in the same geographic area and that the processes producing these conditions are far outside the control of the residents of inner city neighborhoods.

A closer examination of injustice in transit, health, jobs, environmental degradation and other spheres reveals that injustice is almost always located in the same geographic area, and this spatial injustice underpins the potential for the building of transformational alliances. Housing advocates, food justice activists and others are natural allies in the struggle against the non- or anti-democratic processes of the global economy.

These allies must struggle to regain control of the city, to reclaim the processes making their neighborhood, and yes, to assert what Lefebvre called their right to the city.

The Allen Plan and Ways Forward

Will Allen's Plan: Providing food, jobs  

Until very recently, the typical strategy for a local faction of the alternative agriculture movement included farmers markets, subscription plans, institutional purchasing and distributorships.  This approach appealed to high end buyers, supported small family farms, and focused almost myopically on market-based solutions to the small farm crisis.  However, this path can go only so far as the high capital turnover times in agriculture, stemming from high production times, make agriculture a poor investment.  

Consider an investor looking at an investment in steel production or in agriculture.  Since turnover times are much shorter in steel production than in agriculture, it makes good sense for the investor to invest in steel. Investors are more likely to invest in steel than agriculture because it takes longer to make a tomato than to make steel. This is why American agriculture is subsidized to the tune of 16 billion dollars a year, subsidies which allow large farmers to market at below the cost of production and make farming a lucrative investment. With the current structure of subsidies, the small family farm and urban agriculture will never be a good investment because of the natural limitations to agricultural production and the lack of government support for these enterprises.


While national level subsidies are unlikely to change in the near future, subsidies for local agriculture can be developed by state and local governments. In fact, fiscal sustainability and growth for urban and local agriculture hinges on the ability to leverage support from governments. 

I want to next outline a simple, but effective policies and arguments to push local governments towards subsidies for local and urban agriculture.

• Argument: The region has a legacy of agricultural production, and that legacy should be protected by the government.  

Policy tools: land trusts, tax abatement, agricultural zoning

• Argument: Local agriculture produces jobs and economic development (see Allen Plan).  

Policy tools: direct payment, land trusts, tax abatement, agricultural job training programs, increased availability of public land for agricultural production, "sin" taxes on high fructose corn syrup and other bad foods earmarked for ag. 

•  Argument: Local agriculture relieves food insecurity through economic development and providing access to healthy food.  (The single most important item for addressing food insecurity is economic development.  People have little to eat because they are poor and eat bad food because it is cheap).  

Policy tools: direct payment, land trusts, tax abatements, agricultural job training programs, subsidized farmers markets (municipality pays farmers to provide fruits and vegetables at a discounted price), institutional purchasing, increased availability of public land for agricultural production, "sin" taxes on high fructose corn syrup and other bad foods with proceeds earmarked for ag.

While this is not an exhaustive list, the strategy is markedly different from previous strategies in that it focuses heavily on government-subsidized economic development and relief of food insecurity. 

It also operates on the assumption that food is urbanizing quickly, a reflection of urbanization processes across the globe, and attempts to develop a strategy appropriate for that urbanization.  Even many farmers who may consider themselves rural are in fact in metropolitan areas, and, clearly, they are utilizing urban markets.  

Ultimately, the goal is to eliminate the food system that produces, primarily, hunger, food insecurity, and bad food, and replace it with an urban-based food system that distributes good food fairly and sustainably.