Feeeding The Roots: CHAPTER 5: Public Policy

Feeeding the Roots On June 18, 2008, H.R.
6124 -- The Food, Conservation, and En-

ergy Act of 2008 – became law over President Bush’s veto. This 662
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy
page bill, known as the 2008 Farm Bill for short, was the product of
over two years of intense lobbying, negotiating, and organizing by
farm and food advocates.
Some in the public interest community declared “victory” with its

passage. But if there was a victory for the Local Food Revolution, it
The 2008 Farm Bill
was a small one. Less than 0.3% of the total five-year expenditures “...if there was a victory for the
have been set aside for community food projects, to promote farm- Local Food Revolution, it was a
ers markets, and to do increased research on organic agriculture. small one.”
In November, 2008 even these modest gains faced serious challeng-

es in the fiscal crisis that consumes the federal government today.
Sustainable and organic food system advocates, meeting in India-
napolis that month expressed strong concern about the survival of
even mandated funds under the bill.
An effort by the Bush Administration is already under way to divert $8

million (of $18 million in organic research funds) to purchase a new
computer system for USDA.
“As we enter a period of economic uncertainty, precipitating Con-

gressional review of all U.S. government priorities, attention needs
to be paid to achievements in the 2008 Farm Bill for the organic sec-
tor – farm to table spending over five years of at least $112 million,”
said Caren Wilcox, former Executive Director of the Organic Trade
Association (OTA).
“Even mandatory funds that do not require an appropriation can be

cut by the appropriators,” said Mark Lipson, Senior Policy Analyst
“Even mandatory funds that
for Organic Farming Research Foundation. “And discretionary au- do not require an appropria-
thorizations for appropriated funding will be very difficult to realize. tion can be cut by the appro-
Healthy food priorities will be played off against each other, e.g., priators,” -- Mark Lipson
funding increases for WIC vs. Community Food Projects.”
The current financial crisis may seriously complicate the relation-

ship between the Local Food Revolution and public policy. The eco-
nomic and political feedback provided by grassroots-based change
Feeeding the Roots in our food systems can be slowed and distorted OR facilitated and-
strengthened by government intervention. The choice is ours. But the
PAGE 2 inertia of the failing global food system will have the strongest impact
at least initially.
“Centralized government and globalization can weaken feedbacks,”

writes Brian Walker of the Resilience Alliance, “As feedbacks length-
en, there is an increased chance of crossing a threshold (ecological
and economic) without detecting it in a timely manner.”
The 2008 Farm Bill reflected little awareness of these thresholds.

We are in a crisis of our own making. This chapter in the “Feeding the
Roots” report details the role public policy at the national, state, and
local levels can play and must play if the Local Food Revolution is to
succeed.
THE PUBLIC POLICY FRAME
Globalization
vs. ReLocalization
Sheep graze on the FDR White House lawn (1944)
“We are at a moment of dramatic change, perhaps a turning point. The voices for
change are multiplying and, as old systems collapse in exhaustion, finally are being
heard. It is time for a new politics of food, one that starts from the bottom up, “Politics for Food” Speech
not the top down.” ---Father Miiguel d’Escoto Brockman Columbia University
November 19, 2008
The Local Revolution will be strongly impacted by struggles over pub-
lic policy as...
(1) global industrial food systems based on GMO monocultures

confront an expanding local organic agriculture based on ecological
diversity,
(2) a global food supply chain powered by cheap oil competes

for public capital and research resources with local, self-suf-
ficient food systems fueled by solar energy,
(3) the relentless, excessively funded ideology of globaliza ion
Feeeding the Roots threatens grassroots policy initiatives from local communities
organized around healthy, place-based food.
Page 3
Father Brockman, President of the United Nations, calls for “a new
A new politics of food
“...because the
politics of food” because the old politics of food has failed. The 2008
old politics has failed.” Farm Bill offers a prime example of this failure – a failure now exac-
erbated by a growing political “blowback” from the old agricultural
order.
Like a kind of dying woolly mammoth of the Late Pleistocene Epoch

(150,000 years ago) surrounded by a crowd of human consumers with
spears, industrial agriculture is lashing out in the public policy arena,
using its brute power to slow down its inevitable demise.
“Inevitable” because the Local Food Revolution will triumph if only be-
cause the rapidly emerging ecological, energy, and economic realities
on the 21st Century are stacked against industrial agriculture at both
a local or global scale.
“Industrial agriculture needs three things to survive,” said Fred

Kirschenmann, Leopold Center Senior Fellow. “Cheap oil. Surplus wa-
ter. And a stable climate. None of these will be present in the future.”
In particular, the man-made petroleum inputs and technologies neces-

sary to hold Nature at bay, that make industrial food production possi-
ble at all, are failing at an increasingly rapid rate. Industrial agriculture,
which contributes between 28-33% of global greenhouse emissions,
is being dragged to the center of the climate change policy debate.
The real questions are stark and immediate. “How much ecological
damage will the unsustainable global food industry cause, how many
human and community causalities will it produce, before its collapse?” “what can we do through public policy
Perhaps more importantly, “what can we do through public policy to to implement an intentional and ratio-
implement an intentional and rationale transition to resilient, commu- nale transition to resilient, community-
nity-based food systems – the Local Food Revolution?” based food systems – the Local Food
Revolution?”
Feeeding the Roots
Peak Oil and Local Food.
“There is no ready substitute for oil and decades will be required to
Page 4 wean societies from it. Peak Oil could constitute the greatest economic
challenge since the dawn of the industrial revolution.” -- Richard Heinberg
Peak Oil refers to the moment when the maximum rate of global
petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production
declines at an increasingly rapid rate. Today, global petroleum pro-
duction has leveled off (though not officially acknowledged as the
Peak) while global petroleum consumption has continued to climb.
Increasingly tight global oil supplies combined with growing global oil
consumption will produce rapidly increasing prices for oil, over the
immediate term.
These price increases have already impacted the global food sup- “Any intelligent fool can make things
ply chain. In Michigan, in June, 2008 it costs food distributor Sysco bigger, more complex, and more violent.
three times as much to transport a tomato from Mexico as to buy it. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of
It takes 90 calories of petroleum energy to grow and transport one courage – to move in the opposite direc-
calorie of asparagus from Peru. In 2006, the US imported over 50% tion” -- Albert Einstein
of its fresh fruit and 25% of its fresh vegetables from other countries
using petroleum dependent transportation. Peak Oil will fundamen-
tally change the global food system’s economics and security. The
current $50/barrel price for crude oil represents a temporary, short-
term anomaly.
In 2007, US agriculture and food production used 19% of the petro-

leum energy consumed in the United States – second only to trans-
portation as a consumer of oil. Interestingly, nearly 40% of the pe-
troleum used in conventional agriculture goes to the production and
application of synthetic inputs including nitrogen from natural gas,
herbicides and pesticides from oil.
In the future, we must grow our food not only using less oil, but less
energy overall. The City of Portland, Oregon’s Report, “Descend-
ing Peak Oil” offers a conceptual frame for understanding this chal-
lenge.
Feeeding the Roots “The human carrying capacity of the planet has been dramatically increased by the
use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels meant humans no longer had to rely on animal power
City of Portland, Oregon
Peak Oil Task Force Report
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy or ‘current’ solar energy in the form of wind, hydro and biomass energy. Instead, hu-
Page 5 “Descending Peak Oil”
mans harnessed the stored solar energy captured by plants and converted to fossil
May 7, 2007
fuels by geologic pressures over millions of years.
Fossil fuels allowed a dramatic increase in humans’ ability to provide shelter and
produce and transport food and other products to spur a growing economy and popu-
lation.
“What will happen to that carrying capacity when its underlying driver is no longer
available? Fossil fuels are the most productive resources known, and any combina-
tion of alternatives will be less productive. All known alternatives have a lower ‘en-
ergy return on energy invested’ than oil and natural gas—i.e., producing alternatives
requires more energy than producing oil and natural gas, leaving less net energy
gain with which to do other work.”
This change is sometimes called “the long descent” to an economy

that within the next few decades will use 90% less oil than it does
today. This descent, itself a fundamental and formidable transforma-
tion, is complicated, today, by the related descent or “collapse” of
the global financial system.
In a time of pervasive economic crisis that strains government re-

sources, the Local Food Revolution must fight for survival in multiple
national, state, and local public policy arenas dominated by other
competing interests including the petroleum-dependent global indus-
trial food system.
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“It’s easy to dismiss the principle of self-reliance by pointing to many

complex products that communities cannot manufacture on their own. The
goal of a self-reliant community, however, is not to create a Robinson
Crusoe economy in which no resources, people or goods enter or leave. A
self-reliant community simply should seek to increase control over its own
economy as fas as it is possible.” --Michael Shuman in “Going Local”
Feeeding the Roots PUBLIC POLICY CHALLENGE #1
Access to Land
Page 6
All food policy begins with the land. Who has access to the land for
farming? How do they farm? What can they grow sustainably on the
land? The answers to these questions are at the heart of the public
policy debate over the Local Food Revolution.
The Revolution is a movement of small farmers growing for local

consumption, very small farmers by industrial agricultural standards,
farmers who have been almost totally ignored by agricultural policy
since the Second World War. Professor Charles Geisler of Cornell
framed the public policy challenge at a 1999 conference organized by
the American Farmland Trust.
“We have to diversify ownership niches for American farmers, do a

better job of equalizing access to and the distribution of our farmland
and provide ownership security that endures farm crises and com-
modity price swings.”
This “access to land” challenge is manifested differently in urban and

rural communities.
LAND TENURE, URBAN GARDENS & CITY FARMS
“It’s a no-brainer. In contrast to pure green space or parks, which
taxpayers generally have to finance, urban agriculture can be a
functioning business that pays for itself.”
-- Jac Smit interview by Brian Halweil in Eat Here
During World War Two, Eleanor Roosevelt initiated a “Victory Garden”

movement (over the objections of the Farm Bureau) that resulted in 20
million gardens which produced 8 million tons of food in 1944.
A new “victory garden” movement has emerged in the first decade of

the 21st Century as urban communities, in response to food deserts
and economic decline, have begun to grow food for their own tables,
for their neighbors, and for profit.
Feeeding the Roots Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, 103,000 parcels of land are vacant (27%
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy of all land in the city). Aerial photos of some sections of the city look
Page 7 like Iowa with isolated houses surrounded by open fields. There is no
chain supermarket located within the city limits, forcing many people
to shop at corner liquor stores for highly processed “junk” food for
their sustenance.
Detroit has very high obesity and Type-2 diabetes rates as a result.
Public transportation has collapsed or is grossly inadequate leaving
many families in Detroit neighborhoods unable to travel the 4+ miles
to grocery stores with fresh food. Wide-spread food deserts cover much
of the city. In response, the citizens of the city have begun to grow their own
food. This is re-localization at its most fundamental level – survival.
Ashley Atkinson leads the Greening of Detroit, a non-profit that pro-

vides material, educational, and technical support to a blossoming
re-localization of the city’s food system. In 2008, the Greening of
Detroit provided over 120,000 plant transplants, tens of thousands
of packets of seed, hundreds of tools, dozens of classes and other
support services to 116 community gardens, 20 school gardens, 350
family gardens, and 41 urban agriculture sites.
“This is totally a grassroots movement,” said Ms. Atkinson, “ attempting

to answer the question, ’how do we provide food and services to people
in a city whose population, resources, and economy is shrinking?’”
In spite of its growing reach and success, virtually everything Green-

ing of Detroit supports is either illegal or operates within a “grey” area “Farming is not a permitted
of the law. “Farming is not a permitted use in the City of Detroit,” use in the City of Detroit.”
according to Atkinson. Bee keeping, which Greening of Detroit sup-
ports, is illegal.
This pattern is repeated throughout the nation. Most urban farming

occurs on abandoned lots, frequently owned by local governments
because of unpaid back taxes. Sometimes, these urban gardens and
farms operate as squatters, occupying and using the land without
any formal arrangement.
Feeeding the Roots Usufruct arrangements. Where agreements do exist to farm aban-
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy doned land, they are often usufruct arrangements, “the right to use
Page 8 and enjoy the profits and advantages of something belonging to an-
other as long as the property is not damaged or altered in any way.”
Most urban agriculture projects in the US, today, do not own or have
tenure for the land they farm. This lack of land tenure threatens the
urban Local Food Revolution in many, often unexpected ways. In
Detroit, Ashley Atkinson keeps the exact location of community gar-
dens a secret from outsiders. “We had a case where someone se-
cured title to one of our community gardens by paying the back taxes
and then came to the community to sell them back ‘their garden’ for
$100,000.”
Similar stories of speculation and extortion have surfaced in other The CATCH-22 of URBAN AGRICULTURE
cities. These actions are symptoms of another, more fundamental “The act of growing food locally regenerates
characteristic of the Local Food Revolution in urban settings, one not only the land, but the community en-
based in the realities of the marketplace. The act of growing food gaged in gardening/farming. In doing so, the
locally regenerates not only the land, but the community engaged community makes the land they farm and the
in gardening/farming. In doing so, the community makes the land communities around it more valuable, and
they farm and the communities around it more valuable, and thus, thus, increasingly unaffordable for them to
increasingly unaffordable for them to farm. This is a real “Catch-22” farm.”
one that requires new public policy to address.
In the larger frame, relocalization of the urban economy (driven by

Peak Oil) itself threatens the land access necessary to the urban Lo-
cal Food Revolution as cities are repopulated and renewed. Public
policy must address land tenure in both rural and urban communi-
ties. This task has the highest priority because food sovereignty is
the basis of true national security.
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Feeeding the Roots RURAL LAND ACCESS
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy Difficulties in the countryside
Page 9 “The new way of farming was a way of dependence, not
on land and creatures and neighbors but on machines
and fuel and chemicals of all sorts, bought things, and
on the sellers of bought things—which made it finally a
dependence on credit. The odd thing was, people just assumed that all the purchasing
and borrowing would merely make life easier and better on all the little farms. Most people
didn’t dream, then, that before long a lot of little farmers would buy and borrow their way
out of farming, and bigger and bigger farmers would be competing with their neighbors (or
with doctors from the city) for the available land. The time was going to come—it is clear
enough now—when there would not be enough farmers left...”
-- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow (2000)
Land access and tenure for small farmers growing for local consump-
tion involves a different set of public policy challenges in rural ar-
eas. The relentless agricultural industrialization of the countryside, as
Wendell Berry describes above, has significantly reduced the number
of farmers working the land. In the last 35 years, nearly one-third of
US farmers (who farm full-time) have left the land.
The remaining farmers have had to get bigger as “industrialization” in-

creased costs while reducing farm income by depressing commodity
prices through over production. This cost/income squeeze has forced
tens of thousands of farmers out-of-business. Many of the remain-
ing farmers depend on direct and indirect federal crop subsidies to
survive.
Fred Gale, of the USDA’s Economic Research Service, describes the “Since fixed costs are such an
situation this way, “Since fixed costs are such an important part of important part of total costs and
total costs and per unit profit margins are slim, large operations are per unit profit margins are slim,
needed for most operators to earn significant income.” large operations are needed for
most operators to earn significant
“We have industrialized agriculture, replacing natural fertility and so- income.” -- Fred Gale, USDA-ERS
lar energy systems with man-made energy and technology intensive
practices.” Said John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Eco-
nomics, University of Missouri. “This, in turn, has made it possible for
Feeeding the Roots fewer farmers to farm more land, requiring more capital – consolidat- The Iowa example.
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy ing decision making in fewer and fewer hands. We are now in the final The maximum amount of any one
Page 10 stage of industrialization where decision making is consolidated not loan is $300,000 and the farm size
just in the hands of larger farmers, but, increasingly in global agri- cannot be greater than 30 percent
business corporations.” of the median farm of the county
where it is located. In Iowa, for in-
In a rural economy dominated by industrialized agricultural consoli- stance, the average farm size, state-
dated on larger and larger farms, the opportunity for small farms, wide, is 350 acres making the largest
often operated by new farmers, to grow for local consumption is farm eligible for loan assistance, on
marginal. Here’s the situation. average, to be 405 acres. At $5,000
an acre (average) this makes the
Land is not affordable. In the continuing pressure to get bigger, large- largest eligible farm’s purchase
scale industrial farming – aided and abetted by federal commodity price, on average, to be $2.025 mil-
programs, the lack of payment limitations in federal support pro- lion.
grams, ethanol promotion, and biotech – has driven up land prices to
historic highs. In Iowa, the price of farmland increased 11 percent in
six months (June-December, 2007), 18.1 percent in all of 2007. Top
quality land now sells for an average of over $5,000/acre with some
prices hitting $9,000/acre.
Organic production is threatened by industrial land use practices. The smaller

Certified Organic farms often are surrounded by industrial farm opera-
tions using genetically modified seeds, large amounts of artificial fertil-
izers, herbicides and pesticides. The threat of “drift” contamination
makes value-laden, certified organic local food production difficult if
not impossible. The Local Food Revolution requires access not just to
land, but to land not threatened by industrial food production.
A culture of hostility. Most conventional farmers receive the informa-

tion that influences their attitudes and decisions from sources owned
and controlled by industrial agriculture interests. This one-sided media
portrays ecologically intelligent, organic and permaculture farming al-
ternatives as “fringe” and “niche” agriculture. As a result, there is often
peer pressure in the countryside NOT to sell land to small organic
farmers.
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Feeeding the Roots PUBLIC POLICY CHALLENGE #2
Access to Capital
Page 11
For the first 150 years of the history of our democracy, government
intervened in rural economies primarily through monetary policy – a
question of a gold-backed currency vs. a silver-backed currency with
farmers resisting being crucified “on a cross of gold”.
This tradition changed in 1935. Amidst the rural suffering of the Great
Depression, the Roosevelt Administration passed a series of laws to
“provide credit, farm and home management planning and technical
supervision” to farms and rural businesses. Today, these functions are
provided by the Farm Service Agency – the FSA.
Beginning farmers are a specific FSA focus. Fifty percent (50%) of

Direct Operating Loans, 40 percent (40%) of Guaranteed Operating
Loans, 75 percent (75%) of Direct Farm Ownership Loans are reserved
for farmers who have not operated a farm for ten years and who have
at least three years experience in farm operations.
The loan assistance is structured through a series of direct loans

from the FSA and private sector loans guaranteed by the FSA. For
example, a beginning farmer must make a 10 percent (10%) down
payment under the program (which could be supplied from a Down
Payment FSA loan program); could get a Direct Farm Ownership Loan
from FSA for up to 40 percent (40%) of the farm’s appraised value, and
borrow the balance from a private lender with FSA guaranteeing 95 percent
(95%) of that amount.
On paper, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher (BFR) looks like it might be a
resource for small farmers growing for local food systems. But on-the-ground
reality is something different.
Feeeding the Roots The recent increase on the maximum BFR loan under the program from
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy $100,000 to $300,000 signals that the program focuses on larger, more
Page 12 capital intensive industrial agricultural operations. Small farm, local food sys-
tem farming requires significantly less land, markedly smaller capital require-
ments, and per acre operating loans.
Currently, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher loan programs are being used
to promote new farmers who want to farm using the industrial model with its
oil dependence, high input costs, increasing reliance on monoculture tech-
nologies, and low rates of return (requiring larger and larger farms to survive
economically.)
Industrialization and The reliance on the industrial model has had two major effects on
Access to Capital capital access. First, the amount of money required to start a new
farm has grown larger making the $300,000 FSA direct loan limit
(established in the 2008 Farm Bill) less important than conventional
financing.
In addition, the direct federal role in encouraging beginning farm-

ers has been reduced by a decreasing federal commitment to such
programs. In Fiscal Year, 2009, no money ($0) was appropriated for
the Direct Farm Ownership Program. That same fiscal year, Iowa’s
Beginning Farmer loan programs had a $20 million budget, enough for
about 40-50 new farmers in a state of 91,000 farms.
These limitations mean most farm sale financing comes from private
lenders and/or through so-called “Aggie Bonds”, funds raised by
large agricultural states using their bonding authority to help finance
farming purchases and operations. I won’t deal with the Aggie Bonds
here.
An Industrial Bias. Private sector financing offers a portrait of how

government policy promotes industrial agriculture and ignores small
farm, local food system production, almost totally. The key to this
story is another federal linked private sector lender (similar to Fred-
die Mac and Fannie Mae) called Farmer Mac (short for the Federal
Agricultural Mortgage Corporation).
Feeeding the Roots Farmer Mac and the spread of factory farming. Farmer Mac was cre- FSA and Immigrant Farmers
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy ated in 1988 to “buy mortgages on farmland from agricultural lenders In the late 1990s, new farmers from SE
Page 13 and then to sell instruments backed by those loans.” Farmer Mac Asia’s Hmong and Lao communities used
has not suffered the fate of its public/private siblings, Fannie Mae FSA Beginning Farmer loans and loan
and Freddie Mac, because its “financial instruments” are backed by guarantees to begin industrial poultry
farmland which has retained its value in this crisis, unlike homes. raising under contract with large poultry
Indeed, Farmer Mac, which is a publicly traded corporation, recently integrators. By 2005, many of these farm-
announced a 28 percent (28%) increase in its 2008 second quarter ers faced bankruptcy.
core earnings over the previous year.
An April, 2006 review of these loans to 310
But the mortgages that private lenders sell to Farmer Mac are not Hmong-owned poultry farms found that:
all created equal. Farmer Mac offers higher loan-to-value ratios (the
amount of the loan purchased as a percentage of the value of the 1. The loans offered these new farmers
land or asset purchased) for so-called “animal factories” – CAFOs were “flawed” in FSA’s terminology be-
for Confined Animal Feeding Operations – in the poultry and swine cause they were based on overstated in-
industries. come projections, understated expense
projections, and falsely accounted for the
New farmers who want to begin to raise chickens industrially under new farmers’ assets.
contract with a poultry integrator (like Tysons, Con-Agra, or Perdue)
can have 75 percent (75%) of their mortgage purchased by Farmer 2. New farmers in this group paid 30-
Mac; new farmers who want to buy a hog factory operation under 300% more for their farms than they were
contract with a swine integrator (like Smithfield, Premium Standard worth. This fraud was caused by inflated
Farms, or Cargill) can have 80 percent (80%) of their mortgage pur- farm appraisals.
chased. These percentages are much higher than other types of farm
operations. 3. Chickens supplied to these new farm-
ers operating under contract with large
This means, in effect, that the higher percentage guarantee offered poultry integrators were found to be
by Farmer Mac encourages banks to lend to new contract poultry “sub-standard”, further depressing farm
and hog factory operations, over other types of farms. This bias income.
skews the agricultural finance system in one direction, away from
enabling small farmers to engage sustainable agriculture to supply Banks incurred little or no risk from these
local food systems. Farmer Mac’s support of industrial, contract agricul- bad and fraudulent loan practices because
ture has produced some glaring abuses (see the Sidebar on Hmong the loans were guaranteed by the FSA.
farmers). Evidence suggests FSA was being used by
poultry corporations to exploit farmers
The increasing dominance of “contract” farming for everything from through the Beginning Farmer program.
hogs to hops, has made farmers more and more dependent on indi-
Feeeding the Roots vidual corporate policies and less on the supposed free marketplace
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy for their capital.
Page 14
This trend has been intensified by the continuing consolidation of ru-
ral financial institutions. The Riegel-Neal Interstate Banking Act (1994)
sped up the existing consolidation of small rural banks into larger in-
terstate institutions. The numbers are dramatic. In Pennsylvania, the
number of rural banks declined 58 percent (58%) in just 15 years.
Rural Bank Mergers The newly mergered banks were less likely to maintain the commu-
& Community nity banking connection that has characterized agricultural lending
Reinvestment throughout our history, until recently. A report by Sandy & Richard
(2001) found that Community Reinvestment Act leading activity “has
grown slower in banks that were part of mergers.”
Pro-industrial/pro-contract production agriculture and the massive un-

der-funding of federal loan programs has made the Beginning Farmer
and Rancher programs of USDA more a symbol than an intention – a
fact acknowledged openly by some in production agriculture.
A 2007 presentation by Dr. Ernest Brazen of the University of Tennes-

see’s Department of Agricultural Economics ends with a statement
that describes how “new and beginning farmers” fit into the global
industrial food system of “production agriculture”. He said, “Despite
the sharp decline in the number of citizens involved in production ag-
riculture, there is a recognition that young and beginning farmers are
important to the cultural identity of our country.”
The future of our nation’s food systems – with its accompanying im-
pact on economic security, environmental integrity, and human health
– depends on more than “cultural identity”.
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Feeeding the Roots PUBLIC POLICY CHALLENGE #3:
Page 15 Access to Markets
In 1997, US Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman appointed a 30 USDA Definition of “Small Farm”
person National Commission on Small Farms “to examine the status The definition of a “small farm” used by
of small farms in the United States and to determine a course of ac- USDA’s policy reads, “farms with less than
tion for USDA.” The Commission’s 1998 report, “A Time to Act” es- $250,000 gross receipts annually on which
tablished eight policy goals, Three goals of this policy (SEE SIDEBAR) day-to-day labor and management are pro-
dealt with helping small farmers gain access to markets. vided by the farmer and/or farm family that
owns the production or owns, or leases, the
August 3, 2006 – eight years after the release of “A Time to Act” - productive assets.” In the Local Food Revo-
- USDA issued its latest “Small Farms and Beginning Farmers and lution, such a farm would be a substantial
Ranchers Policy.” (USDA Regulation 9700-001) which united the
“small farm” agenda with the “beginning farmers and ranchers” agen-
da. The need for effective change was urgent.
“A Time to Act” - three goals
In 2004, small farms only accounted for 26 percent (26%) of agri- nPromote, develop, and enforce fair, com-
cultural receipts but constituted 92 percent (92%) of all farms and petitive, and open markets for small farms.
ranches, 71 percent (71%) of total productive assets in agriculture,
and operated 60 percent (60%) of all farmland in production. nEmphasize sustainable agriculture as a prof-
itable, ecological, and socially sound strategy
Note that sixty percent (60%) of the land controlled by small farms for small farms.
produced only twenty-six percent (26%) of the total farm revenue
– gross revenue. (Net profit may be a different matter). There are a nDedicate budget resources to strengthen
number of reasons for this land/revenue imbalance; lack of market the competitive position of small farms in
structures for local food systems is one of the most important. American agriculture.
Industrial regulations thwart local food production. Federal and

state policies regarding food security, food safety, and food qual-
ity limit the markets for the Local Food Revolution, using regulation
designed to control industrial food systems problems to thwart local
food system success.
Feeeding the Roots On December 3, 2004, outgoing US Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson offered this warning at his resignation
Page 16 press conference. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the
terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do.”
Former Secretary Thompson was referring to Al-Qa’ida type terror-

ists. But the actual threat to the US food system comes not from AK-
47 carrying thugs, but from brief case carrying executives and very
large industrial farms that dominate the US food system.
Industrial scale threatens food safety. In the fall of 2006, an E-

coli 0157:H7 contamination of bagged spinach (by Natural Selection
Foods) sickened nearly 200 Americans in 26 states. This widespread
infection of consumers was made possible by the industrial nature
of the US food system which makes a sloppy practice in one facility
a national disaster. Small farm, local food revolution is more secure
simply because it so de-centralized, so local.
Currently, two percent (2%) of US farms produce over 50 percent

(50%) of US agricultural production. In the USDA School Lunch
Commodity Program, 400 producers supply 85 percent (85%) of the
food distributed to 93,000 school systems at no or little cost to the
schools.
These very large operations have had a significant impact on food

safety. In 2007-2008, twenty-seven million pounds (27,000,000) of
ground beef produced by Hallmark/Westland Meats of California for
Who is to blame?
USDA’s School Lunch Commodity Program and 21.7 million pounds
The bacteria implicated in these out-
of ground beef produced by the Topps Meat Company for gener-
breaks -- E-coli 0157:H7 -- was un-
al consumption were recalled for possible contamination by E-coli
known before 1982. This e-coli strain
0157:H7.
which thrives in the guts and manure
Industrial practices and industrial scale production contributed to
of industrially raised cattle fed corn,
both the cause and severity of these two food security crises. (SEE can’t survive in the guts of pasture
SIDEBAR) raised cattle eating grass. E-coli 0157:
H7 is a product of industrialized ani-
mal production.
Feeeding the Roots The global food system and food security. The global sourcing of
food has compounded these problems. A growing percentage of food
consumed in the US comes from overseas (50% of fresh fruit and 25%
Page 17
of fresh vegetables were imported in 2006). An extremely small per-
cent – less than 1 percent (1%) – of these food imports is inspected
for safety. The vulnerability of the global food supply chain has been
recently highlighted by the Chinese melamine contamination of food
scandals involving first gluten and now milk.
In animal production, the situation is worse. The potential for Mad Cow
Disease infections (spongiform encephalopathy) imported from abroad
threatens public confidence in the safety of the US meat industry. In
2006, Canada reported seven cases of possible Mad Cow infection. In
the globally integrated meat industry, Mad Cow represents a disaster
of immense proportions.
The American Meat Institute, the National Meat Association, and the
National Cattleman’s Beef Association has responded to this situation
with the public policy equivalents of “denial” and outright intimidation.
In Congress, the industrial meat industry has opposed Country of Ori-

gin labeling (COOL) requirements and increased testing for meat con-
tamination. When Creekstone Farms of Arkansas tried to voluntarily
test all their animals for Mad Cow (in response to a request from Japa-
nese meat buyers), USDA, under industry pressure, sued Creekstone
to stop the practice.
For the federal government to intervene so directly in a commercial

relationship between a food producer and its customers, is unprec-
edented and a sign of what’s to come, public policy wise.
As the global industrial food system encounters more and more food
safety issues, the agri-business corporations will increasingly turn to
government mandated technological fixes and intrusive regulation to
protect their interests. These developments will have the effect of limit-
ing the Local Food Revolution and its markets.
Feeeding the Roots Science Fiction & Industrial Food
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy How technology, regulation and The food irradiation saga is part of an
alternative world story most often pre-
Page 18
disinformation limit market sented through science fiction – a story
access for local food producers. where technology is the sole solution to
massive problems created by the same
technological approach to life process-
es. Food irradiation is sadly reminiscent
of the 1973 movie Soylent Green, the
The most heavily promoted technological fix for the bacterial contami- story of an ecologically devastated and
nation problems prevalent in industrial food production is food irradia- over populated world, fed by a mysteri-
tion. The process involves bombarding of animal and plant products ous food product called Soylent Green.
with high levels of gamma rays, x-rays or high speed electrons. The No one seems to know the makeup of
FDA-recommended irradiation doses are millions of times higher than Soylent Green (and those who do, end
those used in human x-ray processes and destroy not just bacteria up dead.) The movie’s hero, played by
but enzymes, cell walls and chromosomes. In the process, both can- Charlton Heston, discovers the real story
cer causing compounds (formaldehyde, benzene, liquid peroxides) and behind the manufactured food’s label – that
new compounds, called Unique Radiolytic Products (URP), are cre- Soylent Green is made from recycled dead
ated. URPs have not been studied for human safety. humans processed and fed back to the living.
Irradiation may directly impact human health through destruction of

vitamins (A, C, E, K, and some B complex vitamins) and the creation
of free radicals. Further, though some bacteria are destroyed, viruses
and bacteria that cause botulism are not.
Food irradiation policies are designed to protect and promote global

industrial food production. Once irradiated, food can travel long dis-
tances without fear of bacterial contamination. The irradiation pro-
cess actually acts as a disincentive for safe farming and clean food
preparation – functioning as a kind of blunt force remedy for sloppy
practices and unclean shortcuts motivated by “lowest cost” produc-
tion strategies.
This combination of lower costs (made possible by irradiation em-

powered shortcuts) combined with the high capital costs of the tech-
nology put small farmers, growing for local markets, at an economic
disadvantage.
Mislabeling. This small farm/local food disadvantage is increased
Feeeding the Roots through a federal government initiative to obfuscate the risks sur-
rounding irradiation of food.
Page 19
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has used its regulatory
power to mislead and dis-inform consumers about the presence of
irradiated food in their diet. Current FDA regulations prevent the list-
ing of any irradiated ingredients in processed food. In 2008, FDA
went a step further and, in a kind of Alice in Wonderland move,
changed the term “irradiation” to “cold pasteurization”.
Irradiated products might be labeled
The whole food irradiation process undermines the entire economic as “cold pasteurized” under FDA
viability of local food systems by continuing to subsidize long dis- proposals - a deliberate attempt to
tance, petroleum dependent, industrial food production while deny- mislead consumers about the pro-
ing consumers information about what they are eating. cess.
Technological solutions to the earth’s ecological and food problems

– when they are removed from the checks and balances of nature’s
processes as in food irradiation – can grow in reach and impact far
beyond the ability of humans to control and understand.
The most current example of this truth can be found on Wall Street
in the current financial disaster caused by security derivatives rooted
in no reality other than the one they created themselves. As Amory “Wendell Berry once wrote that when
Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute likes to say, “The solution to we took animals off farms and put them
problems caused by brute force is not more brute force.” onto feedlots, we had, in effect, taken an
old solution -- the one where crops feed
Local food production from small farms engaged in organic and per- animals and animals’ waste feed crops --
maculture practices promise the ecological stability that is an abso- and nearly divided it into two problems:
lute requirement of a stable society and a sustainable economy. a fertility problem on the farm and a pol-
lution problem on the feedlot.”
Farming and food systems predicated solely on increased productiv- --- Michael Pollan,
NYTimes October 16, 2006
ity from the application of more and more technology that invades
and ignores life processes (such as diversity) are inherently unstable
and ultimately, doomed to failure.
Feeeding the Roots NAIS: National Animal Identification System.
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy Industrial food system problems have helped initiate a second federal
Page 20 regulatory demand: creation of a system “to identify all livestock ani-
mals and poultry and to track their movements” – the National Animal
Identification System or NAIS.
The threat of pandemic animal diseases like Mad Cow, hoof-and-

mouth, and avian influenza produced, in 2007, a proposal to “tag” ev-
ery farm animal in the United States with an electronic tag to facilitate
traceability. Each “premise” must have its own PIN (Premise Identifica-
tion Number) tied to GPS coordinates. Further, once tagged, farmers
are to be legally required to report every movement ( by PIN) of every
animal under their control.
Under USDA rules, large CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Opera-

tions) won’t have to tag every animal raised in confinement. They don’t
move and they are sold in large lots making NAIS applicable to each
confinement building. But farmers raising animals on pasture will have
to tag every animal and register every pasture.
The cost and reporting burden of NAIS falls disproportionately on small

farmers raising animals on pasture; further inhibiting the development
of small scale animal production for local food consumption.
Insurance & Inspection Requirements.

The current “food safety” hue and cry also ignores the fact that food
from a small farm using ecologically intelligent organic practices (1)
impacts on significantly fewer people while (2) avoiding the industrial
practices that are the source of most food contamination. Food from
small farms using organic farming techniques is inherently safer, con-
stituting a much lower risk.
Yet, federal crop insurance requires organic farmers to a five percent

(5%) surcharge on their insurance bill based on the assumption that
“organic farming practices are riskier than conventional farming prac-
tices.” The Local Food Revolution faces a structural bias against it in
USDA regulations and practices.
Feeeding the Roots At the wholesale level, elaborate and expensive commercial insur-
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy ance requirements for selling into the wholesale market are the same
Page 21 for small farmers as large industrial food sources. The result? The
per unit of production insurance cost is much higher for lower gross-
ing small farms. These requirements are onerously expensive, again
putting small farm food production at a disadvantage (if not prohibit-
ing it altogether) at the wholesale level.
vvv
PUBLIC POLICY CHALLENGE #4:
Access to Information
“Information contaminanted with self-deception, disinformation, and untruths
can be as dangerous as contaminated water or food. It can cloud judgment,
feed additions, dull the will to act, and induce depression or denial.”
--- Ed Ayres, “God’s Last Offer”
To operate effectively, markets and democracies need access to ac-

curate and timely information. The more accurate, the more timely,
the more effective. The Local Food Revolution’s development and
success depends on both open and free markets and a grassroots
democratic process.
Yet, public policy at the federal and state levels has done little to
foster meaningful “access to information” for consumers and farmers
engaged in the local, ecologically intelligent, production of food.
Worse, corporate dominated federal information practices have ac-

tively sought to disempower the Local Food Revolution through the
denial and hiding of information and the intentional distortion of in-
formation processes.
Transparency. The USDA and FDA actively resist the introduction

of “transparency” into market and regulatory processes. In contract
agriculture, USDA has supported agribusiness’s insistence on “con-
fidential clauses” in contracts (which forbid the sharing of contract
information among farmers).
Feeeding the Roots Performance ranking criteria and decisions in contract animal pro-
duction are kept “proprietary” with government support, denying
contract growers the information needed to ascertain fairness and
Page 22
monitor integrity.
NRCS (Natural Resource and Conservation Service) and EQIP (En-

vironmental Quality Incentives Program) funding is decided without
transparency in the decision making process. These funds have
been used to subsidize CAFO manure disposal costs, often exceed-
ing Congressional mandated payment limitations through “special
environmental significance” waivers.
Transparency and the Local Food Revolution.

The consumer driven Local Food Revolution requires easy access to
accurate and unambiguous information about food production, food
quality, and food characteristics. USDA policy has been to thwart
this needed access through what some describe as deliberate misla-
beling and disinformation policies.
In the food marketplace, global agriculture’s successful opposition The attack on the integrity of Certified
within Congress and state legislatures of consumer “transparency” Organic food by corporations seeking to
measures like County of Origin Labeling (COOL), GMO labeling in- use industrial practices in organic farm-
cluding rBGH labels for milk products, and distortion of food irradia- ing systems began in 1997. The original
tion labels has thwarted the Local Food Revolution’s growing power organic rule including provisions to
in the marketplace. certify the use of sewage sludge, genet-
ically engineer organisms, and irradia-
A deepening struggle to preserve the ecological integrity of National tion as organic practices. The flood of
Organic Program (NOP) standards -- the USDA Certified Organic la- almost a quarter of a million consumer
bel -- has dominated much of the public policy debate over organic objections forced USDA to abandon
agriculture. The adoption of industrial practices, particularly in or- this plan.
ganic livestock raising, by NOP has resulted in long controversies in
organic dairy production and now organic fish production.
Giant factory farms producing “organic” milk and fish violate the
place-based, small farm nature of the Local Food Revolution, where
“organic” is just another word for “local” -- i.e. “in harmony with the
place” where food is raised.
Feeeding the Roots “If enacted, the gutting of organic animal raising standards will not
only allow sub-par products to be sold as organic,” said Urvashi
Rangan, Ph.D. - Senior Scientist and Policy Analyst for Consumers
Page 23
Union, “but will undermine consumer confidence in the entire organic
marketplace.”
Currently, USDA in the last days of the Bush Administration is push-

ing through a “naturally raised” label that includes animals raised in
Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). “The ‘naturally raised’
and ‘natural’ labels are more of marketing gimmicks than anything
else,” reported scientist Kathy Glass of the Food Research Institute,
University of Wisconsin - Madison.
USDA has engaged in this kind of label deception to allow industrial

agriculture to benefit from increasing consumer concern about food,
without having to fundamentally change production practices or as-
sumptions. “Without transparency, local food sys-
tems activists cannot monitor and ad-
Without transparency and honesty and accuracy, local food systems vocate for fair federal funding for sus-
activists cannot monitor and advocate for fair federal funding for sustainable agriculture; farmers cannot
tainable agriculture; farmers cannot make informed business choices make informed business choices about
about contracts; and consumers can not express their health, envi- contracts; and consumers can not ex-
ronmental, and community values in what they choose to eat. press their health, environmental, and
community values in what they choose
Intellectual Property Wars. Issues of information access and con- to eat.”
trol form barriers to the Local Food Revolution at the level of nature
herself. The patenting of gene sequences, gene modifications, and
whole life forms represents a privatization-for-profit of the genome.
That nature’s diversity and abundance can be made the intellectual

property of agribusiness corporations represents, perhaps, the most
fundamental violation of nature’s laws.
The process of evolution involves continuous interaction between

life and the environmental processes, with each life form seeking to
“fit” most effectively into the web of energy and nutrition forces that
surrounds it. A “patent” takes a genetic moment in that immensely
Feeeding the Roots diverse and continuous stream of adaptation and freezes it – com-
modifies it as if it were a man-made widget to be reproduced over
and over. Such patenting is, by definition, ecologically unstable and
Page 24
unsustainable and represents perhaps the most extreme, most ar-
rogant application of reductionist industrial thinking to the food sys-
tem.
Yet, the patenting of life is US law. In 1980, the US Supreme Court

ruled in Diamond v. Chakrabarty (447 U.S. 303, 308 [1980]) for the
first time in US history that a “life form” – in this case an oil eating
bacteria – was patentable. In 2001, the Court reaffirmed and ex-
tended the 1980 Chakrabarty decision in J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc. v.
Pioneer Hi-Bred International (534 U.S. 124 [2001]), essentially rul-
ing that all life forms are patentable. In the 21 years between the two
rulings, the US Patent Office issued over 1800 patents for life forms
including “all multi-cellular living organisms” – i.e. animals.
This extension of patent protections to genes, seed, and whole ani-

mals impacts on the Local Food Revolution in a number of ways
including:
(1) ending the millenniums old practice of “seed saving” by

farmers whose seed has been contaminated by pollen or
seed from patent protected plants,
(2) concentrating seed development and ownership in the

hands of a small number of agribusiness corporations,
(3) fundamentally threatening seed diversity that has evolved

from place-based (as opposed to factory based) agriculture.
“There is a direct threat to our food system when we have a prepon-

derance of genetic resources controlled by institutions whose only
goal is profit. When breeding and production services were diffused
amongst many individuals and groups with diverse motives, we had
a much more diverse and healthy food system.” -- Frank Morton,
Plant Breeder in the NEW FARM, February 22, 2005.
Feeeding the Roots Corporate domination of research and information sources.
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act passed Congress, allowing publicly funded “The myth of low-yielding
research done primarily at public universities to be patented and sold organic farming may be
Page 25
for commercial use – to the financial benefit of the university. fading; but without a mas-
sive change of conscience
Some in agribusiness have equated the Bayh-Dole Act to the Land from the world’s agricultural
Grant Act that created the Land Grant University system saying that researches and officials, we
still won’t be pointed in the
“transfer of public intellectual property rights” (in 1980) was the
organic direction.”
20th Century equivalent of the transfer of actual property – land – in
-- Brian Halwell, World Watch.
1865.
The result was a new public/private partnership between universi-

ties and corporations seeking to patent university discoveries and
research. The partnership took two principle forms: (1) direct spon-
sorship of university research with corporate funds, and (2) patenting
of publicly funded university discoveries, with the university earning
patent royalties in the process.
Direct sponsorship. The newly permitted patenting of life forms com-

bined with the historical investment by land grant universities in agri-
cultural research to produce a partnership with the emerging biotech
industry in agriculture. There has been no comprehensive study of the
degree of direct corporate investment in university research, but here
is some of what we know.
n Novartis (1998) invested $25 million over 5 years in the University

of California Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources in return for be-
ing allowed to search through plant and microbial biology research
for patentable developments. The grant was not renewed in 2004.
n Monsanto has a 25 year agreement to fund research at Washing-

ton University in St. Louis.
n Twenty percent (20%) of the University of California Davis’s College

of Agricultural and Environmental Science’s $165 million research
budget is contributed by industry.
Feeeding the Roots n Corporation endowed research Chairs and buildings. Iowa State
University has a Monsanto Auditorium. Texas A&M has the “Dow
Chemical Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering”. West
Page 26
Virginia State and Louisiana State has similar corporate-endowed
Chairs.
This is just the tip of the direct corporate financing research. But
most of the corporate funding land grant universities receive comes
from the second source: patent royalties from commercialized pub-
licly funded research.
The patent scramble at land grant universities. In 1999, universi-

ties received $641 million in patent royalty payments, up from $446
million in 1997. (Association of University Technology Managers). The
potential size of the patent payoff lures land grant university research-
ers into projects with commercial potential.
The direct corporate sponsorship of university agricultural and biotech re-

search and the indirect but larger influence of patent royalties fundamen-
tally affects the Local Food Revolution in a number of important ways:
n Scientific research is privatized, removing it from the public sector,

undermining the public mission of land grant universities. At most
land grant universities, ecologically intelligent agriculture and local
food system development suffer from this privatization.
n The university’s obligation to operate with openness and objective

disinterest is subverted.
In 2005, when Purdue University (Indiana’s land grant university) de-

veloped a new use for the Terminator Gene (owned by Delta Pine and
Land Company), faculty and researchers conducted a campaign to
persuade the public the self-sterilizing gene was safe.
Organic and local food opposition to the introduction of GMOs in

agriculture becomes more difficult in the face of land grant university-
led promotion of corporate biotech products.
Feeeding the Roots In this case both the products themselves (GMO seeds and animals)
and university bias threaten the Local Food Revolution.
Page 27
n University research priorities can become slaves to corporate com-
mercial agendas, leaving research in organic and permaculture alter-
natives to industrial agriculture undone and off the public agenda.
n Extension Services – a function and responsibility of land grant uni-

versities in most states – reflect this bias towards high tech, industri-
al agriculture. As a result, few extension education and support are
available to organic farmers pursuing local food system production.
The influence of private corporate agendas over the public university

research, education, and outreach agendas poses a major obstacle
to the Local Food Revolution.
“Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been
conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical com-
panies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies -- all have been
playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these
inputs to produce food.” -- Professor Ivette Perfecto, University of Michigan
vvv
What do we do?
PUBLIC POLICY for THE LOCAL FOOD REVOLUTION
“It is only when it is understood that our agricultural dilemma
is characteristic not of our agriculture but of our time that we begin to under-
stand why these surprises happen, and to work out standards of judgment that
may prevent them.” -- Wendell Berry
We live in a moment of deepening crisis -- not a cyclical, short-term

crisis produced by the inevitable swings of human greed and loss of
reason -- but a long term structural crisis.
Feeeding the Roots We have lost touch with our home, the earth and its living systems
of energy and nutrition, its relentless generation and regeneration of
“We have an unprecedently large ur-
ban population that has no land to
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy grow food on, no knowledge of how to
diverse life, its wisdom and need for human humility. This alienation
Page 28 grow it, and less and less knowledge
has consequences that go beyond the loss of song birds and wet-
of what to do with it after it is grown.
lands and Currier & Ives vistas.
That this population can continue to
eat through shortage, strike, embargo,
We are systematically destroying our ability to feed ourselves. We are riot, depression, war -- or any of the
trapped in a cycle of intensifying failure where industrial agricultural other large-scale afflictions that soci-
solutions to problems produced by industrial treatment of nature cre- eties have always been heir to and the
ate more profound and intractable industrial problems. industrial societies are uniquely vul-
nerable to -- is not a certainty or even
Public policy enables this suicidal behavior, creating subsidies and a faith; it is a supersition.”
--Wendell Berry,
distortions that allow the industrial agricultural system to continue “Agricultural Solutions for Agricultural Problems.”
for yet another growing season. But we are rapidly approaching the
end of this road.
As Wendell Berry’s words in the sidebar indicate, our faith in indus-

trial agriculture’s abililty to “feed the world” is a supersition, a danger-
ous and fatal delusion.
So what do we do? What can public policy do to help us turn around,

retrace our steps to a place of harmony with the land, with nature’s
systems, with each other? How can we use public policy to promote
the Local Food Revolution?
A Moral Solution. The financial meltdown on Wall Street in the Fall

of 2008, highlights the inherent weakness of systems, economic and
otherwise, that are based on human created illusions. Illusion drives
the engine that inflates a financial bubble. Good public policy is per-
ceived in this context, at minimum, as the kid in the crowd shouting
“the emperor has no clothes”. “Why didn’t they tell us?”, we ask.
In an ideal democracy, public policy comes from people acting to-

gether in communities. So what questions do we need to ask, what
behaviors do we need to value to make the changes we call the Local
Food Revolution?
Feeeding the Roots Wendell Berry addresses this question -- in a 1980 essay entitled,
“Solving for Pattern”. He writes,
Page 29
“Our ability to find solutions depends on virtues that are specifically hu-
man: accurate memory, observation, insight, imagination, inventiveness,
reverence, devotion, fidelity, restraint. Restraint -- for us now -- above
all: the ability to accept and live within limits; to resist changes that are
merely novel or fashionable; to resist greed and pride; to resist the temp-
tation to solve problems by ignoring them, accepting them as “tradeoffs”,
or bequeathing them to posterity. A good solution, then, must be in har-
mony with good character, cultural value, and moral law.”
In order to restore our food system’s harmony with nature, to ensure

healthy food for all people, we need to act with values that bring us
into “good standing” in Nature’s community and within our own com-
munities.
Systems vs. Practice.

Industrial agriculture speaks in terms of “practices” -- techniques and
technologies that address some specific aspect of deconstructed
nature. This industrial practice orientation is based in a static view of
agriculture; this amount of nitrogen produces this yield of corn, this
dose of sub-therapeutic antibiotic produces this increase in feed-
to-weight gain ratios in factory chicken broiler production, this fre-
quency of rBGH hormone injection will increase daily milk production
by this percentage. Since farms are seen as commodity production
factories, it is logical to talk, almost exclusively, about inputs, effi-
ciencies, and assembly line speed.
The organic agriculture of the Local Food Revolution speaks in terms

of “systems” -- complex interrelationships of diverse life forms based
on nutrition, and energy flows.
The key word is “interrelationships” -- every action has implications

for the health of the entire living system and the food economy that
grows out of it.
Feeeding the Roots The systems thinking of the Local Food Revolution requires a simi-
lar approach to the development of effective, forward thinking public
It is essential that we immediately begin to reorder
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy our institutions and plan to establish a stabilized
Page 30 policy in agriculture and food issues. economy. One way to such an equilibrium state
is the holding of resources in trust for the good of
A system of trust. At its base, the Local Food Revolution is based on mankind as a whole and future generations.”
a system of trust. Trust in nature’s rules. Trust in our neighbor’s integ- -- Donnella Meadows, “Limits to Growth” -- Club of Rome.
rity. Trust in our community’s ability to meet the growing challenges of
re-localization in a time of global collapse. Trust in the health of food
grown using organic and permaculture practices.
Michael Brownlee of Transition Boulder says, “Community will be the

most important natural resource of the 21st Century.” All community
depends the ability of people to trust each other and the process of
economic survival they engage in.
Public policy must regenerate trust in our agricultural and food sys-
tems. The goal is a renewed, reborn, regenerated trust that recon-
nects us to each other and to the land that sustains us. “Local food
you can trust.”
In the Local Food Revolution, local government will be the primary public
policy actor. State and federal legislation will play an important but
supporting role. The re-localization of the food and energy systems of
our nation, will require a concurrent re-localization of decisionmaking
to the community level.
Public Policy Proposal No. 1

MAKE THE PRESERVATION OF WORKING FARM LAND
IN AND NEAR POPULATION CENTERS
THE HIGHEST PRIORITY.
Farm land preservation efforts must be tied to food security and pub-
lic health, as well as open space, anti-sprawl, and preservation of ru-
ral culture. Without access to productive farm land in and near urban
areas food security, in a time of increasing oil cost and scarcity, will
be difficult to maintain.
Feeeding the Roots On August 25, 2008 Alachua County, Florida adopted a set of far “The land is one organism. If the
land mechanism as a whole is
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy reaching commendations to “Maximize Local Food Production &
Processing”. The county is the first in the nation to prioritize acqui- good, then every part is good,
Page 31
sition and preservation of farmland sufficient to feed the county’s whether we understand it or not.
population. The county identifed its food shed and set out to protect If the biota, in the course of eons,
it. In addition, Seattle, Washington, and Toronto, Ontario have taken has built something we like but
steps in this direction. The Alachua Plan does the following: do not understand, then who but
a fool would discard seemingly
1. Measure the total community food needs. useless parts? To keep every cog
2. Calculate land necessary for food self-sufficency. and wheel is the first precaution
3. Secure access to farm land needed for future. of intelligent tinkering.”
4. Sustainably manage this land until it is needed. -- Aldo Leopold
These four steps represent an unprecedented move by local govern-

ment into direct support of the Local Food Revolution. The rationale
is community food security. State and federal governments should take
action to support this “turning around and going in a new direction.”
1. Mandate community food security planning as a high

priority in state comprehensive planning statutes.
2. Calculate healthy food needs for the entire state.
3. Prepare a state food security plan based on regional food
production.
4. Establish effective tax and land preservation policies that
protect and expand agricultural land for local food
production.
In 2002 the Department of Homeland Security was created “to pre-

vent terrorist attacks within the United States, to reduce the vulner-
ability of the United States to terrorism at home, and to minimize the
damage and assisting in the recovery from any attacks that may occur.”
Within the Homeland Security Department, “Critical Infrastructure

Protection” is one of five major priorities. “America’s open and tech-
nologically complex society includes a wide array of critical infra-
structure and key resources that are potential terrorist targets.”
--Homeland Security Preservation Directive/Hspd-7 (12/17/03 )
Feeeding the Roots In the seven year history of the Department of Homeland Security,
the food system has never been on the list of “critical infrastructure
and key resources,” -- a fact that led to departing HHS Secretary
Page 32
Tommy Thompson’s observation quoted earlier in this chapter. The
federal government should...
1. Designate development of local food production

the highest Homeland Security priority.
2. Prioritize policies that increase biological and physical
resilience of the food system through localization.
3. Establish tax policies that encourage this resilience.
Five Actions. The preservation and expansion of food producing land

in rural areas, in and near urban centers requires five specific public
policy actions, immediately.
#1. Establish urban gardening and farming as a high priority permitted use in “There is a need to bring life
zoning ordinances. Right now, there is no model ordinance that fully into the city, so that its poorest
achieves this goal. As economies relocalize, competition for land in inhabitant will have not merely
sun and air, but some chance to
urban and suburban settings increases, driving up land prices. In
touch and feel and cultivate the
hard economic times, elected officials are reluctant to intervene to earth.” -- Lewis Mumfod 1961
lock in lower prices on land. This must change if urban agriculture is
to make a significant contribution to urban health, food security, and
economic development.
#2. Develop property tax policies to promote agriculture easements and com-
munity land trusts in both rural and urban areas. The Local Food Revolu-
tion requires a new understanding of land and its role in long term
economic security.
Agriculture easements and community land trusts both are predi-

cated on the idea that land should be held for the common good
and not for private gain through speculation. The public ownership of
land either through governmental or non-profit vehicles is an estab-
lished practice in current urban economic development. Many large
commercial buildings in cities are built on leased land.
Feeeding the Roots This is entrepreneurial development within a community values frame-
work. Indviduals and groups are able to invest in agriculture and food
production, securing a return on their capital and labor -- but without
Page 33
owning the land. Such arrangemets may be necessary to achieve
meaning local food production close to population centers.
#3. Establish “front yard” gardening in urban and suburban settings as an en-
couraged use. Right now, many municipalities have ordinances that
prohibit alternative use of front yards, mandating grass monocultures
in the name of uniform urban design. This needs to be reversed.
#4. Create property tax incentives for farms dedicated to local, organic food
production. Woodbury County, Iowa is the first county in the nation
to pass such a policy, offering a five year tax abatement for any farm
that transitions to organic food production for local consumption.
The Alachua County recommendations suggest creation of such an
incentive.
#5. Establish foodshed agricultural zones around each of the 363 metropoli-
tan areas recognized by the US Census Bureau. The federal government
should designate foodsheds as prioritized areas of federal subsidy,
investment, and technical support. Overlapping food sheds exist in
most states, requiring formal coordination of food system planning
and farmland preservation efforts.

PRIORITIZE COMMUNITY INVESTMENT IN
COMMUNITY FOOD SYSTEMS.
Relocalization of food production offers a parallel opportunity for the

relocalization of capital investment. The recent meltdown on Wall
Street and in the global financial markets have demonstrated the
importance of knowing “what you are invested in.”
In Western Michigan, local credit unions received a dramatic infusion

of deposits in the Fall of 2008, as local investors withdrew funds from
the stock market and other distant investments to bring their money
Feeeding the Roots closer to home. Capital is moving from Wall Street to communities
around the nation. The question has become, “How to invest in the
new local economy of the future?”
Page 34
Woody Tasch, Chairman and CEO of the Investors Circle (a gather- SLOW MONEY PRINCIPLES
ing of investors interested in sustainable economic development) has nInvest for a balance of social and financial return.
coined the term, “Slow Money” to describe investment in “early-stage nGet to know investees/look for a mission match.
sustainable food enterprises.” In a Slow Money investment, investors nSeek sustainable return, not the highest possible
may anticipate a 5-14 percent return (5-14%) in 15 years -- a much .short term hit.
lower rate than traditional entrepreneurial capital ventures. nStay invested, rather than cash out and turn the in-
vestee organization over to the tender ministrations of
Tasch sees such Local Food Revolution investments as more secure, Wall Street.
more ethical, and based on an economic relationship with current nAlign the investment fund’s philosophy with that of
ecological reality. He writes, the investors.
nKeep investors informed not just about financial re-
“The Ground Zero for our future is the farmer’s field, the vegetable garden, the turn, but also about how the investee organizations are
place where every day the battle between the economy and ecology plays out.” doing.
nKeep it real; keep it human: “Barefoot Economics”.
Tasch’s work grows out the “social entrepreneur” movement of the
1980s and 1990s. The Skoll Foundation defines the social entrepre-
neur as “Society’s change agent: pioneer of innovation that benefits
humanity.”
That innovation, increasingly, is community-based as the ecological

realities demand relocalization of basic economic functions: the sup-
ply of food and energy. So what can public policy do to help sup-
port and promote this relocalization of capital investment in the Local
Food Revolution? Here are five actions.
#1. Provide technical assistance, models, and information to community finan-

cial institutions and farmers/entrepreneurs to enable investment in the Local
Food Revolution. Innovative models exist. Cooperatives and microloan
programs like the E.F. Schumacher Society’s SHARE Program have
developed pioneering community investment vehicles. But this infor-
mation has not been gathered together and systematically evaluated.
The Small Business Administration which administers a small micro-
loan program should undetrake this information sharing.
Feeeding the Roots #2. Create an Investment Tax Credit for local food system investment.
In October, 2008, Congress included expanded investment tax cred-
Page 35 its for renewable energy in the $700 billion bail-out package for the
financial industry. This investment tax credit, which allows investors to
write up to 30% of the investment directly off their income tax liability,
acknowledges (indirectly) the importance of relocalized, decentral-
ized, renewable energy production. A similar investment tax credit
should be passed for the Local Food Revolution.
#3. Expand the Individual Development Account (IDA) Program of the US Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services (HHS). The IDA Program was created
to help low income citizens transition from welfare-to-work; providing
a federal (1/3) and a local match (1/3) to money saved by the indi-
vidual (up to a limit of $1,000). IDAs were created to help purchase a
car, make a deposit on an apartment or a house rental.
The CS Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems at Michigan State

University has adapted the IDA Program to allow young farmers (who
often meet the low-income requirement) to get started in independent
farming. Their project is called “Seeding Economies”. This should be-
come part of the Local Food Revolution toolbox.
#4. Create new tax incentives to increase giving to community foundations.

The community foundation will play a central role in the relocaliztion
of the economy. Community foundations democratize philanthropy
and serve as community convenors in the Local Food Revolution.
A 2005 Report entitled, “On the Brink of New Promise: The Future of
U.S. Community Foundations.” recommended that community foun-
dations needed to pay more attention to the potentially larger role of
community leadership -- displaying new creativity and leadership.
Michigan has 65 community foundations. covering all 83 counties.

This statewide coverage is due largely to a major challenge grant
from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to give every state resident ac-
cess to benefits and services of a community foundation.
Feeeding the Roots MIchigan is one of three states (Iowa and Montana are the others)
that provides a tax credit to individuals and businesses that make a
gift to an endowment held by a community foundation. ($100/indi-
Page 36
vidual + $200/family + $5,000/business deducted directly from state
taxes.) This program should be expanded through state action and
perhaps, matched at the federal level.
#5. Reintroduce and Pass the New Homestead Act. This 2007 legislation (S.
1093), sponsored by US Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, pro-
poses to forgive up to $2,000/year in college loans for any who lives
and works for five years after graduation in a “qualified” rural county
-- a county has a net out-migration of residents for 20 years.
The proposed legislation also creates tax exempt “homestead ac-

counts” that matches individual contributions with federal funds to be
used, after 5 years, to start a business, pay for higher education, or
buy a home (first time homebuyers) in a qualified rural county. It also
creates accelerate depreciation and a rural investment tax credit of
70% on new buildings.
Finally, it creates a federally guaranteed and partially financed New

Homestead Venture Capital Fund for investment in qualified rural
counties. This bill is the first attempt at the federal level, in nearly
50 years, to provide incentives to repopulate the rural countryside. In
doing so, it supports the Local Food Revolution.

PROMOTE FARMING AND FOOD SYSTEMS THAT BUILD
HEALTH -- IN THE SOIL , IN THE ENVIRONMENT, AND
1
THE COMMUNITY.
Industrial agriculture’s stripmining of water and soil nutrients has
moved beyond being the concern mainly of environmentalists to cen-
ter stage in our national struggle to survive. The realities of Peak Oil,
the increasing scarcity of once abundant and surplus water, and a
growing instability in climate has doomed the industrial paradigm in
farming.
Feeeding the Roots Yet federal agricultural policy continues to subsidize industrial, larg-
er-is-better, monoculture farming as if it were the future. This blind
support of the failing past has hastened the food crisis before us.
Page 37
Public policy in Washington has only addressed the edge of this prob-
lem, primarily through a “capping of farm payments” to $250,000 per
farm including caps on $40,000 on direct payments, $60,000 on
counter-cyclical payments, and $150,000 on loan deficiency pay-
ments.
The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (SAC) strongly backs a “hard

payment cap” in its “Presidential Transition Briefing Papers on Ur-
gent Sustainable Food & Farming Priorities” (December, 2008).
”The lack of effective payment limitations has caused federal farm programs to
finance consolidation and elimination of mid-size family farms. It has encour-
aged expanding large producers to bid farm program payments into higher
cash rents and thereby reduce profit margins for all farmers.” (SAC Presidential Transi-
tion Briefing Papers, Pg. 10).
This payment limit proposal, sponsored by Senators Byron Dorgan

(D-North Dakota) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) doesn’t even come
close to addressing the magnitude of the ecological and economic
security problems confronting our nation’s food system.
#1. Link federal subsidy and other payments to environmental quality

and soil health as measured by the NRCS Soil Quality Institute’s soil
health protocol. If soil health, water conservation, and food quality
are to valued, all federal agricultural payments must be linked to
achieving those goals. Soil health is the basis for this change.
The SAC Transition Briefing Paper to the incoming Obama Adminis-

tration recommends this linkage (Page 54-55). It sites the 1985 Farm
Act’s mandated conservation compliance required of farmers tilling
“highly erodible cropland” (sodbusting) and prohibition from draining
wetlands (swampbusting).
Feeeding the Roots This legal requirement is not evenly enforced by USDA, giving some
producers an advantage over others. When conservation violations
NRCS Soil Quality Institute
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy “healthy soil” protocol tests for...
are found, a recent GAO study reports that eighty percent (80%) are
Page 38
waived. Current federal regulation and enforcement is inadequate to 1. Soil Respiration
the soil health and water conservation transformation that food secu- 2. Water Infiltration
rity demands. 3. Bulk Density or Soil Compaction
4. Electrical Conductivity
Fortunately, the NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service) Soil 5. pH Test
Quality Institute under the leadership of John Doran has developed 6. Soil Nitrate Test
and published a “science based” soil health testing protocol. This 7. Water Stable Aggregates
“healthy soil” protocol measures eleven (11) different aspect of soil 8. Slake Test (stability of soil in water)
health. (SEE Sidebar). This whole system approach to soil health 9. Earthworm Population
should be basis for the federal payment/healthy soil linkage. 10. Soil Structure and Root
11. Water Quality(Salinity & Nitrate Levels)
#2. Create payment incentives to transition to Certified Organic produc-
tion that builds measurable soil health. Right now, federal policy sup-
port of transition to Certified Organic farming practices is limited to a
cost-share program (run by states) to help pay for organic certification
costs and information available through ATTRA-National Sustainable
Agriculture Information Service of the National Center for Appropriate
Technology (NCAT).
We need to establish direct subsidies for transition to organic farm-

ing practices that build soil health as measured by the NRCS’s Soil
Institute Protocol mentioned above.
#3. Mandate organic farming techniques in the watershed of any “im-

paired” waterway or any waterway that is upstream of an impaired water-
way. Responsibility for quality in the nation’s water ways falls to the
US Environmental Protection Agency. EPA administers three laws,
the Clean Water Act (1972 + 1977 Amendments), the Safe Drinking
Water Act (1974) and the Pollution Prevention Act (1990) that identify
land use procedures as a component of water quality.
Organic farming is an internationally recognized technique to reduce-

and eliminate runoff from agricultural lands including substantial re-
duction in nutrient runoff and elimination of toxic chemical runoff.
Feeeding the Roots EPA should make adoption of organic farming practices in the water-
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy shed of impaired waterways part of the TMDL process of the Clean
Page 39 Water Act and a focus of the Strategic Agriculture Initiation of the
Pollution Prevention Act.
#4. Mandate humane treatment of all farm animals including the banning
of CAFO animal production techniques. Animals form a critical com-
ponent of the healthy soil nutrient cycle. The confinement of poultry,
swine and cattle in large factory-like settings called CAFOs poisons
and weakens this cycle through abnormal and dangerous concentra-
tions of raw manure often containing antibiotics, heavy metals, and
poisons like arsenic.
Humane animal raising techniques that respect basic animal nature

eliminate this danger to healthy living soil while maximizing the effi-
cacy of the natural animal/soil cycle of nutrition.
#5. Mandate foodshed soil nutrient plans to regenerate soil health includ-
ing establishment of zero organic waste community composting systems.
Soil health and productivity is being lost at an alarming rate, with con-
sequences approaching that of oil depletion.
“Nowhere has the depletion of topsoil gained the attention paid to the
depletion of oil reserves,” write Lester Brown in “Soil Erosion: Quiet
Crisis in the World Economy”. Loss of soil and soil nutrients involves
a feedback loop that deepens and accelerates this crisis.
“Whenever erosion begins to exceed new soil formation,” writes

Brown, “the layer of topsoil becomes thinner, eventually disappearing
entirely. As the topsoil layer is lost, subsoil beomes part of the till-
age layer, reducing the soil’s organic matter, tilth, and aeration, and
adversely affecting other structural characteristics that make it ideal
for plant growth. This overall deterioration in soil structure is usually
accompanied by a reduced nutrient retentional capacity, which low-
ers productivity further.”
Industrial farming’s dependence on inorganic nutrients, primarily pro-

duced from oil, further weakens the natural nutrient system.
Feeeding the Roots Organic farming practices are based on returning nutrients to the soil
through application of green manure (covercrops) and animal manure
(composted). The goal is to regenerate soil health through elimination
Page 40
of inorganic chemical inputs, replacing them with natural sources of
fertility from plants and animals.
Federal and state agricultural policy should establish technical sup-

port and financial incentives to:
1. Develop watershed and foodshed nutrient plans base

on organic farming (especially including organic no-till)
principles of regenerating soil health.
2. Mandate the design and implementation of “zero” plant

and animal waste recycling plans based on composting.
3. Make composted nutrients easily available to local food

producers.
At the local level, individual county and regional waste management

authorities have begun to implement aspects of this “zero” biologi-
cal waste process. Federal rules and incentives would support more
widespread adoption of closed loop nutrient planning.
Public Policy Proposal No. 4.

RESTRICT MONOPOLY CONTROL OF AGRICULTURE
AND FOOD SYSTEMS.
Right now, a handful of large agribusiness corporations control farm

and food policy in the United States -- using direct and indirect gov-
ernmental intervention into the market to preserve their commercial
advantage, to extend their control over more of the global food sys-
tem, to subvert and block the Local Food Revolution.
What public policy has created, public policy can change, must
change. For if our food and farm policy is exclusively dictated to
benefit a few coporations -- at the expense of public health, envi-
Feeeding the Roots ronmental integrity, and rural economic prosperity -- we risk disaster.
The recent collapse of the housing and financial markets offers us a
stark picture of what can happen when a few large special interests
Page 41
are allowed to pursue profit at any cost.
#1. Limit the patenting of genes and organisms in agriculture. In 2007,

US Congress considered but did not pass the Patent Reform Act of
2007 -- a reform of the patent laws that, in part, would limit suits HR 1908 and S. 1145.
against farmers with contamination from neighbors’ GMO crops.
The Center for Food Safety (in 2005) documented over 90 lawsuits
by Monsanto against farmers and small businesses found with pollen
from patented GMO crops on their land or in their crops. This contam-
ination was considered prima facia evidence of patent infringement,
winning Monsanta $412,259 in patent payments in the process. The
proposed legislation would eliminate suits based on downwind GMO
contamination.
This bill was virgorous opposed by the BioTechnology Industry As-

sociation whch succeeded in sabotaging this reform through amend-
ments. As needed as this legislation was, it sidesteps the real issues
with Genetically Modified Organisms.
nGMOs in agriculture threaten environmental resilience by

depressing biological diversity.
nGMOs threaten national security and rural economic pros-

perity by increasing reliance on petroleum based inputs.
nGMO crops, increasingly, fail to solve the problems they

were created to solve as GMO yields drop and weeds and
insects adapt.
Congress should amend US Patent Law to ban the patenting of ag-

ricuture based GMOs in the name of food and national security. Exist-
ing GMO crops should be withdrawn from the market and tested for
ecological safety before being reintroduced (if at all) into farming.
Feeeding the Roots #2. Reform agricultural contracts. Eliminate mandatory mediation and
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy confidentiality clauses. Establish “building healthy soil” requirements.
Page 42 The increasing use of contracts to extend monopoly corporate con-
trol crop and animal production threatens the continued existence of
independent family farming.
These contracts eliminate some of the price and upfront financing

risk facing farmers. But the cost of this risk reduction is very high.
Farmers often have to accept low prices per unit of production, forc-
ing them to push yields as high as possible, regardless of environ-
mental cost.
Contracts can demand additional capital investment by farmers, in-

creasing their debt loads without increasing their income. Finally,
contracts frequently establish binding arbitration as the only permit-
ted form of dispute resolution -- a fact that puts farmers at a signifi-
cant disadvantage in their dealings with their integrators.
Mandatory mediation should be eliminated. All contracts should be

made available, through the State Attorney General (as in Iowa) on
the web so farmers can compare the deals they are offered.
Finally, all agricultural contracts should include “building healthy soil”

as measured by the Soil Quality Institute’s eleven criteria as a manda-
tory contract requirement.
#3. Establish national marketing agreements for produce that both pro-
tect the public and encourage diverse, small farm food production.
In 2006, E-Coli 0157:H7 bacteria were discovered in packaged spin-
ach from California. A nationwide spinach recall was the result. In
California the state tried to establish mandatory water testing and
other rules for all produce. This state marketing order was reduced
to a marketing agreement that established new rules.
“We are concerned that mandatory rules are going to be created and
applied to everyone,” said Dave Runsten, Executive Director of Com-
munity Alliance with Family Farmers.
Feeeding the Roots The concern? Small farmers would be saddled with expensive and
difficult testing to protect against a problem caused by industrial pro-
duce production.
Page 43
Industrial vegetable production, which often ships product thousands
of miles to consumers, seeks to maximize shelf life through process-
ing -- specifically packaging in bags or plastic shells. In the process,
industrial packaged produce is subject to Ecoli 0157:H7 contamina-
tion -- a risk that increases the longer the package is on the shelf.
All Ecoli contamination of produce in the Center for Food Safety study
occurred in bagged product 15-17 days after it was packed.
Fresh produce, grown locally and minimally packaged has a sub-

stantial lower risk for such contamination. The issue of food con-
tamination will continue to be of concern, particularly if long distance
industrial food production continues. The FDA in 2006 estimated the
76 million Americans annually from eating food.
The USDA needs to develop national market agreements for each

crop based on food safety metrics that reflects the production and
quality differences of fruits and vegetables grown and sold locally.

MANDATE TRANSPARENCY, PROMOTE PUBLIC
AWARENESS AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION.
The old order in agricultural public policy that supports industrial
farming with subsidies and turns a blind eye to corporate abuse of
farmers, rural communities, consumers, and the environment, will not
die easily. Democratic action by tens of millions of consumers will be
necessary for the Local Food Revolution to succeed.
That democratic action both in the marketplace and the ballot box
requires access to accurate, timely information.
Feeeding the Roots #1. Conduct a national media campaign to promote public understanding
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy of the need for local, ecologically intelligent farming and food systems.
Page 44 The Local Food Revolution is a revolution in thinking and conscious-
ness as well as farming practices and food system design. The change
needed parallels the change in energy consumption the economic
and ecological realities of the 21st Century demands.
Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection’s WE Campaign for

the transition to sustainable, carbon free energy production offers a
model. The WE (...Can Solve It) advertising and media outreach is
based on the idea that “we need to make change now. We have no
time left.”
Although the food and farming crisis that confronts our nation and
our planet today has not reached the critical consciousness that cli-
mate change and global warming has achieved, the threat it poses is
similar in consequence and magnitude.
The federal government should commission a similar scale media

outreach and education campaign in support of the Local Food Revo-
lution, creating the conceptual framework of the changes that occur-
ing, that need to be made.
#2. Require complete labeling of all food sold including place of origin,
all ingrediants including GMOs, and all materials used in growing and
processing including antibiotics, heavy metals, and toxics. A Novem-
ber, 2008 by the Consumers Union found that ninety-five (95%) of
consumers polled “wanted clear labels on food products made from
cloned or genetically engineered animals.”
A similar percentage wanted expanded “country of origin” labeling on

all food products sold in the United States.
In 2000, US Senator Barbara Boxer introduced S. 2080, “The Geneti-

cally Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act” that would “require food
that contains or was produced with GE (genetically engineered) mate-
rial to be labeled at each stage of the food production process.”
Feeeding the Roots This legislation was not enacted. Country of Origin Labeling’s (COOL)
final rule, passed in 2002 was not finalized and put into effect until
September 30, 2008. This long delayed final rule (from the Bush Ad-
Page 45
ministration that resisted Congress’s intent) was full of loopholes.
Processed foods, dairy products, and much the meat sold in the US
were exempted from the COOL labeling requirement. This must change.
Food labels must include clear language about the source, nature,
processing, and health of the food within.
#3. Expand broadband internet access to all communities, rural and ur-
ban. Relocalization of the food economy does not mean a return to
the rural isolation of the 19th Century. The Local Food Revolution may
be local in its growing practices. But the information that feeds and
sustains much of its wisdom will be national and global.
President Obama said in a debte on September 26, 2008, “I also think

that we’re going to have to rebuild our infrastructure, which is falling
behind; our roads, our bridges, but also broadband lines that reach
into rural communities.” We should support this goal as part of the
bailout package.
MAKE THE LOCAL FOOD REVOLUTION THE HEART OF
THE REGENERATION OF THE LOCAL ECONOMY.
This chapter of “Feeding the Roots” began with a
quotation from Father Miquel d’Escoto Brockman, President of the
United Nations General Assembly, speaking at the “Conference on the
Politics
cs of Food” at Columbia University in New Y
York (November 19,
2008). Here is some more of his speech which offers a vision of the
challenges before us and the role the Local Food Revolution can play
in their solution.
“From an international point of view, I do believe that the current food crisis
that we are watching unfold on a global scale is a symptom of a broader
breakdown of models of governance and production that have failed us
and betrayed the trust of billions of people around the world.”
“They are unsustainable and we must find alternatives both internationally and
Feeeding the Roots locally. The food crisis is linked directly to our financial crisis, the energy crisis
and the overarching problems associated with climate change.”
Page 46
Systems rather than practices. The Local Food Revolution forms the
heart of our response to the much larger problem of our economies
“out-of-balance” relationship with nature. Nature operates according
to three simple rules:
x Live on current solar income. Climate change, global warming

and the economics of increasing scarity demand that we move
from a carbon energy economy to a current solar energy
economy.
x Waste equals food. We must design every product and activity

to recycle nutrient flows (both biological and technical) totally.
Zero waste. Everything is food for some other human made or
biological activity.
x Nurture and respect diversity. Diversity is nature’s engine of

change and adaptation. As our economies relocalize and be
come more sustainable, we must eliminate one-size-fits-all
solutions and encourage place based, local innovation and
adaptation.
Four (4) specific public policy actions to connect the Local Food Rev-
olution to the larger issues of the developing sustainable economy
appear below. These actions are, in fact, public policy strategies to
raise the issues described in this chaper.
#1. Develop a national plan to reduce petroleum use in farming and food
production by 90 percent (90%) in 10 years. The farm and food system’s
dependence on petroleum offers a place to begin a public policy ini-
tiative to support the Local Food Revolution.
#2. Develop a national plan to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture

through the new Green Revolution. Agriculture accounts for over 30
percent (30%) of the greenhouse gases responsible for global
Feeeding the Roots warming. The growing international campaign to reduce the threat of
global warming should make the new Green Revolution -- farming us-
ing organic practices -- one of its central strategies.
Page 47
#3. Link funding in healthcare to local healthy food access and produc-
tion. Healthcare costs continue to rise, threatening to further bankrupt
and already bankrupt US economy.
In 2007, the United States spent $2.4 trillion on healthcare, $7,500

person. In spite of this enormous expenditure, the highest in the
world per capita, almost 50 million Americans have no healthcare.
Since 2000, US healthcare premiums have nearly doubled (98% in-
crease) growing four times faster than wages during the same eight
year period. Premiums are becoming increasingly unaffordable for
those with health insurance.
According to a Prevention Institute and PoliicyLink paper to the incom-

ing Obama Administration, “Improving health cannot be addressed
effectively disease-by-disease. Instead, efforts need to be informed
by a comprehensive understanding of the wide range of factors that
shape health status.”
Chronic illness accounts for 83 percent (83%) of all healthcare expen-

ditures. Access to healthy food can substantially reduce healthcare
costs associated with chronic disease.
Chronic illness accounts for 83 percent (83%) of all healthcare ex-

penditures. For example, Michigan in 2004 spent $3.7 billion treating
Type-2 Diabetes (both public and private expenditures), ninety percent
(90%) of which could have been avoided through improvements in diet
and exercise. It is much, much cheaper to provide Type-2 Diabetes suf-
ferers with healthy food than insulin, amputations, and hospital stays.
But no market place exists where savings in healthcare costs can be

officially linked and translated into support for the Local Food Revolu-
tion. Such a link and marketplace needs to be created through public
policy.
Feeeding the Roots #4. Make supply of local, healthy food for school meals a national priority.
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy Increase lunch and breakfast reimbursement rates. Reform federal school
Page 48 lunch commodity programs. Farm-to-School programs form a starting
point for public policy in support of the Local Food Revolution.
In 2007, the highest USDA reimbursement rate to local school districts

for school meals was $2.64/lunch and $1.61/breakfast (reimburse-
ment for meals served free to need qualified students). In most school
districts, food service operations are financially separate from the tax USDA’s School Lunch Commodity
supported educational budget. They must pay all their costs through Program was created by Congress
USDA contributions and student “lunch money” expenditures. With “as a measure of national security, to
personnel and overhead costs consuming 50 percent (50%) or more safeguard the health and well-being of
of food service budgets, the amount of money available to actually
the Nation’s children and to encour-
purchase healthy food is dangerously small.
age the domestic consumption of nu-
This inadequate funding makes school food services dependent on tritious agricultural commodities and
subsidized federal commodities delivered through the USDA School other food, by assisting the States,
Lunch Commodity Distribution Program. through ...the establishment, mainte-
nance, operation, and expansion of
In 2007, this program made available $142,200,000 worth of free nonprofit school lunch programs.”
“commodities” for lunches served in 93,000+ school districts around (Section 2/Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act).
the nation. Currently, the School Lunch Commodity Program distrib-
utes 263 different food items (each with their own code) from almonds
to walnuts. The commodities are made available to state Departments
of Education for distribution, based on state rules, to school districts.
In Michigan, every student lunch receives $.1675 from USDA to ac-

cess (not buy because the commodities are free) commodities for
lunch menus. These commodity funds are used for storage, shipping,
and processing of the USDA donated food. Schools, often working
together in purchasing consortia, contract with approved USDA NPA
Commodity Processors to transform the commodities available under
the program into the food served in school lunches.
The $.1675/lunch is used to contract with food companies to pro-

duce, using USDA commodities, specific food items like pizza, chick-
en nuggets, ravoli, French fries, bread, pasta, hamburgers, etc.
Feeeding the Roots In other words, the main entrée items served in public school lunch-
es are almost always made from USDA commodities. In Muskegon
County, Michigan, the Center for Economic Security estimates that
Page 49
the $.1675/lunch contributes about 6% of the income that runs school
lunch programs but buys over 40% of the actual food served.
But the USDA School Lunch Commodity Program, as currently con-

figured, comes with some serious costs including a fundamental
sabotaging of current Farm-to-School efforts. Here’s the list.
1. According to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study entitled

“Impact of Federal Commodity Programs on School Meal Nutrition”
(September, 2008), over 50% of the commodities distributed un-
der the USDA program was “sent to processor before being sent to
school”. This processing is not regulated for nutritional quality and
often involves adding salt, sugar, and fat to the finished foods served
in school lunches. In California, 82% of the commodity funds went
for meat and cheese; only 13% of the commodity funds went for
fruits and vegetables.
2. The national list of USDA Commodity Processors include Car-

gill, ConAgra, Fieldale (an industrial chicken producer), Giorgio, Land
O’Lakes, Tyson and Uno Foods. Of the 106 processors listed on
the USDA’s National Processing Agreement, 18 make pizza, 10 bake
bread, pastries, and muffins, only 4 process fruit.
3. The processed commodities available under this program are

almost always indistinguishable from the same products available in
the store. This means, large food processors are using the School
Lunch Commodity Program to build brand loyalty among even the
youngest children. The federal government is subsidizing national
industrial food processors to the detriment of local food producers.
4. A year-round Farm-to-School program must, by necessity, in-

clude storage and processing facilities for fruits and vegetables, bak-
ing facilities for grain products, and provision to buy local meat and
dairy products, particularly cheese. Commodity processing under
Feeeding the Roots USDA’s current program makes the development of local sources for
CHAPTER 5: Public Policy processing, storage, and preparation almost impossible.
Page 50
This situation must change. Provision of locally grown, healthy food
for a community’s school children could provide one consistent
market for farmers growing food for local consumption. In addition,
health researchers have documented the positive effects fresh, un-
processed or refined food can bring to a school age population fac-
ing higher and higher rates of obesity and Type-2 diabetes.
Finally, Farm-to-School programs offer schools and students an oppor-

tunity to participate in the raising of food for their own community -- cre-
ating a stronger community as well as healthier children in the process.
Public policy in support of effective Farm-to-School programs has

the potential of being an integrating, transformative force -- a change
of the kind Father Miquel d’Escoto Brockman spoke of in November,
2008.
“We need to have an approach to food production that is multi-functional, that

has a concern for the poor and their right to food; a concern for the earth and
its right to life; a concern for communities and their right to self-governance,
what is referred to as food sovereignty.
So let us take today’s terrible confluence of crises and turn them into an
opportunity to take courageous actions that are needed to ensure new
levels of co-existence between humans and between us and nature
and thereby ensure a better world for present and future generations. “
That should be the public policy goal of the Local Food Revolution.
vvv
DRAFT Prepared by Christopher B. Bedford
January 10, 2009
Center for Economic Security

#6543 Hancock Road - Montague, MI 49437

Feeeding The Roots: CHAPTER 5: Public Policy

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Feeeding the Roots On June 18, 2008, H.R.

6124 -- The Food, Conservation, and En-

Some in the public interest community declared “victory” with its

In November, 2008 even these modest gains faced serious challeng-

An effort by the Bush Administration is already under way to divert $8

“As we enter a period of economic uncertainty, precipitating Con-

“Even mandatory funds that do not require an appropriation can be

The current financial crisis may seriously complicate the relation-

“Centralized government and globalization can weaken feedbacks,”

The 2008 Farm Bill reflected little awareness of these thresholds.

(1) global industrial food systems based on GMO monocultures

(2) a global food supply chain powered by cheap oil competes

Like a kind of dying woolly mammoth of the Late Pleistocene Epoch

“Industrial agriculture needs three things to survive,” said Fred

In particular, the man-made petroleum inputs and technologies neces-

In 2007, US agriculture and food production used 19% of the petro-

This change is sometimes called “the long descent” to an economy

In a time of pervasive economic crisis that strains government re-

“It’s easy to dismiss the principle of self-reliance by pointing to many

The Revolution is a movement of small farmers growing for local

“We have to diversify ownership niches for American farmers, do a

This “access to land” challenge is manifested differently in urban and

During World War Two, Eleanor Roosevelt initiated a “Victory Garden”

A new “victory garden” movement has emerged in the first decade of

Ashley Atkinson leads the Greening of Detroit, a non-profit that pro-

“This is totally a grassroots movement,” said Ms. Atkinson, “ attempting

In spite of its growing reach and success, virtually everything Green-

This pattern is repeated throughout the nation. Most urban farming

In the larger frame, relocalization of the urban economy (driven by

The remaining farmers have had to get bigger as “industrialization” in-

Organic production is threatened by industrial land use practices. The smaller

A culture of hostility. Most conventional farmers receive the informa-

Beginning farmers are a specific FSA focus. Fifty percent (50%) of

The loan assistance is structured through a series of direct loans

In addition, the direct federal role in encouraging beginning farm-

An Industrial Bias. Private sector financing offers a portrait of how

Pro-industrial/pro-contract production agriculture and the massive un-

A 2007 presentation by Dr. Ernest Brazen of the University of Tennes-

Industrial regulations thwart local food production. Federal and

Former Secretary Thompson was referring to Al-Qa’ida type terror-

Industrial scale threatens food safety. In the fall of 2006, an E-

Currently, two percent (2%) of US farms produce over 50 percent

These very large operations have had a significant impact on food

In Congress, the industrial meat industry has opposed Country of Ori-

For the federal government to intervene so directly in a commercial

Irradiation may directly impact human health through destruction of

Food irradiation policies are designed to protect and promote global

This combination of lower costs (made possible by irradiation em-

Technological solutions to the earth’s ecological and food problems

The threat of pandemic animal diseases like Mad Cow, hoof-and-

Under USDA rules, large CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Opera-

The cost and reporting burden of NAIS falls disproportionately on small

Insurance & Inspection Requirements.

Yet, federal crop insurance requires organic farmers to a five percent

PUBLIC POLICY CHALLENGE #4:

To operate effectively, markets and democracies need access to ac-

Worse, corporate dominated federal information practices have ac-

Transparency. The USDA and FDA actively resist the introduction

NRCS (Natural Resource and Conservation Service) and EQIP (En-

Transparency and the Local Food Revolution.

Currently, USDA in the last days of the Bush Administration is push-

USDA has engaged in this kind of label deception to allow industrial

That nature’s diversity and abundance can be made the intellectual