We hope your interest in Slow Food will motivate you to discover the myriad activities in our local food community. Please email us with information about events, local initiatives or groups meeting on a regular basis which would be of interest to our Slow Food members in Southeast Wisconsin so we may post them on our calendar.

 

Free For All: Fixing School Food in America, by Janet Poppendieck

Review by Jennifer Cadenas

School food. For many, just hearing those two words together is enough to conjure up images of crowded, noisy cafeterias, greasy pizza, nachos, chocolate milk, tater tots, mystery meats, long lines, food fights, and other food atrocities. For the Slow Food community, school lunch also has the added connotation of being too fast, - a rushed meal, full of waiting in lines, quick eating, and trying to make it back to class before the bell rings.

Every year America’s schools serve at least seven billion meals to students. That’s right, seven billion meals. That comes to about forty million meals each school day. Our nation has a three-tiered system that requires students to qualify for free, reduced price, or full price school breakfasts, or lunches. Three-fifths of students receiving school lunches and four-fifths of kids eating school breakfasts qualify for free or reduced price meals. Despite all of the problems with school food, - despite the fact that the number one most popular school lunch, pepperoni pizza, nachos, peanut butter cookies and a diet soda, contains 1,116 calories and 51 grams of fat, it is clear that school food is necessary for many children, and for some children, it is the only food they receive during the week. While these feelings of horror about the quality and nutritional value of school food are valid, justified, and based in reality, the numbers, - seven billion meals a year, forty million a day, - should inform us that we are looking at a problem that requires wide scale, structural solution based on federal policy change.

Janet Poppendieck’s latest book, Free For All: Fixing School Food in America is full of facts like the ones mentioned above and is a must-read for anyone concerned about the state of food in America today. Poppendieck takes us on a journey through the school food landscape, - asking how did we get to this point, - how did kids end up eating nachos, pizza, and tater tots for breakfast and lunch, and how does the process of making, serving, and eating school food look on the ground day-to-day.

Poppendieck explores the history of school food from its roots in progressive era community kitchens, to its official start as a program of the Depression years, and outlines how school food has gone from an act intended to serve a public need, - feeding hungry children, - to its current state as a business that schools depend on for much needed funding. She also lays out how cuts to the program have resulted in competition from corporate food providers that have in turn created a change in the types of food offered by schools, - whatever our opinions are on government nutrition guidelines, at least they exist. Students can now bypass the official school lunch line (which many do because as Poppendieck points out, school lunch is seen as a program for the poor, and no kid wants to be viewed as being poor), and head straight to the ala cart line, - a line that sells fast food like items, cookies, and candy that does not have to met any nutritional requirements whatsoever.

The book also opens us to the heartbreaking issues of hunger, poverty, and inequality in America and in American schools. The ins and outs of qualifying for free and reduced price lunches, the realities faced by our nation’s poor and their children, and the fact that for many kids, especially for high school kids, school food is seen as a poor kids program and is thus avoided like the plague by all of those who are able to afford other food options. Even those students who suffer from food insecurity at home and who need food are so afraid of being seen using the free or reduced price lunch line that they do not eat at all, or they opt for the cheapest item in the nearby vending machine.

In addition to providing a detailed analysis of the problems facing school food today, Poppendieck also provides a policy road-map of serious, logical, and necessary ways that we can change school food for the better. Her key argument is that we can make school food better by making it a universal program and thus, avoiding the complicated, and often degrading, three-tiered system of qualification, and reducing the often harmful distinctions that kids make amongst themselves. School lunch is necessary, - school is where most kids are at for lunch time, and not all kids have parents with the time or money to pack them a healthy and appetizing lunch. Poppendieck convincingly argues for making school food a part of the school day, making it equally accessible and beneficial to all students, not just a short break where kids wait up to twenty minutes in line or grab something from the vending machine, but an actual chance to sit down, eat, and enjoy a good meal. She finds hope in the Slow Food movement and in movements that are trying to change school food at the local level, but as a social scientists and scholar, Poppendieck knows that the numbers are too large, and in our country, inequality is too great, for every school to be fixed by local, farm-to-school, solutions. Making school lunch free for all is a start that would open the door to making school lunch good for all.

 

Big Agribusiness Targets Michael Pollen

Agribusiness is not so happy with author Michael Pollan. (Alia Malley)

When Michael Pollan published “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” in 2006, he became an overnight hero for the sustainable food movement. Now he’s taking on a new role: lightning rod.

Pollan’s scheduled speech Thursday at California Polytechnic has raised the ire of Harris Ranch Beef Company, an industrial-sized feedlot and meat-processing operation based in Selma, Calif. Company chairman David E. Wood, an alumnus of Cal Poly, objected to giving Pollan “an unchallenged forum to promote his stand on conventional agricultural practices” and threatened to withdraw a promised corporate $500,000 donation for a meat-processing facility on campus.

In response to the criticism, Cal Poly reformatted the event. Instead of giving a speech, Pollan will now participate in a panel discussion that will also include Gary Smith, a professor of meat science at Colorado State University, and Myra Goodman, cofounder of organic vegetable company Earthbound Farms.

Until recently, agribusiness had not directly challenged Pollan and other well-known advocates of sustainable agriculture, casting them as impractical elitists. But Pollan’s growing appeal to college students and children – a new young reader’s edition of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is released today – may have spooked conventional producers. Harris Ranch, which operates a large-scale feedlot that accomodates 100,000 head of cattle, for example, believes Pollan’s message must be combated:

“For too long now, those intimately involved in production of agriculture have silently allowed others (academics and activists) to shape their future. Not any longer!,” Wood wrote in a Sept. 30 letter to Cal Poly President Warren Baker.

In an interview, Pollan said he supports a vibrant debate, but “what's happening at Cal Poly has a very different flavor. They want to close this conversation down. Harris Ranch does not understand academic freedom.”

The controversy began on Sept. 23 when Wood sent an angry missive (PDF) to Baker. In it, he demanded an explanation of why Pollan had been invited to speak at the campus. (He was particularly enraged that the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences had contributed $5,000 to pay for Pollan’s speaking fee.) Wood objected to Pollan's definition of sustainability, which he believes demonizes rank-and-file food producers. In particular, Wood was concerned about the opinions of professor Rob Rutherford, whom he said does not believe that grain-fed cattle production, which Harris Ranch practices, is a sustainable method.

“Please assure me the facility I am helping to build will NOT be used one day to teach students that only 'sustainable' (read: non grain fed beef) meat products should be produced!” he wrote.

Baker defended the university's approach to sustainability in a Sept. 28 letter. “Clearly, for our agriculture students, sustainability is a huge issue. If we don [sic] not involve our students in the sustainability debate, we set them up to be blindsided when they embark on their careers.”

He also stood behind his faculty, though he did say that the college would consider letting professors with more conventional views teach animal science as well. “A professor’s freedom of opinion is a piece of academic freedom; academic freedom, a pillar of American universities also calls for peer debate among the faculty as to what should be taught in the classroom…I appreciate your suggestion that perhaps other professors should be given the opportunity to teach the [Animal Agriculture] class, and I can personally assure you that [Head of the Animal Sciences Department Andrew] Thulin is reviewing all such options with an open mind.”

Pollan says the demand for equal time in an academic setting is worrying: “At Cal Poly, they are threatening to take away $500,000 in funding unless they can balance my presentation. They are shaping the way the debate gets played out. Will I be invited when Monsanto comes in to talk about genetically modified foods?”

Harris Ranch did not return calls by press time.

The controversy at Cal Poly is perhaps the most hostile example of the face-off between agribusiness and reformers. But tension has been building. This summer, Washington State University, a land-grant that receives research funds from the industry, was pressured to pull "The Omnivore's Dilemma" off the reading list for college freshmen.

Last month, 7,000 people packed the Kohl Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison to hear Pollan speak. Pollan’s book “In Defense of Food” had been selected for the first "Big Read" initiative, which encourages students and members of the community to read and discuss an important book. Local agricultural workers, many of whom wore green T-shirts that read “in defense of farmers,” were bused to the event.

Such controversies are only likely to grow. Pollan maintains a busy lecture schedule. In January, he will publish a new book, “Food Rules: An Eater's Manual,” which recommends, among other things, to steer clear of processed foods.

“It’s like the old Gandhi saying: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win,” Pollan said.

“I don't know if it follows that then you win. I'm not ready to say that yet.”

-- Jane Black

"Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" Campaign Sweeps America

Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a new campaign to promote local and regional food systems and strengthen our farm communities. In his video announcement of the campaign, USDA Agriculture Secretary Vilsack invites the public to join in the national conversation around local farms and food. The new campaign can be a powerful vehicle to fulfill the promise of the 2008 Farm Bill and its new programs and policies designed to support local farmers and local food.

 

Learn More About Your Food

Ten Websites That Will Help You Gain Greater Awareness

Great article in "Culinate" about resources on the web to help you learn more about where your food comes from. Find it here

Will Allen /Street Farmer

On July 5th the NY Times ran an article on the work of Will Allen who is a hero in our midst in terms of transforming our food systems. If you don't know Will take a visit to one of his operations, " Growing Power" on Silverspring & 55th st. or visit them on the web http://www.growingpower.org/

To read the story about Will in the NY Times here is the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Or read Will's Good Food Manifesto at Growing Power's Blog

 

Wisconsin Local Food Network

Four years of the Wisconsin Local Food Summit have successfully brought together key persons across the state who are on the ground working to make local food systems a reality. A list serve and wiki website have been established to assist anyone interested in these projects. Please visit them at http://wisconsinlocalfood.wetpaint.com

Slow Food embraces local, sustainable agriculture along with a firm commitment to the environment and preserving our resources.