Hank Herrera’s Posts

• 'Smart Choices," vulnerable communities

  An open letter to the dean who promoted Froot Loops as a "smart choice" 2

  Posted 1 month, 4 weeks ago

  Why is a top nutritionist at Tufts promoting Froot Loops as a "smart choice"? Hank Herrera, a food-justice activist in Oakland, wants answers.

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Hank Herrera’s Recent Comments

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  Back to the article....

  This dazzling discourse aside, isn't one goal for both organic production and sustainable production in general the constant improvement in soil health?  Regenerative agriculture is a term for this practice.  Farmers large, medium and small can practice regenerative agriculture.  Local regenerative agriculture can optimize if not maximize the production of healthy food.  Local food then becomes a set or series of value choices within a locality, within a community.  Most if not all localities can produce a substantial number of the food products that most people eat every day, such as dairy, meat, grains, vegetables and fruit.  Regenerative local food systems have the potential to deliver tasty, healthy, fresh real food to local eaters, contributing additional environmental and economic benefits.  If we realized this potential, would Stephanie's critique still apply?

  One other small point:  To supplant the global, industrial supply chain, local supply chains would have to deliver healthy food with the same reliability and consistency as global, industrial supply chains now deliver manufactured, edible substitute substances (MESSes).  Advocacy for alternative agriculture does not adequately account for this supply requirement.

  One last point:  Food justice requires that any food system give full access to fresh, affordable, healthy food to all communities. On The limits of consumption-based food movements posted 1 year, 2 months ago 35 Responses

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  It's always someone else

  Thanks for the review, Tom.  I hope to read the book.

  In reading these comments and others, such as the many threads on COMFOOD, I'm struck by how frequently the writer refers to the source of the problem in terms of someone else.  Industrial agriculture is the problem.  The multinational corporations are the problem.  The government is the problem (you choose any agency or all of them).  The benighted consumer is the problem.  The benighted farmer is the problem.  The population is the problem.  "I" am never the problem.  But maybe "I" or we are the problem.

  Let's take the point that the locavore and local food systems advocates needs to get serious about the need to address the important social need to have a steady supply of healthy food.  (By the way, all of those famines in the past occured when the world population was a fraction of its current state.)  How do we--not someone else, but we--organize ourselves locally to produce the food we want and need to consume?  How do we conceive, design, build and operate local food systems that both ensure a steady supply of the basic food we need to eat and bring us the delicacies and delights that we want?  We cannot leave this critical social task to someone else.  We cannot rest easily knowing that we seek and eat local food (a locavore is, by definition, one who eats local food--but what is the word for the people who produce, pack, package, process, distribute and sell local food?).

  Allow me to suggest we match all of the creativity and energy we expend on our important critiques of the big "system" with equal creativity and energy expended on building the local alternatives in our own communities.

  HankOn Why Paul Roberts' End of Food deserves to be digested posted 1 year, 2 months ago 14 Responses

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  Let's expend our energy at home....

  As much as we need to understand the global dynamics of food, Wal-Mart, Tyson, Smithfield et al., I am concerned that we don't spend nearly as much time--or enough time--working on actually building on-the-ground successful operating local food systems in our home communities.  Local ought to mean locally-owned as well as locally grown.  CSAs work.  Farmers' markets work.  Locally-owned, locally sourced small scale retail also can work.

  HankOn As the ground shifts under their feet, food giants experiment with new strategies posted 1 year, 3 months ago 8 Responses

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  Does it matter?

  What a great question--should advocates of a sane food policy for American eaters support a presidential veto of the current version of the 2008 farm bill or not?  Getting past the fun of thinking like a president for a day lays a significant challenge:  What information do we have available to make a determination?  I read the reports of the Community Food Security Coalition and the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the Agriculture Committee summaries for both the House and the Senate.  There is little or no information about how the new farm bill will to spend federal money for agriculture and food systems.  The best summary I found comes from a post on May 9 by Jim Weisemeyer on www.agweb.com/Blogs.

  In a nutshell, making a semi-educated guess based on authorizations in recent years, this farm bill likely authorizes close to $100 billion annually for the programs and agencies supported by the law.  Of that total, about 80% are mandatory authorizations, of which commodity payments and food stamps make up the biggest share.  If we add up authorizations listed by the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, only about 2% of annual authorizations go to sustainable agriculture programs, and more than half of that amount goes to loan and credit programs.  This framework of budgetary authorizations and allocations essentially maintains American agri-business as we know it.

  But it's not all about money.  The Sustainable Agricultural Coalition list includes many provisions of the new law that support small farming and sustainable agriculture.  One example is legislation that permits the interstate shipment of state-inspected meat.  This provision will allow state-inspected small meat processing plants with strong food safety practices to ship product across state lines.  Currently only federally-inspected processors can do so, a major obstacle to building local and regional supply chains.  Another significant provision creates contract reforms between livestock companies and contract growers, correcting a range of unfair practices imposed by companies on growers.  In the aggregate these new provisions support sustainable agriculture and the development of local food systems.

  Finally it is important to point out one new provision of this legislation, the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development initiative, funded at $3 million.  This initiative will support the development of enterprises to increase access to fresh, healthy food in underserved urban areas.  It is important to note that $3 million is just three one-thousandths of one percent of authorizations in this farm bill, even though 80% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, the majority in underserved areas.  In Oakland, California, for example, 69% of the population lives in areas underserved by supermarkets.  Hopefully the initial $3 million investment eventually will grow to a level in proportion to the need.

  On balance the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 does make some important improvements in sustainable agriculture policy.  These improvements are at the extreme margin of a massive piece of legislation that essentially keeps American agri-business intact.  But they are in the legislation nonetheless and they represent the efforts of many advocates who have spent years if not lifetimes fighting to get them into the law.  At the end of the day unfortunately, it really doesn't matter if the President vetoes the bill.  If he signs the legislation, these improvements will go into law.  If he doesn't, the struggle will continue.  Either way, mainstream industrial agriculture will keep on trucking.

  Hank Herrera
  On How should sustainable-food advocates respond to the latest farm bill proposal? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses