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Why Food Is Still Cheap In America
Michael Deane, SFGate
The media love to talk about rising prices on food, and other staples of an average American’s everyday life. The thought of a staple rising by 5 cents can send everyone into a tizzy, proclaiming the death of the middle class, a new recession or the rise of a new economy where there is a premium placed on everything due to rising rice, grain or gas prices. When you break down the numbers, however, the American middle class just seems to have its priorities backwards.
When food prices rise, they mostly affect poorer countries and families that spend a larger percentage of their yearly income on food. The cost of food, compared to what an average American individual or family spends during a year, is a sizable chunk, but it’s certainly less so than media outlets might have you believe – and definitely far less than the 60-80% that families in developing nations spend yearly on food. In developing countries, rising food prices are certainly pushing people further into poverty and despair, but in the developed world, rising food prices are much less of an issue than you’d think from reading the news. (You may have heard of this method of evaluating currencies, but make sure you know the whole story. Check out The Big Mac Index: Food For Thought.)
Why Food Costs Are Rising
The reasons for rising food prices are varied and wide-reaching. One of the reasons for the most recent rises in food prices has to do with the developed world’s move to biofuels, which has increased the price of corn, a staple that provides feed for animals and is used as an additive to an amazing amount of everyday products. Rising food costs are also the consequence of a growing middle class and growing wealth in two huge developing nations: India and China. As well, there have been a series of serious weather events, like the heavy rains in Canadian Prairies and cool, damp weather across the American Midwest this past year, which sent wheat prices up 74% on the Chicago Board of Trade. According to MSNBC, a drought that’s threatening China’s wheat-growing areas, which are the world’s largest, threaten to push food prices up even higher…
(18 April 2011)
Vision — Urban Roots: Detroit’s Industrial Collapse Gives Birth to Flourishing City Gardening Movement (video)
Kayla Heinen, Alternet
The collapse of industrial cities continues: Detroit, once ranked the 11th largest city in the United States, has seen it’s population decrease from 2.2 million to just over 700,000 according to the 2010 census. This Earth month, Tree Media, the creators of The 11th Hour, are releasing Urban Roots, a film that highlights the hopeful emergence of urban farms in Detroit, as a struggling city finds a new voice, and asks the question, when everything collapses, what happens next?
Urban Roots is the latest documentary from Leila Conners, Mathew Schmid, and director and Detroit-native, Mark MacInnis. Urban Roots centers on the rise of urban farms in Detroit where people are taking matters into their own hands. Citizens are working together to create self-reliant communities based on organic food and have transformed many abandoned lots into community gardens and farms. The people of Detroit are taking back Detroit: one garden, one farm at a time.
The driving force behind the American dream has changed; Detroit, a bell-weather for other cities once dominated by industrial strength, large corporations, now finds itself perhaps emerging anew based on small, independent, entrepreneurial farms, like Brother Nature Farms, Earthworks Garden, Feedom Freedom, and D-Town Farms, all located in the heart of Detroit. A large part of the film discusses food issues such as making fresh food available to people now living in what has been termed a “food desert.” Most of the farms also sell their crops at weekly farmer’s markets such as Eastern Market and one business, FOOD (Field Of Our Dreams), even distributes fresh food to surrounding neighborhoods via their “mobile market.”…
Urban Roots Trailer from Tree Media on Vimeo.
(14 April 2011)
Nourish: Teaching About the Food System
Adriana Velez, Civil Eats
The big news out of California this past week was all about the premiere of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Season 2. This controversial show, which has plenty of detractors from within the food movement, is nonetheless the most successful effort to bring the food movement into larger public awareness that I’ve seen so far. But the same week a quieter food revolution was rolling along the West Coast: The launch of Nourish California.
As a national audience watched the dramas unfold on Food Revolution I tuned into the Twitter stream where the show was trending. Two things were clear: The show was making a profound emotional impact on viewers and these energized viewers were now clamoring to know how to make change happen in their own communities. “I want unflavored milk at my school, too!” said one tweet. And like the brilliant evangelist that he is, Jamie has a plain-milk campaign at the ready for his energized base to plug into. But Nourish California is poised to take some of the Food Revolution buzz and direct it toward deeper and broader systems change and they’re focusing their campaign on a key change agent: Youth.
Nourish California is a pilot educational initiative (led by nonprofit organization WorldLink) whose mission is to “increase food literacy and build healthier communities throughout California.” The multimedia program includes a 30-minute special, Nourish: Food + Community, broadcast on PBS (it was shown nationwide in the fall and is being rebroadcast in California through the spring) and available on DVD, 11 short videos, a curriculum guide for grades 6-8 aligned with California state standards, and a library of topic-focused videos for classroom use (there will eventually be 45). All of these materials are free and can be downloaded (or ordered) from the Web site. Nourish will also run workshops at teacher seminars and youth summits around the state.
The goal of Nourish is to open up a conversation about sustainability with teachers and students, as well as administrators, food service workers, school garden coordinators, and health professionals. While there is a clear emphasis on nutrition education, “We’re definitely in the systems side of thinking,” says Nourish Communications Manager Brie Mazurek. And while nutritional education is a critical starting point, the program acknowledges that having the right choices available is also important–which is why a large component of the program focuses on how the entire food system works, from the soil to around the world, and how everything is interrelated…
(15 April 2011)
Food Now on Plate for All Federal Parties
Colleen Kimmett, The Tyee
Voters are hungry for food policy. All five federal political parties apparently think so, given that each of them has made a national food strategy part of their platforms this election. It’s a first, and food advocates across the country are pleased to see it.
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was out front, and now the NDP, Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and Green parties have followed suit with their own promises to support a Canadian food policy in some form or another.
Many developing countries, after all, including Brazil, India and Bangladesh already have long-term policy goals and plans around food security.
Last year the governments of Britain and Australia committed to developing national food strategies and the call for a similar plan here in Canada has been growing from a chorus of diverse interests: farmers, industry, consumers, social justice non-profits, environmental NGOs and academics.
They all agree on one thing: in the face of global food shortages, climate change and a growing world population to feed, Canada needs to have a national discussion about food. What is much less clear is what should be included in a national food strategy, and how the federal government should pursue it.
(12 April 2011)
The article goes on to explain the stance of the major Canadian political parties on the issues of Looking Ahead Five Years, Genetically Modified Food, Pesticides and Habitats, School Lunches, and Local Food Systems. Colleen Kimmet was one of the authors in the Tyee’s thorough
