Feeding Cities

Improving local food access, security, and resilience

Christopher Bosso

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317237112
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Social Sciences

There is enormous current interest in urban food systems, with a wide array of policies and initiatives intended to increase food security, decrease ecological impacts and improve public health. This volume is a cross-disciplinary and applied approach to urban food system sustainability, health, and equity.

The contributions are from researchers working on social, economic, political and ethical issues associated with food systems. The book's focus is on the analysis of and lessons obtained from specific experiences relevant to local food systems, such as tapping urban farmers markets to address issues of food access and public health, and use of zoning to restrict the density of fast food restaurants with the aim of reducing obesity rates. Other topics considered include building a local food business to address the twin problems of economic and nutritional distress, developing ways to reduce food waste and improve food access in poor urban neighborhoods, and asking whether the many, and diverse, hopes for urban agriculture are justified.

The chapters show that it is critical to conduct research on existing efforts to determine what works and to develop best practices in pursuit of sustainable and socially just urban food systems. The main examples discussed are from the United States, but the issues are applicable internationally.

1
What you want, when you want it?

Christopher Bosso

In March 2001 I travelled to Ames, Iowa to talk about the views held by environmental and animal welfare activists as part of a then-annual agricultural forum convened by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University, one of the nation’s great land-grant universities. Upon being invited to participate, I did what any good guest should do: I checked out my hosts. After all, I live in an East Coast city, teach at a large urban university, and have no experience whatsoever with “real” farming, so I wanted to understand what I was getting myself into. Equally important, I wanted to avoid embarrassing myself before the several hundred in attendance, including agricultural researchers, food industry officials, students, and, yes, a lot of Iowa farmers with time on their hands before spring planting. So I checked out the ISU College of Agriculture website to get a sense as to what it does.

The first image I came upon was not a farm, or pigs, or even that famous Grant Wood portrayal of the iconic American farm family. Instead I was presented with the image of a scientist in a white lab coat standing in front of a somewhat impressive-looking electronic analyzer of some sort. To be fair about it, subsequent visits to the College’s website indicated that this image was but one of many faces of agriculture presented by the College – yes, I found barns and pigs – but that first image left an impression.

Here is why. The intended message of that image was, I suppose, “better farming, and better food products, through science.” Fair enough. However, the image of the scientist in the white coat also inadvertently captured a critical issue at the heart of the Forum, whose theme that year was Extreme Demands – Extraordinary Products: the gap between the realities of agriculture as an industry and the attitudes Americans held in 2001 about personal health and their environment, about corporations, and, finally, about the role of the citizen in democratic decision-making.

The average American consumer, I observed to my audience, may not understand much about agriculture, but certainly had opinions on food, particularly its cost, quality, and safety. But an increasing number of Americans were becoming concerned about what they perceived as a food production system that had become concentrated in fewer and larger corporate hands, overly focused on maximizing production at the expense of the environment and animal welfare, and, in the wake of scares about Mad Cow disease and salmonella in chickens, seemingly more concerned with the economic interests of producers than the health and safety needs of the citizen-consumer. Americans may accept big companies like Cargill and Tyson for the goods and services they provide, but they nonetheless fear the distorting impacts of corporate power. In particular, while they want inexpensive and convenient food, they have doubts as to the degree to which producers will safeguard food safety. That 86 percent of Americans in one 2000 Harris Poll wanted mandatory labeling on products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was an indication that the public had grown uneasy about the marriage of science and food.

In short, I said, Americans want someone to keep an eye on corporate America, to maintain a dynamic tension between the forces of the market and the forces of government. Groups that focus on consumer health, animal welfare, worker safety, and food purity are in a long tradition of American activism aimed at maintaining this balance. The good news, I concluded, was that Americans increasingly care about the conditions under which their food is produced. The bad news, for many in the audience, was that Americans increasingly cared about the conditions under which their food is produced.

Of course, such concerns have only become more acute since that March 2001 forum. The number, range, and size of advocacy groups focused any number of food-related issues has exploded. Food studies programs, once the near exclusive purview of agricultural schools like ISU, now proliferate in urban universities like my own, with new generations of students determined to fix the many ills they perceive about the dominant food system, if not the larger socioeconomic system of which it is part. The sheer volume of books and films critiquing some dimension of the food system now overwhelms us. Walmart, not Whole Foods, is the nation’s largest retailer of organic fruits and vegetables. More Americans of many more types now care what is in their food and where it comes from, and demand all kinds of information, whether it contains GM variants, the country of origin, or whether it was fairly traded, humanely raised, or sustainably grown – whatever those terms might mean.

Those of us in urban America – which, if you include larger metropolitan areas, means most of us – flock to an ever growing number of farmers’ markets and farm-to-table restaurants, commit to buying Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, agitate to address urban “food deserts” and advocate for urban agriculture. We even care what is in the Farm Bill, that sprawling federal legislation that because of advocacy by consumer, environmental, and nutrition groups now includes at least some support for organic agriculture and “specialty” crops like fruits and vegetables, offers incentives for more ecologically sustainable production practices, and promotes healthier eating, even if it also continues to define, if not prop up, a dominant food system about which so many of us find fault.

In this regard, it bears reminding: Americans are accustomed to plentiful, diverse, convenient, and inexpensive food. To put it plainly, for most Americans the food system gives us what we want, when we want it, and at a price we’re willing to pay. On average, we spend around 10 percent of net income on food, whether eaten at home or outside of it, the lowest level per capita in the world.¹ In human history terms, this is no small achievement. While the United States started out with advantages in arable land, water, and favorable growing conditions, today’s abundance is also due to key characteristics of the food system as it evolved since the middle of the twentieth century. It is a food system that in many respects is an apt reflection of the norms of industrial efficiency: large scale, specialized, mechanized, technologically sophisticated, global in reach. If you live in Boston and want fresh blueberries in February, you can get them, shipped in by air from Chile. And it is all done by a relatively small group of producers. In 1940, nearly 31 million Americans, 25 percent of the population, worked the farm. In 2012 it was 3.1 million – a farming 1 percent feeding everyone else.²

And yet, as we know, that food system doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, and its pathologies affect us all. Many (but certainly not most) of us worry that the dominant food system, while efficient, is too distant, unaccountable, and not sustainable. We worry that it emphasizes the production of inexpensive but unhealthy processed foods over healthier but (at the moment) more expensive fresh fruits and vegetables, or that the “cheap meat” model is ecologically harmful and ethically suspect. In some ways, we have the luxury of the affluent, worrying that the food system that gives most of us inexpensive and convenient food does so at a cost we’d like to avoid.

As a result of our discomfort, we look for other models that are closer to home, smaller scale, more accountable, and, we hope, more reflective of our own broader desires for a society that is more just, more ecologically sustainability, and more democratic. We think more about the physical design of our cities, how public policies promote (or get in the way of) healthier lifestyles, and whether we can regenerate more local and regional food systems as complements to, if not replacements for, the dominant food system. The question is to what extent these nascent local food systems can fulfill all of our desires – including giving us what we want, when we want it, and at a price we want to pay.

This book

This volume is a cross-disciplinary inquiry on topics relevant to local food system access, sustainability, and resilience. The contributions are from researchers working on social, ecological, political and ethical issues associated with food systems. Its focus is on the analysis of and lessons obtained from specific experiences relevant to local food systems, such as tapping urban farmers’ markets to address issues of food access and public health, use of zoning to restrict the density of fast food restaurants in the hopes of reducing obesity rates in poorer neighborhoods, building a local food business to address twin problems of economic and nutritional distress, developing ways to reduce food waste and improve food access in poor urban neighborhoods, and asking whether the many, and diverse, hopes for urban agricultural are merited. There is enormous interest in urban and local food systems and production among policy-makers and citizens, with a wide array of policies and initiatives intended to increase food security, decrease ecological impacts, and improve public health. This collection is premised on the view that it is critical to conduct research on existing efforts to determine what works and to develop best practices in pursuit of sustainable and socially just urban food systems.

As such, the chapters in this volume focus on experiments, efforts to make the food system work for more people in urban America, especially those who are food insecure for whatever reason. Most were composed for a March 2015 workshop at Northeastern University in Boston, “Feeding Cities: Ethical and Policy Issues in Urban Food Systems.” That workshop brought together an incredibly diverse group of nutritionists, urban planners, ethicists, agricultural economists, urban agriculture experts, sociologists and anthropologists, policy scholars, state and local government and non-profit officials, and, even, culinary experts, to discuss a broad array of topics oriented around three broad themes: expanding food security, building more sustainable local food systems, and ensuring food system resilience.

Part I: Ensuring food security

The five chapters in this part focus on broad issues of ensuring food security and health, particularly for lower-income populations with greater access to comparatively inexpensive, calorie-dense foods is than healthier options, with consequent impacts on their health.

We start by framing the very notion of “food security.” What does that mean? Is it simply ensuring that people don’t starve, or is it something more? In “Food security as a human rights issue,” Sandra Raponi makes the argument for viewing – and acting – on food access in human rights terms, the idea that we all have a basic human right to adequate food that to date has not been taken seriously in the United States. The right to adequate food, she writes, is a right to be able to feed oneself, rather than simply a right to be fed. As such, Americans should advocate for policies that promote equitable access to food and that protect sustainable food security for current and future generations.

The conventional wisdom is that urban America is a barren landscape of food deserts, with far too many citizens lacking basic access to food sources. In “Population density, poverty, and food retail access in the United States,” Wilde, Llobrera, and Ver Ploeg look at the retail food environment in the United States. Their empirical analysis shows that Americans living in densely populated urban areas actually have higher than average proximity to a supermarket, while those living in areas without a nearby supermarket tend to have high rates of automobile access. That leaves almost 5 percent of the population lacking either an automobile and a nearby supermarket. The implications of their empirical analysis include the need to look beyond simplistic notions of “food deserts” and focus as much on such factors as transportation. What good is a market if you cannot get to it?

Another bit of conventional wisdom is that low-income urban areas have a higher than average concentration of fast food restaurants, leading in turn to high obesity rates and other food-related health problems among low-income residents lacking healthier and affordable options. In “Super-sized strategies for improved health,” Nelson and Banks take a close look at policies to restrict the density of fast food outlets through zoning, a strategy based on three assumptions: 1) closer proximity to fast food results in higher consumption; 2) higher consumption of fast food leads to weight gain; and 3) the weight gain from consuming fast food is bad for one’s health and leads to poor health outcomes. They look at the case of South Los Angeles in particular and conclude that such zoning restrictions are likely to have minimal impact on obesity. Worse, they suggest, such efforts may have unintended consequences, including the perpetuation of spatially and socioeconomically stratified communities.

What about getting more affordable fresh fruits and vegetables closer to low-income and ethnically diverse populations? In “From food access to food justice,” Shostak, Blum, Mancini, Oliveira, Robinson, and Satin-Hernandez review a pilot program in Somerville, Massachusetts, a densely populated small city just north of Boston. Somerville is home to three unique farmers’ markets, including a mobile market that brings produce into low-income areas of the city. Here, they focus on the mobile market to show how locating markets in their community contexts highlights the multiple roles and functions of farmers’ markets in urban areas. Different markets occupy specific niches, they argue, so it is critical that farmers are able to match their offerings to the demand at specific markets. Low-income consumers, for their part, can be active agents in determining the products made available to them, thereby advancing food justice.

What about those who are physically unable to get to markets due to age and disability? In “Farm to home,” Ismail and Cuite review and assess a pilot program in New Brunswick, New Jersey that leveraged existing nutrition and “meals on wheels” programs to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables from a local farmers’ market to homebound and low-income senior citizens. Their analysis of program successes and failures raises useful questions about food access and health. Is it simply enough to situate more markets near underserved populations if they cannot physically get there? What policy and administrative obstacles get in the way of greater access? Their ultimate goal is to get us to consider how local, urban food systems might be designed support the long-term nutritional needs of limited access populations. It won’t be easy.

Part II: Building local food system sustainability

The chapters in this part focus on experiments in cultivating local food systems to act as complements to, if not substitutes for, the dominant food system. But these local food systems are more than about growing vegetables or creating incentives for consumers to buy local products. In many ways the next three chapters use a food system lens to cast a sometimes-uncomfortable gaze on broader issues of income, race and ethnicity, urban economic development, environmental justice, and sustainability in all of its meaning.

It is fitting that we start this part with a chapter on urban agriculture, a topic all the rage in cities across the country. But what is your urban agriculture for? In “What grows in East New York,” Daftary-Steel, Porter, Gervais, Vigil, and Marshall reflect on their experiences to address the many expectations – or dreams, if you will – placed on urban agriculture. In what they call “the unattainable trifecta of urban agriculture” they look at the myth that urban agriculture can, without long-term funding investments, simultaneously do three things that are each hard enough to do on their own: 1) provide good fresh food to people with limited financial resources at prices they can afford; 2) generate income for producers and create jobs funded by profits from sales; 3) provide job training, work experience, and/or leadership development for people typically excluded from employment. Based on their experiences, the authors address the challenges urban agriculture operations face in achieving these disparate goals, and what is needed to make this trifecta more attainable.

In a similar vein are efforts to catalyze local food systems and local economies through food hubs and other “incubators.” In “Feeding community: A case study of a shared-use commercial kitchen in eastern Connecticut,” Freake and Godfrey discuss lessons obtained so far in their effort to help small local farmers and low-income communities alike through a shared-use commercial kitchen. The facility in question is located in Willimantic, Connecticut, a once a thriving mill town that today has high poverty rates and a diverse population, with 40 percent identifying as Hispanic or Latino, beset with food security and health issues. Meanwhile, nearby small farms struggle for viability in a global food system where apples shipped in from New Zealand may be cheaper than those grown five miles away. To address these multiple needs, community members, including the authors, created CLiCK (Commercially Licensed Cooperative Kitchen), a non-profit, co-operative shared-use commercial and teaching kitchen to enable local farmers to add value to their products and extend their markets, entrepreneurs to incubate small-scale food businesses, and the whole community to benefit from healthy cooking and nutrition education classes. CLiCK has been designed to serve the needs of the community through its commitment to a just locally based sustainable and healthy food system. This chapter describes the long journey to CLiCK’s creation, and its successes and struggles so far in meeting in multiple, not easily compatible goals.

The sustainability of food systems also depends on reducing their waste at multiple points in the food production, processing, consumption, and disposal life cycle. Can we do so and generate local economic gains and address issues of food access? In “Developing a food system-sensitive methodology to transform food ‘waste,’ create new food businesses, and address hunger in urban communities,” O’Donnell, Deutsch, Yungmann, Zeitz, and Katz report on efforts in Philadelphia to address food waste at points in the food chain linking supermarkets to the public. They report on a pilot project connecting university researchers with business and charitable communities in an economically depressed area of the city. Their specific focus is on sustainable surplus-food management program designed to divert “surplus” fresh fruit and vegetables from the waste stream and return them to the economic/social food system through the creation of “value added” products that can be sold in local stores or donated to food pantries. Their experience shows how bringing together grocers and other food system experts, universities, communication specialists, environmental groups, and health experts can inform issues of food ethics and policy, and work to reduce food loss. In doing so, they also underscore how hard it is to maintain such initiatives in a system where the economic incentives to discard “surplus” food too often dominate.

Part III: Ensuring food system resilience

Finally, we want to know if local food systems broadly defined can be made more resilient in the face of disruption. The global foo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 What you want, when you want it?
• PART I Ensuring food security
• PART II Building local food system sustainability
• PART III Ensuring food system resilience
• Index