People Putting Food First #93

1. KIBISOM: One Kenyan Community’s Struggle to Thrive in the Face of Adversity
2. Less Food Miles = More Sustainability
3. Grassroots Change and the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council
ACTION ALERT—Call Your Representative and Senator on the U.S. 2007 Farm Bill

1. KIBISOM: One Kenyan Community’s Struggle to Thrive in the Face of Adversity

KIBISOM (Kiagasa Breast Feeding Single Mothers/Orphaned Child), translated from the local language, Luo, means “come and learn.” KIBISOM, community-based women’s organization on Rusinga Island, Kenya, aims “to mobilize global and grassroot responses to address the needs or orphans and vulnerable children, people living with HIV/AIDS, and local, neglected, illiterate women.” Since 1996, KIBISOM has grown to include 150 members, empowering and educating around healthcare, HIV/AIDS, and water. They have also developed economic activities and are working toward food sufficiency.

HIV/AIDS AND HEALTH CARE: In 1995 deaths from AIDS were so common that up to six people were dying every day. This left grandparents to care for orphaned children. In addition to education on HIV/AIDS prevention, condom use, natural medicines, and nutrition, KIBISOM provides home-based care and members make daily visits to those who are too sick to care for themselves. Access to health care at clinics in Kaswanga (3 km away) and Mbita (8 km away) can be difficult, especially during the rainy season. KIBISOM has a small dispensary at its main base in Kiagasa and provides traditional and “modern” medications. KIBISOM is currently saving money to buy a small 4-wheel drive truck.

WATER AND FOOD: These subsistence farmers are highly dependent upon rain for food security. Surveying for a centrally located bore hole is currently underway, and a donkey was recently donated to haul water from the lake for drinking and irrigation. KIBISOM is aware that direct food aid is only a band-aid solution, but can provide basic foods when necessary. In times need, KIBISOM provides food, including rice, maize flour and sugar, to each of its members.

EDUCATION: Illiteracy hinders health, nutrition, and disease prevention. KIBISOM provides primary schooling and a youth center in Loure. These centers provide safe and structured learning environments for over 100 children and expose them to Montessori and Waldorf teaching philosophies. KIBISOM also provides school uniforms and other school supplies to these children. When funds are available from donors KIBISOM sponsors children to attend secondary schools and sends teacher candidates to train in Nairobi.

INCOME GENERATION: The main livelihood is subsistence agriculture. Thus if there is a poor crop, people are hungry. KIBISOM promotes income generation through fishing, soap and papermaking, tye-dying cloth, basket making, tree planting, and home gardening. KIBISOM also provides small loans to start small businesses.

For more information, please contact Bridget Meigs at bree@planet-save.com

2. Less Food Miles = More Sustainability

In March 2006, Berkeley-based freelance writer and former science teacher Chad Heeter wrote about sitting down to a breakfast of McCann’s Irish oatmeal, Cascadian Farms organic raspberries, and Peet’s Fair Trade Blend coffee in his apartment. That breakfast alone required eight ounces of crude oil. The oatmeal came from Ireland, the “organic” raspberries from Chile, and the “fair trade” coffee from Guatemala. This included transporting the foods by ship and truck all the way to Heeter’s Berkeley table; plus fuel for the tractors and petroleum-based fertilizers for growing the crops. More fuel was required for processing and packaging.

Enter the locavore movement. We’ve all heard of herbivores and omnivores. What about “locavores,” or people who only eat food that has been locally produced—say, within a 100-mile radius? Food in North America travels an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches us. Locavores are looking to challenge this by creating truly sustainable farming practices. It is not enough to eat “organic” fruit, because such fruit could have been grown in Chile or China. If fossil fuels are required for packaging and shipping the fruit, then it is unsustainable. Sustainable farming is directly linked to reducing the distance required to ship the food to market, and hence cutting down on energy reliance, as well as eating foods that are in season. Olivia Wu from The San Francisco Chronicle writes, “Serving monkfish, which is an endangered species, or snacking on South American cherries in December are not sustainable practices, but eating California-caught Dungeness crab during the November-May season, and buying Central Valley cherries in summer are.”

Sticking to a strictly locavore diet is sometimes called the “100-mile diet.” In spring 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon experimented with eating foods produced within 100 miles from their Vancouver apartment. Living in the Pacific Northwest, Smith and MacKinnon may have had easy access to seafood and certain fruits, but getting local carbohydrates was challenging. It took them seven months to find locally-grown wheat, so in the meantime they ate lots of potatoes. Still, in an interview for Smith and MacKinnon’s website (http://www.100milediet.org), the couple says that “there are places where [the 100-mile diet] is easier and places where it’s harder, but with a little planning, local eating is never impossible.” Furthermore, substituting potatoes for wheat is not such a terrible thing.

Going locavore may be difficult in the short-run, as it requires some serious lifestyle changes. But it will pay off in the long-run.. Eating a locavore diet not only gives back to the local economy; it allows a human, anywhere in the world, to be in touch with the seasons and with his or her community. What can be produced in British Columbia may not be feasible in Louisiana, or vice versa. Going locavore would also mean North Americans may have to forgo pineapple from the Philippines, raspberries from Chile, and Irish oatmeal. What the resident loses with foreign fruit and oatmeal, however, s/he will simultaneously gain in local, fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, and dairy products. Who’s hungry?

Works cited and resources:
Heeter, Chad. “The Oil in Your Oatmeal” The San Francisco Chronicle. March 26, 2006
Wu, Olivia. “Diet for a Sustainable Planet” The San Francisco Chronicle. June 1, 2005
Locavores website: http://www.locavores.com
100-Mile Diet website: http://www.100milediet.org
San Francisco Bay Area: http://www.localfoodswheel.com
Farmers’ markets: http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm

3. Grassroots Change and the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council

The Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council is one of the nation’s leading voices for food security. To help policymakers move toward food security for all Chicago communities, the council, or CFPAC, brings together not-for-profits, city groups, grassroots groups, and concerned individuals. Together, this diverse group strives to improve access for Chicago residents to culturally appropriate, nutritionally sound, and affordable food that is grown through environmentally sustainable practices. With six to seven hundred participants, the CFPAC is made up of an ever-changing and growing body of community members. This ensures that all recommendations come from a diverse group of Chicagoans themselves. “We create an environment where people from the community come and participate and lead what they’d like to see happen in their communities,” explains Erika Allen, council Co-chair, which makes the resulting programs more effective and sustainable.

Food policy councils, or FPCs, have been springing up across the nation in the past few decades. FPCs are as diverse as the communities they represent, but they usually bring together different stakeholders in a food system – such as concerned individuals, not-for-profit groups, and government representatives – to examine their local food system and provide recommendations for how it can be improved. The Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council was founded in 2001 as a partner of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. It is made up of an Executive Committee with Co-chairs, the not-for-profit organizations Growing Power and Sustain, the funding organization Heifer International, and the general body of community participants described above.

The CFPAC encourages the city to focus on food access, food sustainability, and funding and economic sustainability. More specifically, the programs they are pushing for include support for small farmers and businesses, bringing better food into Chicago Public Schools, support for urban agriculture, and sustainability literacy campaigns. The city has been very receptive to the council’s recommendations, and city workers are now educating themselves on how to handle what the council is presenting. After releasing the next set of recommendations this fall, the council will begin grading the city annually on its progress. Due to the city’s positive response, “the ball is very much in our court,” says Allen, “so we really just have to push.”

The CFPAC’s ultimate goal is to establish 72 city councils, one for each of Chicago’s official neighborhoods, and to have one city representative working with each neighborhood council. Several of these smaller councils are already in the works, such as the Rogers Park Neighbor Food Council. For now, the CFPAC is moving to get officially staffed so that they can better support the neighborhood councils. Another big goal is to better connect food security issues to issues such as housing, unemployment, health, and education. Having a more holistic view will not only build a stronger movement, but as Allen says, it will help “to shift the city into very responsible and forward thinking, community-based and serving food policy.”

Visit the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council at http://www.chicagofoodpolicy.org .

Action Alert: ¬Time to Act on the 2007 U.S. Farm Bill!

The House Agriculture Committee is editing the first draft of the new Farm Bill. It is time to contact Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN) and the other Agriculture Committee members. Here is a list of the members of the House Agriculture Committee. http://agriculture.house.gov/inside/members.html

Discussion is also starting in the Senate Agriculture Committee which is chaired by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA). Many of the key members of both the House and Senate Committees represent states where large quantities of the tax-supported commodities are grown. So it will take a concerted effort on the part of all of us to reform a badly outdated system. http://agriculture.senate.gov/sen.htm

There has been talk of cuts in commodity subsidies paid to U.S. farmers, including administration support for cuts aimed at bringing the U.S. in compliance with the World Trade Organization rules. The quality of life of families around the world hinges on the U.S. Farm Bill because the current U.S. commodity subsidies paid out of our taxes to support farmers raising corn, wheat, soy, rice, and cotton allow U.S. grain corporations to dump these commodities on the global market at below what it costs for farmers to produce them. This ongoing bargain sale has been forcing farmers both here in the U.S. and in the Global South off of their land and contributing greatly to hunger and migration.

If you live in the U.S., please meet with or call your representative and senators to ask them to implement cost of production price supports for all crops rather than the current unfair system of commodity subsidies on a few select crops. The current system rewards quantity, not quality in our food system, and it is making us sick. Ask them to support an adequate supply of wholesome, affordable food for all. For an understanding of the price-support system proposed to substitute for commodity payments to farmers, go to a proposal drafted by the National Family Farm Coalition at http://www.nffc.net/

For summaries of some Senate and House bills that have been introduced to promote access to healthy foods for all people and create new, profitable markets for small and mid-sized family farmers and ranchers go to http://www.calfoodandfarming.org/policy/
Two of these bills are more focused on healthy, local foods: Local Food and Farm Support Act, H.R. 2364 introduced by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR, 3rd) and the Food for a Healthy America Act, S. 1432 introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY).

The healthy foods sections of these bills work to increase the availability and affordability of healthy and fresh foods through existing nutrition programs, increase fruits and vegetables in schools, promote urban agriculture, remove barriers that have kept local farmers from selling products to schools, and support value-added agriculture and farmers markets.

Your voice now is critically important.
Here are two simple things that you can do before June 4:

1. Call or visit your congressional district office during the week of Memorial Day, when legislators will be in their home state. Ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2364 and endorse the healthy food provisions of S. 1432, and tell the Agriculture Committees to include the healthy foods provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill. Equally important, ask them to advocate to switch from commodity payments to farmers to a fairer system of price supports. To obtain the direct number for your representative, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or get it it at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

2. You can also sign on to a letter to your congressional representative at http://www.healthyfarmbill.org/