People Putting Food First # 95
1. Immigration Reform
2.The Federal Trade Commission challenges “Whole Paycheck”
3.Cutting out the middle man—increasing access to affordable food
****Action Alert—Ask to EPA to protect us from heavy metals****
1. Immigration Reform
In recent weeks, the headlines have been full of talk about the stalled immigration legislation in Washington D.C.. An abundance of possible amendments (over 300 have been considered), conservative mobilization against anything resembling “amnesty, and President Bush’s claims that the bill will be passed drew the most headlines. But are Americans getting a full analysis of this bill?
If it were passed today, how would this legislation affect the U.S. food system? Provisions that promote skilled labor through a point system are thrown in to secure certain votes. Does a bill promoting this point system have anything to do with migrant labor? And where is discussion of the rights of immigrants as human beings, not to mention citizens of their countries of origin? As the congressional fate of the bill darkens, its authors reach to the right with more proposals of “border security” – also known as more guns, more walls, and more polarization.
Arnoldo Garcia of the Oakland-based National Network of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, comments, "These immigration proposals fail to address root causes, ensuring another generation of forced displacement and lost hopes. Current immigration laws and proposals bolster 'free' trade—making it easier to privatize land and other natural resources and to avoid any responsibility for healthy, stable communities.”
Whether immigration “reform” passes or not, the entrenched mainstream debate has already been framed: liberals argue that undocumented immigrants are victims, while the right insists that they are criminals. Lost in much of the debate is the fact that immigrants are workers, citizens, and human beings.
“What are the consequences?” continues Garcia, “The food security of our countries are undermined, throwing the future of indigenous peoples and rural agricultural communities into the turbulent winds of neoliberalism, where communities have no other option than to leave their homes and lands, many times entering into international migration.”
Food First is contributing to understanding the root causes of migration by making a documentary of its upcoming nine-day reality tour: El Camino Del Migrante (Along the Immigrant Trail). Northern participants will meet with migrant farmworkers in the U.S. and with their families left behind in Mexico, as well as with human rights and peasant activists. The tour will reveal how communities in Mexico are mobilizing politically, using migration and cross-border organization to rebuild their livelihoods through farmer-to-farmer sustainable agriculture and broad-based social movements for food sovereignty. In the words of immigrants and their families, and through the evolving insights of concerned U.S. and Mexican citizens, the stories and testimonies of campesinos will bring alive the positive possibilities for resolving immigration issues.
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights www.nnirr.org
2. The Federal Trade Commission challenges “Whole Paycheck”
In February 2007, Whole Foods Market moved to acquire Wild Oats Market, Inc., for $565 million. But antitrust regulators from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are seeking to block the retail merger, arguing that it is unfair to consumers, and will give the Texas-based Whole Foods unilateral market power. Wild Oats would not be the first company that Whole Foods has swallowed up. The Whole Foods website (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com) lists organic and natural grocery stores that Whole Foods has acquired over the last 15 years—from Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Market in Los Angeles to Merchant of Vino in the Detroit, as well as Fresh & Wild, based in North London, UK.
The FTC is arguing that this merger would allow Whole Foods to dominate the U.S. organic foods market. But the merger is about more than monopoly per se; it is about inequality in access to healthy food in the U.S. The concentration of market power in retail is likely to work against healthy food for all Americans—particularly lower income communities. “Retail power,” according to Sophia Murphy from the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, “is a relatively recent phenomenon.” An example of retail power would be Wal-Mart “[having] 6.1 percent of the global grocery market” by 2004 (Murphy 11). Whole Foods’ acquisition of Wild Oats, then, can be understood through the lens of concentrated retail power. “The emergence of food retailers,” writes Murphy, “is rapidly changing power relations in the food system…”(12).
What endows a supermarket chain like Whole Foods with concentrated retail power is that they can easily move into neighborhood, driving local businesses into the ground because those businesses can’t compete in terms of quality and variety. It means less choice for consumers—but it also means less choice for farmers who sell their produce. Still, why doesn’t Whole Foods buy out Safeway or Wal-Mart, since those chains are selling more and more organic products? The answer lies in the fact that Whole Foods and Wild Oats cater to niche consumers who differs from those who shop at Wal-Mart. The expansion of Wal-Mart into organic foods does not compete with Whole Foods… on the contrary, because Wal-Mart drives prices paid to farmers down, it will depress the market, thus increasing Whole Foods’ margins.
You’ve got to hand it to John Mackey; the vegan CEO has mastered the game of surviving in the corporate world by surfing an affluent market, clamping down on unions, gobbling up Mrs. Gooch’s and other small stores and charging the high prices that some have called “whole paycheck.” Whether this—or the proposed merger—does anything to help small-scale organic growers, community businesses, or mainstream consumers is doubtful.
3. Cutting out the middle man—increasing access to affordable food
The community of West Oakland in northern California has long been an underserved population battling various environmental and health-related problems. This neighborhood, with a high percentage of low-income and minority residents, has 40,000 residents, 42 liquor stores and one full-service grocery store, which is difficult to reach by public transportation. Heart disease is the number one cause of death amongst residents. Five years ago, The People’s Grocery set about to change this. Responding to the high price and lack of fresh, organic produce and other healthy foods, three residents set up a local urban gardening and farming cooperative. Co-founder Brahm Ahmadi spoke to Food First about the organization’s mission, goals and future plans. The People’s Grocery is “all about…[providing] these marginalized communities real opportunity for jobs, for training, and ultimately for real ownership within that sector,” he said.
A primary challenge for People’s grocery is providing West Oakland with fresh, locally-grown produce at competitive prices. Recognizing the need to “[eliminate] the middleman, [eliminate] the multiple chains of events that exist in the food system that drive prices up.” Seventy percent of every dollar spent on food,” Ahmadi asserts, “goes towards external costs, such as packaging, transportation, marketing and brokerage fees. “When you cut out that expense, the consumer benefits on one end … and the producer on the other.”
Ahmadi also sees the need to develop larger-scale fixes for West Oakland’s current food system. They are currently developing a worker-owned grocery store. Future plans include its Food, Jobs and Justice Program, which will employ West Oakland youth to produce niche crops for sale to high-end East Bay restaurants, and a low-income Community Supported Agriculture program called the S.O.U.L. Box, which will encourage food stamp recipients to buy more fruits and vegetables. Currently only 11% of food stamp dollars are spent on produce. The People’s Grocery is working on projects “that have greater potential for scale and impact on a much larger level and that can affect real systemic change.”
ACTION ALERT—Ask to EPA to protect us from heavy metals
Write to your senators to restore EPA oversight on amounts of lead, mercury and other dangerous toxins.
Here is a sample letter that you can cut, paste, and change in a word processing program and then fax or mail to your senators. To find your senators click here http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Dear Senator __________:
I am writing to urge you to support the Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act (S. 595), which I understand will soon be considered by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This legislation would reverse a recent EPA rule change to the federal Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) that restricted the public’s right-to-know about harmful chemicals released from thousands of facilities in states and communities across the country.
The Toxic Release Inventory is essential to safeguard the public health. Industrial facilities that use certain toxic chemicals in amounts that exceed established reporting thresholds must file annual release reports, which are subsequently compiled and posted on EPA’s website for public review.
While the TRI program does not mandate toxic reductions, public disclosure is a powerful incentive for industry to voluntarily decrease toxic releases. The TRI alerts workers, first responders, public health officials and communities to the presence of harmful chemicals.
After more than two decades of success, EPA’s new ruling is a serious setback for public health. The new rule limits available toxic release and other waste management data by adding a loophole that allows facilities to withhold previously reported information from governmental and public review. A recent GAO assessment determined that these changes will have a significant impact on information available to the public, including more than 3,500 facilities across the country that would no longer need to report quantitative data to the TRI program.
EPA’s action to limit the public’s right-to-know was overwhelmingly opposed by more than 120,000 citizens, 113 government agencies and officials representing 23 states, and hundreds of organizations representing labor, public health, environmental, investor and faith-based interests. The changes were also opposed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Environmental Council of States and the EPA’s own Science Advisory Board expressed concern that the "changes may hinder the advances of environmental research to protect public health and the environment." In May 2006, the House of Representatives voted to block EPA from finalizing the rule (109th Cong., 2nd Sess., roll call no. 165 (May 18, 2006),
I urge you to vote in favor of S. 595 to restore public access to the toxic release information eliminated by EPA’s recent rule.
Sincerely,
(your name and address)
To read the proposed bill go to: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills...
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This edition of People Putting Food First was written by Food First interns Joey Smith and Laura Anne Miller.