by Yi Wang & Eric Weltman, Food and Water Watch
February 2012
 
American farm policy and corporate mergers have created powerful agribusiness giants with dominant market shares—corporations that control virtually every of segment of the industrial food system. A leading agricultural economist in 2002 concluded that consolidation across the food system has hurt farmers and consumers more than the efficiency gains it has generated.1  While monopolies and oligopolies have captured the bulk of the profits, small and midsized family farms have gotten squeezed out. Workers face exploitative conditions and consumers end up paying higher prices, with millions living in food deserts without access to fresh food.

There is a growing movement to (re)build food systems that are good, local, sustainable, and fair. Alternative certification schemes such as organic and Fair Trade and marketing channels such as farmers markets, food hubs, and community-supported agriculture (CSAs) offer practical examples of visions for a more equitable and sustainable food system. Unfortunately, voting with our wallets and forks alone is not enough. As the ‘alternative food movement’ works at the local level to restore links between consumers and farmers, urban and rural, and to secure justice and rights for workers, we must also address the rules that govern the food system. The next Farm Bill presents a critical opportunity to chip away at the power of agribusiness and to build fair and sustainable local food systems.

By Kerry Trueman

Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table takes us on a vivid and poignant tour of a place we don't really want to go: the mostly hidden, sometimes horrible world of the workers who form the backbone of our cheap, industrialized food chain. Sound grim? It is, at times, but McMillan's lively narrative and evident empathy for the people she encounters make her sojourn into the bowels of Big Food and Big Ag a pleasure to read.

From the fields of California's Central Valley to the produce aisle of a Michigan Walmart, and lastly, the kitchen of a Brooklyn Applebee's, McMillan gives a firsthand account of the long hours, lousy wages and difficult conditions that are par for the course in these places. This is tricky terrain for a white, relatively privileged middle-class American woman, and McMillan navigates it with grace and humility, remaining acutely aware of the pitfalls inherent in such a project.

I sat down with McMillan recently to chat about her populist odyssey and found her to be just as down-to-earth and plucky as her prose.

By Rosalin Luetum

On a snowy Saturday morning in January, hundreds of people filled the swank auditorium of The New York Times building for "TEDxManhattan: Changing the Way We Eat."  In its second year, TEDxManhattan centers around the sustainable food movement, where inspiring and illuminating talks are given by speakers with various backgrounds in food and farming.  Attendees included farmers, philanthropists, academics, educators, students, health professionals, chefs and bakers, while those unable to attend were able to access the day's events via live webcast and local viewing parties.  Whether physically present or not, audiences left the storm outside to gather in the hearth of ideas, conversation and inspiration.

Want to learn more about the farm bill? Check out the links below to all of our contributors fantastic articles in FSNYC's Farm Bill Series:

• FARM BILL 1.01: An Introduction and Brief History of the Farm Bill
 by:
 Ed Yowell and Fern Gale Estrow (January 2011)
• FARM BILL 1.02:The Farm Bill, the Field and the Players
 by: Ed Yowell and Fern Gale Estrow
 (February 2011)
• FARM BILL 1.03: Cities and Eaters do Matter -What New York got from the Last Farm Bill 
by Thomas Forster, New School Food Studies
 (March 2011)
• FARM BILL 1.04: School Lunches and the Farm Bill
 by: Travis Hobart, MD 
with Fern Gale Estrow, Sheilah Davidson, Thomas Forster, and Ed Yowell
 (June 2011)
• FARM BILL 1.05: H.R. 2112 Defines the 2012 Farm Bill Playing Field by: 
Mark Dunlea with Ed Yowell (
July 2011)
• FARM BILL 1.06: What You Need to Know about Food Stamps and the 2012 Farm Bill
 by: Michael Crupain MD, MPH with Ed Yowell
 (August 2011)
• Farm Bill 1.07: The Risky Business of Farming by: Abby Youngblood and Ed Yowell (October 2011)
• Farm Bill 1.08: Subsidizing the National Breadbasket 
by:Abby Youngblood and Ed Yowell (December 2011)
• Farm Bill 1.09: The Food and Farm Bill: Now What? by Mark Dunlea (January 2012)
• Farm Bill 1.10: Why the Next Food and Farm Bill Needs a Competition Title by Eric Weltman (March 2012)
• Farm Bill 1.11: A Discussion of Dairy Farming and Policy Reform by Caitlin Salemi and Abby Youngblood (April 2012)
• Farm Bill 1.12: The Shortest Distance from here to a 2012 Farm Bill may not be through Congress by Ed Yowell (August 2012)

by Mark Dunlea
1/10/12

The Food and Farm Bill is up for renewal, something that occurs about once every five years. The Farm Bill is how the federal government sets overall food and agricultural policy for the country…to a great extent it determines what we eat and how it is produced. Until recently, the Farm Bill was on a fast track, slated to be passed in December as part of the late Super Committee process. Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, arguing that they understood the needs of rhe farming community, undertook proposing $23 billion in Farm Bill Ag budget cuts over ten years to help meet the nation’s deficit reduction goals.

by Kerry Trueman

A lawsuit filed on behalf of small family farmers against agribiz behemoth Monsanto brought farmers from all over the country to downtown Manhattan's Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse last Tuesday, January 31st. The lawsuit, OSGATA (Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association) et al vs. Monsanto, was filed on behalf of 300,000 organic and non-GMO farmers and citizens seeking protection "from ever being accused of infringing patents on transgenic (GMO) seed.” While the plaintiffs attended the hearing, hundreds of supporters gathered at a rally across the street at Foley Square organized by Food Democracy Now! and Occupy Big Food. Among the speakers was Lisa Stokke, co-founder and associate director for Food Democracy Now!, who read a statement from Joan Dye Gussow that neatly sums up what's at stake in this quintessentially David v. Goliath case: