New Directions for the Sustainable Agriculture Movement: A Conversation about Strategy

January 2005 and beyond...

Andy Fisher

Andy Fisher is co-founder and executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition, a national alliance of 325 organizations working to create a just and sustainable food system. The CFSC’s most recent policy victory was the passage of a farm to cafeteria seed grant fund in last year’s Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. He is a leading expert in the field of food security and has co-authored numerous articles and studies on the topic.

Andy Fisher,
Community Food
Security Coalition,
Venice, CA

Who here thinks that within our lifetimes global capitalism will come to an end in the US?

I would say that capitalism has proven itself to be very flexible and will co-opt competing movements toward its own end. For example, who would have thought 30 years ago that organics would have become a profitable marketing strategy for General Mills, Heinz, and other food giants?

I point this out to show the limitations of market-based change for sustainable agriculture. Yes, markets are powerful forces and consumer demand has played a pivotal role in converting thousands of acres to organic production. Yes, the environmental implications of this change are very important. Yet the food system continues to consolidate, the US now imports more food than it exports, and Walmart is the largest food retailer in the country. This tells us that if we care about who profits from food production and distribution, if we want a food democracy, then we need to change the rules that benefit multi-national corporations under which the marketplace operates.

I, and the organization for which I work, the Community Food Security Coalition, are deeply entrenched in the movement to support local food. Local food has real potential for changing the food system toward more decentralization, democratic ownership, and community-building. Despite its tremendous growth over the past decade- with over 2000 farmers markets and over $1 billion in annual sales, local food is but a grain of sand in the global food giants' beach. We struggle with how to "scale up" existing community food enterprises and need to learn to compete better in the marketplace. We can continue to exist - even thrive- on the margins of the dominant food system. We discuss how we can keep the values in local, so it doesn't become just another marketing scheme for the food giants. Will we ever get to the point where we have the Santa Cruz Farmers' Market sponsored by Driscoll? I hope not. Yet, believing that we can achieve our potential without significant policy changes that level the playing field, that remove the subsidies for industrial agriculture is naïve.

Conversely, just bashing corporate food without laying out an alternative and viable vision does not go far enough to engage and educate citizens about what will take its place. It’s powerful but incomplete.

In the sustainable agriculture movement, we need organizations to take on both strategies in a coordinated fashion. For example, let’s look at addressing childhood obesity through improving the food served at schools. Removing the cokes and candy from the schools is an important step, but it’s not enough. You are still left with mediocre meals, and you haven't taught the kids about good food. We need to be educating kids through their senses and through the linkage between classroom and cafeteria about real food and healthy food and putting a farmer’s face on that food. We need to find a way to re-create what Slow Food has done in Italy to institutionalize “taste education”- not “nutrition education”- but “taste education”in a way that doesn’t come off as elitist.

So, how do we get to that place where the food system is just and sustainable-- where we have a Permaculture President who turns the White House lawn into an organic farm?

We need to make new alliances w/ powerful interests and consider reframing our messages in new ways. Agriculture fails to resonate with many Americans. A few days ago, I was interviewing a candidate for a job, someone who had lived in California her whole life. She said that she didn’t know any farmers. How many Americans do? If you don't know any farmers, and you buy your food at Vons or Ralphs, agriculture is an abstraction. And how can you care about an abstraction? What you do care about is your health, and you want healthy food for your family.
Tim Lang, a leading voice for food security in the UK, holds that health should be seen as the ultimate purpose of agriculture: healthy food for healthy individuals, healthy landscapes and healthy rural communities.
The Prevention Institute in Oakland has recently released a report that lays out the links between sustainable ag and health. Here’s some of their top 10 reasons why the time is ripe to link agriculture and health:

1. Everyone cares about health.
2. Health care is a huge and growing part of the GNP.
3. Health care is one of the top political campaign issues.
4. Obesity and food-related chronic diseases are leading health concerns with long-term consequences for the health of the nation.
5. Health disparities—higher rates of diabetes, stroke, asthma, and other chronic diseases among African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and people with low incomes—are a primary public health concern related to the food system.
6. Awareness is growing within the health sector that the environment is an important influence on individual health, both directly and as a mediator for eating and physical activity behaviors.
7. Health sells. There is an opportunity to take back health claims from the processed food industry and attach them to fresh, local food.

For the most part, as one staff member reminded me the other day, the public health community has not yet discovered sustainable agriculture. For example, they want to get people to eat more servings of fruits and vegetables, but don't necessarily think about who grew those products under what conditions. Food is still an undifferentiated commodity. Our task is to help them to gain an understanding of why sustainable foods matter for their goals.

Transforming the food system will require new markets, new policies, & new visions. Building connections with powerful constituencies such as the public health area and reconceptualizing the benefits of sustainable agriculture in health terms can help move us in the right direction.

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