Closing the Food Gap, reviewed by Katy Kaesebier

Closing the Food Gap, Mark Winne

·         Re: living in a community you are serving, “To only participate in social action had a lower status than to be committed to the same.  Think ham and eggs: the hen participates, but the pig is committed.”

·         “In its simplest sense, food system thinking doesn’t permit us to isolate one segment of food activity from another.  We can’t for instance, think only about farming without also thinking about eating.  We can’t set a price for a food product without being sure that enough people want it badly enough to pay that price.  All parts of the system, from seed to table, are connected in a vast and complicated web, and the more we understand those connections, the more likely we are to narrow the food gap.”

·         “We are playing into Reagan’s hands by increasing private feeding activity while the federal government is doing all it can to shirk its responsibility.  This patchwork system is an inadequate and terribly inefficient way to try to keep people from starving.  But at the moment we have no choice.”

·         The most important word in community garden is not garden.

·          When you help somebody who is fully capable of helping himself, then you aren’t helping them.

·         Since influential people are drawn to influential organizations, both food banks and the people who run them are in a unique position to promote a vital public discourse around hunger, food insecurity, and poverty.  Do they? Generally speaking, they do not, because influential people don’t attain exalted positions within a community’s hierarchy by asking hard, controversial questions or by becoming agitators.  Upsetting the apple cart is not the way it’s done in polite society.

·         “I’m still incredulous when I think about how nearly an entire industry simply walked away from tens of millions of people without consequence… chain supermarkets abandoned vast stretches of this country’s landscape simply because they could make more money in more affluent, usually suburban communities.”

·         Is the responsibility for what one consumes or otherwise does to oneself-whether positive or negative- the person’s responsibility or that of society, culture, advertising, the calculating hand of capitalism, or a host of environmental factors over which we have little control?

·         If shopping at a regional mall is like descending into the inferno, then buying a product directly from a local farmer or craftsperson is like ascending to paradise.  There is, in other words, something transcendent in the passing of an object directly from the hands of the producer to the hands of the buyer.

·         Democracy works best when it’s closest to the people.  That is why we can expect city hall to act faster than the state capitol, which in turn tends to respond to its people before Washington DC.  The farther away the decision makers are from those whose lives are affected by their decisions, the slower will be the change that occurs.

·         Three things are necessary to change our food system and close the food gap: projects, partners, and policy.

·         Our society’s stated mantra to end hunger has grown tired and hollow.  We know its cause- poverty; we know its solution- end poverty.  Yet we choose instead to treat hunger only as a symptom of poverty.

·         Yes, I am privileged.  Yet I have chosen to regard that privilege as a gift that I will share as best I can until it loses value or is no longer needed…. I will pave the way for, make way for, and get out of the way of those whose voices more genuinely call out for change than mine ever could.

·         But it’s important to remember that because the food system is so diverse and complex, it has many interconnected parts, none of which can be ignored for too long before the system falls out of balance.  Focus too intently on hunger, and you’ll lose sight of its cause.  Devote yourself too narrowly to agriculture, and you’ll forget about the consumer.  Care too much about your own food, and you’ll forsake food justice.  There are larger purposes in life when all our interests come together.  Closing the food gap is one of them.

Concepts and Interesting Facts

·         Transportation isn’t available from most low income neighborhoods to quality supermarkets

·         Suburban grocery stores typically cost 10-15% less than urban grocery stores

·         National School Lunch Program started in 1948 by President Truman.  Why? – response to poor nutrition during WWII.  “That so many young men had such substandard diets that they were unfit for military service was a matter of national chagrin and a threat to national security.”

·         Strong link between food gap and civil disturbances

·         Food banks treat the symptom of poverty.  We have to do better.

·          Correlation between race, income, and access to quality food.  “Investors acting rationally and free of misperceptions about urban neighborhoods would say that their financial risk is 20% greater in a lower income area than it is in an affluent area.”

·         Fight between “Big Cola” and school about whether or not to have pop machines in school buildings.  Big Cola saying that not having it was denying students the right to choose whether or not they wanted a pop.  Seriously?  Money drives everything.  “Disempowering children by taking away their right to buy junk food in school.”- an actual argument from “Big Cola”