Tag Archives: agriculture

Nine State Meetings: bring health and agriculture sectors together for food system change


Posted by HFHP Coalition
By Jennifer Billig, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy & HFHP Steering Committee

One of the major initiatives of the Healthy Farms, Healthy People Coalition in 2012 was helping bring together cross-sector meetings in nine states, including Minnesota, Texas, Illinois, Montana, Oregon, New York, Kansas, Mississippi and Iowa. While the purpose of the meetings was to begin building bridges between the health and agriculture sectors,  many of the meetings included representatives from the anti-hunger, culinary and philanthropic sectors, among others, as well.

The nine state meetings mirrored the national health-agriculture convening hosted by the coalition in May 2011 in Washington, DC. Participants across all the meetings were energized by the opportunity to learn about key issues from new perspectives and the prospect of new partnerships between the health and farming communities. The hope is that working across sectors will bring more innovative food system policy to support public health goals for healthier eating, but also support our farmers’ ability to make a living producing fruits, vegetables, commodity crops such as wheat and rice, as well as food animals that serve those goals.

The coalition provided financial support for seven of the nine one-day meetings via a competitive application process that produced 61 proposals. The Minnesota and Illinois meetings also received support from local funders. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) provided technical assistance for all nine meetings on a state-by-state basis, as well as by working with the National Network of Public Health Institutes to convene state meeting organizers to share ideas.

The year kicked off in Minnesota with a meeting in early January and ended with meetings in Iowa and Kansas in mid-November. The meetings ranged in size from 42 participants in the less populated state of Montana to more than 335 participants in Minnesota, with most of the remaining meetings engaging approximately 75-100 health and agriculture stakeholders.

More than one of the meetings opened with a panel of speakers sharing their diverse perspectives on key food system issues. Others opened with a keynote speakers, including Dr. Kelly Brownell of Yale’s Rudd Center who spoke to the Minnesota audience about the need to make healthy food the “optimal default” through policy and environment changes; Bob Martin, senior policy advisor at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health made the case to the Kansas audience for a public health perspective on agriculture, particularly the linkages between the growing number of human antibiotic-resistant infections and the widespread use of antibiotics in animal agriculture; and Ken Meter of Crossroads Resource Center described the political economy of the food system in central Illinois and outlined an opportunity to reverse the trend of food and farm dollars flowing out of the region to distant corporations rather than supporting local producers and businesses.

Discussion of local and regional food system issues were prominent at all the meetings, from the Mississippi meeting which focused on building farm to institution programs in the state, to New York where food business owners participated in discussions about ways to expand consumer access to state products. In Oregon, a state law prohibiting undocumented workers from having driver’s licenses threatens to hurt local farms and food businesses across the state, as well as worsen poverty among that population of workers and their families.

Other key issues discussed included the need for better public incentives and crop insurance for producers of fruits and vegetables, the need for scale-appropriate food safety laws that support development of local food systems, the need to reform state procurement laws to allow for more local sourcing and increasing access to federal nutrition programs at farmers markets.

It is our hope that work will continue on these and other key policy issues within the states and through creation of a national community of practice made up of leaders from each of the nine states, as well as additional states that hold cross-sector meetings in 2013. A multi-year community of practice would allow for shared learning about key issues and foster policy development in multiple states, as well as drive creation of healthier national food and farming systems policy.


Finding Common Ground on SNAP for Agriculture, Health, and the Economy


Posted by HFHP Coalition

The largest federal food safety net program in the United States is good for agriculture, public health, and local economies – but it’s also the subject of much debate as its funding comes up for reauthorization every five years.

How does the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) benefit health, agriculture, and the economy? And what are some of the conflicts that frequently arise as lawmakers attempt to balance these and other interests?

Learn how people who care about health, the economy, and the future of agriculture can come together around SNAP to find a common way forward.

Click here to download the issue brief.

Meet the Author and the Coalition Coordinator, and learn more about this and upcoming issue briefs, at Change with a Twist, Monday 10/29 from 4 pm to 7 pm at the SF Planning + Urban Research Association, 654 Mission Street San Francisco, CA.

Finding Common Ground is a series of Healthy Farms Healthy People issue briefs, authored by Coalition Steering Committee member organization ChangeLab Solutions, bringing agriculture and health stakeholders together, to build a stronger base of support for a healthy, economically viable food and farming system in the United States. Each brief highlights a food and farming issue in which agriculture and health stakeholders have shared interest.


Food Day 2012


Posted by HFHP Coalition
By Gabrielle Serra

For at least one day every year, people across the country join together on October 24 for a nationwide celebration of food and the ever-growing movement for an equitable, healthy, affordable, and sustainable food system. The timing of this year’s Food Day couldn’t come at a more critical time.

Food Day is an opportunity to underscore the importance of equitable access to healthy, affordable, sustainable food, and clarify the link between federal food and farm policy (‘the farm bill’) and the real impact it has on real people in their everyday lives. The farm bill impacts every American through its impact on the price of milk at the grocery store to the price of gas at the pump. While it has a direct impact on consumers, the farm bill is also a jobs bill. More than 16 million jobs across the country are associated with agriculture. Further, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest program in the farm bill, provides one of the highest rated tools for stimulating local economy that simultaneously promotes health and protects more than 46 million vulnerable Americans from hunger.

While policymakers grapple over whether there is enough political support to drive action before the end of the year, Food Day is an opportunity to drive home the point that food and farm policy matters to everyone because everybody eats. A farm bill that doesn’t support a strong and profitable farm economy for farmers and farm workers, that doesn’t support a diversity of farming systems of all sizes, that doesn’t promote a food system that results in equitable access to healthy affordable food for consumers, including those who are most vulnerable among us, means the farm bill doesn’t work for our economy.  We need a new farm bill. And, Food Day reminds us that we are all in this together.

When Congress returns after the election, their attention will be on addressing the significant economic issues facing our country from the near term issues of spending and revenue to long term concerns of debt and deficits.  The Farm Bill should be part of this conversation because it can be part of the solution. Congress has the opportunity to advance modern food and farm legislation that reflects the current needs of American producers and consumers, without compromising the long-term viability of the sector to perform at the highest level for the next generation.

Stay tuned for more information on how you can be involved to let Congress know that the Farm Bill matters to you.


Good for our health, bad for our farms?


Posted by HFHP Coalition
Cross-posted from The State Journal-Register, Springfield, IL
 
By Julia Freedgood of American Farmland Trust and Christine Fry of ChangeLab Solutions
 

We’ve all heard the drumbeat from nutrition experts: Eat more fruits and vegetables. We know this advice is good for our health. But what does it mean for our land—and for the farmers who grow food on our land?

With obesity rates at epidemic levels, easier access to fruits and vegetables is important, especially in low-income neighborhoods where healthy options can be hard to find. But ramping up demand for affordable produce means stepping up production, which means more demand on land and water.

How we use these resources will affect our environment and communities for years to come. We need to find new ways to protect both human health and the health of our land long into the future.

Farms and ranches operate on nearly half of all the land in the United States. Population growth, development pressures and severe weather like droughts and floods strain land and water supplies. Fields now sprout shopping malls instead of squash and melons, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that despite dramatic gains from conservation, 30 percent of cropland in America is eroding at an unsustainable rate.

Everyone who eats has a stake in healthy soil and clean water. We all need to understand what it takes to increase food production in a way that sustains our natural resources and the farmers who grow our food.

Fortunately, Americans’ burgeoning interest in knowing where our food comes from is helping health experts and growers build a powerful new alliance. Nutrition experts haven’t traditionally weighed in on conservation issues, but their involvement would go a long way toward establishing policies and incentives to encourage conservation practices, like using water more efficiently and planting cover crops to protect the soil.

The first step is to get growers and nutrition experts into the same room. Farmers can teach nutritionists about the challenges they face with access to land, a changing climate and competition for water.  Nutrition experts can inform farmers about the challenges of healthy food access and affordability.

We can’t leave it to our national leaders to bridge this divide.  As the most recent showdown over the farm bill has shown, we can’t rely on Congress to do the long-term thinking necessary to create a resilient food and farming system—one that balances farmland conservation and agricultural viability with strategies to nourish our most vulnerable. We need to turn our focus to local efforts.

Around the country, new initiatives are bringing together growers and nutritionists to look at where and how food is produced and where people buy it. These conversations often result in plans to advance a vision for food and farming in the region.

In Virginia, agriculture and health groups have come together around a statewide plan—Virginia Farm to Table—to improve access to healthy food and protect farmland. In western Iowa, growers have joined with health professionals to form the Pottawattamie County Local Food Council, connecting farmers with consumers to increase local food production and to identify new markets. In Montana, nutrition and agriculture groups have banded together to review housing development plans to ensure that the state’s fertile land can continue to provide food long into the future. And this fall, leaders in eight states, including Illinois, will host statewide meetings (with support from the national Healthy Farms, Healthy People Coalition) to bring agriculture and health groups together.

With Americans showing growing interest in where their food comes from, now is the time for farmers and nutrition experts to come together to protect both our land and our health.

Julia Freedgood is managing director of farmland and community initiatives at American Farmland Trust, a national conservation organization dedicated to protecting farm and ranch land, promoting sound farming practices and keeping farmers on the land. Christine Fry is a senior policy analyst at ChangeLab Solutions, a nonprofit public health policy center. Both serve on the steering committee of the Healthy Farms, Healthy People Coalition. For more on the intersection of food policy, agriculture and health, register at www.iphionline.org for a statewide symposium in Springfield on Tuesday.


Guest Blog: Institute of Medicine Report Highlights the Connections Between Health and Agriculture


Posted by HFHP Coalition

Cross-posted from NSAC

May 30th, 2012

We want to thank Becca Klein from NSAC member the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) for her contribution.  Becca is the Health & Agriculture Policy Project Director at CLF, working to bring a health perspective to federal food and agriculture policy.

Believe it or not, just because I work for an academic institution does not mean that I relish reading academic reports.  Usually, the monotonous, highly annotated text tends to make the eyelids of even the nerdy-est of nerds grow heavy.  And, yet, every once in a while, a bit of magic pops off the page, and with it the eyelids fly open.  Such was the case when I read the Institute of Medicine’s report Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation.

Okay, okay.  I have not read all 462 pages of the report, but what I did read was profound.  No, the ideas were not new, but what I was reading was a succinct summary—by one of the most respected research bodies in the nation—of connections between agriculture policy and health, and steps we need to take immediately in order to assure improved public health.  This is not the first time that the IOM or another official body has called attention to these links, but it is the first time that such an urgency has been placed on the call to better understand and address the connections.

Click here to read the full post.