MLK Day reflection: 8 places I love in Georgia's 5th Congressional District

Today, Martin Luther King Day 2017, feels like a good day to list some of my favorite places in Rep. John Lewis' 5th Congressional District in Georgia, from a visit one year ago, in January, 2016, which I will long remember:

1. Emory University, where I learned about local food initiatives at the Wholesome Wave annual summit;
2. the Eastside Trail, where a fun bike ride showed that Atlanta is capable of sustainable alternative transportation, beyond its car-centric reputation, for those who seek it;
3. the Antioch Baptist Church North, full to the rafters with holy music and powerful Word, and totally welcoming to a (white) Christian visitor from out of town and (of all things) his Jewish friends who joined him for the church service out of ecumenical interest;
4. the Center for Civil and Human Rights, which hosts the single most dramatic experiential exhibit I have ever witnessed, in which the visitor sits down at a lunch counter and puts on earphones (and to even say what happens next would be a spoiler);
5. the Atlanta History Center, famous for Civil War memorabilia and the Margaret Mitchell house, but which also was packed with Hispanic visitors on the day I visited, because of a special program for Día de los Reyes Magos.
6. the World of Coca-Cola, a museum dedicated to proving that any product, no matter how empty of nourishment, can be converted by a sufficiently bold and brilliant huckster into the subject of an advertisement so moving that it brings tears to the eyes of the most hardened food policy analyst;
7. the Martin Luther King memorial and gravesite, because even young nations such as ours deserve a pilgrimage destination; and
8. the Amtrak Station, because though I am flying less, our divided country fortunately is still bound together by old rusty infrastructure links that predate our current disregard for the environmental challenges of our times.

I will try to live the next four years with one foot in our democracy's painful contemporary struggles and the other foot planted in the better America that sometimes is hidden in plain sight. This is how I will try simultaneously to do good and enjoy life. Some may slander this good and profoundly American place, but the 5th Congressional District in Georgia has something to teach us. 

Some in Massachusetts are concerned with animal welfare and yet not voting for Ballot Measure #3

In a commentary for WBUR this week, my faculty colleagues Will Masters and Jennifer Hashley write about Massachusetts Ballot Measure #3, which would ban the sale in Massachusetts of eggs, pork, and veal from confined production methods.

This debate is commonly described as a tension between animal welfare goals and protecting poor people from higher prices. Masters and Hashley actually speak favorably about the animal welfare goals, and even say that in principle more humane production practices could be accomplished at reasonable cost (assuming the right supports), but they say in practice the Massachusetts initiative generates too much concern about higher prices right now.

They write:

The more we understand Ballot Question 3, the more vexing the choice appears. From our long experience with U.S. agriculture and food policy, we know that America’s diverse and resilient farms could potentially deliver improved animal welfare without harming access to low-cost, convenient and nutritious eggs. But we also know that this won’t happen automatically. If government remains on the sidelines, a yes vote on Question 3 would bring unacceptable price rises.

A conversation with Project Bread

I enjoyed a recent interview with Project Bread, a leading anti-hunger organization in New England and organizer of the annual Walk for Hunger in Boston.

What is the biggest cause of food insecurity in the United States?
There are multiple reasons why people lack sufficient income to meet their needs, and multiple reasons they go hungry. Some young people who want to work might not have a job because the unemployment rate is high, or there are no jobs availble to them at their skill or education level. Others might fall into poverty because of a medical conditions: they're too sick or injured to work, and they have major costs to cover. They may have a disability that keeps them from having access to the services and support they need. They might be older and isolated in their homes. This is why no one solution fits everyone everyone who is food insecure. ...

Are things getting better?
Some would say that at least they aren't getting worse, but we still have more than 14% of families facing food insecurity. We need to remember the goal of 6% that we set before, and figure out how to get there. Even though our economists tell us we're in a period of economic expansion, we're still not seeing the rate of food insecurity drop.

Food, Farms, and Community (by Chase and Grubinger)

I am enjoying reading the new book-length coverage of local food systems in Food, Farms, and Community, by Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger of the University of Vermont.

Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems takes an in-depth look at critical issues, successful programs, and challenges for improving food systems spanning a few miles to a few thousand miles. Case studies that delve into the values that drive farmers, food advocates, and food entrepreneurs are interwoven with analysis supported by the latest research. Examples of entrepreneurial farms and organizations working together to build sustainable food systems are relevant to the entire country—and reveal results that are about much more than fresh food.

Chase is a natural resources specialist at the UVM and director of the Vermont Tourism Research Center (and a long-time friend and classmate from graduate studies at Cornell in the 1990s). Grubinger is an agriculture specialist with UVM extension.

Cod fishery in crisis

The federal government this week enacted what amounts essentially to a 6-month pause in commercial cod fishing in the Gulf of Maine, according to a report by David Abel in the Boston Globe yesterday. This is a sad day for New England's most famous fishery.

Cod fishing is a classic example of a situation where free markets would be devastating for everybody, including fishermen and their families. Because overfishing in the past has pushed stocks far below maximum sustainable levels, each fishing boat harms the economic interests of the next. Economists believe that liberated markets serve environmental goals wonderfully in many situations, where property rights to natural resources are well defined, but free markets are a disaster when each producer is chasing a common resource.

Nobody thinks the New England cod fishery should be unregulated. Yet, cod fishermen complain about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) regulators who took action this week. Many fishermen believe the scientific estimates are overly pessimistic, leading regulators to be overly cautious.

Here you can inspect the evidence for yourself, in NOAA's report this past August. Using two different models of cod mortality (on the left and right), the figure reproduced here shows the downward trend over time in estimated spawning stocks biomass (top row) and the upward trend in estimated recent fish mortality (bottom row).

Of course, these estimates could be mistaken. Yet, as a non-expert reading them closely, I found them persuasive. If I were a cod fisherman, I would cry, plan, and organize politically, but I would resist the temptation to blame the messenger.

For the other side of the story, here is a link to the Northeast Seafood Coalition, but I haven't yet found a real scientific rebuttal to the NOAA estimates.

In the tragic political division in this country, so apparent in the recent election, the conservative party is (rightly!) devoted to the great prosperity economic markets can achieve, yet sadly unable to comprehend that vigorous and effective government sometimes is needed to let markets work well.

Local food retail access

Many people feel that low-income neighborhoods have less access to supermarkets than other neighborhoods do.

In research published recently in the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, my colleagues and I found otherwise:

In contrast with the conventional wisdom, the results show that high poverty block groups had closer proximity to the nearest supermarket than other block groups did, on average: 85.6% of high-poverty block groups had a supermarket within 1 mile, while 76.8% of lower-poverty block groups had a supermarket within this distance. 

This finding makes sense when you consider the average population density of poor neighborhoods. Low-income neighborhoods may be urban or rural, but on average they are more likely than other neighborhoods to be urban and population-dense. Supermarkets tend to locate reasonably close to where people live.

When measuring local food retail access, it is useful to recognize that most Americans drive to grocery stores. Even though low-income Americans are less likely to own an automobile, this basic reliance on driving is true even for most low-income Americans. We found that the population living far from a supermarket and lacking an automobile is fairly small:

Population density is a strong predictor of proximity to the nearest supermarket. Block groups with very high population density generally had very close proximity to a nearest supermarket. In block groups lacking a nearby supermarket, rates of automobile access generally were quite high (more than 95%), although this still leaves almost 5% of the population in these areas lacking both an automobile and a nearby supermarket.

Other recent research on the food retail environment similarly emphasizes the importance of automobile access. For example, see a fascinating report by Mabli and Ohls (.pdf) on the website of USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.

It is worthwhile to compare these findings to other influential literature on lack of access to supermarkets. The online tool from the Reinvestment Fund identifies areas with Limited Supermarket Access (LSAs). The detailed report (.pdf) from the Reinvestment Fund agrees with our findings in several respects. For example, Table 2 in the TRF report confirms that low-population-density neighborhoods tend to have high average rates of automobile access (above 95%). Table 3 in the TRF report shows that neighborhoods with higher population density and lower average rates of automobile access typically have very short median distances (much less than a mile) to the nearest supermarket. The Reinvestment Fund classifies a particular neighborhood as having Limited Supermarket Access if the nearest supermarket is farther than a threshold distance based on non-poor neighborhoods with similar automobile access and population density. In urban areas, the threshold distance may be four fifths of a mile away, and in some cases merely a third of a mile away.

Because supermarkets are an automobile-oriented retail format, I have some misgivings about defining limited access using such short threshold distances, even for low-income populations. But I am eager to hear the views of others on that question.

The implied remedy in any method for identifying areas without supermarkets is to invite or persuade a supermarket to locate in a particular location. The new supermarket outlet will have to compete with other stores that customers at all income levels may prefer. The new store will not have a captive market. Of course, if communities put great effort into attracting a supermarket, we hope it will succeed and thrive once it gets there!

At Civil Eats, nutrition policy reformer Andy Bellatti included a kind word for Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan) as part of his year-end review for 2013.

Let’s wrap up this look back at 2013 by remembering just a small selection of the many great books that saw the light of day. When it came to an inside look at the world of processed foods, two journalists masterfully pulled back the curtain: Melanie Warner in Pandora’s Lunchbox and Michael Moss in Salt Sugar Fat. Food politics were front and center in Dr. Gyorgy Scrinis’–a lecturer in food and nutrition politics and policy in the Department of Agriculture and Food Systems in the Melbourne School of Land and Environmen–Nutritionism, and literally illustrated in Marion Nestle’s Eat, Drink, Vote.

The plight of restaurant workers was well-detailed in Saru Jayamaran’s Behind the Kitchen Door, while New York Times writer Mark Bittman made a solid case for eating a plant-based diet before 6 PM in VB6. In the textbook realm, Parke Wilde, Associate Professor at Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, released Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction to much acclaim from his peers.

Okay, 2014, now it’s your turn. Impress us and give the “good food” movement something to cheer about, please!

Should food policy be part of the Farm Bill?

In presentations at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on October 23, Neal Hooker and Jill Clark will address the question, "Should food policy be part of the Farm Bill?" (free event, but with registration).  Neal and Jill teach at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University. 

The event will address the political dynamics that historically led both urban and rural legislators to support combining farm policy and food policy in a single omnibus Farm Bill.  As this blog discussed in July, the consensus in favor of a single bill has been falling apart this year.

In a visit to Ohio this week, I enjoyed speaking to student and community audiences at the Glenn School and at Cleveland State University.   The website for the food policy programs at the Glenn School also currently has posted a nice presentation on local food by my Friedman School colleague Christian Peters.  Chris' intense interest in local food, combined with realism and quantification, is appealing.

At Cleveland State University, I visited with students and faculty involved with the Academic Association for Food Policy Research (AAFPR) (site and Facebook), which seems to have a lively event series including regular discussions of documentaries related to food policy.  The organization brings together folks from the university, local food, and anti-hunger organizations in the Cleveland area.  The advisory group includes Michael Dover (Social Work, CSU), Michelle Kaiser (Social Work, OSU, and Food Innovation Center), Mary Waith (Philosophy), and Dana Irribarren (CEO, Hunger Network of Greater Cleveland).

New resources on local meat slaughter

In a series of blog posts for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), Friedman School graduate student Barbara Patterson has been reporting on several aspects of slaughter, processing, and market development for local meat production and sale.

One update described USDA/ERS reporting on the role of business commitments:

Earlier this month, the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) released a report titled “Local Meat and Poultry Processing: The Importance of Business Commitments for Long-Term Viability”.  This report follows a related report, published last year by ERS, that evaluated the availability of slaughter and processing facilities for local meat production and the impact on market supply of local meat.

The authors of the new report, Lauren Gwin, Arion Thiboumery, and Richard Stillman, reported that consumer demand for local meat and poultry has risen, yet there are constraints on production both due to limited processing infrastructure and, at the same time, insufficient business for processors necessary for profitability.  They report, through seven case studies of local and regional processors, that best practices center around long-term commitments by processors to provide consistent and high quality services, and by farmers that commit to a steady level of meat for processing.

A second post drew on Patterson's interview with Ali Berlow, author of The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse.

Ali Berlow, founder of Island Grown Initiative, an NSAC member group, recently published The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse, a manual for building a humane, mobile chicken-processing unit.  Using her experience establishing a mobile poultry slaughterhouse on Martha’s Vineyard, Berlow comprehensively describes how to adapt her methods to other communities based on their unique needs to ensure an economically feasible production for poultry slaughter.

The total number of small-scale livestock slaughter facilities has declined over the past 10 years, despite tremendous growth in total sales of foods direct-to-consumer.  Mobile slaughter trailers can help serve poultry growers who lack access to nearby or appropriately-sized slaughterhouses, as well as helping processors maintain a stable volume of business, necessary for economic success.

Berlow described transparency and community as the keys to a successful slaughterhouse.  “When you engage the community, it helps them to know where their food is coming from and the difficulties and challenges that come with that.”  One such difficulty, complying with local, state, and federal regulations, can only be helped by more community engagement and outreach to local and state regulators, according to Berlow.

City Blossoms: urban gardens make people smile

My parents and I were inspired by our recent visit to City Blossoms near our old neighborhood in Washington, DC.  This series of urban gardens, including gardening programs for children and youth, was founded by Lola Bloom and our long-time family friend Rebecca Lemos-Otero when they were still in high school and college.

I see on the City Blossoms events page that they will host an upcoming dinner night on July 26, in partnership with Brainfood: A Recipe for Youth Development.  Brainfood is a DC food non-profit organization housed at my old childhood church, St. Stephen and the Incarnation, a pillar of community activism in the 16th Street corridor since the 1960s.

Photo: Margaret Wilde.  From l to r: Parke Wilde, Rebecca Lemos-Otero, Fernando Lemos.

Revitalizing Detroit with food and agriculture

Some amazing good things are happening in Detroit's food system.

Betti Wiggins, Director of Nutrition Services for Detroit Public Schools, is carrying out her vision for converting underutilized land to vegetable gardens.  Hear it in her own voice, from the Detroit Stories project.




The Detroit Eastern Market, operating continuously since the 1890s, offers a major regional event each Saturday and serves as a focal point for food business initiatives throughout the city.

Credit: http://www.detroiteasternmarket.com/.

See also the Detroit Food Policy Council, whose annual report (.pdf) provides greater detail about food system initiatives; the Colors Restaurant, an experiment in good food and worker justice; the Kitchen Connect project from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice; the food system work of Detroit's youth movement; and the role of food initiatives in the broader Detroit Future City community planning initiative.

Any visitor to Detroit is struck by the depth of economic distress, visible in the physical environment and people one meets throughout the city.  The city population has declined by 25% in recent years.  Detroit is on the brink of bankruptcy (npr) and an emergency manager has been appointed (nytimes).

The remarkable entrepreneurs and innovators who are driving forward with new investments in food businesses and public initiatives are some of the most faithful, dauntless personalities I have ever met.

What business model lets a person represent a neighborhood?

First, consider this 1999 article in the New York Times, which quotes community activist and businessperson Majora Carter on the topic of a garbage transfer station that had been proposed for the South Bronx.  This 1999 argument pitted (on the one side) an African American-owned business and a clean-air environmental group in favor of the transfer station against (on the other side) community advocates concerned about pollution from the transfer station.

The opponents shouted down representatives of the garbage company, saying the area already handles more than its share of garbage. They also accused the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, which traditionally has opposed such projects, of accepting money from the company in exchange for its support.

''You are accepting money from them and playing their community partner,'' Majora Carter, an official with the Point Community Development Corporation, shouted at members of the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition. ''This is obscene.'' ...

''I don't care if it's a minority owned business,'' Ms. Carter, of the Point, who is also black, yelled at Mr. Jones at the public meeting. ''I'm a businesswoman too. I would not sell out my brothers and sisters that way.''

Later, but only later, read the harsh article today about Majora Carter in the New York Times.  This article may be unfair to Carter.  Yet, perhaps, Carter may have been too harsh in her criticism of Robert Jones, 3rd, and the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition in 1999.

For me, the lesson is two-fold: (a) we should have very high expectations for the ethical standards of our public interest organizations and entrepreneurs, and yet (b) these expectations should not be so high as to be impossible for any thriving operation to satisfy in the real world. 

Just like for-profit organizations, public interest organizations need a viable business model.  They may aim for small local impacts with cobbled together funding, or they may aim for larger impact with more substantial funding.  In the latter case, they must be vigilant about conflicts of interest and transparent about funding sources, but being a businessperson is not itself a sign of corruption.  Notice that even in the 1999 article, Majora Carter always described herself as a businesswoman.

[I had been thinking about similar issues in this February post.]

For local (Arlington, MA) readers: critical meeting for East Arlington Livable Streets

For local readers, this blog has occasionally covered the work of the East Arlington Livable Streets Coalition, a community group that has been supporting the planned improvements to Massachusetts Avenue through our neighborhood.

A critical public meeting will be this Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 7:00 pm at Arlington Town Hall.  Please come out to share your views on a healthy transportation plan for all members of the community.

The Massachusetts Avenue redesign will include better pedestrian crossings, sidewalks, benches, bus stop spaces, and bike lines. For a number of reasons, the redesign is likely to improve automobile traffic too. For example:

• It might seem that a bike lane takes space from automobile lanes, but really it is easier for cars when the bikes are not in the car lane. 
• It might seem that wider bus zones would take space from the automobile lane, but really the full-sized bus stops allow buses to pull all the way out of the traffic lane, so they don't have to block cars while letting people embark and disembark. 
• It might seem that 3 auto lanes in place of 4 in some stretches would clog traffic, but really the total automobile traffic volume is regulated by the traffic lights at either end of the neighborhood (at Route 60 and Alewife Brook Parkway), so the extra lane for cars does not really help traffic. 

Truly the engineers of the redesign have done a terrific job in planning for the needs of pedestrians, bikes, and automobiles all together.  They have been highly responsive to public input.  The current plan is a good compromise for everybody who uses the avenue.

Unfortunately, a Washington DC lobbying group called the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA) has been helping to generate opposition.  They have written an awful misleading letter to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.  Just reading the letter, you can tell they have never even been here, but instead are relying on second hand information from local lawyer Eric Berger, a long-time opponent of the plan.  There is a serious risk that a small group of well-funded opponents will be able to divide our community and thwart years of planning with extensive community input. 

I feel that our community has a big chance to make some improvements that meet our own needs and hopes for our most important street.  But we need to turn out to be heard and counted on Feb. 26.

A concept for insurance company investment in community supported agriculture

Friedman School Ph.D. student Nicole Tichenor explains the concept of community supported agriculture (CSA) health insurance rebates on the Rodale Institute blog:

Here’s how it works: insurance policyholders read about member farms on the Coalition’s website, all of which are certified organic or have exempt status. They then contact a farmer directly to sign up and pay up front for the share, as with any traditional CSA. Finally, they fill out their respective health plan’s CSA rebate form (available online) and mail/fax it to the health plan with proof of payment and a copy of their sign-up form. A few weeks later, policyholders receive a reimbursement check for up to $100 for an individual contract or $200 for a family contract.

The FairShare partnership has been wildly successful.

Bread for working people

A friend taught me how to make this oat/wheat combination bread.  While some bread recipes save time by using just a single rise, this bread has two rises, but there is a twist that makes it quite friendly for people with a day job.

The first kneading is at night.  The following morning, the steps for putting dough in pans, allowing a second rise, and baking, each take just a few seconds and seem timed just right to fit between morning tasks of waking up, showering, dressing, breakfast, and out the door.  By some measures you'd have to say home-made bread takes hours of work, but if we choose a recipe that fits our schedule, we get three loaves of fresh bread for about 45 minutes' work (in the evening, in the kitchen, with music on the radio, sometimes with kids around chatting, at a time of day when I didn't want to do other work anyway).

As I smell this bread before eating it the next evening, I think there are some things that statistics on food prices and time use will never quite measure.

A little bit of summer stored in a jar ...

Raspberries from the bushes outside our kitchen window, turned into jam last July.

Home-made cheese

I have been preparing home-made soft cheeses for the past couple years, working my way through the recipes in Ricki Carroll's book on Home Cheese Making.  Here is a photograph of neufchatel curds draining in my kitchen last week.

In a future post, I will tell about building a makeshift cheese press with my son this month at the holiday Craft Day, an inspiring Boston area tradition organized each year by Carolyn Mugar (who is executive director of Farm Aid).  For more than a year, I had promised myself not to take up more arduous hard cheese making as a new hobby until I submitted a manuscript for my food policy book, but that goal was completed this fall.  So this weekend, armed with the new press, I claimed my reward and began my first attempt at cheddar.

For entertainment during the waiting periods for that project last night, I sat, with a beer in hand, reading the relevant sections of Harold McGee's classic, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.  You will think I was tipsy if I tell you it felt like grasping a thin and nearly invisible thread connecting my kitchen to 5,000 years of kitchens inhabited by inventive cheese makers (and brewers) responsible for a truly remarkable group of technologies using living microorganisms to convert perishable foods into shelf-stable treasures.  McGee writes:

Cheese is one of the great achievements of humankind.  Not any cheese in particular, but cheese in its astonishing multiplicity....

Minor Update 12/13/2012: According to an NPR story by Adam Cole and Helen Thompson today, based on an article from Nature, the thread is even longer, connecting 7,000 years of kitchens!

State-level data on children's poverty and nutrition programs

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center this week released new resources about breakfast and lunch participation in Massachusetts schools.  A chart pack (.pdf) illustrates data describing the extent of take-up of nutrition benefits, and a summary graphic (.pdf) traces a wide variety of nutrition assistance programs from the federal funding sources to the state and local implementation level.

More generally, the Kids Count data center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation has a wide variety of state-level data resources for all states.  For example, here is an interactive map showing children's poverty levels by regions within Massachusetts (you can mouse over selected counties to see specific statistics).

Progress for Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)

Here in Boston this month, during the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' rainy march at the corporate offices for Stop and Shop supermarkets, with the way into the offices blocked by corporate representatives, hopes soared briefly.

And then, just at that moment, a man emerged from the double doors of the towering Stop & Shop headquarters, behind the representatives standing watch, and approached the group. “I'm a systems analyst from floor six—and I support you.” His expression was determined, unflappable. “May I escort you inside for a conversation on floor ten with executives?”

Despite the system analyst's courage, negotiators from the Florida-based farm labor group were unable to proceed further.

Yet, it seems likely that the setback will be only temporary.  On a visit to CIW offices in Immokalee this week, my family (including my two children, wife, and parents) enjoyed speaking with labor organizers about their successes since the time of my previous visit in 2009.  The biggest victory has been a new relationship with tomato growers, who previously had refused to participate in the CIW's penny-a-pound bonus program, in which leading branded supermarkets and restaurant chains agree to pay workers a better piece rate for tomato harvest.

The CIW's "ask" from branded companies seems profoundly reasonable.  Here in New England, I suspect Stop and Shop will give way in the next several months, as have Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, and the tomato growers themselves in previous campaigns.  As a regular Stop and Shop customer, let me mention here that customers like me are following this issue closely, and a sensible negotiating position would generate a pile of customer goodwill and loyalty.  If Stop and Shop negotiates, I will of course give the news effusive coverage in this space.

Source: CIW.

USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass

USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food website consolidates information from a wide variety of less-well-known programs that support farmers' markets and other local food infrastructure, facilitate local meat and poultry, promote local food sales to institutions such as schools and hospitals, and more.

Rather than duplicate existing work with yet another layer of program authority, the website compiles information from a breadth of USDA agencies with their own separate budgets and chains of command.  This simple inexpensive effort makes a powerful impression, articulating a sense of shared purpose for what might otherwise seem like a scattershot collection of tiny stand-alone projects. For a Department that sometimes suffers from accusations of serving only large-scale industrial farmers, the Know Your Farmer program humanizes a large bureaucracy and generates an outsized improvement in public reputation.

For an alternative view, the coverage at Forbes seems to complain simultaneously that the Know Your Farmer program is underfunded and covers the same topics as existing programs.  With a churlish spin, Forbes shares the same facts I just described above.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Merrigan this year launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass, with a link-heavy report and an interactive map, publicizing all sorts of local food activities supported by USDA.  Because U.S. agricultural politics are local politics, the simple act of collecting small program data points by geography has a big communication impact.