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\nThis article was written by Mark Winne, an author and long-time advocate for food justice, and a friend and colleague for many years. Mark gave us permission to post the article, originally published on Mark’s blog here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n October 17, 2022<\/p>\n When did attending a conference about hungry Americans and the appalling state of our dietary health become so popular? It was easier to get a ticket this month for the upcoming Bruce Springsteen tour (seats priced over $1,000 in some venues) than it was to wangle an invite to the nation\u2019s first big White House food confab since 1969 (Richard Nixon was President!). I guess the good news is that our appetite to resolve the problems of millions of food insecure Americans, as well as to address the 93 percent of us who are not healthy, is stronger than our desire for a joyfully cathartic night with the Boss.<\/p>\n In what can only be hailed as \u201cBoss\u201d Biden\u2019s grand attempt to cast the public engagement net as far as possible, thousands of government officials, food industry staff, non-profit leaders, and just plain folks weighed in to shape the conference since it was first announced in May. By holding bi-weekly calls (30 minutes each), hosting four regional listening sessions, and accepting reams of letters, reports, and comments, the White House made an earnest effort to hear everyone.<\/p>\n But as we know, democracy has its limits. Though hundreds of people were on each call, time only allowed for 6 or 7 questions and comments per session. Like the listening sessions, the voices I heard pleaded for the application of equity and the inclusion of people with lived experience. In my listening session that was for the entire Midwest and Mountain states, 600 people vied for attention in a dozen or more breakout groups. Mine had 53 people, many of whom spoke up for better coordination between all food system stakeholders as well as better access to healthy and affordable food for all consumers. My two cents, that I squeezed into my one minute of participation, argued for more federal support for food policy councils. Like everyone else, my devout faith in the process led me to believe that my insightful intervention would become the top featured recommendation at the conference (wrong).<\/p>\n To the anguished ears of many, several people spoke up over the course of the past four months, sometimes listening in muted shock, when they realized that two big topics were left off the table. Because of a Congressional \u201cdeal\u201d to fund the conference\u2014you can guess what side of the aisle the push came from\u2014the food system\u2019s significant contribution to carbon emissions, and the food industry\u2019s relentless need to manufacture and sell us megatons of highly processed crap were not part of the discussion. Yes, many progressive recommendations were presented to expand and enhance USDA\u2019s food and nutrition programs and promote more access to healthy and affordable food. But avoiding action on these big food system problems is like having a car with four flat tires. You fix three of them but not the fourth, and your car limps down the road until an axle breaks. Along the way, the responsibility falls on the taxpayer to fund federal programs to close the food security (not economic security) gap as well as pay for tens of billions in additional health care costs associated with diet-related illnesses like diabetes.<\/p>\n When the irrigation water has dried up and the heat has withered the crops, it won\u2019t matter how many food stamps you have. And when the food industry, who with some anti-hunger advocates oppose regulations and restrictions that would reduce the consumption of unhealthy food, you have to wonder if real health progress can ever be made.<\/p>\n Consider this choice: You can impose severe restrictions on what the food industry can manufacture, and which food items can be purchased with public funds (e.g., purchase restrictions on unhealthy items when using SNAP), or you can splatter nutrition education across the land and fund incentive-based approaches (e.g., Veggie Vouchers\/prescriptions, etc.) designed to promote healthy eating behaviors. From a purely economic perspective, the latter policy choice shifts (externalizes) the costs (including dietary health) of unhealthy eating to the public sector, relieving the private sector of all but the most anemic of responses (I invite some ambitious doctoral students looking for a really big thesis topic to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of those two very different policy options).<\/p>\n Not to place a damper on the enthusiasm of those throwing this shindig, whatever achievements can be attributed to this conference will have little to do with the brilliance and boldness of \u201cnew\u201d ideas. The Conference\u2019s long-term success will be determined by what is politically possible in Congress\u2014Republican- or Democrat-controlled\u2014where big, bold social programs are about as popular as the pandemic. The 1969 White House hunger conference\u2014referenced frequently during the 2022 conference\u2014has been touted as a great breakthrough moment for food security because it catalyzed new and expanded federal nutrition initiatives like the Women, Infant, and Children Program (WIC) and School Meals. But what hasn\u2019t been acknowledged about that historic moment is that back then, we had this word that looks like Greek today\u2014bipartisanship.<\/p>\n Some of the past nutrition policy breakthroughs were the work of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs (1968 to 1977), chaired by Senator George McGovern (D) and strongly supported by Robert Dole (R). Just as significantly, the Select Committee\u2019s report leap-frogged the thinking of many narrowly focused anti-hunger advocates when it said that hunger \u201cis not [so much] the mechanics of the food assistance programs as it is the fact of persistent poverty, and the continued tolerance in this country of a starkly inequitable distribution of income. In a nation\u2026in which 40 million people remain poor or near poor, more than a food stamp or child-feeding program is at issue.\u201d When I read those words today, I\u2019m struck dumb by why, nearly 50 years later, we haven\u2019t done enough to act on this simple but truthful analysis. Instead, as 2022 Conference\u2019s focus attests, we continue to lean on food assistance programs the way a drunk leans on a lamppost.<\/p>\n McGovern and Dole were also prescient in linking health, diet, and the food system. The Committee\u2019s report Dietary Goals for the United States<\/em> set the stage for expanded public and private efforts to reduce the consumption of fat, sugar, and highly processed food. But the soaring rates of obesity and diabetes since then only underscore how immense the problem has become, and likewise, how potent the pushback from the food industry remains.<\/p>\n Looking back over the Select Committee\u2019s work, I was reminded of why we are where we are today. Rather than take robust action to address the root cause of hunger, namely poverty, the U.S. chose to create a mind-boggling labyrinth of food programs. This constituted a kind of moral middle ground that recognized a political consensus that hunger is abhorrent, therefore worthy of action, but that poverty is tolerable, and its eradication is a low priority. Additionally, racism, especially in the earlier days of nutrition programs, played no small part in driving this approach. As the 2022 White House Conference\u2019s National Strategy to End Hunger points out, there are over 200 federal food, farm, and nutrition programs administered by 21 agencies. According to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), this situation promotes \u201c\u2026fragmentation, a lack of coordination and collaboration between government agencies that greatly reduces effectiveness of those programs.\u201d Besides presenting a kind of bureaucratic imbroglio for those wanting to organize effective responses, they stand as a burning testament to our comfort treating the symptoms rather than their cause.<\/p>\n This became glaringly obvious when I reviewed the U.S. Census Bureau\u2019s data that showed child poverty fell to a record low 5.2% in 2021. Why? The fast and effective modifications made to the nation\u2019s safety net in response to Covid-19 demonstrated what can be done when policy makers choose to take action. While some of the changes improved and increased the flow of food and food dollars to eligible nutrition assistance recipients, the bulk of the credit for the lower poverty levels, according to the Bureau, goes to the Child Tax Credit which lifted 5.3 million people, including 2.9 million children, out of poverty in 2021. That initiative along with the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and various pandemic stimulus payments had a far greater impact on poverty reduction than SNAP, School Lunch, and WIC combined.<\/p>\n That analysis is not intended to diminish the impact of food assistance programs\u2014SNAP\u2019s entitlement feature along with the increase in benefits provided by Congress made an important contribution during the pandemic\u2014but when you bear down specifically on what people\u2019s individual needs and costs are, a stronger emphasis on direct forms of cash assistance, along with subsidized health care, point the way to a more progressive and effective approach to building social and economic well-being.<\/p>\n To their credit, the writers of the National Strategy to End Hunger did support making Child Tax Credits permanent and raising the national minimum wage to $15.00 per hour (it is and has been, since 2009, $7.25 per hour). But, of course, the Strategy makes no mention of a tax and redistribution plan that would narrow America\u2019s yawning income and wealth gap. Instead, the lion\u2019s share of the actionable recommendations are tweaks to existing food and nutrition programs. When I hear panelist voices rise in rhetorical flourish to say, \u201cWe can end hunger\u2014we can do this!\u201d wouldn\u2019t it make more sense to say, \u201cWe can end poverty\u2014we can do this!\u201d<\/p>\n But one cynical thought I have is that the idea of hosting this Conference seems predicated on the notion that hunger is still a big deal in this country. The Conference organizers may be operating under the outdated assumption that if we just give our heartstrings a little tune-up, the people will once again rise up in collective outrage. Even using the word \u201cHunger\u201d in the conference\u2019s title is a thinly veiled attempt to arouse our emotions in a way that food insecurity, a more accurate and granular description of America\u2019s food challenges can\u2019t. But lacking the blockbuster equivalent of a \u201cHunger in America,\u201d the 1968 CBS-TV documentary that shocked viewers with images of starving American children, it\u2019s not likely that even a White House sponsored event will stir the sleeping lions of popular discontent. The only \u201cfood story\u201d receiving top billing now is inflation which stokes the nation\u2019s anger, not food insecure neighbors. One recent letter writer to the New York Post<\/em> was nearly apoplectic over Fancy Feast cat food going from 52 cents a can to 74 since 2020! Biden\u2019s feline favorability rating is no doubt in the litter box.<\/p>\n Where I break from my own tirade against federal nutrition programs as a useful substitute for an aggressive anti-poverty strategy is when it comes to school meal programs. Now that we no longer vilify school lunch ladies, likening them as we once did to the Wicked Witches of the West, our schools now have lunch programs we can mostly be proud of. Credit Michelle Obama, the Farm to School movement, or the Good Food Purchasing Program, but tens of millions of American school children are now eating nutritional, tasty, and increasingly locally sourced food. It\u2019s been a journey for sure, but as one who can remember school lunch the way sailors of yore remembered hardtack, we can satisfyingly say we\u2019ve come a long way, baby!<\/p>\n Clearly, the Strategy\u2019s goal is to feed all children for free, thus doing away with the obnoxious school cafeteria payment categories of \u201cfree, reduced, and full-priced meals.\u201d I may actually live long enough to experience the end of a practice that has no doubt traumatized millions of children who showed up a nickel short at the checkout line. Biden\u2019s proposal is to bring nine million more children into the \u201cfree\u201d category of school meals by 2032. That is a big step in the right direction and consistent with the one advocated a decade ago by Janet Poppendieck\u2019s great book Free for All<\/em>.<\/p>\n Another big step for school meals (local economies, health, and the environment as well) is the growing emphasis on purchasing school food regionally from farmers and local food businesses. As Donna Martin, school food service director for Burke County (GA) said during one Conference panel, \u201cI\u2019ll buy anything you can grow for me.\u201d<\/p>\n We also heard from NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a vegan, who is promoting \u201cmeatless Mondays\u201d and \u201cplant-based Fridays\u201d in his city\u2019s schools. World Central Kitchen\u2019s Chef Jose Andres told us to use the same dollar that we feed children with to also train and employ people and buy from local farmers. Given its size and all this momentum around school meals\u2014breakfast, lunch, after school snacks, summer meals\u2014they are fast becoming the biggest force for nutritional and economic change in the country.<\/p>\n As powerful as the school and child portion of Biden\u2019s proposal is, and as helpful as the tweaks to food assistance programs are, I remain dismayed that we are once again going down the road more traveled. We know where it goes because its paths have been trodden now for decades\u2014more food assistance programs and funding to assuage food insecurity; more incentives and well-intentioned \u201ceat well\u201d messages with dubious effectiveness; more pleading with the food industry: \u201cPretty please, Nice Mr. Food Executive, please stop manufacturing and marketing the food that has taken millions to an early grave.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not na\u00efve; I fully acknowledge the political realities. I\u2019m reasonably sure that if we had substantial Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress that the Biden Administration would pursue social welfare and nutrition policies that would truly be bold, possibly revolutionary, that would take a backhoe to the deeply rooted reality of American poverty. But from what I\u2019ve read and heard from the Hunger Conference, the times, they ain\u2019t a changing. That all we can squeeze from the Republicans is incremental change doesn\u2019t mean that one can\u2019t use the moment to articulate a vision of health and wellness that holds those responsible for our dietary sickness accountable, and that leans hard into the eradication of poverty\u2014including a muscular redistribution of income and wealth\u2013as our primary purposes.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take the road less traveled, if for no other reason than it\u2019s time to break out of our rut. Let\u2019s take the road that will end poverty. Let\u2019s take it, not because we\u2019re sure where it leads, but because we know that if we do end poverty, we\u2019ll also end hunger, and at least a dozen other miseries that our world is heir to. Let\u2019s also go down that less traveled side street whose storefronts are stocked only with healthy food, where fake food is consigned to fallen down \u201cspeakeasies\u201d at the edge of town, a kind of \u201cjunk food red light district,\u201d whose contents are priced exorbitantly, and their purchase expressly forbidden to anyone under 21 years of age.<\/p>\n Ultimately, our task should be to eliminate the necessity for another White House Hunger Conference 50 years from now.<\/p>\n About Mark Winne<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Mark Winne has worked for 42 years as a community food activist, writer, and trainer. He has dedicated his professional life to enabling people and their communities to find solutions to their own food problems.<\/span><\/p>\n Learn more at:<\/span> markwinne.com<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n
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