May 2016

News

Improving Child Nutrition and Education?

The House Education and Workforce Committee backed the bill Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 (H.R. 5003), which comes with proposed changes in access to nutritious food at school that could have a negative impact on many low-income families. The biggest change being a reduction in the number of schools with a high concentration of low-income students in which the lunch program is available to all students. Other proposed changes will repeal some of the standards set for nutritional quality of the meals, in the name of reducing costs and administrative burdens. Currently, nearly all participating school districts are meeting the updated school lunch nutrition standards, providing mostly whole grains, moderate salt, more fruits and vegetables, and healthier snacks and beverages. Weakening the standards would only stand to harm children's health.

This bill is going to make it more difficult for schools to help feed children as part of the Community Eligibility Program. The Community Eligibility Program is a provision from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that allows schools and local educational agencies with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. This program currently benefits 8.5 million school children in low-income neighborhoods by increasing school lunch and breakfast access in high-poverty schools and reducing the administrative burden on schools. By increasing the school meal application verification requirements from 40 percent of the student population to 60 percent, this means an increase in paperwork for schools and families, and will likely have the greatest impact on some of the most vulnerable families, such as those who are homeless, migrant, immigrant or have limited English proficiency. The added support needed to ensure that these families complete the paperwork accurately if at all often provides unnecessary hurdles to proving eligibility. Further, this version of the bill will mean that the universal school meals program will end in approximately 7,000 of the 18,000 schools currently participating, and 11,000 additional high-poverty schools not yet participating but eligible under current law, would lose the option to implement community eligibility in future years. This puts a lot of children at risk for not having access to the nutritional support they need to learn and grow.

While there are some improvements to government nutrition programs in this current version of the bill, such as increasing the school breakfast reimbursement, the harmful requirements far outweigh any positive changes. FRAC has made an analysis of just what this bill will do. An excerpt:

"The bill contains a number of damaging provisions, including: shrinking coverage of the very successful community eligibility provision; inappropriately increasing verification paperwork; diluting nutrition standards for school meals; and inadequately investing in the Summer Food Service Program and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. These requirements would reduce access to the programs, water down nutrition quality, and increase administrative burdens on both schools and families."

On a final note, bills like this that force organizations to focus their energy on preserving safety net programs detract from the advocacy work that many could be doing to confront larger systemic issues, like a low minimum wage and underemployment, that force children from low-income families to rely on these school nutrition programs in the first place. Instead of the House taking the time to strengthen programs that work well, this bill reduces access to nutritious meals, which means millions of children go without the support they need to learn, play and grow alongside their peers.

It's important to contact your Members of Congress and urge them to oppose H.R. 5003. Look up your Members of Congress here.

The Paris Agreement Does Not Go Far Enough

On April 22nd, Earth Day, 175 countries signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This is following COP21, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris that happened last year in December. In the agreement, all countries promise to work to limit the rise in the global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to strive for a maximum increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The agreement is said to provide a roadmap for climate actions that will reduce emissions and build climate resilience.

Now that COP21 has come and gone and the Paris Agreement has been signed, the question remains: what now? What are the actual strategies and projects that will realistically take place? The United Nations has been trying for decades to get countries to agree on a framework for fighting climate change, which requires the cooperation of polluters around the world, but the problem is there is no pressure on these leaders to change. The agreement shows, perhaps, that the world is recognizing we have a moral responsibility to act, but is it too late? Beyond warmer temperatures, climate change means an increase in any number of calamitous natural disasters, resulting in displaced populations and increased food insecurity.

One of the biggest problems with this agreement is that it is non-binding. Non-binding agreements mean there is no accountability and no penalties for promises not fulfilled. There's no punishment for countries if they do not take any actions. There's no sense of urgency and if and when new leaders get elected, they could choose to ignore the agreement with no consequences.

The UN process to address climate change amounted to a lot of top-down theatrics without any actionable strategies. This political theater is dangerous because while nothing is set in stone, global temperatures continue to rise as do greenhouse gas emissions. The solutions need to come from the grassroots. A recently released documentary Not Without Us follows seven multi-generational, grassroots activists from around the world as they headed to Paris for COP 21 and then at the event as well. One of the key messages of the film is: "It's just an empty declaration." There's nothing in the process or the resulting agreement that shows how these necessary changes will come to fruition. Not having the voices of the people from the frontlines on center stage in the "official" process, but only in the mass actions outside in the streets, shows the disconnect between what government officials are deciding and what actually must be done. Learn more about the movie here.

In order to learn about what climate-focused campaigns, actions and projects are happening in your area, get connected with 350.org and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.

Building The Movement

Food Justice Voices: What Ferguson Means for the Food Justice Movement: Issue 5

WhyHunger's What Ferguson Means for the Food Justice Movement series is a bold attempt to explore the way in which police violence and institutionalized anti-black racism is deeply interconnected to food, land and Black bodies. What is the connection between the death of Black people at the hands of the state (police shootings) and the death of Black people at the hands of the corporate food system (diet-related disease/ land displacement/redlining)?

To lift up critical voices of the movement, WhyHunger's Beatriz Beckford facilitated a national call with dynamic organizers and activists across the country to gather a collective interrogation of these issues from the perspective of Black activists organizing around food justice. Issue #5 features food justice activist Tanya Fields, who is the Founder and Executive Director of The BLK ProjeK, an economic development enterprise that utilizes the good food movement to provide opportunities for marginalized women and youth of color in the Bronx. In this piece Tanya gives her perspective as a mother, and emphasizes that "radical mothering" and being unapologetic in working to build a community (safety, healthy food, quality education) that your child deserves and can thrive in, will create a more just system for all.

Read the issue here.

What We're Reading Now

The Good Food Now Campaign

The Good Food Now! campaign has worker justice, animal welfare and environmental and health groups coming together to urge Darden Restaurants to change. Darden is the parent company of Olive Garden and 6 other major chains, which employ 150,000 people and serve more than 320 million meals a year. Darden is a large player in the corporate food system with significant purchasing power all the while paying unfair wages and serving meat and dairy from polluting, inhumane factory farms. By changing their labor and environmental practices, they would play a large role in supporting a just, sustainable and healthy food system. Read more about the campaign here.

"Why US-Cuba Relations Won't End Cuba's Alternative Agriculture Movement"

After Barack Obama and Ra�l Castro's announcement that the US and Cuba would begin a process of political and economic "normalization" -many food sovereignty advocates worried about the implications for Cuba's sustainable agriculture sector. But while the prospects of increased trade and investment may tempt some Cuban leaders to abandon alternative agriculture, it is unlikely to sway many of the growers and activists who have been pursuing agricultural transformation on the island for over twenty years. Read more about this here.

Resources

Report: A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families and Communities

There are currently 2.2 million people in prison or jail in the U.S. and there are more than 5 million children in the U.S. who have had a parent in jail or prison at some point in their lives. A report by The Annie E. Casey Foundation details the emotional impact and financial instability created by the absence of an incarcerated parent. The report gives some recommendations about how to address the increased poverty and stress the children of incarcerated parents' experience. Read the report here.

Journal: Labor in the food system, from Farm to Table

The latest issue of JAFSCD focuses on labor economics, politics, and ethics. The articles collectively address a wide range of labor issues, such as the need to see labor issues and solutions as social rather than individual problems, and the need to create new political economic systems. Guest Editor Patricia Allen, Ph.D., Department Chair of Food Systems and Society at Marylhurst University, writes: " The articles in this issue demonstrate in a number of ways that labor problems are not so much the result of individual choices, but rather part of an entire system that extracts value from those who are the most vulnerable and allocates it to those who are the most powerful. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the agrifood system, where jobs are low-wage, dangerous, and contingent." Read the issue for free here.

Report: Kids on the Frontline: How pesticides are undermining the health of rural children

The Pesticide Action Network (PANNA) released a report, Kids on the Frontline, which goes into dozens of independent studies documenting links between pesticide exposure and how it harms children's health. It builds on PANNA's extensive 2012 report, A Generation in Jeopardy.

The report expands on how:

Overall, childhood health problems continue to climb.
Fast-rising childhood cancers have strong links to pesticides.
More science links pesticides and neurodevelopmental harms.
Rural children's "double dose" of pesticide exposure is cause for concern.

Read the report here.

Real Food Films Winners

Real Food Media is a collaborative initiative using online movies and a web-based action center along with grassroots events around the country to spread the stories of sustainable food and farming. Real Food Media released the winners of their Real Food Films Contest earlier this month.

The 2016 Grand Prize winner is Home Flavored, a haunting story of how soda companies impact the lives of Latino - and in this case, Mexican - families in the United States. Home Flavored features spoken word poet Monica Mendoza and is a powerful film about "how corporations continue to colonize the bodies of her culture." Watch the film here.

In This Issue

Improving Child Nutrition and Education?

The Paris Agreement Does Not Go Far Enough

Food Justice Voices: What Ferguson Means for the Food Justice Movement: Issue 5

The Good Food Now Campaign

"Why US-Cuba Relations Won't End Cuba's Alternative Agriculture Movement"

Report: A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families and Communities

Journal: Labor in the food system, from Farm to Table

Report: Kids on the Frontline: How pesticides are undermining the health of rural children

Real Food Films Winners

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Contributors: Betty Fermin