Closing the Food Gap

Last week I read Mark Winne's "Closing the Food Gap," which is about strategies for making good food more widely available, especially for lower income folks. Winne has some impressive experience working in inner city urban neighborhoods addressing food security issues, and he can be credited with starting the wonderful Farmers' Market Nutrition Program, which provides food stamps specifically for farmers' market purchases.

I picked up the book last week partly because I had been thinking about the issue, after posting a piece on the Eat Well Guide's Green Fork Blog talking about the ways that spending money at the farmers' market can be a better investment than investing in the stock market. I received a somewhat scathing comment from someone who had read my piece as just another instance of that upper income cluelessness that makes the Slow Food movement inaccessible to so many people who really care about good food.

It was sobering to read this, because I've always gone to great lengths to keep my own prices low. I joined Slow Food last year--the only organization I ever joined-- but I let my membership lapse because I wanted more policy and less food porn. I've lived on a near subsistence income for most of my adult life, though I've been lucky to have a family safety net as well as a food business that could feed me sometimes. I think about the cost of food all the time because my livelihood depends on shrewd purchasing.

Winne's book covers everything from food banks, to community gardens, to the lack of good supermarkets in inner city neighborhoods, to farmers' markets and CSA programs that address the needs of low income shoppers. He calls for both policy changes and grassroots efforts. My only quarrel with his position was that there was too much of an emphasis on fresh produce and virtually no mention of legumes and whole grains, which are the most cost effective way to prepare healthy food on a budget, as long as you supplement them with some fresh vegetables. Even at Whole Foods, with recent price increases you can get a pound of bulk brown rice, lentils, barley, or almost any kind of bean for under $2 a pound. And that pound turns into more than two pounds when you cook it.

Of course you're still left with the question of how to get to Whole Foods when you don't have a car, and where to find enough time to cook beans and grains from scratch when you're working two jobs. Winne repeatedly brings up the fact that folks who live in urban "food deserts," or communities without decent grocery stores, end up spending more money on worse food because they only have access to convenience stores. I found myself thinking, "If someone is paying more already, why not pay more for something of better quality?"

But it doesn't work that way. I read a book a while back called "Cottage Economy," written by a nineteenth century English reformer named William Cobbett. He complained about the poor spending their money in pubs when they could brew their own beer much more cheaply: all they had to do was invest in 80 quart copper brewing kettles, the cost of which could be easily recouped from all the money not spent at the pub.

The situation is so complex, and it's way too easy to come up with theoretical solutions that are completely impractical. But it's better to have a list of good questions than a couple of inadequate answers.