Food and Ag News Nuggets

Roundup: Innovation and the USDA in an Era of Budget Woes, Investing in Food and More

By Courtney Lowery Cowgill, 4-28-11

When President Barack Obama took office, hopes ran high in the sustainable and local food world that the USDA would finally be an agency of change in agriculture.

And, by and large, the agency showed promise in fulfilling that hope out of the gates. The Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign was a big hit. School nutrition measures have been too. But now, on top of everything else (see this piece from Tom Philpott on Grist that explains why the agency is falling out of favor, particularly on the GMO issue), there are budget cuts to contend with and that can make change even harder.

At the Atlantic’s food summit Tuesday, Kathleen Merrigan, the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, talked about the balance between budget and innovation at the USDA.

Here’s a snippet of associate editor Daniel Fromson’s report on Merrigan’s address:

“Why couldn’t I have been deputy secretary during the good years?” Merrigan joked. The reality, she said, is that a lack of funding has driven the USDA to pursue innovative, low-cost health-related solutions. These include expanding the HealthierUS School Challenge program, which recognizes schools that have created healthier environments by promoting nutrition and physical activity; updating the dietary guidelines; and investing in hoop houses, cheap greenhouses that, she noted, have made more produce available at farmers’ markets where the USDA has partnered with the philanthropic community. Merrigan might be right that these solutions are innovative, but it’s also hard to imagine that the USDA will be able to change how America eats with a few cheap hoop houses instead of more expensive interventions.

Merrigan also talked about hunger, food stamps, public health and sustainability (although she did not address the GMO issue.) Click here for Fromson’s full report.

The summit was jam-packed with discussions with some of the biggest players in the food and ag world. You can watch the full thing at the Atlantic here.

Or, here are a few quick recaps from across the Web:
Is the Soda Industry Really Helping to Curb Obesity?, the Atlantic
White House Triumphs Over White Bread, Other Revelations From Food Summit 2011, Washington City Paper
GMOs and Organics: Why Can’t They Get Along?, GreenBiz.com
Food Bloggers Challenge The Atlantic Food Summit, The Bay Citizen

THE PROMISE OF FOOD HUBS

In other USDA/Merrigan news, the agency just put out an interesting study on the role so-called food hubs play in reinvigorating local food systems.

The report “highlighted the economic opportunities of food hubs, an emerging business model that offers aggregation and distribution services for small and midsize producers across the country,” according to the USDA release.

Merrigan said in the release, “This new data clearly demonstrates that small and midsize farmers can work with a variety of players to overcome the infrastructure challenges they face, while creating effective economic opportunities for their communities at the same time.”

Click here for the release and report and here for a little more context from the ecocentric blog.

SCHOOL NUTRITION

The USDA also announced this week that its implementingnew rules in its childhood nutrition programs that encourage the use of local food in schools. 

According to the release: “The final rule, published in the Federal Register, will let schools and other providers give preference to unprocessed locally grown and locally raised agricultural products as they purchase food for the National School Lunch, School Breakfast, Special Milk, Child and Adult Care, Fresh Fruit and Vegetable, and Summer Food Service programs.”

For anyone who’s tried to navigate their way around a school kitchen and figure out how to make local food possible in a system that’s been built to favor processed food, this is a big, big deal.

FOOD SAFETY

The Wall Street Journal this week takes a look at the new food safety legislation and what it could mean for small businesses and producers. The Journal reports that the devil may in the details, despite the exemptions for small producers championed by Montana Sen. Jon Tester and cheered by sustainable food advocates.

INVESTING IN FOOD LIKE IT MATTERS

Grist’s Tom Laskawy writes about the budding trend in Silicon Valley to invest in sustainable food, using investor Ali Partovi as the example. In a post on Techcrunch, Partovi likened investing in green ag to investing in renewable energy:

“As a student of the space, I’ve seen enough parallels between food and energy to posit that food may be the next frontier in green tech. Like energy, food and agriculture are big, slow, and highly regulated sectors. But also like renewable energy, there might be opportunities for innovation and profit in “renewable food,” fueled by consumer preference today and by shifts in policy tomorrow.”

If sustainable ag and investing are interesting to you, you might check in with author Woody Tasch, who wrote the book Slow Money and leads the movement to take Slow Food principles to the next level by finding investment strategies that work toward food system reform.

Also, (fair warning, a plug is coming) the economics of local food will be a topic du jour at the upcoming New West Festival May 5-6 in Missoula when nationally renowned food system analyst Ken Meter kicks off a discussion about the regional food economy. Click here for more information on the Festival and if you’re interested in coming just for the afternoon food discussion and have questions about that, email me.

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Courtney Lowery Cowgill is a writer and editor (formerly of these pages) who also runs Prairie Heritage Farm, a small farm in Central Montana. She and her husband grow vegetables, turkeys, ancient and heritage grains and sometimes a little ruckus. As a farmer and writer, she works on and follows food and agriculture issues closely and each week, rounds up the top stories on the web in this arena for New West. Have an ag story you think should be included in next week’s roundup? You can reach Courtney at courtney@newwest.net.

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