Mark Winne

By Mark Winne

A recent New York Times dining section piece (4/9/08) told the story of a 17-year old on his spring college shopping tour. Apparently the young fellow’s selection criteria was not limited to a school’s academic strengths but also included the quality of its dining service. On the day the young man visited Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, he was transfixed by the dining hall’s sumptuous repast that included vegetable ragout over polenta, spicy orange beef, Dijon-crusted chicken, vegetarian pho and spinach sautéed with garlic and olive oil. Precocious palate or not, the would-be collegian readily admitted to “something subliminal from the food…that influences your decision [about the college].”

My own tour not long ago of the Storehouse, New Mexico’s largest food pantry (http://www.thestorehouseabq.org/master.asp) was decidedly less than subliminal. Young mothers, mostly Hispanic, pushed shopping carts loaded with children past shelves of USDA powdered milk and canned vegetables. Dried pinto beans donated by a Colorado milling company, and day-old white bread salvaged by Albuquerque VFW Post 401 gave the pantry a well-stocked, if not inviting look. Rounding out the inventory was ground beef shading toward the brown end of the color spectrum, fluid milk only a heartbeat from its code date, and cardboard bins of over ripe cantaloupes that most of us would consign to the compost pile.

Should the budding gourmet select Bowdoin, mom and dad will pony up something in excess of $45,000 per year, of which $5,200 or $2,600 for a four-month semester will be allocated to his food tab. Given the superiority of the dining hall’s fare, the Fair Trade certification of its coffee, and the 20 per cent of the food sourced locally, including from two student-run organic gardens, it sounds like a pretty good deal.

But many of those young Albuquerque moms shopping at the pantry are also using food stamps. Their value equals, on average, about $1.05 per meal per person, or something just short of $100 per month. In other words, not counting the pantry’s periodic food supplement, the Storehouse shopper has about one-sixth of the food buying power that our pho-slurping friend at Bowdoin will have should he choose to matriculate there.

Not to give this young gentleman a hard time – if my choice was to eat at Bowdoin or the pantry, well… – but choice is what it comes down to in America’s food system. For the nation’s “haves,” things couldn’t be better. Cosmopolitan cuisine is at our beck and call, locally and organically produced food is virtually everywhere, and a super abundance of culinary skills are making extraordinary magic of it all.

But for the “have nots” it’s a different story. Hunger and food insecurity plague 36 million Americans, obesity and diabetes are rampant posing greater threat to the poor than to the affluent, and “food deserts” – places with few healthy food choices – are a common feature of our urban and rural landscapes. But in spite what can only be labeled a social injustice, there is good news. Over the course of several articles I will share the experiences of people, projects, and policies that are leveling the nation’s food system playing field. These will be stories from farmers’ markets, schools, food banks, CSAs, and the halls of our state legislatures where people are hard at work making the promise of good food a reality for all. Please stay tuned.

Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press, January 2008). For more information contact www.markwinne.com.

Leading the Charge, Leading the Change

By Mark Winne

(Excerpted from a keynote address given to the Northwest Harvest Food Bank Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington – May 15, 2008)

Here are three thoughts I’d ask you to consider – open-mindedly and with the hope that we can make extraordinary food available to every person in this country. The first: to end hunger and food insecurity in the United States we must attack their root cause, namely poverty. Second, the food bank and emergency food network constitutes one of the largest sustained private peacetime mobilizations of human compassion and resources in the history of this country. It must use that power to change society. Third, everybody living in this country, regardless of race, income, or residence, has the right to the healthiest and best food available.

I direct your attention to these three points because in spite of our efforts over the years, we continue to come up short. Why, for instance, in the richest nation in the world do we have 38 million of our brothers and sisters frequently wondering where their next meal will come from? Why has organic and locally grown food become such a craze – organic constituting the fastest growing segment of the U.S. food industry – while high calorie, low nutrient, so-called cheap food, constitutes such a large segment of lower income families’ diets? And why do so many of us have before us an unprecedented abundance of accessible and diversified retail food outlets to choose from while a significant segment of our citizens live in what can only be called food deserts?

Ours is a tale of two food systems – one for the haves and one for the have-nots. It is a food system that is tilting seriously out of balance; one that rewards capital and affluence, while exploiting labor and natural resources. It reveals itself in the health disparities between rich and poor, where an unequal diet and limited access to health care place the poor at greater risk. And perhaps most egregiously, it is a food system that reflects an income gap that has dangerously divided our nation along class lines. We have paid little heed to Plutarch’s ominous warning, “An imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”

Our nation’s cheap food policy and an unsustainable farm policy have threatened the air, the water, and most importantly, our health. Cheap food has lots of calories, but few nutrients, and our bodies have paid a tragic price: 65% of us are now overweight or obese, and due to diabetes and other diet-related illnesses, American taxpayers and health insurers are paying an additional $117 billion a year in health care costs.

For many Americans, it is not just a problem of having enough money to buy food; there is often no place to buy healthy and affordable food. In many of our communities – often the poorest urban neighborhoods as well as 800 rural counties, according to the American Rural Sociological Society – there are simply no decent food stores. These food deserts not only suffer from a paucity of fresh fruits and vegetables, they also attract the vultures of the food industry: junk food purveyors, convenience food stores, and fast food joints that feast on deprivation and scarcity.

The twin jolts of a declining economy and food/energy inflation have driven record numbers of people (28 million) into the food stamp program. In Ohio, 1 in 10 people now receive food stamps. In Michigan, the number is 1 in 8. In total, 40 states have seen increases in food stamp use and six have seen a double-digit increase in the past year.

Some anti-hunger advocates have estimated that a fifty percent increase in the food stamp program – about $18 billion per year, or less than two months of the cost of waging the Iraq War – would largely eliminate food insecurity in America. But as we all know, the President and Congress are not willing to realign the nation’s priorities.

Food insecurity has cast a dark shadow across our national landscape for decades, primarily because we cannot bring ourselves to confront American poverty. Our elaborate network of private and public food programs make a noble effort to mitigate the worst aspects of poverty, but even on their best days only succeed in managing it. In the face of America’s growing low-wage economy and stingy employers, every small increase in food assistance amounts to nothing more than small dollops of whip cream scooped on to the skimpy rations of too many American businesses.

As Washingtonians you should look back for a moment and take pride in your history on the subject of a living wage. In 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of Washington State to require minimum wages for women and minors. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes argued that “the denial of a living wage” harmed workers and burdened society. “What these workers lose in wages the taxpayers are called upon to pay,” Hughes noted, adding that, “The community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers.”

President Roosevelt added his voice to the issue when he said, “No business which depends…on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country…and by living wages I mean the wages of a decent living.”

Why does the principle of a living wage encounter such stiff resistance today? Is it because we are not willing to address the yawning gap between the wealthy and everyone else in this country? But until our public policies once again take on the task of ending poverty, and private industry is forced or shamed into paying a living wage to all its workers, hunger and food insecurity will be business as usual for tens of millions of Americans.

Unfortunately, that day will never come unless citizens and our nation’s largest poverty managing charities take up that fight. William James, our great American psychologist and philosopher, once reminded us that we are not here on this earth simply to sip its milk and honey or live as comfortably as society will permit. He told us over 100 years ago that, “If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game…from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight – as if there were something really wild in the universe which we…are needed to reform.”

What do we need to reform?

I want to eliminate hunger and food insecurity in this country once and for all. That 38 million Americans may not know where their next meal is coming from is a bloody stain on our national cloth that must be permanently washed clean. Anti-hunger programs that provide healthy food for all, coupled with anti-poverty programs that eventually eliminate the need for programs like food stamps, should be our highest national policy goals.

No one should be forced to shop at high-priced, limited selection grocery stores or convenience stores because they can’t get to a high quality retail food outlet. A major public investment, in partnership with the private sector, is necessary to make our urban and rural food deserts bloom once more.

And ordinary people of every stripe should have access to the most extraordinary local and sustainably produced food available. That you drive a new BMW and I should drive a 10 year old Ford is one thing; but that you should eat from the silver-lined trough while I am forced to scour the dumpster is another. Extraordinary food for all people should be our motto.

And who are the reformers?

I believe that the goal of a sustainable and just food system is no longer the rant of a disheveled few, but is embraced as a necessary principle of American life by a growing and articulate majority. Its rightness and knowledge are fast becoming lodged in our national bones, and will soon become as inevitable and certain as the plant shoot that cracks the soil and seeks the sun.

Yes, the people are ready, but where are the leaders? Are they too busy managing programs to lead the charge for change? Are they too beholden to politicians and foundations to upset the applecart? As a former non-profit executive of 30 years, I know the temptation to tow the line. During that time, I was reminded everyday that the immediate needs of the clients and keeping the agency’s doors open came first, and that the truth will have to wait. For any passionate person with an ounce of intellect, running your program can be a painful reminder of your inherent impotence. But I also see the charitable leaders and the institutions that support them becoming more sophisticated in their analysis of society and public policy, more frustrated with the slow pace of change, and starting to strain at their tethers. And because they have come to occupy such a dominant position in the charitable structure of almost every U.S. community, I have singled out food banking as an institution that must now step up to the task of raising the bar on their responsibility to end both hunger and poverty.

In this regard I have not been quiet over my concern with the growth of food banking over the past 30 years and its willingness to accept a certain kind of status quo. Just before Thanksgiving, the Washington Post ran an essay I wrote expressing that concern. I said that in 1981 when I co-founded one of Connecticut’s first food banks, there were only four places in the Hartford community where people could get emergency food. Due to the phenomenal growth in the emergency feeding network, there are now nearly 400 such places. Nationwide, the number is now 50,000.

I stated that I viewed this growth not as a legacy of success, but as a glaring example of our failure to end hunger and food insecurity. I said that so much attention to private charity – food drives, distributing more and more pounds of food, bigger and better equipped warehouses – had not only failed to end hunger, it was distracting the public and policy makers from working toward systemic change.

As you can imagine I was greeted by an avalanche of letters, email, and blog posts. In only three days, my piece received 86,000 hits on the Washington Post’s website. According to the Post, this was two to three times more than their typical so-called “big story.” My sampling of this feedback, as well as comments I received from a similar piece that appeared later in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, suggested that two-thirds of the readers agreed completely or mostly with my position. Another 20 per cent, whom I categorized as the “uncompassionate conservatives”, also agreed with me, except that they thought that neither the public sector nor the private sector should help the poor. A small minority felt that I had done a grave disservice to the anti-hunger movement, that it was shameful for me to publish such a piece only four days before Thanksgiving, and that I may even be responsible for the food shortages that were then hitting food banks. Clearly I had struck a lot of different nerves.

Perhaps typical of the negative reaction was that of one prominent food bank official who wrote, “Examining the causes of poverty is noble, worthwhile, and important, but in the meantime, we must feed people who are hungry.”

But among those who agreed with my remarks were a number from the food banking world who were obviously younger, more progressive, and relatively new to the field. Their tone suggested that they were aching for change and were frustrated by the hidebound food bank culture. One letter from a public policy director for one Second Harvest food bank was particularly illuminating:

I’ve been asked to create a strategic plan to guide our food bank through the next five years. In your book [Closing the Food Gap], you recommend several strategies for food banks to pursue, including re-purposing food banks while pursuing an expanded government role.

On the local level, there is an “underground” of food bankers who would like to take a more activist stance. Sometimes these are rogue executive directors, and sometimes “siloed” departments within traditional food banks. They are constrained (as am I) not just by their boards, but by the conflicting messages crafted by fundraising staff, who in their role as an interface with donors feel the need to tread more lightly (and sometimes in opposite directions). These messages are likewise favored by communications staff who rarely want a more controversial story than “local pantry out of turkeys” on the evening news.

My question is simple: what can a single food bank do now, in concrete terms, to better serve its constituents as well as change the culture of the anti-hunger movement? How do we get the food banks of the nation stampeding in a different direction? Something tells me the announcement won’t come from America’s Second Harvest.

I answered this way:

Food banks have become masters of moving food. They thrive in a culture where that kind of mastery is recognized and rewarded. To step out of that culture into the world of public policy advocacy is not comfortable, well understood, or supported, either internally or externally.

I have seen too many food banks refuse to take on the political power in their own communities and states because they fear losing the modest government contributions they now receive. They fear conducting vigorous public policy advocacy because they might jeopardize support for their next multi-million dollar capital campaign.

To break this cycle, food banks must conduct a soul-searching examination that begins with the question, “How do we end this problem of hunger and food insecurity?” They must then reframe the problem as one that will not be solved by simply donating more food. As the most dominant food charity in their respective communities – and one of the biggest non-arts and culture charities as well – food banks must use their visibility and moral stature to steer the conversation away from more food to more attention to poverty and public policy. This conversation must start with their boards, their staff, and their volunteers, and then move aggressively into the public policy arena.

Food banks should shift a significant percentage of their operating budget into public policy advocacy that has a strong anti-poverty focus. While the exact amount of that budget can be debated, I think the Oregon Food Bank is a good model because it has five full-time staff assigned to that role. I also think that food banks should join forces with other anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates in conducting their public policy campaigns.

I strongly believe that food banks should sign a “No More Capital Campaigns” pledge. I am waiting for the day when a food banks says, “We know that demand for food is growing. We are in the biggest warehouse we’ve ever been in. We have the most trucks we’ve ever had, and yet we could easily justify an expansion of our infrastructure. But we are not going to expand because we believe that the larger community, the state, and the national government are responsible for addressing the need and its underlying cause.”

I think two more pledges are also in order. The first is to reduce or eliminate the amount of unhealthy food they accept and distribute. This will tell donors and the general public that food banks are committed to following the nation’s dietary guidelines, and that the nutrient content of their food, and therefore the health of their clients, are far more important to them than managing the waste stream of the nation’s industrial food system.

And second, and perhaps most controversially, food banks should refuse donations from food industry sources that do not pay their employees a living wage, provide safe and healthy working conditions, or may be polluting the air, land, and water. In other words, food banks should develop a social and environmental screen for the receipt of donations that is comparable to the screens applied by socially responsible investment funds for picking their investments. In so doing, food banks will send a strong message that they will not do business with companies whose wages are so low that their own employees must seek help from the very institutions they are donating to.

Let me close by saying that I remain optimistic, in spite of my criticisms and critique. I believe we can face these challenges and win the fight. I believe this to be true because it is my conviction that those who feel life the most, those with a riper human presence will ultimately prevail. And I don’t know anything that exposes the warm core of our humanity more than sharing food, or the act of gardening, or our quiet appreciation of nature’s gifts.

We recognize our humanity daily in our food pantries, schools, and at farmers’ markets. It is there in our communities, face-to-face, in our face, undeniable, and omnipresent. And the more that this recognition spreads and the more seeds we sow, the more our humanity grows into an inexorable force for change, a force that will one day overcome the resistance of those who try to thwart sustainability and social justice.

I am convinced that we are united by a shared desire for things that are good for us, our communities, and the environment. The low-income mother who wants the best food for her children is no different than the yuppie family that spends whatever it must to ensure the healthiest and safest food for their children. I do not believe that our desires for good food are separated by race, class, or location, but I know the results are. The poor, the person of color, those in underserved urban and rural communities, are forced to the back of the line even though their desires are the same as those at the front of the line. This is the fight we must all own. It is the struggle for food justice; it is the struggle for the health of the earth and our own humanity.

And it is my conviction that our nation’s food banks can lead the charge for a more just society. You feel and see and hear humanity’s pain more acutely than most. You are more attuned, as the poet Seamus Heaney says, to that “phenomenal instant when the spirit flares.” You have the ability to get the public’s head above the plate, so to speak, and make them see that distributing more and more food is not the answer. You have the numbers on your side, you have the public’s attention, and you have the resources to make the right known. Gather those forces together, unleash your humanity, and make food justice for all not only your mantra, but that of every person in this nation.

Thank you.

Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press). The book may be purchased from www.amazon.com and www.beacon.org as well as many local book stores.

High Food Prices – Just Another Bad Day in the Food Line

Mark Winne

The current spate of alarming farm and food stories – drought, rising food prices and shortages – has riveted our attention on the precarious state of our food system. As a nation that has become accustomed, at least for the past generation or two, to an abundant supply of affordable food, the daily accounts of everything from food riots to soaring egg prices have brought us up short.

For some, these events may mean that those weekly strolls down the tastefully lit aisles of Whole Foods now become monthly. For those who have naturally spurned such discount pariahs as Wal-Mart, second thoughts may be in order.

But for another class of American shoppers, rising food prices, whether organic or conventional, is just another bump in the road on an already trying journey. I’m speaking of low-income families, and increasingly low-to-middle income families who now find themselves treading closer to the lower end of the income spectrum.

Use to standing in line at county food stamp offices or the neighborhood food pantry, the nation’s poor seem to know how to tough it out when times get hard. Like a “last in, first out” inventory system, the poor are the last in line on those rare occasions when there is an equitable distribution of abundance, but always the first to get cut when scarcity sets in.

Almost 35 million Americans – 11.3 percent of the population – were classified as food insecure or very food insecure (a term that used to mean “hunger”) by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2006. Not coincidentally, this is almost the same number of Americans who live at or below the nation’s official poverty level (the food insecurity rate is likely to increase when tallied again this fall). When those folks are combined with 57 million Americans who are considered near-poor, we have nearly one-third of a nation already struggling to put food on the table.

What is perhaps most striking about the 11.3 percent figure is that it is exactly the same as when USDA first measured food insecurity and hunger in 1996. In spite of current federal nutrition assistance expenditures (e.g. food stamps, school lunch) approaching $60 billion a year and a private system of 50,000 emergency food sites such as food pantries, we as a nation have made little progress over more than 10 years in reducing food insecurity.

The twin jolts of a declining economy and food/energy inflation have driven record numbers of people (28 million) into the food stamp program, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still clinging precariously to overcrowded lifeboats. On average, food stamps provide an individual with barely enough to live on – about $1.04 per meal (this number will increase in proportion to inflation, but not until October). Similarly, school meal directors are scrambling like never before to feed millions of children who are eligible for federally funded child nutrition programs.

Some anti-hunger advocates have estimated that a fifty percent increase in the food stamp program – about $18 billion per year, or one to two months of the cost of waging the Iraq War, depending on your sources – would largely eliminate food insecurity. But as we all know, the President and Congress are not willing to realign the nation’s priorities.

What must be understood here is that food insecurity has become a way of life for far too many Americans. The current economic crisis and soaring food prices that are now stinging the middle and upper classes are just another slap in the face to the poor, though perhaps a gut punch to the near-poor now taking their place in food lines for the first time.

Food insecurity has cast a dark shadow across our national landscape for decades, primarily because we cannot bring ourselves to confront its root cause, poverty. Our elaborate and not inexpensive network of private and public food programs make a noble effort to mitigate the worst aspects of poverty, namely hunger, but even on their best days, they only succeed in managing poverty, never ending it.

But perhaps it is asking too much of both the public and charitable sectors to fix a problem that our low-wage economy is largely responsible for. It was Henry Ford, who as legend has it, paid his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they built. Today’s U.S. companies don’t even pay their workers enough to feed themselves.

Until our public policies once again take on the task of ending poverty, and private industry is forced or shamed into paying a living wage to all its workers, hunger and food insecurity will be business as usual for tens of millions of Americans.

The recent flare ups in our stressed food system may remind us how vulnerable we all are to economic and natural forces, but for the poor and those now joining their ranks, it’s just another bad day in the food line.

Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press).

In tightly packed urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas, fresh and healthy food is unavailable to many Americans. Lawmakers hope to remedy that.

By Mark Winne
September 2007

Whether you live in an urban or rural community, access to fresh produce and meat is a basic need,” says Pennsylvania Representative Dwight Evans in sizing up an issue that is finding its way on to the agendas of America’s state legislatures.

As traditional food stores have disappeared over the last 40 years, millions of Americans find themselves living in so-called “food deserts”-places that, compared to more prosperous communities, are underserved by affordable, high quality retail food outlets. And like a host of problems that affect a community’s economic well-being and the health of its residents, legislatures have begun searching for the most appropriate policy remedies.

Although the problem may be universal, the solutions are not. “People who live in areas where not everyone owns a car or must travel long distances to reach a good food store, are keenly aware of the need for accessible and affordable food markets,” Evans says. But trying to “re-store” poor urban neighborhoods or sparsely populated rural counties requires significantly different approaches. Private advocacy organizations have joined forces with businesses and lawmakers to find creative solutions.

U.S. agriculture policy has grown fat and lazy–and hasn’t helped our waistlines either.

It’s tempting to take for granted summer’s bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. But if you care about how that succulent tomato gets to your table, your beach reading should include delving into the Farm Bill, the much-overlooked legislation authorized by Congress every five years that sets the direction of the U.S. food system. The 2007 version could be a food, health, and environment bill, or it could continue, as it has since its inception in 1949, to dish out millions in subsidies each year to the growers of the five main commodity crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton. Congress will decide between local, organic apple pie or one filled with ersatz fruit oozing high-fructose corn syrup.

With Democrats now in charge in Washington, D.C., chances are good that there will be more money for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s conservation programs, which help farmers employ practices that improve water quality and reduce soil erosion. Currently, these programs account for a mere one percent of the $400 billion spent over the six-year life span of the Farm Bill. Legislators are already targeting more money for programs that prevent agricultural pollution, encourage sustainable farming, and distribute fruits and vegetables to schools. One bill, introduced by Representative Ron Kind (D-Wis.), would also promote clean-energy development on farms, which are often hugely dependent on fossil fuels.

One of the more interesting proposals in this year’s debate–particularly because it requires no funding–would permit institutions that buy food using public funds to favor local farmers. Allowing a geographic preference for procurement would result in “stronger farms and less farmland loss,” says Jimmy Daukas, director of the American Farmland Trust’s Farm Policy Campaign. In addition, the soaring U.S. obesity rate, spurred by subsidies to corn and soy (and a lack of support for fresh produce), might begin to shrink. When the Farm Bill is seen as a food bill, consumers and farmers will benefit. –Mark Winne

MORE INFORMATION Read Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, by Daniel Imhoff with a foreword by Michael Pollan (University of California Press, 2007).

By Mark Winne
Hartford Courant
November 9, 2003

The flight from Bradley Airport circled slowly west over the Farmington River Valley. Below me, wedged between the red and yellow flares of autumn foliage, were angular farm fields alternating at irregular intervals with home subdivisions. The mix of man-settled land and land cultivated by man produced a pleasant harmony of interests – places to raise families blended comfortably with places to raise crops and livestock.

Yet the aerial view on this lovely autumn day was more disconcerting than it was pleasing, for efforts to achieve harmony between competing interests often prove ineffective. The new use usually trumps the old one, current trends crush old ways and the market sets a higher bounty on the highest return. The Connecticut farmer, who may generate gross revenues of only a few thousand dollars per acre in really good years, will never win the economic competition with subdivision lots that can grow millions of dollars in houses.

In spite of the market’s iron fist, a dilemma nevertheless arises over what we choose to value and how. With respect to farming in Connecticut, it is insufficient to say that the contribution of farming to our lives is nothing more than the number of production units multiplied by the current market price.

We all know that farming is a constituent part of our state’s beautiful landscape, open space, local heritage, education, wildlife habitat, flood control and food security. It is our personal experience of farms both past and present that reinforces our connection to place. How many times do we return to a former home and feel a sense of loss when we see the adjoining farmland that we knew so well now sprouting houses?

Our palate also holds special memories of tastes gone by, such as the summer tomato, sweet corn, the Thanksgiving turkey or farm-made ice cream. “Do not think that the fruits of New England are mean and insignificant,” admonishes Henry David Thoreau, “[for] they educate us and fit us to live here in New England.”

The Futtner Family Farm in East Hartford, just a half-mile from the spanking new Rentschler Field, is a case in point. Jim and Honora Futtner have rented 17 acres of farmland there since 1969 and use it as a pick-your-own farm for their thousands of local customers who like to harvest their own tomatoes, peppers and beans. This unassuming couple work harder than most of us, but manage to wrest a respectable living from fields that have been farmed since the 1930s. Rather than complain, for instance, about the noise from this fall’s Bruce Springsteen concerts, they jokingly credit his extended version of “Born to Run” with putting a little extra heat in this year’s hot pepper crop.

But a developer recently offered the landowner $1.5 million for the property. The Futtners would have to grow some remarkable crops to ever justify paying that much for farmland. As an alternative to commercial development of the site, the Futtners are trying to convince the Town of East Hartford and others to buy the land, place a perpetual agricultural easement on it, and maintain it as one of the area’s last working farms. Their customers are so enthusiastic about the idea that over 800 of them signed a petition at the farm’s sales stand in favor of that approach.

If something isn’t done very soon, another 17 acres will join the 8,000-acres of farmland that Connecticut loses every year to nonagricultural uses. This is equivalent to losing the town of Wethersfield or Middlefield or Essex. If this rate of loss continues, Connecticut’s remaining farmland base of 370,000 acres will disappear by 2045.

What can be done to stanch the loss of farmland? Farmland preservation programs are one line of defense, but Connecticut, which led the way in 1978 with landmark legislation to purchase the development rights of farms, has fallen behind other Northeast states. Although the state legislature is allocating more money to protect farmland, the Rowland administration, which controls the state Bond Commission and therefore the purchase of development rights, has done precious little to spend those dollars. In a sometimes desperate attempt to make up for the state’s inaction, groups like the Connecticut Farmland Trust, the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land use private dollars, recently appropriated federal funds as well as the generosity of the landowners to preserve thousands of acres across the state.

Although farmland preservation funding is needed to protect our state’s most valuable natural resource, we must also support efforts to enhance the economic viability of agriculture. The state Department of Agriculture’s Farm Enhancement Program funds new farm enterprises like Cato Corner Dairy Farm in Colchester, which has demonstrated that the “get big or get out” approach to commodity milk production won’t cut it by turning its milk into some of the best cheese in New England.

Likewise, local tax assessors are being forced by the reduction in state support for municipalities to increase local property tax revenues by eliminating the agricultural property tax exemption. When this is done, the farmer stops farming, sells the land to a developer who builds houses, which increases the town’s cost of services. And in what has to be the greatest slap in the face to the state’s agricultural community, the legislature voted to eliminate the Department of Agriculture by merging it with the Department of Consumer Protection. Without an agriculture department, Connecticut will lose its farmland protection, marketing and economic development programs and, more important, its primary voice for farming in this state.

When it’s gone, it’s gone. A state without farmland and working farms will be a poorer place indeed.

Mark Winne is a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a position funded in part by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He is also the former executive director of the Hartford Food System. He can be reached at mwinne@hartfordfood.org.

Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant