Mark Winne

By Mark Winne
How ironic that we must even ask our national policy makers to make the nutritional health and well-being of their people the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s first priority. But due to the sheer weight of the marketplace and poor government policies, local and regional food systems of the early 20th century yielded to highly concentrated, chemically intensive systems of the post-World War II era. Now disparagingly known as the industrial food system, its voice was always the first to be heard in the corridors of power; its phone calls always the first to be returned by the Secretary of Agriculture.   

But a fair wind is blowing, the market is shifting, the people are speaking, and some would even say that the leaders are listening. The pendulum is swinging in the direction of sustainable, local and regional food systems. Certainly for those with time, money, and good information, a healthy food supply is now at hand. No, the scales of justice are still not balanced. There’s plenty of “good food” for the affluent, but not enough affordable and healthy food for those with limited wealth or access to quality food retail outlets. But at least those who speak up loudly for sustainably produced food are beginning to speak up for justice as well. The voice we are hearing more often than not is one that cries out for a food system that is both just and sustainable.

What must be done? Even though I have kept my phone lines open for President-elect Obama to solicit my advice, he has not called. So rather than wait around forever, let me share my thoughts here. First, the new Secretary of USDA (Tom Vilsack?) should create an Office of Community Food Systems directly under his control. The Office’s task should be to coordinate all the functions of USDA for the purpose of ensuring that diverse, healthy, sustainably produced and affordable food is available to all residents of any community in the United States. The Office should focus on developing the potential of every region of the U.S. to meet a major share of its own food needs. Caring for the natural resource base – both in terms of protecting vital farmland and promoting sustainable farming practices – should be at the top of the list. That emphasis should be followed by developing, or redeveloping as the case may be, the region’s production, processing, and distribution infrastructure. In addition to food storage, transportation, and processing, the infrastructure should include retail outlets as well – both supermarkets and farmers’ markets – to ensure that everyone has access to affordable food.  Skill-training for farmers, including the development of new farmers is necessary and should also be a part of the Office’s mission. To ensure that everyone’s food needs are met, regardless of their income, the Office should work with existing nutrition programs such as WIC, Child Nutrition (school lunch, etc.), and food stamps to not only make sure those funds are adequate, but to every extent possible, target their use in ways that will also help local producers and retailers. For instance, billions of dollars are spent every year by USDA for the WIC program and school meals. If a sizable share of those dollars were used to purchase locally produced food, it would create an incentive that may be large enough to drive other initiatives to redevelop a region’s food system. 

The Clinton Administration under the leadership of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman created a Community Food Security Initiative. Though under-resourced and possessing little authority, it at least made the statement that USDA is capable of thinking about the simple but essential task of developing the capacity of communities to meet a greater share of their own food needs. It did not serve the American Corn Growers Association or the food stamp lobby, but attempted to integrate the vast resources of that sprawling agency in a way that would build that highly coveted American ideal, community self-reliance.

The time has come to try again, only bigger, better, and smarter. Mr. President-elect, thank you for listening.

 

 

November 6 – Phoenix, Arizona – Maricopa County Extension Office (434 E. Broadway); Keynote address, 9:30 a.m. For more information contact Cindy Gentry at 602-493-5231

November 11 – Norman, Oklahoma – University of Oklahoma, 7:30 p.m; Public talk. For more information contact Julia Ehrhardt at 405-325-5258.

November 13 – Albuquerque, New Mexico – Albuquerque Journal auditorium, 7:00 p.m; SAGE Seminar “Back to the Essentials.” For more information contact Carolyn Flynn at cflynn@abqjournal.com.

November 20 – Madison, New Jersey – Drew University. Evening talk open to the public. Exact time and campus location to be announced. For more information contact Clare Mullaney at cmullaney@drew.edu.

December 4 – Houston, Texas – Evening book talk. Time and place to be announced. For more information contact Chris McCullum-Gomez or go to www.houstonfood.net.

December 5 – Austin, Texas – Evening book talk. Time and place to be announced. For more information contact Marla Camp at marla@edibleaustin.com.

The following article was first written by me in 2006 for publication in the Sierra Club magazine “Sierra.” Though accepted in a revised form by the editors for publication, they chose not to run the piece for some reason that they were never able to explain to me. Though over two years have passed since I researched this story, I believe that the article’s facts and basic arguments remain true. In light of the growing concern over the state of our nation’s food system, I finally offer the complete, admittedly long story to the public on my blog.   Mark Winne, author of “Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty.”

Factory Farms, Dirty Water, and the Bible

By Mark Winne

Just an hour west of Texas, the gentle swells of New Mexico’s high plains calm to a pancake flat sea of grass. Crossing into Curry and Roosevelt counties at the state’s eastern edge, the empty landscape, broken only by the occasional grain elevator and abandoned village, quickly gives way to a discomfiting motion. Strung out along the highway’s edge in a nearly unbroken chain are cow pens filled with thousands of black and white Holsteins slithering in the summer heat like giant schools of beached eels.

Got milk? Eat Taco Bell cheese? Slurp Yoplait yogurt? Chances are pretty good this is where the main ingredient comes from. Curry and Roosevelt counties now enjoy the dubious distinction of being at the heart of the Great American West’s dairy industrial complex. With barely 20,000 dairy animals in 1992, the two counties now feed, milk, and clean up after 120,000 cows at 58 operating dairy farms, a number that by all accounts will double in a few short years. And to sop up all this milk (only 30% is used for fluid consumption), Curry County is now home to North America’s largest cheese plant, which extrudes a Velveeta-like product at the rate of one truckload per hour.

What do these many farms do to a place? At four tons of manure per cow annually, 120,000 cows produce as much excrement as the city of Los Angeles. The odor in the surrounding communities is bad enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon, and the hordes of flies stop outdoor picnics before the potato salad is uncovered. Besides being a nuisance, the winged insects are also disease vectors for a variety of bacteria-related illnesses. They may be one reason why Curry County’s asthma rate is three times higher than New Mexico’s statewide average.

But the dairy industry’s most problematic contribution is not easily seen or sniffed. Since large dairy farms – labeled by the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – and milk processing facilities use more of the region’s limited water supply than other users, they present a serious threat to the counties’ main water source, the Ogallala Aquifer. And at the same time that the industry is sucking the ground dry, nitrates from the manure are finding their way back into the ground water in such concentrations as to alarm public health workers and state officials.

Pass the Bible and the Bucks

“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well (Matthew 6:33).” These are the simple lines of scripture that Otis Davis and his family live by since they started their Matthew 6:33 Academy to bring the teachings of Christ to families across the Southwest. Before this time, according to Otis, he had “built his house on the shifting sands of the world rather than the rock of Christ.” And it was during this earlier period, before he was born again, that Otis was the designated pitchman for Roosevelt County’s bid to become the dairy capitol of the world.

As a successful real estate developer, broker, and Roosevelt County Republican Chairman, Otis was at the vanguard of the recruiting drive to bring the dairy industry to his region. “In the early 1990s,” he told me, “I was a member of the Roosevelt County Economic Development Committee. Me and Ken Fusey, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, decided this would be a great dairy area. We have the right climate for cows, land was cheap, taxes were low, there’s little regulation, and we already had a few 100-head dairy farms. So we placed ads in farm magazines and went to trade shows in Chino Valley, California where the dairy farms were getting pressure from environmental regulators. I have a college degree in marketing, so I know what hot buttons to push to sell somebody something. But believe me, it wasn’t a hard sell to get those dairies to come here.”

To make the area even more attractive to dairy farmers, Otis and other community leaders spearheaded a drive to raise money to buy land for a new milk processing plant. “We had a meeting of banks and business people and told them we had to raise $300,000 in one day because we had a chance to bring this company to town. The banks and the big businesses were putting up $25,000 each. We wrote the pledges up on the chalkboard and had the money in no time. I put up $10,000 myself. We bought the land and just gave it to Dairy Farmers of America to build their plant.”

The plant was built and the dairies came. Farms of 5,000-head pushed aside the small ones, and the new dairymen, many of whom had left the Netherlands one or two generations back when that small country couldn’t handle the water polluting farms anymore, sank tens of millions of dollars into their new operations. Their capital came from the sale of their farms in Chino Valley, which went for as much as $200,000 per acre. They bought land in Curry and Roosevelt counties for $1,000 per acre. And before he knew it, Otis and his team of economic development boosters had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Voice of the People

Over half of America’s milk is now produced west of the Mississippi. The economic advantages of a near perfect climate, cheap land, subsidized water, an uneven, if not lax regulatory environment, a multi-billion dollar infrastructure consisting of rail, grain elevators, and dairy processing plants, and low-cost Mexican labor (only of half of which is legal by the admission of one Curry County dairyman) have made western dairies the low-cost producers in the national milk market. A New Mexico dairy farmer’s breakeven point for a hundred pounds of milk production is between $11.50 and $12.50. For a large (500-head), efficient New England dairy farmer, the breakeven point is over $14.00.

Twelve years have passed since those heady times when Otis and his pals raised a lot of money for rural New Mexico in what amounts to a New York minute. Roosevelt and Curry counties are now in the throes of a veritable dairy boom. For a few, it is literally the land of milk and honey. But for many long time residents, there is a growing disquietude that there is more pain than profit in their economic resurrection.

“They call this the ‘Bible belt,’ but when you see what’s going on around here, you wonder where the Bible is.” That was the cynical reaction to the dairy industry’s meteoric rise by Dan (a local resident who could not use his full name or employer for fear of being fired), one of a dozen local folks who gathered for lunch one day at Mark’s Café in Portales, the county seat for Roosevelt.

“The increase in the fly population is the biggest change over the last few years. You can’t leave any food on your counter.” said Erin, a housewife. “Another problem is that more trucking [associated with increased milk hauling] is tearing up the roads. We also have more cow dumping.” She was referring to a growing phenomena, confirmed by the County Sheriff’s Department, that dairy farmers are dumping dead cows along the roadways because they don’t want to pay the cost of removing the carcasses (according to some observers of the dairy industry, cow dumping is increasing because sick or “spent” cows have been so burned out by rBGH or are so sick that they can’t even be sold to McDonalds, the nation’s largest buyer of Holsteins).

Ron, a truck driver, said “our water level is way down. People our losing their wells right and left. Our neighbor, who previously had water at 90 feet had to re-drill his well to 125 feet.” While no one, including the dairy industry, disputes the fact that the Ogallala Aquifer is declining (at the rate of one to two feet per year according to New Mexico’s State Engineers Office), people only disagree when its water will become too salty to drink. The optimists say 40 years and the pessimists say 5. The deeper the well, however, the more energy required to pump the water, which becomes increasingly problematic in an era of rising energy costs. According to Dr. Neil Nuttal, former superintendent of the Clovis School District (the largest in Curry County), the school system’s water costs have gone from $50,000 to $250,000 per year because of increased pumping costs. “That’s less money we have for education,” he said.

There are social costs as well. Ron said that, “many of the dairies’ undocumented workers from Mexico were receiving medical treatment that we, the taxpayers, are paying for. The dairies don’t give them health insurance and the state exempts farmers from paying workmen compensation insurance.”

In response to the growth in Spanish speaking students, the Clovis School District has increased its English as a Second Language programs by three-fold, and the percentage of children receiving subsidized school lunch has increased from 26% to 52%, according to Nuttal.

Crime and jail overcrowding have gone beyond the headache stage for Curry County, a place that up until recently had only one or two homicides a year. In 2004, according to the district attorney’s office, there were 14 homicides. The Clovis News-Journal reports that, “jail overcrowding has crippled the county budget, leading to tax hikes and pay increases to keep detention workers on staff.”

A recent survey by the Roosevelt County Health Council, a quasi-governmental group that monitors public health, confirmed that environmental health concerns are widespread. Respondents (n=150) said that dairies were the number one cause of the county’s air and water quality problems. As Theresa, a housewife, put it, “living on the high plains, we have natural air conditioning, but we can’t open the windows because the manure odor is so bad.”

None of the people I spoke with were optimistic about conditions improving. As Dan said, “we don’t have an Erin Brokovich to go after these guys.” This statement was backed up by a unanimous belief that government would not help them. “The politicians are in the pocket of the dairy industry,” said Theresa.

The Power and the Politics of Big Dairy

Nothing gets as big as the dairy industry in New Mexico without political support and the strategic exercise of economic power. The hardhat adorned photo of New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson, proudly displayed by the New Mexico Dairy Producers Association at statewide agricultural expositions, breaking ground at the Clovis cheese plant is testimony to political support for the industry. In the words of Cindy Padilla, [former] Director of the Water and Waste Management Division of the NM Environment Department (NMED), the state agency responsible for issuing and monitoring dairy wastewater discharge permits, “our agency must balance the need for economic development with environmental protection.” The question, however, is precisely where is that balance.

Under the provisions of the U.S. Clean Water Act a prospective dairy operator in New Mexico must first obtain a wastewater discharge permit from the NMED. The evaluation of the application is based solely on the conditions at the proposed site of the dairy farm and representations made by the applicant. The NMED does not evaluate conditions in the surrounding area such as the number of dairy farms already in existence, the proximity of those farms to that of the permit applicant, or the total impact that a certain number of farms could have on the public’s health or environment. In fact, according to Ms. Padilla, there is no upward limit on the number of permits the department can issue, which means the number of dairy farms is only limited by the amount of land and water rights dairymen can purchase.

Air quality oversight fares even worse. In spite of the concerns raised by residents of Curry and Roosevelt counties, including the high rates of asthma, the NMED does not monitor air quality anywhere in New Mexico except in the state’s southern-most region. According to department spokesman, John Goldstein, “we have no plans to monitor air quality in dairy areas at this time.”

The quality of groundwater monitoring and enforcement is also in question. According to Paul Elders, director of Concerned Citizens for Clean Water, “New Mexico may have stringent groundwater regulations on the books, but the state falls down with respect to monitoring and enforcement. They just don’t have the staff or the funds.” Based on the number of groundwater contamination violations that are attributed to dairies, this appears to be the case. Maura Hanning, an employee of NMED, said in the NM Business Journal, “of the 194 permitted dairies [in New Mexico], about 61 have recorded discharges exceeding state regulations.” Though asked on three separate occasions for an updated number of groundwater violations by dairies, Ms. Padilla did not respond to the request. One former employee who spoke off the record said that there are “hundreds of violations,” and that in fact groundwater nitrate levels above the allowed level of 10 milligrams per liter may exist beneath every dairy in the state.

[Update: As of 2007, NMED records showed that over half of the state’s dairy farms were in violation of their permitted groundwater contamination levels. One dairy in the south eastern portion of the state reported nitrate levels that were 19 times higher than the permitted standard. As a result of a continued flaunting of state regulations by dairies, NMED has issued letters to at least 10 farms (the actual number is assumed to be higher as of late 2008) requiring the dairies to come into compliance with the standard. I was told by one NMED staffer that they could issue many more letters, but their low staffing levels limit their capacity to monitor and enforce compliance.]

Attempts by the dairy industry to suppress research and public discussion have had a chilling effect on scientists as well as citizens. Just ask Dr. Stephen D. Arnold of the Department of Health Science at New Mexico State University. Research that he conducted in 1999 on the impact of dairy farms on the state’s southern region found the following: an association between higher rates of diarrhea and asthma among children living near dairies, considerably higher number of flies in areas around dairies, and groundwater contamination at all of the study’s sample dairy sites. The levels of contamination exceeded quality standards for nitrate, ammonia, chloride, and TDS (total dissolved solids). When his data was released in professional journals, the dairy industry issued vehement protests stating that the university should not be supporting this kind of research. “The university administration was supportive of me,” said Arnold, “but I decided at that point that I had other things to do.”

When asked if he thought that more research needed to be done, Arnold responded, “Absolutely. You can’t tell me that if you put 30,000 cows along a 14-mile stretch of land, that after many years it doesn’t have an impact.” Nobody at NMED was aware at the time of his research until I told them about it. Nor was the agency aware that the American Public Health Association had issued a strong, carefully documented statement urging a national moratorium on all further CAFO development until a full environmental and health impact assessment was conducted.

Perhaps the influence of the dairy industry on New Mexico is summed up best by Rod Ventura, a [former] staff attorney at the New Mexico Environmental Law Center: “The dairy industry is so powerful in this state that it doesn’t help to have science on your side.”

The Cows Come Home To Roost

One day a few years ago Otis Davis was suddenly confronted with the consequences of his highly successful promotion efforts. In a strange twist of fate (he might say that is was a sign from the Almighty) a 640-acre tract across the road from a property that Otis had formerly owned and developed for home sites was about to be turned into three dairy farms. He tried to reason with the dairyman, a person he had known for sometime, but to no avail. Due to the farmer’s intransigence, Otis was forced to bring the dispute to court. “Why should these dairies push us around, I asked myself? Even though I didn’t own the land anymore, if I didn’t stand up for them who would? So I hired a former New Mexico attorney general, spent $50,000 and three years of my life fighting this thing.”

In what may be the only occasion in eastern New Mexico when a dairy development was stopped cold, Otis succeeded in court. “My lawyer brought a sample of manure lagoon liquid in a bottle to court. The judge was so grossed out he found in our favor. We had proved that the farm’s wastewater would percolate into the aquifer, and that there would be an increase in flies, odor, truck traffic, and lights. We proved that these farms would have an adverse affect on the quality of life. So here I am, a person who put up $10,000 to bring the dairy industry to town, and a few years later spent $50,000 on this lawsuit.”

“I’m not against these dairies per se,” Otis makes clear. “By God, we need the jobs they provide. I know many of the dairymen, most of whom are family oriented and good Christians. But they have got to be more responsible. These dairies are not islands unto themselves because what they do affects us all.” He pauses for a moment as if searching deep inside himself for some revelation, and says finally, “We don’t realize what we’re doing to each other. We just can’t hand this problem off to our children!”

Big Dairy’s End Game

Dr. Charles Benbrook is an agricultural economist and former executive director of the Board of Agriculture for the National Academy of Sciences. He has devoted a considerable amount of his professional career to studying the dairy industry, whose growth in the west he finds “very perplexing.” Benbrook singles out water and the gargantuan scale of factory dairy farms for special scorn. He says that, “if the dairy industry in the Southwest was forced to pay the real cost of water, it would quickly move to the Upper Midwest and Northeast where rainfall is plentiful.” But, instead, the price of water for western farms is so cheap that it doesn’t even cover the management cost, let alone the replacement cost. Alfalfa, for instance, the key forage for dairy cows, requires one-acre foot of water to produce, and the bales are then trucked hundreds of miles to dairy farms. Grazing a commercially sufficient number of dairy cows on grass, as nature intended, is simply not economically feasible in New Mexico where rainfall is so sparse.

So how long do the factory dairy farms of the Southwest have? Benbrook says the expansion of large dairy herds in the West, especially to produce processed dairy products like cheese, “doesn’t make sense and is patently unsustainable because water will become too costly, and in not less than five years, but surely no more than 20, the dairy waste stream will overwhelm the absorptive capacity of the local environment.”

Eastern New Mexico is indeed part of the Bible belt. A drive down its county roads takes you past churches and billboards that admonish sinners in more ways than Christianity ever intended. Perhaps it is no surprise that in such a place where money and power often invoke religion, that neither science nor independent citizen action should be held in high regard. Nevertheless, men of faith like Otis Davis are worried; men of science like Stephen Arnold and Charles Benbrook are anxious; and citizens across the high plains are just plain tired of the stink, the dry wells, and the social and economic disruption in communities they no longer recognize.

If there is any good news here, it is the hope that salvation may follow revelation. “Fear God, and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come” is known to many in these counties where prosperity sits precariously on the shifting sands of the world. There is time, though not much, for the players in this drama to stop their slide to an environmental Gomorrah. Knowledge motivates, but it may be the fear of the fire and brimstone that ultimately ignites action.

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.