What Exactly is in the Proposed Plan for Making America Great, again??
“America’s Harvest Box” is what Trump’s administration has called its plan to substitute prepackaged, low-quality processed foods for some of the food assistance currently being received by an estimated 46 million people (based on numbers for 2015, the last year for which data are available).
The term “harvest box” has been used by other programs which distribute local produce like this one, and for USDA pilot programs in Maryland and Virginia designed to offer “seamless access to locally produced food and products” and to “boost rural economic development.”
Moreover, based on the currently bleak levels of assistance per family, reinvesting federal money into providing truly unadulterated, fresh or frozen American-grown fruits and vegetables, is worth serious support. However, many food justice advocates and policy experts agree that the White House’s proposed plan indicates no real intention of achieving anything other than cutting costs… Chef and food writer, Michel Nisam says that, if the plan is “carefully considered and implemented in partnership with folks who know how to do this” then success could be in sight.” But that notion does not seem to be part of the published plan.
From Politico: “Trump’s Food Stamp Idea Is Like Blue Apron Had a Socialist Hangover.”
It is hardly pro-market to displace the private sector and build a parallel, state-run distribution system, no matter how many times you name-check Blue Apron. This is the sort of thing you find in countries still recovering from socialist hangovers…No, the “Harvest Box” approach to hunger policy makes sense only in the context of hunger politics. And hunger politics have always been as much about the welfare of agribusiness as about the welfare of the poor…. It is generally more expensive than either buying food locally and distributing it or simply giving the recipients cash or vouchers to purchase their own food. Rigorous experimental testing has shown that it does not even produce systematically better nutritional outcomes than giving out money.
Andy Fisher, author of Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups (Check out Marion Nestle’s Weekend Reading post on this book or my interview with Andy here). Read his article, “Comrade Trump Might just be on to Something.”
“The problem isn’t that the Harvest Box circumvents the free market, as Joel Berg of Hunger Free America (whose organization receives millions of dollars in grants from free market icons Pepsi and Walmart) states on NPR. Frankly, it’s that SNAP is an accomplice to our need for cheap food with the accompanying externalities caused to public health. It reinforces the ills of the marketplace rather than seeks to transform them. Bioethicist Nancy Kass of Johns Hopkins University asks whether our patterns of consumption represent a freedom of choice or a social injustice, and whether government action would be interfering with personal preferences or righting a wrong (Big Hunger p 137).” – Big Hunger Blog
“The administration last week proposed halving the monthly benefit of most participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and replacing it with a “Harvest Box” of shelf-stable government-sourced foods, a system that White House budget director Mick Mulvaney compared to Blue Apron. The proposal was directly modeled after the existing senior food-box program, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman said, and will include similar features. States will order boxed foods from a preset list and develop their own delivery and distribution networks, including through partnerships with nonprofit groups.” – Washington Post
48 Million Sickened Every Year by Cheap, Dirty Meat
“If you live in the U.S., you’re far more likely to get hit with salmonella or some other foodborne illness, than if you live in the U.K. You can thank the factory farm industry for that. An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Guardian found “shockingly high” levels of foodborne illness in the U.S. The Guardian reports that “annually, around 14.7 percent (48 million people) of the U.S. population is estimated to suffer from an illness, compared to around 1.5 percent (1 million) in the UK. In the U.S., 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die each year of foodborne diseases.”-OCA
Read the full article online here.
“More and more, ecologically minded milk consumers are turning to nondairy products to minimize their carbon hoofprints. Sales of almond milk shot up by 250 percent between 2011 and 2016. Meanwhile, consumption of dairy milk has plummeted 37 percent since the 1970s, according to the USDA. This is because animal agriculture consumes 2,422 billion cubic meters of water annually (about one-fourth of the global water footprint), 19 percent of which is related to dairy cattle. The Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that the dairy industry contributes 4 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions—52 percent of which is methane, which can trap up to 100 times more heat than carbon dioxide.” – Sierra Club. Continue reading online here!
Water Scarcity is Real and Happening Now: What Can You Do?
Cape Town is literally about to run out of water. Residents are preparing for “Day Zero.”
Toxic Chemicals in Your Home Are Making You Sick, New Study Reports
“Regular use of cleaning sprays can have as much of an impact on health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, according to a new study. Scientists at Norway’s University of Bergen tracked 6,000 people, with an average age of 34 at the time of enrolement in the study, who used the products over a period of two decades, according to the research published in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. They found that lung function decline in women regularly using the products, such as cleaners, was equivalent over the period to those with a 20 cigarettes a day smoking habit.” – Organic Consumer’s Association
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