Tape #449 - Food, Security and Public Policy

 

Welcome to the session this afternoon.  It's dealing with food security and public policy.  In this session today, we're hoping to take a practical look at how food security issues can be handled in a positive manner by women at all levels and what impact we can make at all levels with problems of food security.  We're looking at food security from public policy to practice today.  We're going to have a panel here.  My name is Kelvina Duprey.  I'm an agricultural research advisor with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service and I'm pleased to be able to work with Marianne Keith in our International Corporation and Development Section and she's going to introduce the panel and participate as a moderator. 

 

But first of all if you notice the packages that we have here has an agenda that's included on here.  You'll notice that two of the presenters that we had hoped to have today were unfortunately unable to make it.  Last night I received a fax from Sudan from [inaudible] Tabeti.  And she sends her regrets that she won't be able to be here with you.  She was going to discuss some of the challenges facing African women in agriculture and the environment.  But hope some of the issues that she wanted to have covered will be covered in this session.  And hopefully that'll happen with your participation and from our panel here.  As well Ghau Len Yi (sic) was not able to make it from China.  But again we encourage your participation and your comments in sharing your experiences through this session.  And I'd like to turn the session over now to Marianne Keith.  Each person will give you a bit more about their background as they present.  Thank you.

 

Thank you Kalvina.  I hope you all will join me in appreciating the work Kalvina put into coordinating this particular workshop of the conference.  As you can imagine dealing internationally on putting all the conference together and the various workshops required a great deal of time and patience and a lot of good work and Kalvina was wonderful in helping us out with that.  Just wanted to see if there light here.  Kind of strange lighting in this room, but [laughter].

 

My name is Marianne Keith.  I am the Deputy Administrator for International Cooperation and Development which is a part of the Foreign Agricultural Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, long title.  I'm somewhat unique I think to being part of this particular workshop and indeed maybe to the overall Conference of Women in Agriculture because I have been in my current position as an appointee of President Clinton since November of last year.  But prior to that I served as the Deputy Under Secretary for Food Nutrition and Consumer Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture which is the missionary within the Department that is responsible for the United States food assistance programs.  15 programs that you will also hear a little more about today from one of our presenters. 

 

The main purpose of our session is to take a practical look at the roles women can play in making food security a priority from policy making to project implementation. 

 

First after brief overview of what food security is and the importance of policies affecting our access to food, you will hear prospective from the other women on our panel.  And then we really want to hear from you and we encourage you to interact not just simply by asking questions, but we want to hear any experiences that you can enlighten us as well as the other members of the audience about.  So please regard this as a very interactive session.  Before I proceed further, I'd like to introduce the other two members of our panel today.

 

Yvonne Sinkervich is the Women's President of the National Farmers Union in Canada and Yvonne will be presenting after my remarks and Patricia Daniels is the Acting Director of the Nutrition and Technical Services Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service and she will be talking more about the domestic food assistance programs and indeed the importance of nutrition when we talk about food security. 

 

So what is food security?  It's an issue this is now the third workshop that has been part of the conference dealing with various aspects of food security and we ought to start with the definition.  We define food security as access to a reliable, adequate, nutritious and safe food supply.  Hunger and malnutrition are chronic problems all over the world.  With one and seven people going to bed hungry or getting insufficient basic nutrition from the food that they do get. 

 

Hunger, I think we all would agree is an unacceptable human condition wherever it exist.  Whether it exists here in the United States and indeed it does or anywhere else in the world.  Furthermore, hunger doesn't exist in a vacuum.  The link between a nutritious diet and our development and health is critical.

 

A hungry child will find it more difficult if not impossible to learn.  Undernourished people are more susceptible to disease and a malnourished pregnant woman is more likely to have complications and low birth weight babies that will have problems as well. 

 

In addition to what we now face, our world's resources will be severely tested in the next century by food demands from a growing population.  Today our world population is nearly six billion.  By the middle of the next century, we're estimated to exceed nine billion.  That's over three billion new mouths to feed. 

 

In November, 1996, the world food summit was convened in Rome, Italy.  The 186 countries that participated in that summit pledged to reduce the number of malnourished people by half by the year 2015.  To meet that goal each country's future policies and programs within the reality of its resources will determine the success of their commitment. 

 

Today, I will focus on what we need to do to achieve worldwide food security.  To reach this goal we're going to have to do more of some things and more importantly, we're going to have come up with new strategies and new ideas.  We cannot rely only short term aid to the needy.  Providing emergency during famines and disasters.  As women we must take advantage of each opportunity at every level to help determine requirements for our rapidly changing food and agricultural systems in our growing world.  We must help our governments adapt policies and programs to respond to these needs. 

 

The long term solutions in food security, this means within each country, we must make investments and improvements in our infrastructures and our economies.  This includes conventional forms of physical infrastructures such as transportation, storage and processing facilities for safe food supplies as well as financial infrastructure, banks and other institutions and the services they provide.  More and more as we find we are increasingly connected to other countries.  Our policies must ensure adequate food access to freer trading goods, services, information and ideas.

 

But most of all to ensure food security over the long term we must invest in our most valuable resource of all, our people.  That's why education, training and research for women and children is a priority.  It's gives us the tools to succeed.  Research and the training of scientists in some of the world's most advance technologies as well as continued attention to new and improved agricultural technologies appropriate for small scale farming operations is very important.

 

Women in every country can look for ways to use science and technology to increase the nutritional content, the safety and the shelf life of our food.  Scientistic cooperation can help us increase yields and resist disease and pest in our agricultural production. 

 

Our environment will benefit when we use science to decrease the use of crop chemicals and fossil fuels.  Since only a few of the crops now grown in the United States originated here, we rely on the tremendously beneficial cooperation with other countries on mutual problems in food and agricultural science and technology.

 

International cooperation allows us to work together in helping to safely feed our growing populations.  By sharing progress in sustainable agriculture, we also help protect our environment for future generations. 

 

The United States plan of action on food security resulting from the world food summit serves as a blueprint for our future domestic and international policies and programs.  We've already made some progress towards our commitments and have highlighted accomplishments of our government, educational institutional, private industry and voluntary organizations.  And I have brought some copies of benchmark report which deals with the U.S. plan of action and what we have done to date and what directions we are moving as our answer to the world food summit.  We presented this earlier, well we're now in July, in early June in Rome at an FAO conference that was dealing with the world food summit follow-up and we will put these out on the back table as well and invite you to take them.  If there aren't enough, please let any of us know and we will get some additional ones.

 

Also in the packet of material which you will find out on the back table, there is various material about parts of foreign agricultural service and USDA.  There is also a working group progress report on our follow-up, talking about successes we've had to the world food summit and there is some information there on the domestic food assistance programs as well.  So we have plenty of these, please pick one up.

 

Let me mention a couple of examples of successes.  President Clinton's initiative on food safety is the direct result of consumers demands for safer food and a reduction in food borne illnesses.  Women were leaders in the successful effort to make cooperative research and education a priority in enhancing the safety of all food, domestic or imported.

 

Women were also instrumental in developing U.S. Department of Agriculture initiatives for preserving small family farm producers.  The 1996 Farm Bill included the greatest revamping of our conservation programs in history.  Through our conservation reserve program, we're putting our most productive farm land to use while protecting our most highly erodible land.  This approach goes to the heart of sustainable development.  The idea that our farmers can do what's best for the environment and still realize a profit. 

 

We're convinced that none of us anywhere on the globe will know true food security without this kind of serious commitment to worldwide sustainable development. 

 

Gleaning and food recovery is something that has been highlighted by Secretary Glickman and is indeed something that everyone can contribute to.  We discovered that in the United States, the amount of waste in our food is unconscionable when there are hungry people.  And whether it's literally gleaning the crops from the farms or rescuing food from kitchens of restaurant that isn't used, from terminal docks where produce is brought in.  Indeed, from our very own kitchens, the food that makes it to the back of the shelves.  There's been a heighten awareness as a result of the Secretary's activities for people to be more concerned about the waste of food and getting the food to the people in need.  And quite a successful mechanism has put together to do this.  Of course it doesn't answer all the problems, but it does indeed increase supplies of food to people in need.

 

So in closing let me say that our future lies in the active participation of women at all levels.  From policy making to project implementation, from food in agricultural research to production in export.  By identifying our needs and potential solutions to our problems, we can help provide a safe reliable abundant food supply for all the peoples of the world.  And with that I would like to turn to first presentation from Yvonne Sinkervisch who again is the Women's President of the National Farmers Union in Canada.  Yvonne.

 

[Applause]

 

Thank you.  Just a little bit shorter here.  Good afternoon everyone.  It's been a long day.  I'm really pleased to be able to bring to you to this conference a few brief words about the most important subject of food security.

 

The challenge of feeding the world in the future is the responsible of all of us.  And what better people in the world to be discussing this, but women from around the world.  Historically, women have played the critical role in the food security of nations.  As mothers, food providers, farmers and also consumers, we make decisions on a regular basis about how to access food for our families.  Many things are changing in the world of agriculture and no one knows that better than us for we are on the front lines of sourcing that food and are aware that not all of these changes are necessarily to our advantage and to our family's advantages.

 

There is the dangers of mono cropping, factory farming with respect to livestock, and the serious loss of farm land to cities and golf courses, etc.  As an active farmer myself, I readily admit that we're loosing good fertile soil through farming methods.  But due to continuous cropping and the resulting soil erosion, we are now experiencing a significant loss of fiber and soil nutrients.  And by single cropping on larger and larger farms, we have lost the integration aspect of farming.  We know that in nature there is no such thing as mono cropping.  Don't forget now we are talking about sustain ability and securing a food access to people in the world.  By not integrating different crops and raising a variety of livestock, we're loosing the ability to build and maintain soil conditions with crop rotations and the addition of valuable manure. 

 

This kind of loss to the soil means that we will be more and more dependent on chemical fertilizers and herbicides for food production.  Is this going to be a sustainable when populations are rising and climate conditions are changing?  Because to be dependent upon chemicals and fertilizers and fuel and all the inputs the farmers use, means to be production cost and those cost never go down.  In 30 years of farming I've never seen it go down. 

 

Around the world in the past few years, we have seen the devastating results of adverse weather patterns and climate conditions.  We're told that the El Nino effect is causing this and that it will pass.  But there are no guarantees with weather at any time.  And we must feed ourselves regardless.  Farmers must deal with these conditions, yet they have no control over them. 

 

Years of climate fluxuation, alternating drought years with massive precipitation causing flooding, has effected yields to the extent that we are now have the lowest world grain stocks ever.  Rising population growth in almost every country in the world also plays a large part in this scenario.  But there are other factors that are contributing to the changes in the food production and the security of food in any nation.  And many of them are due to government policies. 

 

The market driven approach to agriculture policy has forced farmers in Canada to change their farming methods.  And now we find that we are more and more dependent on the things that cost us so much money.  In fact, the methods that we had used 50 and 60 years ago are almost obsolete.  We are realizing that what many have known for a long time.  That which drives to market is not what drives mother nature.  And if we want to continue to live healthy lives, we have to stop what we're doing against nature. 

 

If the goal is to continue to feed ourselves in the coming millennium, we will have to farm using methods which are realistic, sustainable and affordable.  The continued use of high price inputs will bankrupt most farms as well as do irreparable damage to our water, our soil and our air.  And women farmers know this more than anybody.  Because they're the ones who are feeding their families and they know what they're feeding and how its affecting them.  So they are the ones who need to urge government and they need to be involved in the crucial new round at the world trade organization talks due to take place in 1999.  And in those talks this situation needs to be taken under consideration.  It must also address the dilemma of the world food scarcity as it relates to world trade rules and the declining income of all farmers. 

 

I have some charts that I'd like to show you regarding the declining income of farmers.  This Canadian farms from 1931 to 1996 and it is in 1996 dollars.  You can see that we made a peak in somewhere in 1975 and then we decline like a hot rock.  This is an average income chart.  The little squares are the average per farm from 1931 to 1996 again.  And this is a chart telling us about our agricultural food exports and our farm income and how it relates from 1989 to 1997.  Farmers are not making money.  This is a chart that tells us the relation between wheat and bread prices.  Price of wheat as in Saskatoon. 

 

Nothing is going to affect our international food security more than the continuing decline of a number of farmers.  And since its founding convention 30 years ago, the National Farmers Union in Canada has understood that the federal government's cheap food policy has created a growing dependence on imported food products.  The booming bust cycles that are prevalent in a market economy have contributed to economic and social instability of the rural community and the under development of our basic food industry.

 

Market speculators and trans-national food conglomerates are able to maximize control over food production and profits.  This may be good for those playing the markets and looking only for profit.  But it is not good for farm gate prices or for the stability of rural communities or for the national food security.  Without economic incentives for production, farms are destabilized and rural communities loose control of their food source. 

 

When a nation become deficient in the production of any number of food items, there is a potential for loosing its self-sufficiency in food production.  And a dependence on imported food contributes to a host of other problems as well.  It negatively effects the balance of trade.  It decreases the wide range of employment opportunities.  And it devalues the gross national product.

 

Nevertheless, there must still be a place for food trade on the global scene.  After all Canada is an exporting nation.  We export nearly 80% of our wheat crop annually as well as other grain, livestock and oil seeds. 

 

The [inaudible] policy statement suggests that world trade does not have to be detrimental to farm income.  To me that's key.  It does not have to mean less farmers.  I quote from the policy statement "While we do not endorse an isolationist position on food trade, we must strive to develop policies which will encourage the attainment wherever possible of national self-sufficiency in food production.  The value of our import trade of any particular food item in which we possess potential for self-sufficiency, must as a minimum objective balance the value of our exports.  Farm families must not be used as pawns in the world scene of food trade in any country." 

 

As you can see even in countries where there is an abundance of water and fertile soil and the temperate climate, food security is still at risk.

 

Although it may be seem to many that there's certainly no shortage of a variety of food in their local super market, we must be aware that both access to food and the quality of food is being reduced.  Quality is effected whenever a perishable item is transported any distance and in many cases it's transported around the world before it reaches a potential consumer. 

 

Pricing is affected because this massive transportation strategy is expensive and the cost is not only in monetary terms.  We must be aware that everything involving food production, marketing, trading, transportation and consumption is all interconnected and vital to a nation's health.  To ensure that nation's food supply a holistic approach must be taken which means that everything is taken into consideration when policy is being made.

 

Underlying all of these issues though is that the biggest winner or loser whichever the case may be is the environment.  When the environment loses we lose, big time.  Lester Brown from the World Watch Institute in his 1997 report states, "The growth in food production is sowing while the growth in demand driven by both population growth and rising affluence continues strong."  He also says that "in this world of scarcity, countries would do well to devise agriculture and population strategies that would permit them to avoid excessive dependence on imported food." 

 

Keeping in mind all these issues, the cost of the environment, a decrease in quality food supply, a trend to world scarcity, the need is there to reorganize and I believe to start locally, to devise ways to feed ourselves in a sustainable fashion. 

 

In Canada there are many individuals, groups and organizations and many at the policy making level who are concerned with these issues and are striving to find solutions.  As is the case with many social problems, there are many different ways in which to deal with ensuring self-sufficiency.  There are also different levels at which work can be done in order to break that chain of dependency.  This would include first and foremost the local community.  The place with which we're most familiar and where food and production of it and the initial distribution of food begins at the farm gate.

 

Then of course on the national level where the laws regarding trade, transportation, food quality and safety guidelines are set, to ensure fair and equitable access to food.  Also, as we're finding out especially this week, on the international scene where trade plays an important role economically as well as socially. 

 

As it was mentioned earlier, the world trade organization is preparing to start a new round of talks in which agriculture causes are up for review.  But producers and consumers are not represented there and we need to change this. 

 

Women must be involved at every one of these levels.  As you have heard all throughout this conference, women need to be involved at every one of these levels.  There is just no way around it.  We need to involve socially, which we are, practically, which we are, and politically which we are not for the most part. 

 

As the household manager that make the decisions that involve all aspects of sourcing food, no one knows the importance of a supply of quality, safe nutritious food more than farming women.  In Canada it's very slowly becoming more, we are very slowly becoming more involved in the national and international levels.  Women tends to bring a sense of balance to agriculture policies and we need to be more proactive in ensuring that there is women at decision making tables.  But we have a long way to go in realizing this political equality.  It has been my experience that you can make much ado about legislation, but there will be no real changes until attitudes change.  When we all began to accept that we're here together, we work together, we live together.  And we must deal with our problems together as equal partners. 

 

With regards to some solutions to the problems of food scarcity, I'd like to share with you some ideas that seem to be taking shape where I live.  And I also found out this week that it's taking shape everywhere and this is real exciting stuff.

 

It has recently been acknowledged by some nutritionists that food grown and consumed in a local area is the most nutritious food that humans can consume.  Provided of course that growers are taking into consideration that toxin must ought to be kept to a minimum or discarded completely.  As consumers, we hold all the cards with regard to what kind of food we buy.  It's really quite simple.  If we demand quality food, and are willing to pay the price, producers will supply us.  But the key is being willing to pay the price.  It does seem to me that to consume the food that is produced in your area, should be the goal of every consumer and family food provider. 

 

The suggestion that I would like to make is that it is in the interest of a nation's food supply to encourage local food production in every possible circumstance.  Thereby keeping each region as independent as possible as well as economically viable.  With a minimum of transportation cost and a minimum of depreciation of food quality, much could be gained if this were the focus of government policy.  Farms would in all likelihood become more integrated as a variety of food would be in demand and rural communities would become more stable and thrive. 

 

I want to tell you a little antidote about last winter when my husband was doing some grocery shopping.  He came home and told me, you know what, the price of bananas in that store is cheaper than the local bag of potatoes that I could buy.  And we all looked at that and we thought something is wrong here.  We don't grow bananas in northern Alberta.  Why should the price be cheaper than our local potatoes.  We're not paying the real cost of food. 

 

Rural women would be in the forefront of this type of agriculture because they already know the importance of it.  And they are the producers and the marketers as well as the consumers.  Farmers markets, cooperative marketing schemes and share agriculture plots and community kitchens and a whole host of other things that I've been learning about this week are all very community oriented and are very beneficial to local food distribution scenes in which women play the leading role. 

 

Also in some regions of Canada sustainable farming practice are becoming more popular.  Better maintenance of precious soils which results in healthier and more nutritious food.  But what is really driving this alternative farming is the very high cost of inputs.  And the awareness of what we cannot continue to pour into our resources into already depleted soils.  It is important to understand that these alternative methods are not new.  It is the way the farmed 50 and 60 years ago, but that it is not to say that we should retreat into yesterday.  Only that we need to take the good ideas and integrate them into a new set of methods that would sustain us into the future.

 

The issues of food security are massive and no one individual or gender or nation has all the answers.  But by discussing our challenges as we're doing so well at this conference, it is surely one avenue that could lead us to better understanding and a possible consensus.  It's my hope that these few words would be seen as some information to you and which we together can use to reverse the trend of food scarcity.

 

I would like to tell you a bit a success story before I leave and it is regarding the National Farmers Union in Canada.  30 years ago, we will be celebrating our 30th anniversary coming soon, the National Farmers Union was founded in Canada and some very progressive thinkers felt that there should be a farm organization, a reflection of the farm family and so we set up a membership that gave men, women and children or youth the right to vote.  And we set positions for them.  We set positions in locals, regions and the national level for youth, women and men.  And 30 years later, almost 30 years we now have a woman as the leader, a woman president and a woman as a youth president.  And I think that's a very good success story.  Thank you.

 

[Applause]

 

I'm going to invite you at this point if you have some questions for Yvonne to ask them now.  I mean you can also at the end, but often times I know when people has just heard a presentation, there might be something that strikes you that you'd like to talk about it at this time.  If that's the case, before we go to Pat Daniels, please feel free to ask any questions, otherwise we'll just get into discussion later.

 

I'd be very interested to know what are the main food products that Canada exports and imports.  I know you import bananas.  The main exports in the food line and imports.  Thanks.

 

Ok.  Like I said we export 80% of our wheat crop.  So that's a big export.  We export oil seeds, canola.  We export beef, we export pork, I think we export all the main food items, but we also import a lot of them.  We also import beef.  We import fruits, tropical fruits.  We import a lot of vegetables because we have a harsh climate.  We don't grow too many fruits and vegetables in our winter season and a lot of that comes from Mexico and the U.S., and some from South America.

 

Hi.  I'm Gail Schultz and I'm from Ohio and I'm a farmer and I also serve on the Farm Service Agency state committee.  What I wanted to know was I'm also a farmer's union member.  And I remember years ago we discussed the circle of poison which would be food that would be imported into our country sprayed with pesticides that would have been outlawed in our country are no longer used and I just wondered how accurate that is and if we have come forward with that, you know have we moved forward with that, if we don't consider that much of a problem any more.  I'm very concerned about the safety of our food.  I am very choosy and because I'm a mom I feed my family and my children's friends of course.  And I have just wondered for a long time.  I've researched and would like to get some really kind of accurate information.  I was wondering if you ladies might know anything about that.  The food that we import actually is sprayed with things that we do not allow here in the United Sates and I just wondered about the safety of our imported food.

 

Well I too am real concern about that.  I feed my children and their friends too and I think that our laws in Canada and the U.S. are much the same about some substances, although I know there are some things we use that you don't and vis versa.  But, yes I think it's happening.  I can't prove it.  How do we know what's been sprayed and when.  Nothing is ever, it's never said on their labels that this has been sprayed with such and such.  But I think all that means is that while we're here internationally, we speak about it to one another and we make sure that our governments know how we feel about that.  And it also suggests that maybe we should look more to our local food production. 

 

It's certainly no secret that food safety is a front and center issue in the United States.  Almost daily there is some news item dealing with aspects of food safety and it's a deep concern to the United States Government and I think that our government is being very active in this area.  A part of the President's food safety initiative in fact deals with importation of fresh fruits and vegetables and guidelines are being developed.  This is jointly been worked on by USDA and US Food and Drug Administration and CDC.  Both of those organizations are part of Health and Human Services.  The guidelines when they are developed are going to be put out for public comment and so that this is an issue specifically, I think, addressing issues you raised are going to be looked at very seriously.  And it's an area that my particular part of Agriculture in Foreign Agricultural Services has been very involved with from a training and technical aspect.  We have programs whereby we bring agriculturalist to the United States to receive both short and long term training in various aspects of food safety and so we're very active in that area in the United States.

 

As well on that line, and one of my positions as agricultural research advisor with Foreign Agriculture Service.  There are a number of committees that are part of that President's initiative on food safety.  I sat on one interagency committee for example that was looking at research needs.  Taking a look at what we can do with the kind of research with the budget that we have right now, with the resources that we have right now and working together with the different organizations. 

 

Look at what kind of diagnostic testing still needs to be done and looking at how research links into the whole agricultural education and extension system as well.  And working with extensions throughout to get that scientifically sound based information out to people so that we can use it.  And we can make decisions about how we're importing or exporting. 

 

I'm Vicky Walker, I'm with Wind Rock International, an international development organization based in Arkansas, but we have a branch in Washington.  I do work with Africa and particularly with women in agriculture and the environment, but this is a more general question.  Actually, we're very interested in the implications and the role of women in effecting policy and when you mentioned which I think is so true, the study that showed that food grown and consumed in local areas is the most nutritious.  I think this is true, but at the same time how do you reconcile and what are the implications for policy in particularly what women can do when for example, in Africa they're trying to diversify their resource base and use more of their locally grown goods but

 

 

END OF SIDE 1 OF TAPE

 

ability to grow and be independent or I'd like you to talk about that a little more.

Well I think what the implications would be in my thoughts when I was thinking about all this food security thing, would be that it would revitalize rural areas.  I mean you're talking about areas in Africa which I'm not very familiar about and it's too bad we don't have someone here, we supposedly had someone on this panel, but she wasn't able to make it. 

 

Yeah, my idea was to that the implications of locally producing and consuming food means that you then have a reason to be in a rural area.  And you'd hopefully would make a living on your farm, because then you would have people willing to pay the price for good healthy nutritious food.  And when you have vital rural areas, you then have a healthy nation.  You have schools, you have churches, you have people paying taxes, you know it seems that to me that what the wealth of the nation is.  And this wealth that we talk about in farming is renewable, it renewable on an annual basis.  And we think we're a developed nation.  I wonder how, it seems to me we are undeveloping when all of our farmers and families are moving to the cities. 

 

Let's take one more and, I just want make sure we don't ....

 

Thank you.  My name is Grace Acceo.  I'm from Kenya.  I'm very impressed with the presentation.  I just wanted to make a few comments in relation to the Kenya situation.  When we talk of the women being involved in agriculture, we have this illiteracy and so when we develop some alternatives for them I think we should focus on the most practical ways they can handle without really the complication other scientific names for chemicals whatever so they can be taught practically. 

 

And the other issue is research.  This very critical in the food sustain ability and also security.  [inaudible] I think government  should be told to invest  [inaudible] some of them are putting emphasis on research.  They hide under the color of [inaudible].  Ok I know their body doing research but the government itself I think that they are trying to avoid it.  The other issue is maybe the panelist will be able to expound on the dumping issue.  At what level is it critical.  Then also the security is threatened by refuge situation on African continent.  Maybe I can just show you. When there is a refugee situation because of wars and other conflicts, then actually the issue of sustain ability and security does not arise.

 

I think I asked you - I think I heard you ask if when is it a critical issue when do we become really worried?  I think from my point of view, that critical issue is when we have become totally dependent on imported food.  At least that is from a Canadian point of view.  Because once we've done that we've lost sovereignty. 

 

My name is [inaudible] and I work with [inaudible] in Bangkok.  I'm regional officer for [inaudible].  About the food safety and what we're doing about it.  There a whole group of people in [audible] work to

gether which is international standards for food safety and things like.  All the member countries work with them.  It is also going to be very soon that talk and discussion with the [inaudible] and member countries to look into [inaudible].  Things are not that easy now because every food comes in is tested.  [inaudible]  So I think, but information doesn't come to your level.  That may be the problem, but seriously work is going on.  There are handbooks and standards telling the importing and exporting countries what are the standards like acceptable and what should not be going between the countries.  But every country have their own national standards too so coming to consensus is a problem.

 

Thank you. 

 

Thank you all very much for the comments and thank you for reminding us about the international organizations and indeed FAO with [inaudible] and organizations such as Aieka in this hemisphere are very involved in issues of food safety.  Our next presentation is going to be from Pat Daniels who is a Director of the Nutritional Technical Services Division in the Food and Nutrition Service.  And I think, you know, we're constantly talking about nutritious diets and very often I think we just interchange that for thinking in terms of food access type of issues, but indeed our nutrition is an element when we talk about food and very important.  We're all extremely aware these days of that important link between nutrition and health and Pat has been someone dealing with great expertise in the nutrition area here in the United States and the many food assistance programs that are run through the Department of Agriculture in our own country and will enlighten us on this important issue.  Pat.

 

Thank you Marianne.  I'd like to digress for a second and just say to Yvonne that your comments really started me to thinking about my own childhood.  I grew up on a farm in South Carolina, subsistence farming is about what we did.  But in that community everyone raised their own fruits, vegetables, even their meats and there was a lot of bartering that went on.  Whoever raised lot of Okra and somebody else had lots of tomatoes and we bartered and shared.  And the quality of our diet were far superior to what I see in many of the families back there now.  We were poor, had no doubts about that.  We were dirt poor.  But we ate differently and I guess what I observed these last couple of times that I've gone home and spent some time is that no one is raising gardens anymore.  No one has yard fowls, no one has unless they're raising pigs for the market, there is no livestock and what's happened the folks have gone to work.  The women aren't home anymore.  And the men aren't home anymore.  No one is farming.  They're living in a rural area, but they're not farming, they're just, their houses are there.  They reside there.  That's about it.

 

But they go to town, they go to the factories and I think there is a growing trend in southeastern United States where we don't have, we have people living in rural areas who really aren't buying into the rural life and the farm life.  And they present a real challenge for us in our food assistance programs.  And we're beginning to look at that.  How do you reach people, how do you find out what their needs are, what their concerns are and what we're beginning to understand is we're making a lot of false assumptions about what their issues are and how we deal with them in our education intervention programs.

 

So I've been kind of digressing there because you started me thinking about what was going on.  What I was asked to talk about are the domestic food assistance programs and how the policies of those programs and some practical application and how it relates to the role of women.  I'll have to say on the onset here, I couldn't figure out to do that, all of that. 

 

We're talking about 16 programs.  I'm talking about very complex programs, multi level programs and so working in the role of women into these programs were difficult.  So I'm going to start off with this.

 

Our programs provide food assistance.  Food is served in the home.  In most homes, I know it sounds very traditional, but still in the United States, in most homes it is a female who is the household food manager.  Relates back to the female in that household and there are some other exceptions where the female or women are also key players and I'll try to point those out to you.

 

The 16 programs of the... I can do two hours talking about just the food assistance programs.  So to save you the boredom, what I have done is to put together a handout.  The handout will give in more detail the little synopsis of the programs, the level of funding and the target audience, also some of the benefits.  You will find this handout in the USDA folder in the back of the right hand side.  

 

I'd like to start by saying that what you have on the screen, the U.S. domestic food and nutrition programs is not how these programs are generally described or have been.  This is very recent, fairly recent under this current administration in fact.  These programs have begun to be identified as food and nutrition programs.  For 22 years, I've worked in the Department of Agriculture in the Food and Nutrition Service.  Always in the area of nutrition and I've always had a real gripe with our senior managers, with our policy analyst, with our decision makers because they would always say to me, Pat these are feeding programs, these aren't nutrition programs.  And so for 22 years we've been having this debate.  However, all of sudden nutrition has now taken hold in the Food and Nutrition Service.

 

It's remarkable when you think about what that means.  Because the policies of those programs are made on a day-to-day basis.  I know people say well policies are set by the government.  Well our policies our programs are created by Congress.  They're legislated, the regulations are developed within the Federal agencies, but so much of what happens on a daily basis in those programs really is policy too.  And that is very often said at some very low staff levels.  In discussion, in response to needs and response to information requests and these policies set a perception of the program. And it has been for years that we've been working to integrate nutrition into that level of policy making. 

 

And it makes a difference.  The difference is that when decisions are made about what is going to be what commodities are going to be provided in he food distribution program on Indian reservations, there is now a consideration that perhaps we don't need to be sending fig paste to the Indian reservations.  Fig paste is a concentrated sweet where we have high rates of diabetes because what is the nutritional value of this product on those Indian reservations.  That's no longer create a logger head.  It's now a discussion that is very acceptable folks are very amenable to it.  Sometimes I go this is too easy.  But it's really been a pleasure to go through this change.

 

What I want to do is to share with you a little more about these programs so that you can better understand the complexity of the food assistance programs.  The mission of the food, oh my, I actually put food and consumer service on this. 

 

The mission of this agency is to provide the children and the needy families access to more healthful diets through the 16 food assistance programs and also comprehensive nutrition education efforts.  The nutrition education component is also relatively new in these programs.  Nutrition education was primarily limited to a small segment or small area of our program and considered a nice to do.  It was not an integrated component of each of these food assistance programs.  What is beginning to happen over the past I'd say five to six years is that nutrition and nutrition education is being integrated into the programs to such an extent that they're also getting larger share of resources.  They're getting larger, they're getting more air time.  When there's discussion they're getting more consideration when the policy decisions are being made.  These programs are vast.  The largest is the Food Stamp program and its the foundation program.  It's services families.  The actual benefits provided and how much they're provided at that's talked about briefly in your handout.

 

But it's important to understand that the Food Stamp program has the largest participation.  It has the largest budget and its serves families.  So it's a foundation program because what we do know is that many families who take advantage or participate in the food assistance programs, participates in more than one program.  And often times they will be in the food stamp program and they're also be in several of the other programs.

 

Then we have the National school Lunch which serves lunches in all eligible schools.  And also we have the special supplemental nutrition program which provides vouches for women, infants and children for selected food packages to provide target nutrients.  We also have a child and adult care program which reimburses day care centers for providing meals to children and more recently adults have been added to this program where they're providing meals to adults in respite care centers. The school breakfast program which is becoming increasingly important because mothers are going to work much earlier.  Children are getting on school buses much earlier.  The school day is beginning fairly early for some children.  And what we're finding is that kids are coming to school without breakfast.  And this is a very important program that we're really pushing.  We're really working hard to get more support for the implementation of the breakfast program because we think it really makes a difference in the academic performance of the child.  And this is another area that we're doing some ground breaking work in that we use to make our appeal to the school board.  We would make our appeal to superintendent.  Now the appeal is being made to the teachers and to the families.  And they're becoming more responsive and they're moving the communities toward the implementation or more and more breakfast programs.

 

Now we have the summer food service program, which provides meals for children in out of school days.  They maybe in camps, they maybe on school provided in schools or they maybe on play grounds and recreational areas.  Then there's the emergency food assistance program which started out as actually a distribution of surplus dairy products.  It was expanded.  It's now pretty much entrenched in, now appropriated funds used to purchase foods distributed in [inaudible] programs.  There are eligibility requirements, they're generally going to the elderly and they are administered by state and local eligibility criteria.

 

Then we have nutrition assistance program for Puerto Rico which is a cash out of what use to be the food stamp program.  And that program is now cashed out in Puerto Rico.  We don't hear a lot of discussion about it.  There is not a lot of policy analysis being done.  There was a major evaluation of the cash out and then all of a sudden people stopped talking about it.  I think that certainly a lot that perhaps the public needs to know about what happened out with the cash out program.  What does it mean for the family to have the cash instead of the food stamps and some of the other programs?  But that's kind of a personal opinion there.

 

One of our other programs --The other 16 and I'm sorry to take through this tedious process, but you need to have a good appreciation for the complexity of these programs before I go on to talk about these other things. 

 

We have the nutrition program for the elderly which provides commodities to elderly feeding sites.  These are generally congregate feeding sites.  We have commodity distribution to charitable institutions where we are actually providing commodity foods to hospitals, some nursing homes if they're public facilities, even prisons.  Commodity supplemental food program provides a food package to women, infants and children it's targeted again for key nutrients.  It is very actually it's the predecessor of the WIC program which now provides vouchers.  The commodity supplemental food program has a few sites.  I believe it's about 12 or 13 sites and they're providing services to the elderly in addition to women, infants and children.

 

We have a food distribution program on Indian reservations, which is operated in lieu of participating in the food stamp program.  In the food stamp program, you get your stamps, you go into the grocery store, you purchase your food.  In the food distribution program actual commodities are provided in warehouses, you come in and you get your food package or in some cases the food packages are loaded on trucks and taken out to the reservations where they're made distribution they call tailgate distribution sites.  This is because many of the reservations are not located in close proximity to grocery stores.  And it's very difficult to get back and forth to the market. 

 

We also have special milk program which is being phased out.  It provides milk in certain day care and school operations.  We have the WIC farmer's market nutrition program, which is in fact expanding.  The farmer's market program was started as a pilot, the women participating in the WIC program, the Women Infants and Children program are given vouchers and they can take these vouchers to the farmer's market to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. 

 

 

This is a clear link between the food assistance programs and agriculture production.  And see here that this is new.  For 

many years, the Food and Nutrition Service which is the agency that administers these programs, has been spending about two thirds of the US Department of Agriculture's budget operating these programs.  However, it's always kind of set off to the side because it was non-traditional agriculture. 

 

When you talk about agriculture there is downtown and then there is park office where the food nutrition center resides.  And there's really has always been a great distinction between agriculture and farming.  Folks back at the Food Nutrition Service don't consider themselves agriculturalist or in agriculture for the most part.

 

So when the WIC farmer's market came around folks really use to make a joke about it.  They thought it was funny.  Said we're really doing this farming thing aren't we?  It has been very successful in the WIC program.  But more than that, I think it is brought again, this recognition that food is what we're about.  Fresh fruits, vegetables.  We're not really all about providing a stamp or a voucher or reimbursement for a meal that someone else serve.  But we really have to understand as a direct connection between these programs that we operate, the policies that we set in these programs and the actual food that people are consuming in their homes.   Or that the children are being served in the schools and in the day care centers or that the elderly are eating in the congregate sites. 

 

And this kind of message has to be continually put in front of the policy makers.  I think it's easy to get distracted when you are administering programs and forgetting that the services delivered in these programs really do have a significant impact on the families and the individuals they're serving.  Ok that another one of my little sides.

 

The other programs are the nutrition education and training program and the homeless children's nutrition program which again is a very small pilot program. 

 

Now, food security.  Well food security is why these programs exist.  Marianne gave a definition of food security and it is probably the official USDA definition of food security.  The one I use is a little differently.  It incorporates the traditional idea of insuring adequate food availability and offering a nutrition safety net.  It also includes the need to create social and economic conditions that empower individuals to gain access to food by earning the income to purchase food, participating in community food security activities, producing food where practical and effective and efficient use of food including gleaning and food recovery. 

 

However, I have another definition that I like to use.  And this is in addition to food security.  This is -- I refer as nutrition security.  It encompasses in addition to food security the provision of an environment that encourages and motivates the society to make food choices consistent with short and long term good health.  I think this again is that link between the food we eat and the nutritional status and the direct impact that has on our health care cost, our quality of life, the ability of our children to learn, the ability of our adults to produce to go to work free of disease of chronic disease, free of debilitating accidents and that has a direct impact on the economic condition of the family.

 

So what's our current status here in the U.S.?  Well, we live in a land of abundance.  We really do.  We are blessed.  We have wonderful access to food.  There are few places or few pockets where that's not true.  However, we have some real difficulties too.  We have malnutrition of a new sort.  The deficiency disease have been effectively eradicated.  There's only a few incidents reports and they're usually through neglect, abuse or abuse.  The diseases related to dietary excesses and imbalance are our major problems in malnutrition.  And I like to call them, I like to refer to it as malnutrition, because malnutrition means bad nutrition, poor nutrition.  Excess can create as many problems as not having enough and we'll talk about some of that and the complex problems that we have to address in trying to address the types of malnutrition that we face. 

 

We also have the less visible forms of malnutrition that's due to food insecurity and the episodic hungry periods in lives of families and individual.  A recent study showed that about 12% of approximately one hundred million U.S. households are effected by this less visible food insecurity and episodic hunger.

 

A significant number of families are in extreme poverty.  Especially those families with young children, frail elderly, homeless individuals and aids victims.  We do have some extreme nutrition and food security problems in these populations.  And we have one American in six being served by the food and nutrition assistance programs.  That's a lot of people participating in these programs.  That's one out of every six and I wanted to list those programs.  You're looking a bit amazed.

 

Well you have to look at the breath of the programs.  The scope of the programs.  The school based programs alone, children are participating in lunch.  They may not be free lunch.  They may be reduced lunch, but even children who pay full paid rates for lunch are being subsidized.  Even the full paid meal is subsidized.  So you have wide spread participation.

 

Now with this real complexity of programs spanning the United States, we also have added to complicate things the delivery system. These of federally funded programs, but they are administered through state agencies.  Then again, administered through local agencies that are implemented services delivered in the local community.  So these are direct services provided in the community.  There are a lot of layers.  There are a lot of intervening factors.  But we also know that these programs are effective.  We know that in order for them to continue to be effective, we've had to look at them in some very new ways.

 

We've made radical changes in the food assistance programs over the last ten years.  These changes have been in response to changing demographics, they've been in response to changing technology, they've been in response to emerging research about what we know about diet and health.  They've also been in response to the consumers needs to have a new type of information.  And one of the things that I think we need to continually understand is  that the consumer makes decisions on the information they have available to them.  And I think sometimes we take for granted as civil servants, public officials the level of knowledge that the local community person has about the programs that are available to them and how they operate.  And that we really have to provide a lot more information about those programs.

 

Achieving practical results in these programs requires that we continue to address them on a number of very very different fronts.  This includes economic security.  You must have the money to purchase the food.  Food access.  The food has to be accessible to you in the grocery store.  I too am a little puzzled by or concerned about what's available to us in the store.  In the United States we have in excess of a hundred and eighty thousand products in the average grocery store.  That's a lot of things to choose from.  It makes for very hard decisions about how to use your household food money. 

It presents real challenges when you have to make selections among these products.  So what does the shopper use as a basis, family preference, what are the family preferences based on?  What they've been use to eating.  When is the cycle changed?  When is new information introduced when a new preference, new taste, new foods introduced in the family.  When do you make decisions based on the nutrient content of the food rather than the convenience of being able to pop it in the microwave. So the whole thing of food access and It's not something that I've seen addressed, but perhaps in the future it will be and that is what do we do to the consumer with this abundance.  It's not that they don't have access to it, it's that they have access to so much.

 

Awareness of hunger and food insecurity because it is a problem in this country, but it's massed because of the appearance or perception that we are a country of plenty.  And I think we have to look around and understand that it is a problem and it must be addressed on all fronts and I'm really excited that our current Secretary of Agriculture has taken such an aggressive role in promoting gleaning and the recovery of food because it is a major, I believe just a major scandal that we waste so much food in this country.  And as people began to respond to what he's doing with the gleaning and food recovery, they're beginning to understand and better appreciate the growing problem that we have in this country and that's between the haves and the have nots.  The haves cannot see beyond their abundance to see that there are have nots and that they have a right and need to be addressed in this country.

 

Sustainable food systems and environment.  I believe that's certainly been addressed here in these last three days, better than I can other than to say it's also a part of practical achieving the practical results and we have not loose sight of that. That nutrition is directly related to our sustainable food systems and that yeah, we should be really concerned about the food choices that we're making.  We all know as nutritionist that fresh picked food that is eaten within a limited amount of time, from the time it's picked when it has not been stored definitely has a high in nutrient value.  There is nutrient loss when foods are shipped, cold storage, pulled out, put on the shelves and left for a couple of day, exposure to air, there is nutrient loss due to oxidation.

 

But I think that the thing that bothers me the most as a country girl is that in this country we tend to pick things before its ripe and you pay high prices for it.  It has no smell, it has no taste.  There's people in this country who don't know what a good peach taste like.  You know and I feel so sorry for them.  Everybody should have the opportunity to eat fruit fresh off the vine, eat a tomato right out of the field and understand and appreciate there is a wonderful joy in eating.  I believe eating is a joy.  We eat for pleasure as well as health.  Ok, that another one of my little backrashings.

 

Monitoring and food and water safety.  Another real issue that has to be addressed in our programs, because we do provide commodities.  We do need to be concerned.  We've had a number of scares because of products we were unaware of.  You talking about the consumer being unaware of chemicals being used on foods.  We as an agency purchase food, as a Department executive department we're purchasing foods and we were not aware of what was being sprayed on some of the products that we were buying.  So certainly there is an increasing awareness for food safety.

 

Also because food is handled so much more.  I think people -- we have to get the message out to our consumers that we're handling our food a lot more than we use to when it was locally grown, when it was produced in the home or prepared.  About, there's been a 35% increase in the number of people eating meals and the number of meals eaten out in the last five years.  That's a lot.

 

Again I use my own experience.  I go back home.  When I left home a few years ago, well it was 30 years ago, I just won't tell you how old I was when I left.  But when I left home we had one hamburger place, one fast food.  We had one McDonald's.  Now we have and I counted the last time I was there and it maybe some that I missed.  There are 35 fast food places in my little home town.  My mom is 86 years old.  The first time we went to a restaurant I was a teenager. Because she didn't believe in eating out.  Well I tell you I go home and she says where would you like to eat tonight, Chinese food, you know, the steak house, McDonald's.  She's always looking for someplace to take me instead of cooking for me, I don't like that.

 

We also have to continue to monitor our food security and our nutritional status.  Someone spoke to the need for continuing research in agriculture.  We have a continuing need to monitor.  I know for developing countries, your issues are very different.  Your kinds of nutrition problems, your food security problems are some of the easier ones to address and I mean that with the best of heart.  Because they are gross problems.  What we're dealing with here are very subtle kinds of food security, malnutrition, problems that you have to search for.  And in order to identify them and in order to monitor what's happening with them, we have to have more resources put into monitoring and surveillance.

 

So the better you get  -- I think economies and societies and cultures are kind of like this new car I just bought.  Better is not always best.  They said I have a better car.  I bought one car, I had a car 20 years.  This car was wonderful, it was big, it was roomy, it was clunkly and it would go anywhere I wanted.  I could put all the kids in there, the dog and coolers and everything and go wherever I wanted to go.  My husband could do all the repairs.  But after 20 years, the folks convinced me to that I needed to get a new car.  So I went out and I bought a new car.  The car is all electronics.  There is not a screw to turn when you raise the hood, there's not a screw to turn.  You don't know what you're looking at.  Just fuse boxes and wires and things that are connected.  So three months I buy this car and I'm embarrassed to say how much I paid for this car cause I used my retirement money.  You get this car and you're on the interstate and I'm driving along, zooming along me and my new red car.  It shuts down.  Lights went out, dash board went out, the entire electronics system shut down.  Well, you know, I guess I had refused to connect the telephone that came with the car, because I said I don't need a telephone.  All these years I've never had a telephone, a portable phone on the road.  I don't need one, I got a new car.  I'm not going to have problems with this new car.  Well me and new car and no telephone, a dead cellular phone in this new car sat there on the highway for three hours to get towed away.

 

What does that mean?  Well we're changing, our technology is changing.