Food Activist john robbins and author michael pollan speak at a public event called, “Every Body Eats,” about topics including Prop 37, the election and the globalized food system. Photo by Mikaela Todd

American energy independence, rising health-care costs, environmental degradation and national security. What do all these things have in common?

A troubled relationship with the food we eat and how it’s grown, at least according to best-selling author, veteran food journalist and sustainability spokesman Michael Pollan. Pollan addressed a sold-out crowd at Santa Cruz High School on Oct. 25 as the featured speaker in a panel discussion on food and its future.

Titled “Every Body Eats,” the discussion was sponsored by Slowcoast and Sustainable Santa Cruz with all proceeds going to the Homeless Garden Project (HGP), a local nonprofit.

In addition to Pollan, speakers included: Jamie Smith, manager of Food Services and Nutrition for Santa Cruz’s public schools, Darrie Ganzhorn, director of the HGP, Randall Grahm, owner of Bonny Doon Vineyards, Jim Cochran, owner and founder of Swanton Berry Farm, and Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist. The event was moderated by food activist John Robbins, author of “Diet For a New America.”

The night’s first topic was Proposition 37, the controversial ballot initiative that would implement mandatory labeling on all food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMO) in California.

“I think it’s a real moment of truth for the food movement,” Pollan said. “Up until now we’ve been voting with our forks, and that’s great, but it’s not the same as voting with our votes. And this is a chance to do just that.”

Pollan said even though the level of public interest in food related issues has never been higher — citing the recent surge in farmer’s markets and the organic craze — those issues still command very little respect in Washington D.C. Although President Obama quoted an article Pollan wrote describing the links between food, healthcare, energy and the environment in a speech, Pollan said the President “still hasn’t decided the time is right to invest political capital in these issues.”

Pollan said Prop 37 could change that.

“This is an opportunity to demonstrate that there are actually votes behind this movement,” Pollan said. “This is our chance to make him do it.”

Pollan and Robbins both acknowledged that the fate of the proposition is far from certain. A recent poll showed only 44 percent of California voters support the measure while 42 percent oppose it, a far cry from the 2–1 margin it enjoyed as recently as September. At the heart of that change is an “advertising blitz,” according to the the LA times, against the proposition by its detractors. So far the “No on 37” campaign has outspent Prop 37’s supporters $41 million to $7 million.

“The food industry understands what’s at stake here, that’s why they’re spending a million dollars a day against it,” Pollan said. “What’s at stake is that the public wants to have a say in how their food is produced.”

The panelists also discussed what they see as the broad shortcomings of the U.S. industrial agriculture system and its consequences.

Pollan began his critique with the vast farms specializing in single crops that form the backbone of the industrial agricultural system, a recent development that he views as a long-term challenge to the stability of the system.

“Instead of placing one big bet with regards to how our food is grown, we need to make lots of smaller bets,” Pollan said. “There’s a resilience in diversity, and currently that’s being undermined.”

Robbins emphasized the inequity of distribution within the globalized food system, noting that roughly one billion people worldwide are underfed while another one billion are overweight.

“So there’s this kind of macabre mirror image, a billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking about a tragedy of epic proportions,” Robbins said. “The food on our plates ends up touching all these different areas of our lives.”

Pollan said the next president could take a major step toward addressing each of these issues by shifting government support away from industrial agriculture and toward local, sustainable alternatives.

Use less machinery, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides in our agriculture, Pollan said, and the U.S. could significantly decrease its dependence on oil. Pollan added that the U.S. agricultural system currently uses more fossil fuel than any sector of the economy other than cars.

By promoting a healthier diet centered around fresh produce and removing subsidies that artificially deflate the price of processed food, Pollan said the U.S. could make progress in combating health care costs, the bulk of which are caused by preventable diseases linked to diet and lifestyle.

“It’s a deeply dysfunctional system at the moment,” Pollan said. “There are other ways to do it and that’s what we’re trying to build.”

Pollan said although the government can provide important incentives for moving the U.S. in the direction he described, in the end the task will ultimately fall upon the shoulders of the next generation.

Jamie Smith, manager of Food Services and Nutrition for Santa Cruz city schools, said he is already hopeful change is taking root.

Since being hired in 2009 Smith has eliminated processed foods from the cafeterias and switched them to cooking from scratch, and has since witnessed an upsurge of interest among students in cooking and growing food.

“Getting away from the processed foods was the easy part,” Smith said. “Now we’re on the next step, which is educating our kids about the food they eat.”

Photo Courtesy of Hai Vo.

Strawberries may not come to mind when one thinks of justice, but this year’s second annual Strawberry and Justice Festival is intended to connect issues surrounding the delicious berry to larger issues of agricultural production, labor and pesticide application.

The event is entirely student-directed and will take place from 4-7 p.m. at the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) farm on May 17. The festival is open to the public and all activities will be free of charge.

Event organizers hope to engage students with issues not only involving strawberry production, but agricultural justice in general.

“The focus is to take a largely celebrated spring fruit, strawberries, and talk about issues of production that are involved but invisible to the consumer at the grocery store,” said Aliesha Balde, UC Santa Cruz Food Systems Working Group (FSWG) co-coordinator and one of the event’s organizers.

The Strawberry and Justice Festival is hosted by the CASFS and FSWG. Funding for the event was provided by the Sustainable Food, Health and Wellness Initiative, which is a university-wide measure that funds various undergraduate projects to make such events free for students. Through the festival, organizers are hoping to create a community space for students to interact in a panel concerning food, justice and agricultural production.

The event will feature a panel discussing safer alternatives to strawberry production as well as a recent ban on methyl iodide, a toxic pesticide used in strawberry agriculture. Other activities will include fresh organic berry tasting, interactive tabling and an art and mural expression zone, in addition to addressing themes of labor, wage and workers’ ability to provide for their families. A live performance by local band Wooster will also begin at 5:30 p.m.

“We hope our activity will help make this social justice issue come to life for festival guests, since it is difficult to fully comprehend what farm labor is like, being that we are all removed from where our food comes from,” said festival coordinator Alexandra Villegas, who also serves as the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Intern for Dining and co-chair for the FSWG. “We have the luxury of being able to go to the farmer’s market or grocery store to buy our food, which makes it easy not to think about the hard work that goes into producing and harvest the food we eat.”

In addition to CASFS and FSWG, the festival is partnered with the Student Environmental Center (SEC), UC Santa Cruz Dining, Education for Sustainable Living Program, Sustainability Office of UCSC and the Science & Justice Working Group. In past years, the apprenticeship program at CASFS ran the event, but the FSWG has recently started playing a more active role in organizing it.

“Historically, the event has been a celebration of berries, the springtime, and serves as a community space for people to connect and learn about agriculture,” said Tim Galarneau, community coordinator for the Central Coast School Food Alliance and food systems education and research program specialist for CASFS.

After the event ends at 7 p.m., students are encouraged to attend a discussion concerning food waste. The discussion will take place from 7:30-9:30 p.m. in Social Sciences 1, Room 110. Guest speaker Jonathan Bloom, author of “American Wasteland,” will discuss the reasons why Americans waste food and ways we can reduce food waste.

The Strawberry and Justice Festival brings together many organizations for a chance to converse and connect themes of agricultural labor and justice, all while also enjoying live music and student-made, organic berry dishes.

“We’ll have opportunities to better connect and understand issues of labor, issues of pesticide application and production as well as challenges of farming, marketing and consumption,” Galarneau said. “It definitely goes beyond what choices are best in buying to what are the bigger problems and how can we in our everyday way of living be more mindful and supportive of a different vision in our food system and what will it take us to get there.”

All in all, festival organizers hope the event will stimulate learning and create a fun and refreshing environment for students to become educated and engaged in agricultural and labor issues.

“I believe that educating people on these issues and increasing general awareness,” Balde said, “is a form of pursuing justice in itself.”

The Salinas-based organization Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association offers a six-month training program for new farmers. ALBA focuses on organic farming methods and subsidizes costs for farmers starting out. Photo by Susan Sun.

Standing under a small canopy, two women sell fresh organic produce directly from their farmland in Aromas, half an hour from Santa Cruz.

After recently completing a six-month training program at the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) in Salinas, the two have been able to make a smooth move into the world of organic farming.

ALBA plays host to the Farm Training and Research Center the two women participated in. It serves as an organic farming training center that provides educational opportunities for people to start farms as small businesses.

Karina Canto, a recent graduate of the ALBA training program, told about her experience with the program.

“My English is no good, but I can speak a little bit,” Canto said. “I started this business after starting this program and to me it was easy to make the transition.”

Unlike other farmers’ training programs, ALBA doesn’t only offer training but also offers land, access to water, and access to equipment. Typically, these costs excede the budget of start-up farmers, making it very hard for farmers to start up a new business.

Food systems program manager Deborah Yashar said the progam’s intention is to provide more opportunities for those interested in owning a farm.

“We’re reaching out to the people who have experienced working the land, but have never had the opportunity to actually own their own farm,” Yashar said.

ALBA offers a six-month educational program, available in both Spanish and English, that covers all topics related to what it takes to start a farming business. At the end of the course, the students graduate and they complete a farming business plan.

Executive director Brett Malone said that ALBA reaches out to immigrant farmers, Latino farm workers and families with limited resources. The tuition fee — which is based on income — ranges from $250 to $2500.

Grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and from foundations are used to financially support the educational program.

“We want to allow low-income families an opportunity of economic advancement, a chance to support themselves and their family,” Yasher said. “We’re an economic opportunity organization as well as an educational organization, teaching people how to take care of the land and farm organically using sustainable practices.”

What makes it extra difficult for the farmers is that in order to keep ALBA’s land certified organic, farmers have to comply with many requirements regulated by the USDA.

“It’s hard,” Canto said. “If you see the weeds in the land, you can’t use the herbicides. It’s just with hands or with tools. It’s a lot of physical work. The weeds grow so fast, and we have to hand pick the weeds because we’re not using herbicides.”

ALBA’s local certified agency is CCOF, California Certified Organic Farmers. One of the basic tenets of organic agriculture is the building and maintaining of soil fertility. Certifiers look at crop rotations and types of inputs used on the soil.

Yasher explained that the main difference between organic farming and conventional farming is conventional farming relies heavily on chemical inputs to manage issues like soil fertility, pests, and weeds, whereas organic farming finds natural solutions to control those problems. For example, organic farmers will use insects that eat the pests instead of using a chemical poison. They rely upon nature’s own controls so pests and weeds do not get out of hand.

There are certain pesticides and herbicides that are accepted as part of organic management, but organic inputs cannot be synthetic and they are not toxic like conventional inputs are.

“[Organic farming] requires an understanding of ecology and natural systems,” Yasher said, “and these farmers are really scientists, to a certain degree.”

Proponents of organic farming cite several negative repercussions for chemical usage in farming to support sythetic-free herbicide and pesticide use. Hash chemicals impact all the plant and animal life that on that land and the farm workers who are applying them, as well as the consumers who buy foods with pesticide residue.

Luckily for farmers enrolled in ALBA’s training program, the organization provides technical assistance with pest management and organic certification. For farmers who are just starting out, ALBA teaches the new farmers how the organic certification process works. The new farmers maintain their own paperwork, supported by ALBA. During this three-year “incubation period,” ALBA’s involvement provides physical and moral support. This allows the new farmers time to become familiarized with how that process works before they have to go into it on their own.

“The idea of the incubator is that these farmers are prepared once the incubation period ends to do this on their own,” Malone said. “We try to be along with them every step of the way because we want to give them an opportunity to sort of catch up first.”