The animosity of the comfortable

I really need to stop reading the comments section after articles in the Cap Times and WSJ. More often than not, they're filled with the most ridiculously awful crap--even regarding stories that most would consider unimpeachable.

For instance, the Cap Times currently has a piece up about an Allied neighborhood activist who's working to organize shuttle buses to take residents grocery shopping. This is in response to the looming loss of the Cub Foods that currently serves the area.

This guy, Mike Bodden, has taken the selfless initiative to see what can be done to help those people without access to a car or bus (for whatever reason) get to a grocery store. He's running this operation out of a local food pantry that's sponsored by a group of churches.

Bodden said he planned to charge a small fee to ride the grocery shuttle, but it would not cover the estimated $200 weekly cost of providing the transportation.

The service would operate out of the Boys and Girls Club, 4619 Jenewein Road, where the food pantry is located.

"Any good souls who would like to help support this, it would be appreciated," he said. "Maybe some business would like to take it on."

Seems straight forward enough, right? Not according to some of the generous souls in the comments section, from whom we get such gems as "Has anyone ever considered giving these leakers a ride to a 'job'? Naw, not the likes of The Capital Times, wouldn't want to hurt their feelimgs [sic]. What a bunch of nonsense," and "Yeah, this is a joke. I like how they're 'operating' out of the Boys and Girls Club. Does the B & G Club know that? Do they have insurance for something like that? What happens when someone gets hurt on the bus or in a car accident? And the 'maybe some businesses would like to take it on' comment?!? Really? Yeah, nobody wants that bus pulling up to their business, up to and including Woodman's."

Can you feel the love?

Someone else goes on to rail against the "use of taxpayer money" to fund projects like this, apparently completely missing the part where this is being paid for by donations and a small rider fee. Are people really so eager to shit on needed community service projects that their brains just shut down, overlooking the facts of the matter entirely and opting instead to just lash out?

These kinds of comments, I think, speak volumes about the misperceptions and misplaced animosity that exist in our community regarding the working class and impoverished among us. All of these cries to "pull yourself up by your own damn bootstraps" completely miss the part where many of these people simply don't have any bootstraps to begin with. It behooves us, as those fortunate enough to have been given better opportunities in life, to do what we can to see that everyone gets the same chance to do well for themselves.

And before anyone jumps down my throat, allow me to point out that there's a big (and incredibly important) difference between creating a situation where people can mooch off the system and your good graces without giving anything back or taking some responsibility for themselves, and creating a situation where everyone has the same opportunities but then must take it upon themselves to take advantage of them and work toward something better.

Currently, the latter and better situation is not the case. And making sure that people have access to food is the least we can do to right that. If you can't see that, it's high time you turned your brain back on and really started learning about your community--all of it.

The new Victory Garden

The movement to convince the Obamas to plant an organic Victory Garden on the White House grounds is growing, and a Madison-area farmer has been nominated for the theoretical position of official White House Farmer by one of the groups pushing the notion.

I am extremely excited by this idea (it has come up before), and sincerely hope the new First Family will take up the cause. Having an organic garden on the premises would not only provide fresh produce to the White House and, potentially, surrounding food pantries, but also serve as a powerful example to the rest of the country.

During World War II, the White House planted a Victory Garden and encouraged citizens to do the same, all as part of helping the country to attain a sense of food security during a time of crisis.

Now we're all faced with a growing threat to our our food supplies, both in terms of quality and availability. In accordance with the "teach a man to fish" line of thinking, I think encouraging and supporting community agriculture projects is one of the more important movements of the day. So I'm signing petitions and raising my voice and hoping that our new president heeds the call.

You can learn more and lend your support to the cause at the following websites: Eat the View, White House Farmer, and TheWhoFarm. Green thumbs for all!

New 'food desert' forms on south side

Cub Foods just announced the closure of its store at 4716 Verona Road, all part of corporate downsizing in response to the current recession.

Normally, I admit that this sort of announcement wouldn't necessarily catch my attention. I used to give rides to residents in that area when I drove for Women's Transit Authority, though, and I remember that a lot of the people that relied on the store also didn't own cars. I saw many women walking their grocery carts across busy Verona road to get from their homes over in the Allied Drive neighborhood to Cub. We also provided rides for people who needed to make a trip to the grocery store and couldn't walk it.

The loss of that store leaves a pretty big hole in the food landscape for those people who live in the area. It will be especially hard, I imagine, for those still without easy access to transportation.

I'm not placing all of the blame on the decision-makers at Cub Foods. They're a business and have to make choices that will help keep the business afloat in difficult economic times. But I can't help but wonder what will happen with the people that relied on the Verona Road store for their groceries? Will they be able to get to the more outlying stores? Will a new grocery go in where Cub once was?

And while I recognize that it's usually just a simple, hard matter of following the money, it's difficult to see something like this happen when we have other, more affluent neighborhoods that enjoy two or even three grocery stores within a small area.

It's something well worth thinking about as a city when we talk about how best to serve all of our citizens.

The future of food

I highly, highly recommend reading an article recently published in the New York Times by Michael Pollan, written as a letter to the next president, all about moving America toward a better, more secure food future.

Seriously, read the whole thing.

Pollan has so many good suggestions for moving away from monocultures and toward more sustainable, but still large-scale food production techniques: "sun-based regional agriculture", he calls it. Some of the proposals are so simple that you'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to implement them. Even the trickier ones still make perfect sense.

This should be required reading for everyone, especially the next president.

Local matters now more than ever

I just read this piece in the Mail Tribune (a paper out of southern Oregon) about how farmer's markets are suffering because of higher fuel prices. It's an interesting read, and makes mention of our own Dane County market, but what struck me the most was the final quote in the article, attributed to one NYC vendor: "Local soon will not be that important."

My knee-jerk reaction to such a notion is "YOU'RE WRONG! TAKE IT BACK RIGHT NOW!" But then, I'm trying to put my petulance aside and really look at the issue. The conclusion I've come to, though, is the same--local does matter, now more than ever, and it is precisely because of the skyrocketing cost of fuel (and environmental concerns, and the so-called obesity epidemic, etc. etc.).

The contention of the article is that higher oil costs, and the associated greater cost of supplies for smaller farmers, is forcing them to raise their prices. Large chain grocery stores, however, can better absorb the cost increases without passing it on to customers quite as much. Evidence points to this being the case, so I'm not arguing against this point.

It shouldn't be like that, though. Food grown and prepared locally tends to be fresher, tastier, and more sustainably grown. Plus, you're truly supporting family farmers instead of giant corporate operations. As a nation, we pay a lot of lip service to these family farmers and how important they are to our way of life, but we don't seem to do much to actually support them.

And since locally produced food has to travel a lot less to reach our tables, it should logically follow that it be somewhat cheaper. So then, why isn't it?

Farm subsidies might have something to do with it. Most of the money and benefits of these subsidies goes toward the big operations, most of whom don't really need the help. Originally enacted to help struggling family farmers during the Depression, the subsidies now primarily game the system in favor of large agribusinesses and Fortune 500 companies. That's certainly no good. The trick, of course, is that many of the arguments against the subsidy system stem from a belief that the free market will right all wrongs. What's left out, however, is the effect it has on local farmers in various, less developed countries around the world.

It's a fine balance. On the one hand, we want to make sure that people all over the world have reliable and affordable access to healthy food. Looking at the current state of world food prices (crazy high), it's easy to see how one might jump to the conclusion that the best remedy for the problem is to make it easier to import produce from abroad at cheaper prices. I won't argue that that's completely wrong, especially considering the poor environmental conditions of certain parts of the world (both man-made and as a result of natural disasters). It's important to have a global system of food production and distribution to aid people and places that are, for one reason or another, unable to support themselves at any given time.

But shouldn't our main focus be on making sure that most places can, in fact, support their local populations? It's the old adage: don't give away fish, teach them how to do the fishing. Easing farm subsidies shouldn't mean glutting foreign markets with goods and essentially forcing local, smaller producers out of the game. This seems especially important now with the cost of fuel growing ever-higher. Food security should take just as much precedence as energy security, in that perhaps we ought to be focusing on making sure populations have access to more domestically, locally produced goods. This reduces the cost of transporting the food, the risk of accidentally importing a piggybacking pest, and increases the likelihood that people will be able to sustain themselves in the event of catastrophes elsewhere in the world.

If we subsidize anyone, shouldn't it be the local, smaller farmers and producers? After all, they tend to be the ones at the forefront of innovative and more earth-friendly growing techniques. And shouldn't they be allowed to grow crops based on both the demands of their local markets and the capabilities of their local environments? This would have the positive effect of providing affordable, nutritional, and more sustainably grown food--and of helping to empower local communities who would be able to take a larger stake in their own well-being.