People Putting Food First #116

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--Action Alert: Contact Gov. Schwarzenegger about the 4th heat stroke death in California farm fields this summer at http://www.foodfirst.org/en/actionalerts
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1. Oakland Food Policy Council Launched
2. Rethinking Biodiesel in Swaziland
3. Changing Local Food Access, One Corner Store at a Time

1. Oakland Food Policy Council Launched

Food First, the City of Oakland, CA USA and local food activists have launched the Oakland Food Policy Council. This innovative council will engage with a variety of local stakeholders including the government, community based organizations, and the private sector in Oakland to advance a sustainable food system and economic development within the city.

Goals of the council include:
• increasing food security
• building greater public health
• supporting local agriculture
• promoting energy efficiency
• reducing energy consumption
• protecting environmental resources
• promoting a “closed-loop” food system
• promoting local economic development
• increasing public “food literacy

The efforts of the Oakland Food Policy Council will bring us closer to a sustainable, healthy, food sovereign community. The council is currently accepting applications for a dynamic, self-directed professional to launch and coordinate the council during its inaugural year. Please visit: http://www.foodfirst.org for the complete job description.

2. Rethinking Biodiesel in Swaziland

Yonge Nawe (“You too must conserve”) is a public interest environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) that campaigns on issues of sustainable development. It has been instrumental in creating a moratorium on D1 Oil’s jatropha biodiesel plantations in Swaziland.

The South African Department of Agriculture currently classifies jatropha, a non-edible oil seed plant, as an invasive tree. In September 2006 D1 Oils, which is headquartered in London, signed an agreement to plant 20,000 hectares of the plant in Swaziland for biodiesel production, with a possible 50,000 additional hectares to follow. This total would represent about four percent of the entire country. At the time of the agreement there was great fanfare—with rock stars and luminaries trumpeting the economic benefits for the perennially drought-stricken county. D1 oils promoted jatropha through films, posters, leaflets and pictures touting the benefits.

Currently 60 percent of Swaziland’s population relies on food aid. The country needs to produce food rather than using their land for non-food exports. Thuli Makama, Yonge Nawe’s director, asks “How long will it be before rural people are being moved off their land to make way for these [jatropha] plantations? … We agree that they have a potential to give a badly needed boost to agriculture, to earn foreign exchange and reduce dependency on oil for the poorest countries, but the potential for environmental and social damage are just as great.”

Swaziland has seen a wave of development in recent years and has tried to promote sustainable development by requiring Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for projects such as this. However D1 did not perform an EIA. Following a Yonge Nawe publicity campaign, farmer protests, and press coverage; Swaziland’s Prime Minister, Themba Dlamini got involved. The Swaziland Environment Authority (SEA) has since ordered D1 to suspend jatropha planting pending an EIA. Dlamini said “We’ve always thought they had a nursery at Hluti in the Shiselweni region, but recently heard the company was now expanding its operations. That’s why we’ve asked them to conduct the EIA so as to ascertain what impact this will have environmentally and nationally.” Stay tuned.

For further information contact Yonge Nawe Environmental Action Group:
http://www.yongenawe.com/

3. Changing Local Food Access, One Corner Store at a Time

As any resident or visitor to West Oakland, California can attest to, the lack of full-service grocery stores in the area is alarming. With one supermarket to serve over 25,000 residents, access to fresh and affordable produce is, for some, a luxury. As Oakland’s People’s Grocery states, residents of West Oakland who live on limited incomes “face severe food insecurity due to a lack of access to healthful, affordable, fresh, and culturally appropriate foods.”

Luckily for people in West Oakland, as well as those living in areas like it around the country, there has been recognition of this severe inequality. Spearheaded by the Community Food Security Coalition here in California, the Healthy Corner Stores Network seeks to address this problem. Acknowledging the fact that a majority of residents in low-income communities get their food items from neighborhood corner stores, the HCSN serves as a hub for information and a working group for those who want their local stores to stock more fresh produce and fewer processed items.

Newsletters, mailing lists, and conference calls keep participants in touch, and aware of programs around the country. One such program, undertaken with financial support from the HCSN, allowed Los Angeles-based Accelerated School to take its youth-based program to the next level. The school involved local youth in asking a particular store owner to change the makeup of items available, to reflect the need for more healthy foods. According to Kai Siedenburg, program director with the Community Food Security Coalition, other similar stores in that Los Angeles neighborhood are now interested in joining Accelerated School’s program, after seeing the improved performance of their competitor.

While the HCSN is a starting point for activists and those interested in sharing their ideas and successes, Siedenburg is aware that limited funding is preventing expansion of their impact to a national level. Government support for such initiatives varies by state, while the federal government is notoriously loathe involving itself in such “local” issues, despite the fact that this seems to be a problem plaguing communities across the country. Instead, Siedenburg advocates starting from a well-organized community base. “Produce is hard for store owners to make feasible all the time, logistically, and sometimes the infrastructure is not always there,” Siedenburg says. “People must also be willing to promote healthy stores in the community, to make store owners realize that the support is there.” She pointed to a recent change in national Women, Infants and Children (WIC) policy that allowed produce, tofu and soy milk to be covered under the government-assistance program for the first time. This, she said, could provide the needed policy incentive for some stores to change their offerings, and would at least help those on WIC support to buy healthier foods.

To find out more about the Healthy Corner Stores Network, and how you can become a participant, visit: http://www.healthycornerstores.org/index.php
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This edition of People Putting Food First was compiled by interns, Trisha Chakrabarti and Heidi Connor and Associate, Rick Jonasse. If you have stories, questions or feedback, please contact: info [at] foodfirst.org. To subscribe to this People Putting Food First e-newsletter go to www.foodfirst.org or simply hit reply and type the word subscribe in the subject line.

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