GOP proposes cuts to domestic, foreign food aid
(AP) – 18 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are targeting domestic nutrition programs and international food assistance as they try to control spending in next year's budget.
In a bill released Monday, Republicans proposed cutting $832 million — or 12 percent — from this year's budget for the federal nutrition program that provides food for low-income mothers and children. The 2012 budget proposal for food and farm programs also includes a decrease of almost $457 million, or 31 percent, from an international food assistance program that provides emergency aid and agricultural development dollars to poor countries.
The legislation would provide $71 billion for food stamps, $2 billion less than the Obama administration projected would be necessary for next year.
Republicans who wrote the bill said the cuts in domestic food programs are taken from excess dollars in those accounts, and participants won't see a decrease in services.
Domestic nutrition programs are mined for dollars in tight budget times because they often have extra money sitting in their accounts. Money is allocated for the programs based on projections of need and food costs, and those needs are sometimes overestimated.
Hunger advocates have warned against stripping those programs of those reserves. Two analysts from the liberal research and advocacy group Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Zoe Neuberger and Robert Greenstein, said Monday that the cuts could mean turning away as many as 475,000 people from the Women, Infants and Children program if food prices continue to rise.
Almost 9 million low-income mothers and children participate in the WIC program, which provides food, health care referrals and nutrition education.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said the GOP budget "rolls back years of progress."
"This budget threatens the health and security of American families, while asking the most of low-income seniors and the most vulnerable among us," she said.
The bill would cut almost 12 percent of the Food and Drug Administration's $2.5 billion budget, with fees charging industry for regulation potentially making up some of that difference. The legislation also cuts rural development programs, rural housing programs and agricultural research programs administered by the Agriculture Department.
Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee, said the cuts would "root out waste and duplication."
"Where they have strayed from their core mission, we rein in agencies so they may better focus on the responsibilities for which they are intended," Kingston said.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Imagining Detroit
By MARK BITTMAN, NYTimes, May 17, 2011
Detroit was once called the Paris of the West, but at this point it’s more reminiscent of Venice. Like Venice, its demise has been imminent for some time, as crucial businesses and huge chunks of the population flee.
And, like Venice, it has a singular look. Not everyone will find Detroit beautiful, but with its wide, often empty boulevards, its abandoned, ghost-like train station and high-rises, its semi-deserted neighborhoods and its once-celebrated downtown now jumbled by shuttered storefronts — and the hideous Renaissance Center — it creates a sense of disbelief bordering on fantasy. It’s either a vision of the future or, like Venice, an impossibly strange anomaly, its best days over.
But after spending some time here, I saw an alternative view of Detroit: a model for self-reliance and growth. Because while the lifeblood of Venice comes from outsiders, Detroit residents are looking within. They’d welcome help, but they’re not counting on it. Rather, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, they’re turning from seeing things as they are and asking, “Why?” to dreaming how they might be and wondering, “Why not?”
Food is central. Justice, security, a sense of community, and more intelligent land use have become integral to the food system. Here, local food isn’t just hip, it’s a unifying factor not only among African-Americans and whites but between them. Food is an issue on which it seems everyone can agree, and this is a lesson for all of us.
“The idea,” says Malik Yakini, a school principal who runs the two-acre D-Town Farm, “is to help black people stand up, to demonstrate that creating reality is not the exclusive domain of white people — without pointing fingers at white people.” The farm, located in Rouge Park — the city’s biggest — will soon double in size.
Yakini, the chairman of the Detroit Food Policy Council, which is holding its first conference this week, gave me a tour on the eve of spring planting while a dozen African-American volunteers steadily raked a sizable plot. “The farm can empower, drive the economy, reduce our carbon footprint and give us better food,” he said. “And we’re influencing young white people too, because they can see that.”
And how. During the 48 hours I spent in Detroit, I met enthusiastic black, white and Asian people, from age 10 to over 60, almost all of whom agreed that food is the key to the new Detroit.
I was driven around the city by Dan Carmody, director of the 120-year-old Eastern Market, whose huge sheds are crammed with vendors on Saturdays, when as many as 50,000 shoppers buy everything from Grown in Detroit vegetables to Michigan asparagus to flats of flowers to hydroponic tomatoes. In other words, a typical big-city covered market mash-up.
But if the market is familiar, the rest of Detroit is anything but. Read the paper, and you see a wasted landscape; go there, and you see the sprouts emerging from the soil.
Imagine blocks that once boasted 30 houses, now with three; imagine hundreds of such blocks. Imagine the green space created by the city’s heartbreaking but intelligent policy of removing burnt-out or fallen-down houses. Now look at the corner of one such street, where a young man who has used the city’s “adopt-a-lot” program (it costs nothing) to establish an orchard, a garden and a would-be community center on three lots, one with a standing house. (The land, like many of the gardens, belongs to the city and is “leased” for a year at a time. But no one seems especially concerned about the city repossessing.) A young man who adopts eight lots and has bought another three has an operation that grows every year and trains eager young people. A Capuchin monastery operates gardens spanning 24 lots, five of which they own; at one of them, I meet Patrick Crouch, who’s supervising 10 gardeners-in-training and reminds me that “community gardens are not just about ‘gardens’ but ‘community.’”
The gardens are everywhere, and you almost can’t drive anywhere without seeing one — a corporation named Compuware is establishing one downtown — but it goes beyond that. Carmody has plans to expand, modernize and re-unify the Public Market, which was split in half by a freeway in the heyday of urban renewal. Gary Wozniak, whom I meet over breakfast at the Russell Street Deli and who runs a program for recovering addicts, has plans to start an indoor tilapia and shrimp farm near the market, using a combination of investment money, loans and grants.
Back in the neighborhoods, I talk with Lisa Johanson, who, with the aid of a church group, started Peaches and Greens, a small fruit and vegetable store in a neighborhood that boasts 23 liquor stores and one grocery. Daily, Peaches and Greens sends out a truck that sells to residents in a two-mile radius, providing produce to a neighborhood in which only half the households own cars. The truck also sells wholesale to five of the liquor stores.
And so on. Over good, old-fashioned lasagne at Giovanni’s, Betti Wiggins, who runs the food services department for the public school system, talks about using more and more local food; Phil Jones, a chef who’s on the Food Policy Council, talks about training kids to cook; Mike Score talks about plans for greening 300 acres, including forests, tree farms, a demonstration center and gardens.
As Jackie Victor, co-owner of the Avalon Bakery, an unofficial meeting place for the Detroit food movement, says to me, “Imagine a city, rebuilt block by block, with a gorgeous riverfront, world class museums and fantastic local food. Everyone who wants one has a quarter-acre garden, and every kid lives within bike distance of a farm.”
Imagine. If the journey is as important as the destination, Detroit is already succeeding. And we can all learn from what seems to be the city’s unofficial slogan: “We can do better than this.”
Detroit was once called the Paris of the West, but at this point it’s more reminiscent of Venice. Like Venice, its demise has been imminent for some time, as crucial businesses and huge chunks of the population flee.
And, like Venice, it has a singular look. Not everyone will find Detroit beautiful, but with its wide, often empty boulevards, its abandoned, ghost-like train station and high-rises, its semi-deserted neighborhoods and its once-celebrated downtown now jumbled by shuttered storefronts — and the hideous Renaissance Center — it creates a sense of disbelief bordering on fantasy. It’s either a vision of the future or, like Venice, an impossibly strange anomaly, its best days over.
But after spending some time here, I saw an alternative view of Detroit: a model for self-reliance and growth. Because while the lifeblood of Venice comes from outsiders, Detroit residents are looking within. They’d welcome help, but they’re not counting on it. Rather, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, they’re turning from seeing things as they are and asking, “Why?” to dreaming how they might be and wondering, “Why not?”
Food is central. Justice, security, a sense of community, and more intelligent land use have become integral to the food system. Here, local food isn’t just hip, it’s a unifying factor not only among African-Americans and whites but between them. Food is an issue on which it seems everyone can agree, and this is a lesson for all of us.
“The idea,” says Malik Yakini, a school principal who runs the two-acre D-Town Farm, “is to help black people stand up, to demonstrate that creating reality is not the exclusive domain of white people — without pointing fingers at white people.” The farm, located in Rouge Park — the city’s biggest — will soon double in size.
Yakini, the chairman of the Detroit Food Policy Council, which is holding its first conference this week, gave me a tour on the eve of spring planting while a dozen African-American volunteers steadily raked a sizable plot. “The farm can empower, drive the economy, reduce our carbon footprint and give us better food,” he said. “And we’re influencing young white people too, because they can see that.”
And how. During the 48 hours I spent in Detroit, I met enthusiastic black, white and Asian people, from age 10 to over 60, almost all of whom agreed that food is the key to the new Detroit.
I was driven around the city by Dan Carmody, director of the 120-year-old Eastern Market, whose huge sheds are crammed with vendors on Saturdays, when as many as 50,000 shoppers buy everything from Grown in Detroit vegetables to Michigan asparagus to flats of flowers to hydroponic tomatoes. In other words, a typical big-city covered market mash-up.
But if the market is familiar, the rest of Detroit is anything but. Read the paper, and you see a wasted landscape; go there, and you see the sprouts emerging from the soil.
Imagine blocks that once boasted 30 houses, now with three; imagine hundreds of such blocks. Imagine the green space created by the city’s heartbreaking but intelligent policy of removing burnt-out or fallen-down houses. Now look at the corner of one such street, where a young man who has used the city’s “adopt-a-lot” program (it costs nothing) to establish an orchard, a garden and a would-be community center on three lots, one with a standing house. (The land, like many of the gardens, belongs to the city and is “leased” for a year at a time. But no one seems especially concerned about the city repossessing.) A young man who adopts eight lots and has bought another three has an operation that grows every year and trains eager young people. A Capuchin monastery operates gardens spanning 24 lots, five of which they own; at one of them, I meet Patrick Crouch, who’s supervising 10 gardeners-in-training and reminds me that “community gardens are not just about ‘gardens’ but ‘community.’”
The gardens are everywhere, and you almost can’t drive anywhere without seeing one — a corporation named Compuware is establishing one downtown — but it goes beyond that. Carmody has plans to expand, modernize and re-unify the Public Market, which was split in half by a freeway in the heyday of urban renewal. Gary Wozniak, whom I meet over breakfast at the Russell Street Deli and who runs a program for recovering addicts, has plans to start an indoor tilapia and shrimp farm near the market, using a combination of investment money, loans and grants.
Back in the neighborhoods, I talk with Lisa Johanson, who, with the aid of a church group, started Peaches and Greens, a small fruit and vegetable store in a neighborhood that boasts 23 liquor stores and one grocery. Daily, Peaches and Greens sends out a truck that sells to residents in a two-mile radius, providing produce to a neighborhood in which only half the households own cars. The truck also sells wholesale to five of the liquor stores.
And so on. Over good, old-fashioned lasagne at Giovanni’s, Betti Wiggins, who runs the food services department for the public school system, talks about using more and more local food; Phil Jones, a chef who’s on the Food Policy Council, talks about training kids to cook; Mike Score talks about plans for greening 300 acres, including forests, tree farms, a demonstration center and gardens.
As Jackie Victor, co-owner of the Avalon Bakery, an unofficial meeting place for the Detroit food movement, says to me, “Imagine a city, rebuilt block by block, with a gorgeous riverfront, world class museums and fantastic local food. Everyone who wants one has a quarter-acre garden, and every kid lives within bike distance of a farm.”
Imagine. If the journey is as important as the destination, Detroit is already succeeding. And we can all learn from what seems to be the city’s unofficial slogan: “We can do better than this.”
Monday, May 16, 2011
Budget Presents Opportunities for U.S. Farmers
By Andrea Hayley, Epoch Times Staff Created: May 11, 2011 Last Updated: May 11, 2011
A historical confluence of forces has turned agriculture in America into a complicated and highly subsidized industry.
Many farmers are doing well, but have come to rely on government handouts, while hundreds of thousands of small farmers are shut out from help. The nation’s 1 million farmers that produce our food are competing within an arrangement that needs reform at a time of budgetary pressure.
“The system we have is one that has evolved over a period of time. It needs to be overhauled. There is no question about it from our point of view,” said Dale Wiehoff, vice president of communication with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization advocating for family farmers.
The U.S. government’s support of farming and nutrition assistance will total over $80 billion this year, according to the Congressional Research Service. With the crushing debt dominating political debates, these are billions legislators say will be under the budget-cutting microscope.
The president’s bipartisan fiscal commission recommended reducing spending by $10 billion over the next 10-year period. Obama’s 2011 budget request included a reduction of $2.6 billion, and House Budget Committee Director Paul Ryan (R-Ky.) has proposed $30 billion in cuts from the next Farm Bill. "With an out-of-control federal debt, committee members are going to be expected to do more with less,” said Jerry Moran, member of the Agricultural Committee in a weekly radio address, “The Ag Minute.”
Savings, Revenue Neutral, or Reform?
The U.S. Farm Bill, which is updated every five years, is due to be revised in 2012. While powerful and entrenched interests work hard to maintain the status quo, the bill, and the industry, needs reform. Exactly how to work that out, is the debate that stakeholders will be having over the coming months.
The House Committee on Agriculture has begun a series of public hearings to collect input from farmers across the country."Writing a farm bill is always a challenge, but this next farm bill may prove more challenging than most,” said Agricultural Committee ranking member Frank Lucas on “The Ag Minute.” The Farm Bill covers a variety of programs. Some directly benefit farmers, such as income support, crop insurance, conservation, agricultural export programs, irrigation support, and loan guarantees—while others are more indirect. Recent additions to the bill have included rural development assistance, and increased support for biomass production, and processing facilities.
At least 65 percent of the Farm Bill supports nutrition assistance for the needy, including food stamps and school lunch programs. According to Wiehoff, that amount can be as high as 85 percent, depending on how you calculate it.
Farm Bill costs have risen significantly since 2008, when legislators predicted a five-year total of $272 billion. The actual cost is now expected to top $400 billion. Increases in costs for the food stamp program due to the Great Recession account for the bulk of the increases, while higher than expected crop insurance payments add to a lesser extent, the Congressional Research Service found.
The Farm Bill is both controversial and popular with lawmakers. Conservatives, many representing farming districts, want to support their constituents; Democrats support the bill because of its social welfare component. A powerful industry lobby also makes it very difficult for lawmakers to reform the system.The most controversial part of the bill came in 1996 when good intentions by Congress went wrong. “In an attempt to get rid of subsidies they created a program that turned out to be a disaster,” said Wiehoff.
It happened during a good year, like the current year, when commodity prices were high. Congress decided to get rid of subsidies, only to have prices suddenly drop, forcing an emergency bail out of the farmers.
The benefits, now entrenched based on historical allotments, currently go to farmers of major commodities like corn, soybeans, and wheat—products desirable on the global markets. Farmers of other products, such as fruits, vegetables, and organic and urban growers for example, have no chance of support under this system. Over a billion dollars a year of direct payments are estimated to go to people who no longer farm their land.
“It is not a very rational system. It could be done in a much more thoughtful way,” said Wiehoff.
The federal government’s intervention in the markets has also created a system where certain farmers are encouraged to overproduce using modern, capital intensive farming techniques, which increase yields, but may devastate the quality of the land. Excess crops are then dumped on the world markets at prices lower than the cost of production, leaving millions of farmers in developing countries unable to compete with the cheap American imports. The United Nations, developing countries, and the WTO have criticized the United States and other developed nation’s agricultural practices on numerous occasions.
An overhaul of the system could benefit hundreds of thousands more American farmers, as well as provide relief to subsistence farmers in developing nations. The difficult question, particularly in tight budgetary periods, Wiehoff says, “is if we are not going to spend more money, if we are going to allocate the money differently, who is going to have money taken away.”
A historical confluence of forces has turned agriculture in America into a complicated and highly subsidized industry.
Many farmers are doing well, but have come to rely on government handouts, while hundreds of thousands of small farmers are shut out from help. The nation’s 1 million farmers that produce our food are competing within an arrangement that needs reform at a time of budgetary pressure.
“The system we have is one that has evolved over a period of time. It needs to be overhauled. There is no question about it from our point of view,” said Dale Wiehoff, vice president of communication with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization advocating for family farmers.
The U.S. government’s support of farming and nutrition assistance will total over $80 billion this year, according to the Congressional Research Service. With the crushing debt dominating political debates, these are billions legislators say will be under the budget-cutting microscope.
The president’s bipartisan fiscal commission recommended reducing spending by $10 billion over the next 10-year period. Obama’s 2011 budget request included a reduction of $2.6 billion, and House Budget Committee Director Paul Ryan (R-Ky.) has proposed $30 billion in cuts from the next Farm Bill. "With an out-of-control federal debt, committee members are going to be expected to do more with less,” said Jerry Moran, member of the Agricultural Committee in a weekly radio address, “The Ag Minute.”
Savings, Revenue Neutral, or Reform?
The U.S. Farm Bill, which is updated every five years, is due to be revised in 2012. While powerful and entrenched interests work hard to maintain the status quo, the bill, and the industry, needs reform. Exactly how to work that out, is the debate that stakeholders will be having over the coming months.
The House Committee on Agriculture has begun a series of public hearings to collect input from farmers across the country."Writing a farm bill is always a challenge, but this next farm bill may prove more challenging than most,” said Agricultural Committee ranking member Frank Lucas on “The Ag Minute.” The Farm Bill covers a variety of programs. Some directly benefit farmers, such as income support, crop insurance, conservation, agricultural export programs, irrigation support, and loan guarantees—while others are more indirect. Recent additions to the bill have included rural development assistance, and increased support for biomass production, and processing facilities.
At least 65 percent of the Farm Bill supports nutrition assistance for the needy, including food stamps and school lunch programs. According to Wiehoff, that amount can be as high as 85 percent, depending on how you calculate it.
Farm Bill costs have risen significantly since 2008, when legislators predicted a five-year total of $272 billion. The actual cost is now expected to top $400 billion. Increases in costs for the food stamp program due to the Great Recession account for the bulk of the increases, while higher than expected crop insurance payments add to a lesser extent, the Congressional Research Service found.
The Farm Bill is both controversial and popular with lawmakers. Conservatives, many representing farming districts, want to support their constituents; Democrats support the bill because of its social welfare component. A powerful industry lobby also makes it very difficult for lawmakers to reform the system.The most controversial part of the bill came in 1996 when good intentions by Congress went wrong. “In an attempt to get rid of subsidies they created a program that turned out to be a disaster,” said Wiehoff.
It happened during a good year, like the current year, when commodity prices were high. Congress decided to get rid of subsidies, only to have prices suddenly drop, forcing an emergency bail out of the farmers.
The benefits, now entrenched based on historical allotments, currently go to farmers of major commodities like corn, soybeans, and wheat—products desirable on the global markets. Farmers of other products, such as fruits, vegetables, and organic and urban growers for example, have no chance of support under this system. Over a billion dollars a year of direct payments are estimated to go to people who no longer farm their land.
“It is not a very rational system. It could be done in a much more thoughtful way,” said Wiehoff.
The federal government’s intervention in the markets has also created a system where certain farmers are encouraged to overproduce using modern, capital intensive farming techniques, which increase yields, but may devastate the quality of the land. Excess crops are then dumped on the world markets at prices lower than the cost of production, leaving millions of farmers in developing countries unable to compete with the cheap American imports. The United Nations, developing countries, and the WTO have criticized the United States and other developed nation’s agricultural practices on numerous occasions.
An overhaul of the system could benefit hundreds of thousands more American farmers, as well as provide relief to subsistence farmers in developing nations. The difficult question, particularly in tight budgetary periods, Wiehoff says, “is if we are not going to spend more money, if we are going to allocate the money differently, who is going to have money taken away.”
Monday, May 9, 2011
Experts Say Federal Policies Can Impact Obesity or Eating Disorder Problems
By Rebecca Adams,
State and federal officials should be careful to avoid creating policies that reinforce eating disorders, a panel of experts said at a Capitol Hill briefing Monday.
Panelists at the briefing, moderated by Health Affairs editor-in-chief Susan Dentzer, said that sometimes policies can exacerbate eating problems such as overeating and unhealthy dieting.
One example is the use of notes from school officials to parents notifying them that a child is obese or overweight. That could motivate a parent to encourage dieting, which often doesn’t work and can ultimately lead to metabolic problems that result in greater weight gain.
Panelists said that they are concerned about congressional efforts to kill a multibillion-dollar prevention fund created in the 2010 health care law (PL 111-148, PL 111-152). That fund could be used for anti-obesity efforts.
“We need to invest funds in both prevention and treatment,” said Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a professor at the University of Minnesota.Jean Kilbourne, a media critic and author, said that it’s difficult to convince lawmakers to pass more-aggressive regulation of the diet food and products industry when lawmakers are “getting most of their money from these industries.”
However, some approaches that could have an impact include tougher Federal Trade Commission oversight of advertising for deceptive claims and stricter federal oversight of advertising that targets children, said panelists and audience members.
The briefing was organized by the National Eating Disorders Association and the STOP Obesity Alliance.
Rebecca Adams can be reached at radams@cq.com.
CQ HEALTHBEAT NEWS, May 9, 2011 – 4:32 p.m.
State and federal officials should be careful to avoid creating policies that reinforce eating disorders, a panel of experts said at a Capitol Hill briefing Monday.
Panelists at the briefing, moderated by Health Affairs editor-in-chief Susan Dentzer, said that sometimes policies can exacerbate eating problems such as overeating and unhealthy dieting.
One example is the use of notes from school officials to parents notifying them that a child is obese or overweight. That could motivate a parent to encourage dieting, which often doesn’t work and can ultimately lead to metabolic problems that result in greater weight gain.
Panelists said that they are concerned about congressional efforts to kill a multibillion-dollar prevention fund created in the 2010 health care law (PL 111-148, PL 111-152). That fund could be used for anti-obesity efforts.
“We need to invest funds in both prevention and treatment,” said Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a professor at the University of Minnesota.Jean Kilbourne, a media critic and author, said that it’s difficult to convince lawmakers to pass more-aggressive regulation of the diet food and products industry when lawmakers are “getting most of their money from these industries.”
However, some approaches that could have an impact include tougher Federal Trade Commission oversight of advertising for deceptive claims and stricter federal oversight of advertising that targets children, said panelists and audience members.
The briefing was organized by the National Eating Disorders Association and the STOP Obesity Alliance.
Rebecca Adams can be reached at radams@cq.com.
CQ HEALTHBEAT NEWS, May 9, 2011 – 4:32 p.m.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Food Environment Atlas
http://ers.usda.gov/FoodAtlas/
Objectives of the Atlas:
Food environment factors—such as store/restaurant proximity, food prices, food and nutrition assistance programs, and community characteristics—interact to influence food choices and diet quality. Research is beginning to document the complexity of these interactions, but more is needed to identify causal relationships and effective policy interventions.
The objectives of the Atlas are:
To assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on the determinants of food choices and diet quality
To provide a spatial overview of a community’s ability to access healthy food and its success in doing so
What information is included in the Atlas?
The Atlas assembles statistics on three broad categories of food environment factors:
Food Choices—Indicators of the community's access to and acquisition of healthy, affordable food, such as: access and proximity to a grocery store; number of food stores and restaurants; expenditures on fast foods; food and nutrition assistance program participation; quantities of foods eaten; food prices; food taxes; and availability of local foods
Health and Well-Being—Indicators of the community’s success in maintaining healthy diets, such as: food insecurity; diabetes and obesity rates; and physical activity levels
Community Characteristics—Indicators of community characteristics that might influence the food environment, such as: demographic composition; income and poverty; population loss; metro-nonmetro status; natural amenities; and recreation and fitness centers
The Atlas currently includes 168 indicators of the food environment. The year and geographic level of the indicators vary to better accommodate data from a variety of sources. Some data are from the last Census of Population in 2000 while others are as recent as 2009. Some are at the county level while others are at the State or regional level. The most recent county-level data are used whenever possible.
See Documentation for complete list of indicators, definitions and data sources.
Food Desert Locator
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html
The HFFI working group defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store:
· To qualify as a “low-income community,” a census tract must have either: 1) a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, OR 2) a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area's median family income;
· To qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles).
What can users do with the Locator?
· Create maps showing food-desert census tracts;
· View statistics on selected population characteristics in food-desert census tracts;
· Download census-tract level data from food-desert tracts.
How is the Food Desert Locator related to the Food Environment Atlas?
The Food Desert Locator maps and provides selected population characteristics of census tracts that are food deserts—low-income neighborhoods without easy access to a supermarket or large grocery store. These characteristics are provided only for census tracts that meet the definition of a food desert.
The Food Environment Atlas provides a wider set of statistics on food choices, health and well-being, and community characteristics for all communities in the U.S. While the Food Desert Locator provides information at the census tract level, the smallest geographic level of data in the Food Environment Atlas is the county.
The Food Environment Atlas also has an Advanced Query tool that allows users to identify and map counties sharing the same degree of multiple indicators.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Group Of Foundations Launches Food, Agriculture Policy Research Initiative
A group of foundations on Tuesday in Washington launched AGree, a food and agriculture research initiative, Bloomberg reports (Bjerga, 5/3).
The initiative, which aims to "tackle long-term food and agriculture policy issues," is backed by eight foundations, according to press release issued by AGree. "Over the next four decades there will be an additional 2.6 billion people on Earth to feed – a 38 percent population increase from today ... Simultaneously, the world faces a limited amount of easily accessible arable land, increasing pressures on freshwater quality and availability and accelerating environmental degradation," the release states (5/3).
"The initiative's diverse group of leaders will include Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm; former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman; and Jim Moseley, an Indiana farmer who served as deputy agriculture secretary in President George W. Bush's administration," the Des Moines Registerwrites (Brasher, 5/3). Emmy Simmons, former assistant administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade at USAID and a board member for several agriculture and global development organizations, will also help lead the initiative, the press release adds (5/3).
"Food policy is too important just to be left to people in the food industry," said Glickman. "For too long, food and farm policy have been related to a narrow range of interests," he said, Bloomberg reports. According to Hirshberg, AGree will support agricultural research that is "agnostic" in an effort to help U.S. policymakers arrive at decisions that have an effect on domestic and international food production (5/3).
"AGree is funded by Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and The Walton Family Foundation," the release notes (5/3).
The initiative, which aims to "tackle long-term food and agriculture policy issues," is backed by eight foundations, according to press release issued by AGree. "Over the next four decades there will be an additional 2.6 billion people on Earth to feed – a 38 percent population increase from today ... Simultaneously, the world faces a limited amount of easily accessible arable land, increasing pressures on freshwater quality and availability and accelerating environmental degradation," the release states (5/3).
"The initiative's diverse group of leaders will include Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm; former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman; and Jim Moseley, an Indiana farmer who served as deputy agriculture secretary in President George W. Bush's administration," the Des Moines Registerwrites (Brasher, 5/3). Emmy Simmons, former assistant administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade at USAID and a board member for several agriculture and global development organizations, will also help lead the initiative, the press release adds (5/3).
"Food policy is too important just to be left to people in the food industry," said Glickman. "For too long, food and farm policy have been related to a narrow range of interests," he said, Bloomberg reports. According to Hirshberg, AGree will support agricultural research that is "agnostic" in an effort to help U.S. policymakers arrive at decisions that have an effect on domestic and international food production (5/3).
"AGree is funded by Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and The Walton Family Foundation," the release notes (5/3).
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