>> robert gottlieb is a professor of urban andenvironmental policy and the director of the urban environmental policy institute in losangeles. he has authored over 12 books including "food justice" which is the topic he willpresent on today. other books include "food, health and the environment," "reinventinglos angeles," "nature and community in the global city," and "the next los angeles: thestruggle for a livable city." he is also a co-founder of rhe national farm to schoolnetwork, a program that connects small local farmers to school lunch programs nationally.throughout the health at google speakers series, we've heard a lot from doctors on how to improveour over all personal health through diet,
exercise and other lifestyle choices. professorgottlieb comes from a different perspective. rather than looking just at personal health,he strives to answer broader questions such as what are the social economic and politicalforces that have brought us to this point and how can communities come together to fixproblems like hunger, malnutrition, as well as how justice plays a role throughout. pleasejoin me in welcoming robert gottlieb to our campus.>> gottlieb: i understand that in talks like this we get always lots of feedback. so, thatwould--that would be helpful, i think, in terms of what i want to share with you. letme start--let me do a couple of things. i'll tell you a little about the program we haveat the urban environmental policy institute
which includes a number of programs aroundfood issues. everybody is looking both over there. there we are. and then i'll kind ofsituate that in terms of this book that anupama joshi, my co-author and i--anupama is actuallythe director of national farm to school network. and both--what we mean by food justice andthen how we illustrate that both in relation to the issues and problems around food injusticesand then some of the stories that we've identified, groups and movements and individuals who aretrying to bring about system change. so, the urban of--i'm a professor at occidental college.alisa was a student of mine and very engaged in food issues as a number of other folksat occidental. the institute's an interesting mix. it's kind of a high breed between kindof a research and educational entity and one
that involves engaging in action and policychange. and as a high breed, we not only try and identify some of the issues and problemsbut how you start bring about change. so, an illustration of that would have been whenwe started the farm to school program, which i'll talk about in a little bit, we wantedto get inside the los angeles unified school district. and so, we presented the researchwe had done to demonstrate where it first begun in a smaller school district in southerncalifornia and how it could be applied to the second largest school district in thecountry. and we found a lot of resistance within the school bureaucracy, within foodservices. and so, we decided that what really needed to happen is a policy change. and inorder to get a policy change, we felt we needed
to really reach out to students and parentsto be part of the process of bringing about that change. and what happened, in fact, wassome of the key issues we identified were not only what was going into the cafeteria,but where the kids were going in terms of getting food that is known in the school foodlanguage as competitive foods, namely the vending machines where you had the sodas andthe junk food and that became the alternative to food that was not considered very appetizingin the cafeteria. so we focused on that and we hired some parents to be organizers toreach out to the--both the kids and to the parents and started a campaign. and the startingpoint, really, was the vending machines and getting the sodas out and identifying, forexample, through our research the average
amount of sodas consumed and the sugar quantitiesinvolved in the amount of soda that a teenager would drink in the course of a week. and therewas a mason jar full of sugar and that became the symbol of the campaign. this was backin 19--in 2001, 2002. and out of that campaign and out of the work we--and identifying theissues, the l.a. unified school board passed the first really major change that took placearound the sodas and vending machines by banning sodas in the vending machines and having astudent constituency that was engaged in the issue that became really an important partof the process. so that's the kind of thing that we do in our institute. we identify programs,we do research, we do organizing, and we bring about policy change. and we operate on multipleset of issues. we basically have a social
justice mission. we deal with issues of immigrationand housing and transportation, but our largest set of programs are in the area of food. andamongst those, we do this farm to school program of the idea of getting local, regional foodgrown by local, regional farmers into school cafeterias and other institutions like google.we have a program called farm to preschool and we focus on preschool because aside fromthe importance of thing--of the preschool to cage well, it's also some of the fastestincreases in obesity and weight gain are happening in a zero to five population. so that becomesan important way of thinking about how do you change the way kids think about food andwhat kind of program to develop in order to bring about that change in perspective andattitude and connection to food. we have programs
that deal with women, infant, and childrenprogram. we call it farm to wic where we are going to places where wic coupons are used,like these stores that only sell wheat products and trying to get local food into those stores,fresh produce into those stores that the people who have the wic coupons, the--who'll qualifylow income women with infants can have access, not only to fresh food but local food thatis going to be that much more appealing. we have a program that deals with the connectionwith food and transportation. the whole area around food access is really a significantone because you can--you can urge people to change their feeding patterns in terms ofwhat they will eat, you can urge them to go to a farmers market or to go to a market thatsells fresh produce, but if it's not in the
community, if you don't have access to that,then you've got significant issues in terms of changing the food culture. and that's particularlyimportant in terms of the thing--the people who are most vulnerable in terms of how thefood system operates. people with low income communities don't have supermarkets, don'thave farmers market. so we have a whole program we've developed around food and transportation.we also have a program we call the regional food hub or food hubs and i'll talk aboutthat in a little bit also because that would be an interesting project to describe in termsof thinking about the needs that we have to make that are operational. but the conceptof the food hub in short is that if you have now this idea of making the connection betweenpeople who grow food locally and people—-and
the institutions that can access that food,how do you create a system where you can have multiple farmers working together and theinstitutions, identifying the needs that they would have to get that food? and like in l.a.,we also work with food trucks, for example, to try and get healthy and fresh produce intothe food trucks as well and that maybe they could use a kitchen facility in our food hub.so, it's a--it's a complex concept of making those linkages and making the system workto support what we would call a regional food economy or a regional food system. so that'swhat we do. lots of projects we try and innovate, develop new programs, we evaluate them, wethink about the policy context, we do organizing, and our students get engaged in a whole rangeof these programs as well. so that's what
we do. and as part of that, we've really becomepart of kind of an emerging food movement around the country. and the food movementhas many ways of addressing food issues. and within that, we had begun to make the argumentthat food justice within the context of emerging food movement is really critical. and by foodjustice, we think of it in a number of ways. on the one hand, we do think of it--in whatwe call the "food systems" or "system ways". so we think about--if you think of it, it'ssupply chain terms, you know, from growing, producing, processing, manufacturing, distributing,retail, where it's sold, and how it is consumed as a system from sea to table. what is thenature of that system? what's happening within that? particularly from a perspective thatsays, are there environmental problems in
that system? there are. are there issues ofdisparities? there are. are there issues of undermining local and regional farmers whetherin this country or abroad? there are. are there issues around worker injustices whetherit's in the confined animal feeding operations where much meat production is now based andthe people who work there are subject to the, kind of, occupational hazards, subject toa whole wide range of exploitation that goes on in terms of those operations, whether it'sin terms of thinking about people who work in retail or in restaurants. i--it's justlast week in a--in a press conference in l.a. for an organization called the restaurantopportunities center which is an organization that got formed out of the bombing--the worldtrade center events, the 9/11 event, where
the top of the world restaurant was destroyedand when it reopened sometime later, the restaurant workers were fired to bring in a nine unionlower wage workforce. and so, the workers who had been displaced set up their own cooperativerestaurant but then started advocating for--around the conditions of restaurant workers and so,the press conference that i was at was related to a release of a report of the conditionsof restaurant workers. something that food movement might or might not be addressingbut which is really critical when you think of the in-system terms and these were issuesaround wages, in terms of occupational issues, in terms of no sick time; where you'd havepeople who would be working didn't have the ability to take off time when they were sickand they were serving your food. and so, that
becomes kind of a central food justice issueof how, not only restaurants can maybe be more sustainable and sourced locally but alsohow are they treating the people who work in those places. so, food justice is a perspectiveon system issues. it also looks particularly at the disparities within that system whereyou have people who are most vulnerable even as you talk about the system as a whole createsproblems for everyone. and i think there is no better example of that when we think aboutthe issue of--this issue weight gain and obesity where you have--all population groups haveseen this change taking place in the last three or four decades and particularly pronouncedin the last 20 years across the board; age groups, ethnic and racial groups, income level,but those obesity levels are most pronounced
amongst people who live in low-income communities,people of color who, going back to that food access issue, are most vulnerable in termsof what kind of food they do access and what are the circumstances--the system circumstancesthat they experience in terms of their connection to food. so, you have obesity as a consequenceof the way our food system is organized for everybody. it's a system issue but that theyare also most--those who are most vulnerable. and then the third approach we take in termsof food justice is that you ultimately can't separate the idea of food from other kindsof social and economic issues that come into play and constituencies that are impactedby those issues. so, another way of thinking about food justice is, you are also connectingit to things like, transportation or a land
use, or what's happening when we lose farmsat the urban edge and you instead have a real change in the nature of the, kind of the metropolitanregion and all the related problems that go along with that. food issues are a powerfulenvironmental questions. what are the inputs in terms of how food is grown? how is thatchanging and as we become more of an industrialized food system? and that both in terms of theproduction of food as well as even in the retail sector we're to use a term that anenglish theorist called it the, kind of the industrialized food retail that is reallydeveloped where, for example, walmart in 1987 had zero percent of the market share of foodretail and today it has over a third and it is by far the largest food retailer in theworld and its practices; how it retails food
and how it's organized is very much part ofthis kind of industrialized food retail model. so we see that happening in terms of thinkingabout how these systems operate across the board throughout this supply chain. so, thefood justice book was really an attempt to do two things. on the one hand, to documentin the first half of the book, how–-if you do kind of walk through the food system, whathappens at each stage of that food system that addresses these questions of food justiceand food injustices. on the second half, is telling, the kind of a narrative of whereand how there are efforts to change the way the food system operates from a food justiceperspective. so you have a wide range of an issue that's there taking place around thecountry and around the world that are seeking
to find a kind of an alternative to the directionin which the food system has evolved particularly in the last 30, 40 years with these massivechanges that are taking place in food growing, in terms of the manufacturing and processingof food, the retail side where we and how we consume our food as well. so, some of thestories included--there's a--for those of you who have the book, there's a wonderfulphoto on the cover of the book of a group in holyoke, massachusetts called nuestas raices.and they started about 15 years ago where--in holyoke, massachusetts it's a very--a poorcommunity. it's actually the poorest in the state of massachusetts. it's heavily puertorican. and so, a number of young people decided that they wanted to do something to deal witha problem not only of lack of healthy food
but that they wanted to connect back to thetraditions of food growing that they and their families experienced growing up. and so theystarted an herb garden. growing the kinds of herbs that were part of their cuisine andthey expanded to become not only growing food but creating what could be considered likea little mini food hub in holyoke, massachusetts and doing the range of other kind of economicdevelopment programs for the community using food as the center piece. so, that's the--tellingthe story of how that group got started and how it's really mushroomed into kind of amajor player in rethinking food in western massachusetts. another group that we profilewhich we have folks who have come here from the salinas valley is a group called albawhich has done a remarkable job and we actually
had the advantage of having some of the albaorganics produce here at google. alba started out trying to identify--well, it has a longcomplex history but in a nutshell it tried to identify the ways in which people--mostlyimmigrant farm workers in the salinas valley and other parts of central california couldbe able to make a transition to themselves participating in being--becoming food growers.it's really a critical transition if you think about both from the justice perspective ofhow farm workers are treated in california, in this country but also in terms of skilland knowledge and capacity to grow food that you don't have that opportunity to do that.so, that's the evolution of this--the organization was how you have some land that could be madeavailable to farm workers who can become farmers.
and it's part of a broader theme that we talkabout where you are seeing for the first time a shift where there are more farmers in thelast census of agriculture than there had been in the previous census. this was the2007 census that i think you will see in the 2012 census of agriculture even more strikingchange. it's not that we've seen a wholesale shift in agriculture but you're starting tosee pockets particularly asian, latino, farmers, women and young people. there are sort offour constituencies of people who are becoming connected to the land--reconnected to theland. of course, it also takes place in urban settings as well as outside of urban areasin the form of the community garden movement, the urban agriculture movement, ways in whichpeople start thinking about food growing as
a culture, a vocation and in fact, a way tohave a sustainable livelihood. so, that's another story we tell about. and we talk aboutthe group in florida that--tomato pickers in immokalee county in florida who sufferedincredible abuses in terms of the patterns of recruitment of people coming on acrossthe border to being sent into the field and really being subject to conditions of nearslavery; locked up, subject to wide range of abuses and incredibly low wages that wereprovided for the--for the tomato crop that was being picked and some of the other cropsin that part of florida. and what happens back in the mid '90s is desired by some ofthese folks who were most subject to these conditions and started to expose this kindof near slavery conditions to think about
ways in which they could, given the weightagainst them of changing the situation of the field, how could they begin to shift,make a dent in that kind of imbalance of power and lack of capacity from people working inthe tomato fields to bring a better change? so, they created an organization called thecoalition of immokalee workers. some of you might be familiar with them. and they decidedthat the growers--the large growers were not going to yield at all to the idea of not onlya kind of a wage increase but to recognize and give some dignity to the people who areworking in the fields in terms of their representation. so they thought, "well, let's go up street.who purchases the tomatoes?" and they started by targeting taco bell. they had a four-yearcampaign to say, "we want a penny a pound
more and we want some recognition in termsof the rights of the people working in the fields and we want you to agree to that andthen pressure the growers to bring about that change." and they mobilized students aroundthe country and people who have faith who got involved and thinking about food justiceas in social justice as their issue that they could engage with and identify. went fromtaco bell, they finally succeeded after four years. they went to mcdo--they went aftermcdonald's. they went after some of the retail chains and just as our book was released inoctober, we'd be going around--going around the country and we were happy to say thatthey finally got the growers to agree, so great victory. limited, you know, a pennya pound. the little bit of recognition. enormous
obstacles but a really inspiring story ofpeople over time mobilizing, getting constituencies to cook up with them and bring about thatone change that becomes an emblematic of how that change can magnify and develop furtherin terms of related kinds of issues in the fields or in other parts of the food system.so, let me end with a–-i'll tell you a personal story in terms of some of this work and connectit back to farm to school which is one of the signature programs that have developedin farm institution. we were trying this about 15 years ago to think of ways in which wecould support farmers markets in low-income communities. there were—-there was in aparticular one market that had been the very first farmers market in the south--in southerncalifornia that was set up in the late 1970s
when they made their revival. actually, farmersmarkets were designed in the late '70s and early '80s as kind of food justice institutionsif you will. they were designed to bring affordable, healthy, fresh local food into communitiesthat had lack of access. the first farmers markets were sponsored by a group called theinterfaith hunger coalition in l.a., in places like philadelphia and chicago when they werestarting. there was a group in philadelphia called the food trust. these were really kindof low-income strategies for fresh food access. they change--farmers markets obviously havechanged overtime for a lot of good reasons in the sense that it became very popular andso it became very attractive in communities, in middle-income communities and places wherethere might not have been quite the same food
access problem but there was real interestin getting healthy fresh local food and they were community institutions. so, a great gatheringplace where you don't have that kind of--those kinds of places. but in the process, you–-it'snot that the low-income markets were abandoned but they tended to be more limited. fewerfarmers were coming to those markets. there were-–there were the burdens of how to findthe appropriate places for those markets. so we were trying to figure out how couldwe support the farmers market in an area, this was a gardena area and reach out to low-incomefolks in that southwest region of l.a. and we found that it was really difficult. wetried our csa model, that one where people would pay at a subsidized rate and maybe onlyhave to pay once a week rather than once every
six months. it wasn't working. so, we though--well,what we really need is the place-–the places where you can have kind of this--the institutionalsupport for this and that's--that was the origins of thinking about farm to school.and at that point--my daughter was in a school in santa monica. santa monica sounds likeone of those wealthy enclaves. it actually has low-income enclaves within the wealthyenclave. and the school where my daughter went had 50% free and reduced student body.in other words, 50% of the kids qualified for a free and reduced lunch, which meantthat they were hovering near the poverty line. so, my daughter would come back and tell methat, you know, the school lunch sucks. they tried a little bit of a salad but the lettucewas brown, and she actually liked getting
fruit and even vegetables. and she wantedsomething different, and so she was kind of not eating in the school cafeteria. so, thatwas sort of like a--an epiphany from myself. why not go to the school? so we went to thefood service director, a fellow by the name of rodney taylor, who was then the food servicedirector. he came out in the food industry. his picture is in the book. an industry guy,you know, a food service industry guy. bottom line considerations, you don't do anythingdifferent. you got to--you got to have the food that the kids will connect to. so thatmeans you got to have the kind of the chicken nuggets, you have to have the pizza, you haveto have the--and you have to also buy the commodity foods because you are under constraintson budget. so we came to him and said, "you
know, we have a thriving farmers market systemin santa monica. why not get the farms that are coming to the farmers market to set asidefood that they bring to the farmers market that can go into the school cafeteria?" androdney said--he tells a story, even goes around the country saying, "oh, here was anotherrich white pear with too much time on his hand coming and lands this issue on me. andwhat i'll do is, i'll test it out and i'll show that the kids will not eat the fruitsand vegetables." so, he set up a salad bar as an alternative to the hot meal. it servesthe way you can–-some of your school cafeterias can have these choices which the offer andserve system is called. so he's decided he would have pizza the first day as the alternativeto the salad bar that was set up with farmers
market produce. and the kids came, we hiredan organizer to help reach out to the parents. a young latina, fresh out of ucla, and shegot feedback form the parents about how they--the kids would respond, you know. make sure you'vegot a slice of lemon or a lime that can squeeze on the lettuce and you can do x, y and z interms of how you show where the food is. and sort of the big breakthrough with the kidswas, they did actually have a school garden. and so, we did some tastings, and the kidssaid, "well, that looks like the food fruit that was coming from the farmers market fromthe local farmers. looks like they are food from the garden, you know, and, you know,we love that food from the garden," which is never connected to having food in the cafeteria.so by the time that they came around and rodney
set out the choices, 75% of the kids chosethe salad bar, and it blew rodney away. he said, it's–-as he talks about it now, hesays, "it changed my life. it gave me a sense of purpose that i didn't have, that i neededto become a champion for the kids, and i could see that becoming a champion of the farmerswas the way i could become a champion of the kids." and that was the origins of farm toschool. at that point, there are only three programs around the country, this is 1997;the one in santa monica and two small ones in north carolina and florida that were designedto support farmers there. today, it's in all 50 states. it's been embraced by michelleobama. it's--it was part of the recent child nutrition legislation that has just passed.and it came out of a kind of a history of
mobilization and of practice of trying toshow why this kind of approach is--creates change at each level. and it really–-itsymbolizes for us the food justice story. because farm to school is a system change;it's for everybody in terms of a school-food system. but it's particularly—-when youthink of it in the public school system, you have kids who are substantial portion in placeslike la--lausd for example is, 70% of the kids qualify for free and reduced lunch. ibet you if we go to east palo alto, we'd see that kind of--those kinds of numbers, or insalinas, or in san francisco, in some of the school district. so you're also talking aboutkids who, otherwise, might not have access to that type of food. so it's a--also becomesa food justice story in terms of those who
might be most vulnerable. and it's finallysomething that allows you to think about--learning about food differently is also a way of thinkingabout deeper set of issues in--that one comes and encounters; whether it's how you growfood and what does that mean in terms of environment or--and what is--what are the economics offood and how is it operating? so it becomes also a teaching lesson and a way to connectto a number of different very powerful issues that we need to confront in our communities.so, i'll leave it at that. open it up if you have questions or thoughts or things you wantto share. our folks from alba are here if you want to ask them about anything. i hadan update yesterday, i guess, in the san jose mercury news talking about some of the albafarmers but also the connection of immigrants
and food. there's an interesting article iread in--coming up in the paper, in the new york times this morning in the food section,the dining section, about how immigrant cuisine is changing sub-urban areas and places likeindianapolis, a fascinating article. and i think it's part of thinking about new waysof–-we are just starting to address food in our--in this country and in our society.so, questions, thoughts? you can clap. it's all right.>> i'll be the first. fantastic talk. thank you very much. i was just wondering if youcould draw a connection between food and social justice to justice for animals, what we puton our plates or what some of us put on our plates. because i think, you know, you read--i'mseeing different books out there. and the
condition for–-the conditions for workersworking in factory farms and working in slaughter houses and so forth is probably among themost abominable for all workers. if you could just like, maybe comment on that a bit.>> gottlieb: yes. two connected points. first in terms of, there are important constituenciesout there that are talking about what's happening to animals in the factory farm system, particularlyin these confined animal feeding operation structures, their incredible environmentalissues as well in terms of the waste that are generated and the kind of pollution that'sassociated with it. and there are these animal abuse issues that are really important. butto separate one set of issues out from, as you rightly pointed out, the issue of workerjustice and work conditions for the people
who work in those places, it really limitsus. and that's really part of the message of food justice, is to not make that separationbut see the connections between those sets of issues. there's a wonderful phrase thateric schlosser used taking about the tomato workers he spoke in a slow food conference.and he was saying, "look, do we really want to eat an heirloom tomato if it was pickedin the--under conditions of slavery?" and i think--so that's really important that you'dnot separate the two. the other thing about what's happened in terms of the processingplants. we've really seen a big shift in the--that began in the '60s and '70s influenced in partby the kind of supply chain issues that led to the feedback to somebody's processing operations;how the meat was being produced in effect
and for whom, whether it was the chickensthat were being turned into the chicken nuggets. and the workforce that had been in those processingplants up through the 1960s tended to be a relatively stable union workforce that hadrelatively decent wages as production workers had at that time. and when you started seeingthese changes in the supply chain and the way the processing plants operated, you basicallysaw a wholesale shift away from that workforce. a lot of folks were–-the plants were movedto different places like in colorado, and an immigrant workforce was brought in there.it was non-union, highly exploited and subject to kind of some of these horrific conditionsthat we've read about in terms of what goes on and whether it's the poultry plants orthe meat production, the beef production plants.
so yes, it's very much connected. and partof our arguments that brought our food movement is that, it's really important to make thoselinks, to not separate out one issue from the other.>> cool. thank you very much. >> how do we get–-how do we get grocerystores for our neighborhoods? with my understanding is they're just like convenient stores. it'sjust like there's no access to produce or anything reasonable for the people. even theywant to get it, they just can't get it. >> gottlieb: well, it's a really importantquestion and there are actually a couple of different answers to that. on the one hand,there are efforts to say, "why have the supermarkets, for one the large--larger full service markets.why are they not in the urban core areas in
the inter city areas?" they used to be. therewas really a major change that began–-again as we see other changes going through thefood system happening in retail--beginning and say in the mid-1960's or even a littlebit earlier where you had kind of the flight from urban areas to suburban locations. oftenclose to free ways, great parking and car centric places. so, the disadvantage whenyou sort of build your market around the idea of access by car rather than other strategiesfor access, you disadvantage your urban core areas where land is actually more expensive,more limited so, you can't have that big parking footprint. number of reasons that were allpart of the change in food retail markets were leaving; were abandoning the urban corp.well, there's now a merge, you know, a lot
of work in this area saying, you know, "themarkets have to come back in." it is their social responsibility. there's also an economicopportunity thus the suburban markets became saturated. there have been sufficient numbersof studies out there that really make a compelling argument that food market, even with theseconstraints around land cause and the income level of the shoppers, you still can make--havesignificant economic return. and those markets that have been set up that have made thatjump have turned out to be very successful but there is still a lot of resistance. so,there's been a lot of organizing trying to do that. not--hasn't gotten as far as it oughtto. the other part of that is always to think about either the alternative kinds of placesto access fresh food like farmers markets
and making them more viable, you know, increasingtheir capacity. so, a core of food justice demand, for example, for farmers market, isthat they'd be able to accept snap benefits, the food stamp benefits and have the system,the electronic benefit transfer system that will allow them to access the farmers market.and then, there's a–-yet a third an issue that's going on called the healthy cornerstore initiative which is looking at stores--the small stores that have historically been,kind of, too expensive, limited if any produce making their money off of candy and cigarettesand liquor, if there were liquor stores that were define sells as food stores. and howdo you change that situation? what do you do to really make these more responsible kindsof community stores? and so, there's an effort
in pennsylvania called the fresh food financinginitiative that has really created an incentive-based program even as simple as creating refrigerationin these smaller stores. it's also been boasted by the fact that we have more ethnic marketsnow that are developed that kind of a small store level. so, there are some changes thatare taking place in that level but it's a core problem that it doesn't go away and needsadvocacy in all these different levels. >> i think you might have just answered alot of my questions but i live in intercity at oakland and i taught there for five yearsand that's, you know, that's definitely--you don't see there were no grocery--well, notmany very quality grocery stores in the area where i taught. but i've noticed the recently--actually,a whole food which is kind of an extreme as
far as [indistinct] foods go has opened upin a--not the worst area but also not the nicest and every time i go there it's just--theyappeared to be doing great business. so, is getting--are getting stores like cold foodsor, you know, maybe low in price versions or all versions of that in this city, is--doesthe actual city government tend of player like do they--can cities kind of deal withor approach companies or individuals interested in this or is it tend to be more kind of anorganic individuals want to go groups approaching the stores themselves?>> gottlieb: did everybody hear that? okay. the answer is actually both but you--thereare areas or role for policy including the local policy to ensure that not only thata store comes but that the store, for example,
hires locally, has fresh produce and is–-theother kinds of things that are important like, has culturally appropriate foods in that store.all those kinds of things can lend themselves to different kinds of policies that advantagestores were doing it and disadvantage stores who are refusing to do certain kinds of things.and there are different policy instruments that are available. we did a study when tescowhich is the third largest global retailer and that they are american--they had to--they'rebritish company and they entered about five years ago into the u.s. under the name fresh& easy neighborhood market and their target is to sort of an undercut trader joe's. and--so,we did a study of how tesco operates globally. and in that, you can access it to our website.we listed a range of policy strategies that
you can have to really--and specifically design.in that case with tesco and fresh & easy, what can you do when somebody wants to kindof increase their foot print in different communities and--or they're not going in tocommunities, they're going in to one set of communities versus another? so, there area lot of policy opportunities but ultimately, you can't make change unless you have peoplewho are advocating and mobilizing and seeing themselves as part of the movement to bringabout that change. and there are examples, illustrations of when that's happen when peoplehave mobilized where they brought about that kind of change. so, another question and theni have a question for all of you. >> what would be the top two things that googlecan do to be the most forward-thinking...
>> gottlieb: great.>> ...and progressive for corporation of this size and we are almost 30% supportive of smallfarmers and local farmers like our relationship with alba. we do have a really high food values,high in sustainability but if we really wanted to push, what should we be doing?>> gottlieb: great. that was actually what i was going to ask all of you and i'll giveyou my take on it but i actually like to hear your take as well. certainly, the roll asa major institution is important and there's a whole range of ways to do that. one, ofcourse, is what food is available and where it is being purchased from and how you scalethat up? i understand you have csa for google employees. all those kinds of strategies areimportant. there are other things that you
might have or not have that people are exploring.we've been talking with kaiser for example, about the idea of–-i don't know if googleis self-insured or what relationships they have around health insurance but there arestrategies to advantage, for example, your insurance premium goes down if you are memberof csa, so you are thinking about how you incentivize the change that could take place.so, as an institution, there are a whole range of opportunities and the partners that googlehas. so it extends not just in terms of this place here and what food gets purchased buthow does [indistinct] or how does google operate itself in terms of other place, other facilities,other partnerships that it has where it can talk about its connection to bring about changesand how people relate to food and where it
comes from. i think the other piece of thatconnection that google could make is, right now we are in a situation where some of thestories that we talk about, things like farm to school, for example, are in a stage wherethey have moved from–-how can i best put it?--from the pilot stage to something deeper.but in doing that, there are both barriers and challenges of how you make that happenkeeping the eye on the price of the type of regional food system that you want to supportand the justice component throughout it. so this food hub is a great example of that.there are all kinds of needs now as it gets--this farm institution model expands of linkingfarmers who operate--when they operate individually, find that they can't really be an effectivesupplier. you need to aggregate. you need
to connect. but then the institutions havedifferent needs. and there's also a land that's not being farmed that could potentially befarmed particularly if there were that connection to somebody who needs crop x point y in termsof their needs from an institutional perspective. so there's--there are a range of kind of techissues, if you will, of how to configure a system based on this hub model where you'reaggregating, consolidating; you're doing maybe even some processing connecting and then you'regoing out to the institutions. and those--this is the--where farm to school was 15 yearsago, the hub model is today. it's just beginning. it's catching around the country. there arethe ones, in northern california, there are the ones in southern california, in san diego,there's one emerging in la. and then also
how do you link that state y so that operates?so those are the kinds of needs and there are other illustrations of that as well.>> talking about making [indistinct] and economic model and aggregating the food shift.>> gottlieb: it's an economic level but it's also–-it's defined not simply as an economicmodel but it has a kind of social justice mission associated with it whether it's interms of support of the local farm. a group set of the farm workers as well as in termsof who gets--you know, who can access the supply if in fact there are issues aroundthe price points or their schools who don't have kitchens. so one of the things that wemodel of this kind of a floating salad bar that could actually be brought to the schoolsbut there are also policy changes that you
want to bring about. so there are technicalissues within the building, the capacity to create that kind of alternative, regionalfood economy, but also a justice based regional food economy. so let's set up a meeting.>> we don't have enough land to for all of our students coming out of our program. andso--and then at a k through 12 level with the kitchen prep areas and whatnot, i was--iwas at a meeting with our congressman and the local k through 12 in watsonville area.and if everybody is on board to do more of this, bring in fresh local produce but theydon't have the area to prep it. so in our case, just--our growers need access to morecapital and more land. so it really comes down to economics, you know, money and howwe can find a better source like that. so,
i don't know, maybe a grant or something tohelp stimulate that just to get everybody on tract.>> gottlieb: well getting back also to thinking about the points you are raising, how wouldyou identify land that could maybe made--be made available for food production whether--includingin urban areas, for example, as well as in terms of land that's either [indistinct] oris unutilized, or a foreclosed land and what's happening to it. so kind of the inventoryissue is also significant. there are lots of possibilities and it--you know, the foodmovement and the food justice movement is both a new movement but it's very rapidlytaking on really major--both major opportunities and major challenges. we've seen a shift fromjust thinking of it in terms my own trajectory.
when i got involved in the early '90s, anenormous shift in consciousness that's taken place and discourse around food in ways inwhich the desire to do things differently around food is out there but the capacityto make that change is uneven even as we start seeing some of these breakthroughs.>> on that note, what do you see as the biggest obstacle to having that--there--the capacitybeing increased, i guess, to have this movement be--you know, take a greater hold?>> gottlieb: well, i think we're at a point where there are real potential institutionalbreakthroughs and how those institutions have operated is going to be the challenge. solet me give you an example. walmart's announcement that it wants to purchase local and organic.the argument i would raise about walmart doing
that is on the one hand, i think it is a greatvictory that this food retail--this global food retailer which had only defined whatit would get into its stores is now saying, "well, this is important. it has to reachout." it's also, it's vulnerable to the criticism of the role it's played. so on one hand, it'sa great [indistinct]. on the other hand, it's at best questionary, if not dangerous becauseof the way--in fact, walmart operates is that it doesn't have that approach of thinkingof justice orientation. it does put the squeeze on its suppliers. it dictates the terms ofit. and we tell—-we tell a story in the book of--from a local midwestern grower whorecounted it to us. when walmart really wanted to get in to the chicago area and so it wantedto kind of scale up its reputation. so it
said, "well, we're going to go organic andwe're going to go local to show to people in chicago that it really was capable of movingin this direction." so it decided it would highlight local watermelons in the summer.so it contracted with one of the largest of the growers–-still kind of a medium-sizedgrower-–and said, "well, here is our supply needs and this is the price you're going tohave to agree to, and here is the volume needs and when you have to it." and as a consequence,that grower became a broker and bought out basically the water melon crop in a radiusaround where walmart was supplying. what that meant is that there were, a. no watermelonsof that season in the farmers market, and b. the growers were less of a price throughthe walmart system when they would have threw
a direct marketing system. so that becomesthe challenge. as the opportunity to change the food system, the way it operates, we increasethat capacity. we're going to start meeting these kinds of challenges and then thinkingabout how in fact you're going to continue to build without then becoming squeezed bywho the dominant players are and how they operate. so it's a--it becomes a politicalchallenge, it becomes a social challenge and it becomes an organizational challenge. andwe'll see what happens, but we are at the point. well, i thank google for setting thisup and having some books available to you. and hope we can continue the dialogue.