Artwork by Paris Coyne
Hey there,
Happy Thursday! Welcome back to Before the Cutting Board, your weekly roundup of food + supply chain hot topics keeping you up to speed on what’s going down with your food. A huge thank you to everyone who clicked subscribe and/or shared the newsletter launch last week!
If you’re new to Before The Cutting Board, here’s how it works: The “This Week” section focuses on news and current events, while the “Food Fights” section explores some of the interesting debates flying around the food news world. You can read more about the ‘why’ behind this newsletter here.
I wrote the roundup a little early this week. Paris and I are spending the day in Central LA on our first shoot for the LA Food Policy Council project we’ve been working on. LAFPC has brought us on to document Farm Fresh LA, one of their Good Food Purchasing programs.
Programs that fall under the “Good Food Purchasing” category focus on leveraging the local economy to increase food access that is both environmentally and socially sustainable from start to finish. LAFPC’s Farm Fresh LA program leverages CalFresh dollars (California’s SNAP funding) to subsidize the cost of locally grown produce for corner stores situated in food insecure communities. The goal of the program is to not simply facilitate food access, but also to be intentional about the who, how, and why behind sourcing and providing food. It also flips the script on the stigma surrounding food welfare; contrary to the belief of some that food assistance is a drain, SNAP programs like CalFresh have incredible potential to stimulate local economies.
I promise there is actually a reason I’m telling you so much about this program, so without further ado - let’s dig in.
-This Week-
Where would we be without the refrigerator?
Speaking of programs that increase fresh produce access in food insecure communities, Civil Eats reported this week on the State of California investing $20 million in expanding its Healthy Refrigeration Grant Program. The program, which is managed by California’s Office of Farm to Fork, provides funding for energy-efficient refrigeration units to corner stores and small businesses in low-income or low-access areas. It highlights a key element in making produce available: refrigeration and cooling. Fridge units are expensive and have been even harder to secure lately during the pandemic’s supply chain shortage fiascos.
Of course, refrigerators aren’t the fix-all to ensuring produce access - stores must actually be able to obtain produce to stock the fridges. As the Civil Eats report points out, the California program specifies that the produce stocked in sponsored fridges must fall under the “California Grown” label, which is often too pricey for store owners (especially during a pandemic when funds are already tight). Food policy groups, like the LA Food Policy Council, are continuing to strategize around how to make truly local supply chains feasible and culturally-relevant produce available for underserved communities.
Note: We would seriously be nowhere without the cold chain, aka refrigerated food transport. It’s the reason why people in the Northern Hemisphere can enjoy blueberries in December, and also how we were able to get temperature-sensitive COVID vaccines to destinations across the world.
Introducing: Starbucks Workers United
Starbucks, the largest coffee chain in the world, is facing a growing union campaign among store workers across the US. What started out as a small effort among two Buffalo, NY stores has catapulted into over 100 stores across 27 states petitioning to unionize. Tensions between Workers United, the union representing Starbucks workers, and the coffee company are intensifying with the organizing workers accusing Starbucks of intimidation and retaliation - pointing to the firing of one of the original Buffalo organizing leaders as evidence of the company’s tactics. The union push at Starbucks reflects a wider exasperation with the way food industry workers across the supply chain are being treated. Among other protests and unionizing efforts: Hershey’s employees and Port of LA truck drivers.
-Food Fights-
A fight with few winners: Inflation vs. Price Gouging
Inflation has been the term most often invoked to describe the devastating rise in food prices that is shaking the world. Of course, the core tenets of inflation are all present - the delicate balance between supply and demand is clearly out of whack, with the supply chain crisis and other extreme events making it difficult for production capacity to match demand. But, it feels irresponsible at best to not take a hard look at the profits and financial leveraging happening within the same food companies that are marking up price tags.
The more prices surge, the more people are starting to take notice of imbalance. Take this bit from Pod Save America pointing out the hypocrisy in Chipotle blaming supply chain issues for a 10% price increase when its CEO received a 137% pay bump after a year of record profits, for example. Or this breakdown from New York Times’ Peter Goodman of the monopolizing and skyrocketing profits happening in the beef sector, to no benefit of the grower or the consumer. Forbes’ Chloe Sorvino drew attention to how Tyson in particular is facing surmounting litigation for price-fixing and collusion as the company enjoys a stock surge amid a 13% rise in meat prices.
Pointing out these troubling patterns does not at all minimize the struggle that small food businesses have experienced throughout the pandemic and the Great Supply Chain Crisis. But there is a very real difference between Kroger getting excited about what high prices mean for already rocketing profits and a small local grocer having to raise prices because they’ve been priced out of space for goods in a shipping container. It often feels like food and consumer good corporations put on a facade of piggybacking off of the very real woes of small businesses, in order to justify price hikes, while they continue to rack up record-breaking profits. And then all of a sudden, it becomes a little less shocking that food workers and consumers alike are demanding better.
“Come Correct” says Civil Eats to NYT
Late last week, food-system-focused news source Civil Eats posted an op-ed calling out a New York Times video series on food system challenges for missing the mark and not giving airtime to growers on the ground. The three-part “We’re Cooked” opinion series from NYT aimed to help viewers understand the dynamics of our “broken” food system and what actions could be taken at an individual level. Civil Eats primarily took issue with the lack of grower voices across all of the videos and the strange problem solving-approach the producers took - instead of exploring real grassroots strategies and policies innovations happening at a community level in different parts of the world, the last video’s answer was “we need more dietary alternatives, like crickets!”.
The Civil Eats op-ed writers were really not a fan of the cricket suggestion, and I must admit that I’ve also never fully been on board with the whole ‘insect snack’ push. But I think more broadly, the NYT videos showcase how problematic it is to take systemic challenges like those in our food system and boil it down to population issues and individual responsibility.
Invoking population numbers as a reason why we face surmounting food and climate challenges is problematic for multiple reasons. In this case, it comes down to the fact that the problem is not that our food system is designed to feed every person in the world equally, but that it is instead designed to benefit few and exclude many. With that in mind, the uncomfortable truth remains - there’s only so much one individual can do to change the system. It requires a reckoning and accountability holding of the entities that actually possess the power and financial capacity to create change [see this week’s first Food Fight].
It’s just as exciting of a time as it is tough for people working to raise awareness about food justice and food system change. There is an increasing number of voices trying to speak truth to power, which is absolutely a good thing. This call out from Civil Eats, however, is a good reminder that we have to center those who have long been at the forefront of these challenges in our storytelling efforts.
That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed reading this, please forward to a friend. Even if you didn’t enjoy reading it, still tell your friends - misery loves company :)