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E-mail: metromin@fresnometmin.org
www.fresnometroministry.org
Food and the Politics of Scarcity
Edie Jessup
Good Afternoon. My name is Edie Jessup, and I am privileged to work with Fresno Metro Ministry
on a Hunger & Nutrition Project. When asked if I might join you today, as you are wrestling with the
future Ethics and the Community, it gave me pause. I see this and Food/Shelter/Health as THE work
of society. Notice ‘society’, not just the work of individuals.
Before I begin my more formal remarks, I want to frame my discussion of Food and the Politics
of Scarcity. This is an evolving topic of consideration for me over the years.
In 2003, I first put my thoughts together about this topic for the American Heart Association
Conference of Cardiologists, and it evolved out of my experience here in Fresno with Hunger, poverty,
and chronic disease. I received a call from a middle aged farmworking woman who had been
discharged from Community Hospital following a heart procedure. She had no transportation and no
food in her home in south Fresno, and no money. She had walked blocks to Catholic Charities to try
to get some food. However, they would not give it to her because she had received food from them
two months ago, and one could only get emergency food from them every 4 months. Meanwhile,
there were no stores in this woman’s neighborhood. How was she to recover? How was here illness
related to access to consistent healthy food in the first place---though she had worked for years
harvesting food for the rest of us? Beyond the individual’s predicament, what did her environment
have to do with her ability to carry through with the Doctor’s orders to eat well in order to recover?
In 2005, at one of the (now 87 Hunger & Nutrition Forums) Metro has sponsored, a Hmong mother, a
brave mathematician of the highest order, told me: “I know I am supposed to feed my children 5 fruits
and vegetables every day so they will be strong. But I have 8 children, and I cannot afford 40 fruits
and vegetables a day.”
An Hispanic mother told me that in her country of origin that healthy food was the cheapest
food, but here it is the most expensive, and she must buy enough food to keep her children’s bellies
full—even if it is fast food or top ramen.
Another told me that the ‘Schools were teaching her children to eat poorly.’ Schools being the
place to learn….
An elder Hmong woman told me that she was never hungry until she came to America.’
These experiences in trying to figure out beyond individual ‘choice’ what influence our social
environment plays, and how communities construct access to the basics all humans need (food,
shelter, health) in order to thrive and learn, have provoked me to wrestle with our societal ethic of not
seeing the environment as being significant, and indeed driving a blaming of folks most impacted by
hunger, homelessness, and chronic disease.
Lastly, as a framework, we are entering the holiday/holy day season, when every family and
religion calls themselves to charity, and we are faced with deep hunger, and the 7 deadly ‘IN’s of
charity:
Insufficiency, inappropriateness, inadequacy, instability, inaccessibility, inefficiency, and indignity. So,
when you pull that year old can of cranberry sauce from the back of your cupboard to donate to the
poor –please be aware that that is fine, but there is more required if we have any concept of economy,
environment and equity.
And, in all of this I have been troubled. So many good people distributing charity food from over
300 purported food distribution points in Fresno County. But we have found only 18 really open to the
public, and most of them not accessible without praying to Jesus or producing long documentation
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Food and the Politics of Scarcity
Edie Jessup
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about how really poor they are, and only if you could get to the pantry at 10am on Tuesday, and lived
in that Zip code. The Fresno Community Food Bank estimates that they can serve only 1/3 of folks
experiencing hunger in Fresno County. What are the other 2/3 doing?
Did you know that in Fresno County and much of the Valley:
 You can only access most food pantries once every four months, or agree to case
management by volunteers?
 Fresno County unemployment hovers at over 10% officially (really twice that) and is 2-3 times
the state or national rate?
 Over 10,000 people are homeless in Fresno and Madera Counties, at least 5,000 in Fresno
City?
 Over 85% of Fresno Unified kids qualify for free or reduced lunches? Yesterday Federal data
released by the USDA announced that hunger for US kids rose 50% from ’06-‘07
 Immigrant families are afraid to apply for food stamps and school lunches because they think
that if they use these nutrition programs they will be denied legal status or deported by the
INS?
 If you are a Senior Citizen in California, receiving SSI, you cannot receive Food Stamps, even
though you qualify by income? Increasingly grandparents are caretakers for children, and
they go without food so kids can eat.
 Do you know that the Senior Nutrition (congregate meals program), which is Federally
authorized, contracts to the States, then to the Local Area Agency on Aging, who contracts
with the City of Fresno Parks and Rec Department who contracts with the Fresno EOC that
provides the meals. Do you think much money is left after passing through all those
agencies? Senior Nutrition sites are closing because they don’t have the funds, even though
seniors are starving due to medication costs?
 Did you know that the old Meals on Wheels Program for the elderly is capped with a waiting
list of 600, and delivers 7 frozen dinners once a week to those it does serve (not the lovely
tangerines you see advertised in the Fresno Bee).
 Food Stamps in California, and across the US, have been ‘privatized’? In 2003, all Food
Stamps in California and the nation are issued on a debit like card, In California called ‘Golden
State Advantage’ or EBT, and though the County will still qualify and case manage recipients,
the system, by state contract is run by: Citicorp (then in 2004 was ‘sold’ to Morgan Chase).
And that Citicorp then Morgan Chase runs Food Stamps in 46 of the States? And in many
places administers ‘welfare’ through the same card. That means that federal dollars for the
Food Stamp nutrition program and block granted CalWorks assistance to poor families all
goes to Citicorp, now Morgan Chase, to distribute. This morning, it was reported that Citibank
is slashing 53,000 jobs. Who is making money here?
A side note, the ‘customer service center’ for Fresno and California Food Stamp Recipients is run
out of a call center in India.
Food Stamps, the premier nutrition program, is underutilized. California is LAST in eligible
participation nationally—51st. In Fresno County alone, if people who were eligible for food stamps
were enrolled, it would mean an additional $188 million dollars a year into the economy for people
to buy food!
 The iron deficiency anemia rate in the Valley is 4 times the national average, resulting in
permanent brain damage to 16% of Fresno children?
 For individual kids the permanent injury of hungry is cruel. The cost for our nation in high rates
of school failure and weakened workforce productivity when youth reach employment age is
huge.
So. Food and the Politics of Scarcity.
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Food and the Politics of Scarcity
Edie Jessup
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We human beings started living in cities on the earth about 6,000 years ago and we did it
because our farming got so good that not everyone had to spend all their time growing food. Farmers
could raise enough food to feed themselves and lots of other people too, so some people began to
specialize in making cloth and others specialized in making pottery and others specialized in building
buildings. We created cities as a result of good farming. Some of the oldest cities in the world were
in Egypt. From the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead here is a partial list of things a citizen was not
supposed to do. One is not to cheat poor people. One is not to take land from a neighbor. One is not
to take milk away from children. One is not to waste water. From 6,000 years ago some pretty good
recommendations about farming and about what we need to live well in our cities.
Why are we not moved by the issue of hunger and food insecurity?
And now, chronic disease: obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Impairments to living well;
OVERWHELMINGLY with racist outcomes.
.
What kind of a country would create this?
How can we say what this means.
It is so strange. It is far beyond what makes sense, or, what we intend. What to do, particularly at a
local level.
My biggest concern is whether we, you, are looking at people, our neighbors, as persons in
their environment. Do we understand people as they live in a place? What environment do you and
they live in, and how have we created the environment where we live?
I work for Fresno Metro Ministry, an audacious social justice non-profit. I coordinate a Hunger
& Nutrition Project, and work with the Central Ca. Regional Obesity Prevention Project, Fresno Co.
Obesity Prevention Policy Council, a number of statewide food security organizations, and most
recently with the Roots of Change. I work on access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate
food at all times for low-income people in Fresno. Fresno, where we raise enough food to feed the
nation, and where the very people who harvest our bounty in 106 languages, are hungry. 40% of
adults in Fresno County are food insecure at sometime during the year. 1/3 of the children are
growing up in poverty. The grandchildren of Selma and Delano are standing in the free meal-kitchen
lines. This true here, before the current economic crisis.
The News is: There is no scarcity of food. We have created hungry neighbors by clear policy
decisions at the federal, state, and local level. We have decided to not feed people, and not to feed
people healthy food. We have created a FOOD SECURITY issue. If we do not change the policies
that create an increasingly poor population that is obese and thus inflicted with chronic disease by
diet, we all will pay for the costs of increasingly ill neighbors. We will pay for the loss of farmland by
sprawl, and the loss of knowing HOW to raise our food, as development usurps broken farms. This is
the environment you are living in.
We need to change this environment we are creating very quickly –
If you know who know the consequences for individual health and the accumulation thru society, how
can you not become advocates for system changes that support healthy environments for humans
and the planet?
Some starts have been made. Wellness policies in Schools might begin to turn the tide for all
kids’ health—if we were to fully implement them in Fresno. . But we also have to change the food
landscape in our own organizations, communities, and neighborhoods—including Fresno State.
Because what we are seeing is epidemic, and it is racist in its outcomes. The African American,
Hispanic, and Southeast Asian populations are being hugely impacted by chronic disease by diet. We
are creating a situation where children are developing chronic disease in elementary school, and will
be impaired physically, mentally and socially for the rest of their lives. They are our future.
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Edie Jessup
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Elementary school kids with diabetes, pre-schoolers on inhalers.
Here is the research from Tufts on Kids and nutrition:
Children use food differently than adults. They use food fuel sequentially. So, the kids we see
in Fresno might have 2/3 of the nutrition needed to thrive. Their critical organ growth and function has
occurred; their physical growth has occurred (often they are overweight from excess empty calories.
However, the last 1/3 of nutrition is missing because of poverty, and these kids are not getting the
nutrition they need for cognitive and social development. They are not ready to learn and play. They
are not physically prepared to develop relationship. Almost all hungry children suffer from severely
impaired ability to learn, organize information, concentrate and form relationships. This results in low
activity levels, apathy, fatigue; disinterest in their environment; low self esteem, poor social
interactions and more susceptibility to illness and school absences. Ultimately, this results in
curtained productivity as adults, and our community suffers when young adults and parents are
impacted by early childhood hunger. The External alarm we can document is the level of poverty.
Poverty is the primary factor associated with hunger. One out of three children in Fresno is living in
poverty.
The danger here is huge, and I am sure that doctors and teachers are not asking when and
what patients and students last ate, or if they have enough food at home for a healthy meal.
If you think your work or study is very individual to you, I appeal to you to begin to look at a wider
environmental view. The neighborhood you live in is a great clue. South Fresno is a clue. Take a
bus around and think about how people get what they basically need.
Then, go to your school student government, faculty, board, city council and board of supervisors,
and say we must urgently do better. They must do better. Tell them you will be watching how they
address the environment: physical and social in your place. If what you see is unhealthy food,
expensive healthy food, food shipped for miles, with a huge carbon imprint…..pay attention.
CSUF, as our institute of learning, must get more involved in the community: Anthropology needs to
be out on the corner of Chestnut and Kings Canyon doing observations; the Organic Farming folks
from the Ag department need to be helping site and start community gardens, the business school
needs to be in the community helping small farmers start neighborhood markets and work out food
distribution in food deserts in south east and west Fresno. Volunteers need to do community service
by gleaning food from fields and distributing it through the Food Bank to pantries that are empty right
now.
The gaming of the agricultural industry is breaking the food system. The Corporate world is
now defining nutrition, and marketing food and seed that is ruining sustainable farming worldwide, and
globally causing increased poverty and chronic disease by obesity.
Fresno is a microcosm of what will happen with economic globalization: agribusiness only
exporting of food grown, disintegration of air quality, land taken out of production because the land
has been ruined by unsustainable farming practices, and the displacement of rural families to cities;
cities who, like Fresno, are unprepared to deal with the migration of poor and culturally different
families, and creating extreme urban pockets of poverty. (Please read the Brookings Institute report
on Fresno having the worst pockets of poverty in the nation.
Mark Ritchie, when he led the Institute for Ag and Trade, said that there is a basic dichotomy
reconciliation we must make:
1. We are internationalists fundamentally. We see the world like the world flag from space,
and understand our interdependence as a global issue. This is Globalism.
2. We are also concerned about economic globalization that promotes persons, cities, and
nations as competitors.
Make this leap and analogy to the work you are doing and learning, and the ethics of
community.
Ritchie posits that industrialization of agriculture and multinational Ag is being argued as if it is a
better system than traditional farming. When science and study prove that it is not a better food
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system, it is argued that corporate agriculture (or corporate social services, for instance) is needed in
order to feed or treat the poor of the world. When study and science prove that consolidated and
corporatization is in fact not feeding the poor, and is instead impoverishing and hunger is increasing, it
is argued that techno-industrialization , corporatization and consolidation is inevitable. And, if we add
to the perception that corporate agriculture or corporate health treatment is inevitable –as in ‘you can’t
fight city hall’ we are giving the destruction of our food system, our best treatment standards, and the
environment over to an irresponsible corporate-individual.
The Hope I have is that we can use policymaking and can show that it is not inevitable. It is a
threat to democracy to give over as inevitable the drive toward corporately determined agriculture or
health care, or housing, the failure of the food system, health care and housing here and worldwide,
and the inevitable hunger and now development of chronic disease by diet.
WE may have to change, and step up to the plate as an advocate for sustainability and
localism that can solve our people and planet health problems in PLACE. The recent Declaration for
Food and Agriculture circulating from Roots of Change is my hope of changing our current failed food
system into a sustainable food system by 2030. Locally, we may have to change our city ordinances
to allow Community Gardens, and support the relocation of the Hmong Garden.
You see, I come very blatantly from a perspective, and a place. My perspective is heavily a
social justice perspective, and my place is the Fresno area of the San Joaquin Valley, where we
indeed grow food for the nation and world. I come from a place critically positioned and a place that is
a microcosm of what is happening to land, water, food, and people around the world. I think policy
affects the social fabric of all our lives. And policy is the only way we can assure Equitability in our
communities. I ask you to contribute what you know from your practices to a larger, environmental
change needed in our Society.
Community requires a new bottom line, a triple bottom line that considers not just the economy, but
the environment and equity.
Have you seen: The Future of Food, Supersize Me, and read Fast Food Nation, and the
Politics of Food? Read Sweet Charity: Emergency food and the end of entitlement?
I see our Social Environment as a dimension of a place-based strategy to address health
disparities.
Fresno Metro Ministry intentionally works in collaboration, and intentionally works in multiple
languages. We have invested in interpreting equipment, multi-cultural staff, and interpreters.
When we bring people together who are directly affected by health disparities, access disparities, and
who have never talked to others who are experiencing similar issues based in poverty and
discrimination, we have found these things:
1. They find that they have much more in common than not.
2. That we are attempting to collaborate in a very conservative social environment.
3. We find that the proverbial ‘Elephant in the Living Room, being described by Blind men’ may
not really be an Elephant. We have assumed --since we can academically ‘see’ that it is an elephant.
We presume what the issue is, when it may not be the issue. What if what they describe is not an
Elephant? What if they are truly describing what it is in their experience, and we are projecting that it
is an Elephant and dumping our resources into Elephantness, but it is really something else?
To work in place based strategies to address hunger and health disparities, we need to know
more anthropologically about what we are seeing. I do not believe we have an accurate description of
the environment in which we are seeing the clear, racist outcomes in health, chronic disease, and
food insecurity.
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Edie Jessup
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I think we fail if we do not begin the dialogue with the very people we are observing suffering
the results of a social environment we have in effect created. In Fresno, that is primarily folks living
South of Shaw, or in rural parts of the county. We are often afraid to do that. We have a great fear of
the people themselves, and a misunderstanding of what the issues are for people of poverty --- who
now are in the racial majority in California.
I truly believe that we have ignored the populations we talk about endlessly and here in
Fresno. Hate radio overtly blame people for their situation. And speak ill of food stamps for the
stimulus it is to the economy, while affirming that Wall Street deserves a bailout. Food Stamps, an
invention of our government to support farmers, Fresno’s major industry, during hard times by keeping
retail sales steady, and people buying food.
Central California. It is different. And, because it is the part of the state anticipating the
greatest amount of population growth in the next decade, the need for our advocacy work is high.
And, because of lack of infrastructure, the current and future problems of poor health and
environmental degradation in the place where most of our food comes from in this country, makes
addressing place critical for our whole state and nation.
Fresno County is much the microcosm of the world, in diversity, power differentials, and
environmental problems caused by our social environment, and its resultant poverty.
I see the Health disparities in our region as the eye of a perfect storm. That storm is founded
on a faulty premise by those attempting to build high enough dikes. The mistake in perception is that
in the Valley, jobs do not equal health care. And, most jobs being created in the pell-mell
development in the Valley do not have health care as a job benefit. So, in addition to huge numbers
in poverty, lacking food, housing, and education, the play out is that these diverse people, okies and
immigrants, are dying from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. In fact, Death by their social
environment.
I ask: What is the work of our society?
So far, Metro’s focus on addressing these issues are primarily systemic, and a look at the
policies that maintain and expand poverty and the resultant ill health by generations.
Changing an entrenched environment is not a fast process. It is not a neat and tidy. It is not
one-on-one. It is not necessarily academically rigorous. But it does engage the people affected, and
creates a power base across cultures and languages, and en mass, they are heard by those who can
make changes and could apply resources if there was political will.
The challenge of place based change in our social environment is challenged by Diaspora,
migration, and displacement coupled with lack of resources to answer basic human rights to food,
housing, and health care. Communities most impacted by ill health seem to be communities in
transition, and they nearly disappear from a place just as they begin to see their issues. Our solution
making to overcome health disparities based on poverty and race and place will rely on ongoing work
to establish the ‘small town’ again, and find ways for people to take the ‘small town’ with them to the
next housing development, homeless shelter, labor camp, or prison, as they migrate---or the next
therapeutic community, if they are so lucky.
Or, we can change the environment so good health and common good is universally possible.
Short wins, and commitment to the long haul are both necessary.
We have to relearn the rhythm of sustainability.
Policies determine our future
People form policy.
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Edie Jessup
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I hate the fish story. It is a myth. An urban legend that leaves poor families, poor single
adults, poor elders, and poor children in a created prison where they are dismissed from human
dignity and it is a poor story for sustainable agriculture and sustainable community to use as a mantra.
You know. Give a person a fish, they will eat for today; teach a person to fish and they will fish
for a lifetime. Exactly 50% wrong. If they have no access to the water/land they will die, full of
knowledge about how to fish, but dying of the inability to wet their line because someone owns the
access to the land and water, and will not let them in to fish, will not let them grow food, will not let
them eat. A prime, current example is the closing of the Hmong Garden, and the lack of Farmers
Markets in Fresno.
How can we begin to see Persons in their Environment? If neighborhoods only food access is
liquor stores, fast food restaurants and corner stores, Shall we blame them for not following through
on our recommended good eating habits or therapeutic carry through if their environment gives them
no way to be supported in change or buy healthy food?
We can impact the Environment, the Economy, and EQUITY in SOCIAL ISSUES
Environment: We have created an un-sustainable system. Industrial Agriculture is
destroying life. We must attend to planning issues locally and globally. Land use, zoning.
Economy: There must be re-investment in building the local economy.
Equity: We lose you, our children, here in the Valley because they must leave in order to
have a life, education, recreation, health care. There has to be a social climate that will support work.
With the environment ruined, youth have no vision of having a life in place. They will leave. There
must be a vision of a positive future--A reason to stay, the idea that a life can be built and a story told.
This is where you all come in. You/We must look to the environment we have created for
people to live here and study it quickly. An individual only approach is nice for some, but condemns
our society and community to a fast approaching point of irresponsibility.
Robin Hood was Right. It’s time to take back from the rich and give to the poor and assure all
of our best interests with a healthy population with adequate nutrition and health for whole people.
The privatization of social programs and the balkanization of private hit-or-miss charity is no
way to solve injustice. We have the means to feed the hungry.
Our Citizen Job, our job as keepers of the secrets of raising food is creating the community
support and environmental change for those most in need. We have to use our power to create the
environment in our neighborhoods that supports health by good diet that is accessible by the poor.
The cost in lost participants in our society is too grave.
There is plenty of food. Why do we not distribute it to those children suffering from permanent
brain damage and disease by diet? We can you know.
As a charge to you in your community, as a charge to you with your colleagues today at your
tables, I urgently request that you frame your relationships with your neighbor stakeholders, and that
you get to it in enrolling your neighbors—to full participation NOW by drawing upon the resource and
intent of the Federal Nutrition Programs.
When we see that the plight of ill health by diet in our most vulnerable is because of our perverted
sense of who is deserving of basic human resources and then we limit resources to others for their
basic needs --When we see that the most vulnerable: children, and elders don’t have adequate nourishment to
thrive, and meanwhile fall on to cheap fat and sugar comforts to their ill health---
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Edie Jessup
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It is time for us to recommend and act at a larger level than changing individual behavior with BandAids of advice to eat right and act nicely; and meanwhile allow the life of a generation to be irreparably
damaged. YOUR Generation.
When we see that we have the resources to make a major corrective in our schools and the diets of
our kids and when we provide access to healthy food to those without a living wage
When we see, and do not act as we can, with our resources and power to fix this one piece of
grinding poverty: access to nutritious, adequate, culturally appropriate food BECAUSE WE CAN and
because we have resources to do it
We fail, because we have not changed with the times and new circumstances. The State of the Plate
here in California is cruelly and increasingly empty. Like the state of Health and Housing in our
communities, things are not getting better.
Watch The Governor’s and the legislatures’ budget proposals: Cuts to CalWorks grants;
Denying health care to CalWorks, Immigrants, and low wage families; denying COLA for SSI/SSP
who still cannot get food stamps in California even though they qualify by income; cuts to Senior
Nutrition Programs; cuts CFAP and CAPI Food Assistance to legal immigrants; ---we are headed for
escalated problems, while we are cutting county staff to deal with these huge and growing real people
with real need for good food.
We have researched, and asked people who are hungry what they need.
Food, dignity, voice in how they access food and health---not standing in line for hours for not enough
food. No mystery.
Here is the challenge from my perspective. We should address --specific action, specific
advocacy, and specific policy to change our environments in PLACE.
You are the people. You know things. You and I are needed to act for the common human good.
****************************************************************************************************************
I will close with my new favorite poem. (not delivered)
Imagine the Angels of Bread, Martin Espada
This is the year
This is the year
This is the year that squatters evict their landlords,
Gazing like admirals from the rail
Of the roofdeck
Or levitating their hands in praise
Of steam, at last, in the shower;
This is the year
That shawled refugees deport judges
Judges, Who stare at the floor
And their swollen feet
As their files are stamped
With their destination;
This is the year that police revolvers,
Stove-hot, blister the fingers
Of raging rogue cops,
And nightsticks splinter
In their palms;
This is the year
11-19-08 Ethics Lecture
Food and the Politics of Scarcity
That darkskinned men
Lynched a century ago
Return to sip coffee quietly
With the apologizing descendants
Of their executioners.
This is the year that those
Who swim the border’s undertow
And shiver in boxcars
Are greeted with trumpets and drums
At the first railroad crossing
On the other side;
This is the year that the hands
Pulling tomatoes from the vine
Uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
This is the year that
The hands canning tomatoes
Are named in the will
That owns the bedlam of the cannery;
This is the year that the eyes
Stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
Awaken at last to the sight
Of a rooster-loud hillside,
Pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
This is the year that cockroaches
Become extinct, that no doctor
Finds a roach embedded
In the ear of an infant;
This is the year that the food stamps
Of adolescent mothers
Are auctioned like gold doubloons,
And no coin is given to buy machetes
For the next bouquet of severed heads
In coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
Began as a vision of hands without manacles,
Then this is the year;
If the shutdown of extermination camps
Began as imagination of a land
Without barbed wire or the crematorium,
Then this is the year;
If every rebellion begins with the idea
That conquerors on horseback
Are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
If plunged in the river,
Then this is the year.
Edie Jessup
Page 9 Of 10
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Food and the Politics of Scarcity
So this year may every humiliated mouth,
Teeth like desecrated headstones,
Fill with the angels of bread.
This is the year
This is the year
This is the year
Edie Jessup
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