Jesse-Justin Cuevas, Staff Writer
Ideology: Liberal | Writing from: Brooklyn, NY

On December 7, New York Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, announced a new City Council effort, FoodWorks New York. It will be the City’s first comprehensive plan that uses our food system to create jobs, improve public health and protect the environment. Food, economic and environmental sustainability all in one. Personally I am thrilled, but I can’t help pausing for a moment to wonder, What took us so long? Oh right, a globally affected economic recession.

Almost four decades ago, the federal government established the Environmental Protection Agency to write and enforce healthy food and environmental regulation. Despite clear air standard improvements and better pesticide control, there has been little done surrounding local and sustainable food development. Admittedly, food issues get pushed to the fringes of public policy amidst national security crises, and we can’t expect the EPA to implement federal food policy when the point of such sustainability is its “local” nature. Finally the issue is on the forefront in New York State, and the government is debating sustainable food strategically, in a language that most every American understands: The Dollar.
This isn’t to say that the advantages of sustainability never were presented from an economic angle; sustainability advocates, students, professionals and politicians alike, know better than to dismiss the question of finances. However, our local governments merely ‘recommended’ local food consumption. Until now, they hadn’t implemented it politically. Now, because of our current economic climate, we are able to debate the environmental climate in a way that makes ‘cents.’

On Thursday, Christine Quinn addressed her constituents with the news that FoodWorks New York would help our economy. Did she cite the usual positive sustainability propaganda of reducing carbon emissions, taking care of farmland and supporting agro families? Certainly! But she kept coming back to the reality that healthier and greener food policies produce economic gain.

We can expect to see the Council working with experts in the varied and interconnected fields of government, industry, labor and academia over the next six months. Council members also plan to work closely with hunger and environmental advocates and community leaders to put policy into action. Speaker Quinn outlined FoodWorks New York’s five major goals.

(1) The Council aims to improve infrastructure by creating more links between upstate producers and the five boroughs. Simply doubling the rail transportation of goods between New York and Hunts Point will eliminate 58 million truck miles—76,000 tons of carbon dioxide—every year. (2) This shift in transportation greatly reduces local environmental damage. Also contributing to the bettering of our environment is the push for urban agricultural expansion through vertical farming, community gardens, green roofs and compost centers. (3) The Council also hopes to attract more food industry companies to the City and to expand local food manufacturing to create more jobs. The FRESH Initiative works towards increasing the City’s local food industry, and the City plans to open a wash, cut and bag facility for the DOE’s lettuce. (4) FoodWorks NY wants to keep local dollars in the local economy by expanding CSAs, farmers’ markets and amending State legislation to prioritize local food. (5) It has been made clear that obesity and other food related diseases and disorders are rampant in America. The Council expects to expand healthy food markets to lower income neighborhoods, and the new Health Bucks program increases New Yorkers’ enrollment in Food Stamps and WIC.

We’ve been given life-threatening incentives in all arenas of our livelihood from energy to food consumption, but clearly they haven’t been enough. Al Gore presented us with the horrific effects of climate change and resource depletion in his 2006 An Inconvenient Truth. US Secretary Steven Chu constantly reports startling numbers that I consider cardiac arrest inducing, but our energy policies are still coming along at a tortoise pace. And if Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me weren’t enough, a mere walk around your neighborhood supermarket ought to register the immediacy of American obesity rates. And yet, not much changes until our money is on the line. Although each of FoodWorks New York’s five goals can be interpreted as more of the vague and noncommittal government speak to which we’re accustomed, it’s exciting to see sustainability in actual policy.
Enforcing sustainable food policy in many cases calls for a shift in economic paradigm, which before the dollar’s value plummeted was not on the table for discussion. So there is good in our economy’s downward spiral yet! It doesn’t make me happy that doing the right thing wasn’t deemed right before, and it doesn’t make me happy that millions of Americans are losing their jobs and their family security. But I am pleased that finally we are listening to what we should have heard long ago.