THE PRICE AND THE PROMISE OF CITIZENSHIP

President Barack Obama, in his inaugural address stated: “that we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood,” and urged that, “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.” – Obama, January 20, 2009

The ongoing “Food Crisis,” which showcased grain shortages and price volatility and sparked riots across the world last summer, brought public awareness to eaters everywhere that we have created a system in which access to food is highly vulnerable to international market forces. Everywhere now attitudes are beginning to shift as environmental concerns force people to recognize that we must be stewards of the land, and recent spikes in food prices are raising questions about what it means to have an equitable democratic society. To encourage agriculture we must make it profitable again which will require increased prices to farmers for their produce, but we also have to provide food security for the poor. The paradox of building a strong agricultural sector while ensuring food security for all will be one of the great policy challenges facing our country in coming years. Food policy councils represent one way forward and have the potential to provide a safe and healthy way for communities to deal with that conflict and to coordinate and build relationships between members of a food system across urban and rural landscapes, and to promote civic engagement among underrepresented groups.

Tom Vilsack, recently appointed as Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama administration, has been applauded for creating the second official state-wide food policy council in the United States by executive order in the year 2000. The Iowa Food Policy Council had many early successes and was diverse both in its representative stakeholders at the table and range of policy recommendations. However, when Governor Vilsack left office in January of 2007 the council effectively ceased to exist, leaving spectators to wonder about the durability of such agencies to address systemic change in the food system. Since their inception, support for food policy councils has grown exponentially – the promise of innovative and creative problem solving by empowered citizens, shifting policy at the local level toward a sustainable and just food system, appeals to a wide range of political and social activists. Many Foundations, including Kellogg, Mazon and the California Endowment are currently investing in policy councils. In 2007 The American Planning Association wrote its first ever policy guide on community and regional food planning. Since as far back as 1996, even the USDA began funding Food Policy Councils through Community Food Projects Competitive Grants. Wayne Robberts, manager of the prominent Toranto Food Policy Council, has gone as far as to suggest:
Our problems do not come from scarcity, but from not knowing how to treat abundance. .. Marry Poppins came down into a family that was totally dysfunctional and then used her magic to make their family functional, which is I believe that a FPC does which it underlies a system which has all the necessary ingredients for success…

While food policy councils are revolutionary in their ability to coordinate disparate actors across the food system, they most certainly cannot remedy all of the problems currently plaguing our global food system. For this reason, it is vital for the greater goal of ensuring food sovereignty that we take a critical look at food policy councils to fully understand their limitations. With the appointment of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama administration, an unbiased critique is needed now to inform the progress of the food justice movement nationally. This paper seeks to analyze the potential and limitations of food policy councils to influence or inform public policy and restore local control over the food system. Additionally it is our intention to catalog various conditions for success. By so doing, we hope to provide a better understanding of what food policy councils can and cannot do. Through this process, we hope to provide a better understanding of the problems and potential of the food policy council model to transform food systems.