Kansas Food: What's for Dinner?

i know what was the last thing you ate with a healthy was a road in kansas i'm kate mcintyre and today on kbr presents kansas what we eat and who produces and we'll look at what we're eating and where they came from and what the future of food production looks like here in kansas it's a panel discussion sponsored by the university of kansas environmental law society and held at the k u comments in spin or halt on january twenty third two thousand fourteen this event featured paul johnson of the kansas rural center rhonda gen keith who teaches horticulture at kansas state university don stull who teaches anthropology at the university of kansas and studies the meat and poultry industries and our first panelist barbara leclaire of the kansas health institute what we each has a lot to do with how healthy we are as individuals in a population and

what we eat in our food choices not only influence on our ability to maintain a healthy weight but also have a lot to do with rates of chronic diseases things like heart disease hypertension diabetes and that some forms of cancer and in fact it was just a study that i can just last week that i know the world cancer research fund that estimates that about thirty five percent cancers could be prevented if we increase our korean vegetable consumption so there's what we should eat we have dietary recommendations from usda at my plate is different person that says that we should try to fill about half of our plates with fruits vegetables and the rest of what we should be composed that whole grains and lean protein sources and lean period rather its limit the cats and sugars but focus on fruits and vegetable consumption everybody knows that right so how well are we doing just under eight percent of kansas

adults scored good on the healthy eating index on with the remainder either needing improvement or pour more than half leading improvement and these results are not unique to kansas these are very similar to what had been published in national studies like the inane says well so it's not that we're doing worse than everybody else nobody does very well in terms of the eu admission fee the median daily vegetable intake was one point six times a day people a vegetable so listen twice a day we have other evidence that houses were not doing so well also and there's been a lot in the news in the last decade or so that increasing rates of overweight and obesity and again kansas is not doing it a lot better or a lot worse and then the rates across the country but we know that in twenty eleven about thirty five percent of adults in kansas were in the overweight category an additional thirty percent were in the category that we call these so why are we in this

venice and while eating choices are complicated and the things that taste that are always the things that are the best for a similar kind of we kind of are programmed for that false and sugars and those aren't really love me no we should be eating all the time that it was down and simplify just a little bit i think there are these are these are the big issues in terms of what factors influence our eating behaviors taste the bath salts and the sugars that really tastes good and are more satisfying sometimes on and of course i think oral condition to some extent that those are the things we'd like to be eating price is a big factor you care to eat well you have to be able to afford to have a purchase or rower chambers healthy fruit in some way you can't eat well if you can get the foods that you should be

eating on an access can be influenced both by whether their villages they are in your environment where you can reach it and whether you have the means to be able to obtain it without either through i don't really have the money to purchase farm by that over there you can get physically get to the grocery store or other distribution point within your community convenience is a huge huge factor on we're on the society we we are busy and that trend has been that we spend less than less and less time eating at home and preparing for that role on that all of these other factors come into play and sometimes make it hard to make good choices in summary you are eating behaviors are complex there's lots of factors involved here we know we need to do better we need to improve for ed there's many many places in awe of this where we might intervene if we wish to change behaviors and can cause people to eat more healthily that i think our

food environment exerts profound influence and one thing that we could consider is aware and i think some of our panelists will talk about this a little bit is what we can do in terms of policy to start to reshape the world barbara leclaire is a senior analyst at the kansas health institute you've just heard excerpts of her presentation at a panel discussion called kansas food what we eat and who produces it rhonda junkie is a professor of horticulture at kansas state university specializing in sustainable agriculture an organic crops you see the science by the side of the road one kansas farmer feeds more than a hundred and twenty eight people on but are we really feeding ourselves and if we are what kind of things are we kidding ourselves well as we all know are growing a lot of wheat that's where we're called the wheat state on there are sixty five thousand total farmers in kansas and actually twenty two

of those are we farmers growing family according to the census of ag we can feed ourselves just one year's crop we give yourself for forty three years several set what were exporting wheat were growing a lot of wheat so that's fine were exporting wheat got a lot of ground thats good for week ross raising a lot of beefs let the flint hills we've got some wonderful grazing land or also feeling a lot of grains to to beef animals again of those sixty five thousand farmers in kansas twenty seven thousand in the raising beef and the consumption us why does ninety four pounds of beef pre year that's a lot of beef thats how much we're eating so if you take a point seven million cattle and assume a certain carcass wait that's four point four billion pounds of beef per year using kansans so did get ourselves only seventeen years ok so we got hamburgers we got me what about that letter are redrawing of tomatoes to even have catch up on our burgers many people think we have enough tomatoes in the

entire state of kansas is the only hundred and twenty seven acres of tomatoes which sounds like a lot that we eat a lot of tomatoes think of all the pomp the sausage making the spaghetti sauce pizza we could only feed ourselves for five days and the amount made is that are produced on those hundred twenty seven acres that some cancers that hundred and thirty days i did everything on a dais basis because it's easier to think of days rather than percentages that they're not a potato some others are grown on irrigated circles in western kansas fifty years a sweet corn asparagus there's only seventy six acres in the entire state we can feed ourselves or seventeen days carrots and let us we can even have a salad bar mom sorry well we cannot have a solid like one day here so that's it if you go back to the nineteen twenties if you go back to nineteen ten we had a lot more sweet because i don't have the number memorized that one ego rather have used to be the sweet potato capital of kansas on acts of

us for a while we can feed cancers with eighty two thousand acres of vegetables and we used to have one hundred and thirty so we used to get that we don't anymore same thing with freight are repeating ourselves afraid we're only drawing ten days of apple's fourteen days of peaches three a half days of cherries much we have a lot of people may not realize is pecans alonso cancer and that they're not a fruit or a vegetable but we do have a lot of pecan orchard to so we look up free and that statistics or kansas announcer lumped together and we did produce a fair amount of pecans in terms of fruit the trend is similar to vegetables nineteen ten we had a lot of money as they went down and then held constant down down down until it's almost you can even see the number of apples anymore on barb mentioned the studies on fruit and vegetable consumption the cdc had a report in two thousand nine that some of the disputes that end in two thousand nine the national average is fourteen percent of adults are

consuming on a day on the high was washington dc with twenty percent the lowest mississippi with eight point eight in kansas is actually forty five and of the fifty states plus district of columbia with only ten percent but it or survey my red cross class on tuesday of this week and i asked them how many for fifty five a day and i don't they're lying to twenty six seven cents to six percent said yes so they're either lying of them were above the national average of if you take that crap classic case they are that pride is located right so how does that pan out in terms of water weed growing well remember the hamburger illegal but vegetables had practically no fruit there's some very so we need a lot more fruits and vegetables is the take home message again if you look at historical data on the census of agriculture in nineteen twenty we had a hundred and sixty five thousand total farms in kansas instead of sixty five of those eight hundred and sixty five forty thousand have orchards hundred and

nine thousand were selling vegetables and a hundred and twenty three thousand were growing vegetables for how news and vegetables for sale was down to four hundred and seventy three farms and me and hollered to those who thought if you like your senses right ok where's the small farmer land in orchards their four hundred and thirty two farms so we're just almost all the chart in what that results is unrealized economic potential so you just see in the movie when i read the book is the physics are all in the douglas county fair report interested in questions of the ants running joke he teaches horticulture at kansas state university don stull teaches at the university of kansas he specializes in the anthropology of food including meat and poultry production and industrial agriculture over the course of the twentieth century american agriculture steadily and relentlessly industrialized small largely self sufficient farms rely on venture across livestock and wild fruits

gateway to highly mechanized and highly capitalized large ones producing a limited range of crops for commodity markets as control of our food system shifted from independent farms to highly concentrated and vertically integrated agribusinesses agriculture became an industry manufacturing food fiber and fuel control most production is now in the hands of large corporations virtually all the chickens sold in the united states are grown into production contracts to a handful of companies to own the bird from egg to supermarket tyson foods the largest us poultry company contracts with about six thousand of what he calls family farmers to raises chickens they are expected to grow the birds to slaughter weight under strict company guidelines as quickly and as cheaply as possible if tyson does not satisfy it may cancel their

contracts with little notice and even less recourse leaving them under amount of debt for their otherwise useless chicken houses poultry became the model for pork in the early nineteen eighties less than five percent of the us horse went to market under some type of contract in two thousand eight more than eighty eight percent were committed to actors through direct ownership or contract the packers are in the lighting plot or import processors but only in their own cattle and contract in with the years to raise them between fifty and eighty percent of the cattle manslaughter in the united states where security through what it's called captive supply this means either forward contracts formula pricing packer ownership or feeders who have only one viable buyer these methods allow packers to drive down prices for independent producers who depend on marcus control but only a few bars according to the prominent

agricultural economist one of war concentration in the packing is and i quote well above levels generally considered to elicit non competitive behavior and result in adverse economic performance in fact fourteen packing plants is slaughtering more than one million animals a year account for most of the nation's before the poultry market disappeared decades ago and a hot market is all but gone the beef market is fast disappearing as well sourced more barriers from nineteen eighty to two thousand on the number of dairy farms the united states fell by eighty one percent whispering these numbers for survival in nineteen eighty eight kansas had fifty six hundred dairy operations for eagle four hundred and twenty four left to that over the last decade a retail meat prices have risen more than forty percent during that same time gross farm income for small and medium

sized hog and cattle farmers fell by thirty two percent or two thousand twelve report entitled the hands that feed us found that thirty one percent of food chain workers that his workers to plan parties process pack transport prepare serve herself the thirty one percent of these workers suffer from food insecurity so americans in general and food chain workers in particular have been shaken iced as a nation we're at a crucial juncture and how we produce process consumed and even think about food a cultural dialogue about food has erupted into what to land and michael he's been called food wars between competing food paradigms on the one hand as the dominant production this paradigm based on corporate agriculture and all about ballistic food industries on the other is there a re emerging alternative integrated ecological model in which was produced

locally naturally and sustainably on family farms under socially just conditions these competing paradigms what michael pollan calls the industrial and the pastoral have significant consequences for natural health national health and food security in the years to come advocates of industrial agriculture are in a cave clothes confined animal feeding operations or the most cost effective means are producing milk meat and eggs they credit this production model with giving us the cheapest food in human history and also the safest they say kato's make better use of available resources decreased the force station and actually reduce the environmental impact of meat production they dismiss critics as anti modern with nothing better to offer than a retreat into the past and they argue that the idea of green organic local food

systems for sustainable and secure is nothing but a bunch of bull advocates of the integrative ecological alternatives counter that the food produced by industrial matters is cheap only because they externalize says many of his true cost they say it cannot compare with pastoral artist on all foods for freshness or taste nor is a particularly safe are those who produce and eat it and it's about environmental consequences the meat and poultry industry has restructured and relocated from cities rural communities and in the process it has transformed how food is produced and processed and biking the industry has been largely successful in blocking meaningful efforts to reform and the industrial system remains the dominant method of reproduction indeed of all agriculture although pressure from consumers and groups like ages us have led to a modest reforms in its treatment of animals

alternative production models of which animals are raised locally unsustainably on family farms under socially just conditions have emerged whether they will effectively challenge the gemini of industrial me on the production for all but the wealthiest eaters in high income nations remains to be seen it is ultimately up to us to decide which system the dominant industrial model or emerging alternatives to it that's professor don stull of the university of kansas the last speaker at the k u commons panel on kansas vote is paul johnson of the kansas rural center i think you can overstate the consolidation what's happened every culture in the last forty years so i think the question is what that can we reverse course on and how we build a new local and regional food system in our state that psychologically environmentally sound and doesn't abuse

line workers at such firm when you look at farm policy and who gets the money out of our farm bill's only get to you'll see that seventy percent of the four came a cicada kansas and from niger five toy piano i went to ten percent of the farms the basic thing here is that we really don't have a food policy discussion our country per se with a formal discussion we have discussions about agriculture seventy five or so the farm bill is spending goes for the stamp program are used to called food stamps fifty percent of our farm bill spending goes for commodity payments and crop insurance is a fight really goes on when youre going to pass a farm bill but as you can see the vast majority of those payments are for five crops wheat corn soybeans cotton and rice will spend any money on produce even though should behalf of the plate and there were eating five percent is for conservation programs most of it is from what's our land retirement program crp stands for the conservation

reserve program has a couple million acres of that in kansas at this point the sustainable farming advocate so i work with the battle's week on the farm bill and two thousand to we finally started its conservation money for working for it's so people can put up buffer strips they can do crop rotation second improvements on a working for and there's five percent for everything else marketing farmers markets research world of element it's a trick surgery only see where the money goes and that's so where the legal battles coming forward at this point california two years ago had a ballot initiative before so people to label a genetically modified food but oliver send out of the sixty million dollar campaign fifty million spent by the grocery and coca cola nestle and pepsico to be cat maybe a fifty two forty eight the washington state supervision was about twenty

million dollar campaign that happened last fall and we lost fifty two to forty six that there are there are no laws on the books at this point for genetic derived so places and wellness to farmers in north dakota who are growing for their dna canola market in this country and ninety percent of the canola seat in a country now is genetically modified so this is the organic farmers lost their ability to ensure that they were going to have to know organic or canola oil and that were not too far from genetically modified wheat and there'll be a real debate over whether it's going to be for export schrader we're good with genetically modified soybeans and corn at ninety percent of our corn soybeans are now genetically modified it but with the dust animals we think that you know we would live with that although oliver grocery products have an unlabeled but waits a feeder of food grain and staff alive japan a lot of

what the market's of service that you can eat your next for we just needed that word and expanded drill pesticide drift issues so we've we've had a life or save roundup ready for twenty years now with overused it now about fifty super weeds in this country that live to say won't kill so what's the next chemical treadmill the robot farmers on to world for crop production was step two four d and i was curious about that is the great chemistry in a state has tried to expand his band concerned about it as the cotton industry was coming to kansas well i think we are getting in the soda pop taxation and regulation i would say that will be comparable to the tobacco fight that we've had for the last forty years bloomberg try to do in new york city that debate coming and what's been so severe you've just heard paul

johnson of the kansas world centre speaking january twenty third two thousand fourteen at the k u commons he was one of four speakers on kansas food what we eat and who produces it i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to kbr presents on kansas public radio in order to feature more of the following question and answer session on today's program the previous presentations have been excerpted for broadcast you can hear their comments in their entirety on our website kbr that pay you that edu thanks for those very interesting piece occasions i appreciated a life and i'm just wondering this is a pessimistic picture either i'm from which i can say i came expecting something all that different in tone and tenor that i went there wendy when you deviate from your perspectives health ants farm from a variety of standpoints look at what's happening what would be the

biggest changes you think how could occur now given that we're already at this point that occur now to shift the direction over the next few decades for the state the same terms of vegetable growing you know from what i see from possible future generations of farmers there's interest there brundage ag teaches horticulture at kansas state university and civic estate i see the urban anger of you have a campus in kansas city you know the economics are tough especially as you saw the subsidies are there for fruits vegetables and it's you know it's hard to ask for subsidies people won't want that that unless you want more expensive feed people had to make a living wage is fried vegetable farmers to sow that's all that puzzle one way or another and whether that is a good starting point would be a level playing field stop subsidizing things that aren't enforcing of the carson meets and then that'll create enough of an uproar and maybe the confusion we can get in there and do something

positive sosa that step one and other thing is and protection from herbicide ridiculous thought was my minor leaguers or sand about in some glamour talking to people who might know something about the legal end of this you know as a vegetable farmer have very little recourse if there's any drift on a property there's some actually are deciding the rainfall right now thats affecting people's crops especially vegetable crops are sensitive to all kinds of herbicides and that's all of us have high tunnels and that's one of the reasons people are coming apart tunnels as the buttes you get better protection the high toll some of its protection from the environment some of it i think is protection from the riverside so it's so we've got to have some ways some recourse for genetic drift and have some recourse herbicide draft and have been trying to raise awareness about pesticides and the rainfall we got it again just level playing field naked make an uneven even game so they were not always the ones that are being drifted upon thousands of dull teaches in the department of anthropology at the university of kansas the

beginning stages of their dunes more search planning about where a new food system might look like farm farmers markets in kansas city has doubled to an eighteen the last twenty years robert talked about the best food studded with had done in kansas what was done with that that the douglas food policy council an end to those three counties are really analyze what we need to grow war we grow and what are the food deserts you know that your sport or were putting some of that data together and now that the next step from that which is food policy councils gotten is a grant to do a food hub which is really kind of the next step up from farmers markets where you start planning now who wants to who is growing up how are you put together a number of growers to meet certain accounts to do we need of approaches where else do you know when he'd expand some of the small meat packing houses you know

that there's an infrastructure really have to rebuild or a red find some money and animosity is not there the anderson local food is just this phenomenal it sends forth it's really starting to help stroke what we're producing kansas no and i'm an urban market gardening twenty years so with a the rolling prairie csm russell says christian service and um this last year one of the distribution site that i write for rolling prairie as the town wards memorial hospital a man and i think the health folks are finally getting off the dime and say in a long term costs have to be factory and hear it and so i'd just as the net make a couple comments again barbara leclaire of the campus health institute first of all i think we did maybe paint a fairly negative picture but there are some positive things happening and i do think there is an awakening that's occurring and where were starting to see more interest on

not only not a large sector of the population still put the more people that are interested in knowing more about where the kids come from and how the fruit a produce stand and one teen sustainably produced foods and that drives the market so are purchasing patterns have a lot of power and we need to use that power and remember remember that doesn't think there's lots of a local posse opportunities are things in local planning and in terms of how we use our land it we can encourage community gardens we can have some control over where food retail outlets are located and what kinds of retail outlets are there we can incentivize healthy food retail wow we can't restrict opportunities for fast food are and there's there's lots and lots of ways they're within local policy we can exert some influence on on the food environment and began to reshape and make the healthy choices easier for people to choose

the question of iraq ever again paul johnson is a policy advocate and lobbyist with the kansas whirl center and your sense of how one or a sea of the connection that how strong does it the pressure for example at kansas state to really move education toward sustainable ongoing war with also and food production it just not going to take it going away tears and it's a roll of the dice and beyond any thoughts about if you do a ritual a pattern that that is the safest a study method the state of kansas or the universe existing interstate be careful what i say i think this is going to be iranian i would say there's growing interest in the trenches unsustainable black people like me that are faculty members of the department's and it's not just in horticulture that there's more interest now on a grimy there's interesting geography there's people are in landscape architecture miniatures it's

all over campus people are are looking at ways to design more sustainable systems and that's good but then there's another side of it which is where people are starting to use the word sustainable to mean anything they wanted to me and so that's not so good so i think we still need to be careful when we see the word sustainable how's it being used in terms of what's going on in awkward for you know since i grew up in kansas city and i know that that's been in the news since i was you know three years old probably i did it had to turn to the policy people to see if it's really being addressed seriously i don't know that people are going to get seriously until it's hidden their pocketbooks you know what i know is that they've finally started doing some earring and an they have the end of the districts out there that are supposed to be figuring out how to survive self self police what's being used in terms of what will be grown bear on an interesting thing about the fruit vegetable piece of this puzzle is that it has a certain point when water gets expensive field crops can be grown

economically but there are some vegetables and i think that's why we're seeing a couple circles of potatoes go in another garden city so there could so this is sort of an ironic twist an impossible result of the depletion of the aquifer does it there's an economic opportunity for some larger scale vegetable production least until the opera for a completely dries up and it's happening it's not like as you probably know from maps the stuff it's not happening in uniform way certain counties and have problems with four other county so it's a mixed bag in frustration you just to be on us what it's like to work at each day is on the one hand there are a lot of people have been very supportive of me and you know department heads things and things like that to say i've gotten to sustain a blight on the other hand at the same time that i'm doing as much as i can to explain what's sustainable ideas in and teach classes and things like that there are other people on campus you are free flowing how sustainability doesn't mean anything or get you know i was at a meeting just to

give a specific example without naming names i was in a meeting and cancers women that are producers in wichita couple years ago i was on a panel to talk about organic production that the keynote speaker got up and showed a picture of a really really skinny chicken and said this is what organic chicken necks like ha ha ha and so in he was from k state so at the same time we've got people accuse state that are still kind of think it's a joke and that's very frustrating to me and i know what to do about i mean they have free speech to sell but i and i do say public trans supporting a lot more interest in organic revelatory just an unsustainable lot more interesting in local so setting where winning but not because of the slow but the summonses is really policy directed and in some comments i made him a war just were not putting research money to speak of and a sustainable practice organic cover cropping you know things that we really need and fertile land grant

colleges like ok you and other places in the state support it's getting cut back and so the money they get from the state legislature which for her good taste it's fifty million for a research and extension they spend at all primarily all of factly and low and trying a little bit to give people a phone or a desk or an internet and then they go that raise the money two for the various research projects and there's a spam little of of good quality in a long term organic sustainable farming money out there i was dating is the exception of that legal center at iowa state university is one of best the country and there are those long term cropping trials and showing that you know what roe with rotations and they're going to men to it even grow corn soybeans at comparable bush allowed goals in a sustainable system but blood will be heading to one of those trials in kansas for example but i'm

going to run him trouble here for they're from the southern presentation that seemed like a lot of the problems was that we don't have the farmers anymore and consolidation what would you say that it's more so environmental and obviously it's all the above and talk about the depletion of the resource of our fire but it seems what chlamydia big issue for like the depletion of fruit farmers and of the variation a vegetable farmers that we have what would you say are the biggest things that we need to actually get more farmers and secondary would you think that getting more farmers would solve a big part of the local food issue one of my fears about these local food hubs studies is that they're not in a fine enough farmers and gordon the farmers with acres or the farmers with their willing to expand and in my own situation you know we're withdrawing a half acre for in half acre vegetables and you know and have a full time job to support the farm kind of thing when i look at what i make growing fruits and vegetables it's not enough to support a family or even support an individual been about twelve

fifteen hour you mentioned that would be a good wage right now you know people who say i can't hire in terms of fifteen dollars marks i don't even like that and it's if you just cancel it out i mean look it you know it takes the cost me about two dollars a pound of your potatoes into my and the store for twenty cents a pound said just doesn't have so i'd be at my scale you know the larger scale so and thus we've got some people ready to scale up believing the scale you still vegetables are a lot of physical work a lot of fear on the weather no matter what work and even a new mechanize are still a lot of labor for both fruits and vegetables singing people willing to do that where'd the economic incentive comes in and i don't think we should underestimate that and my colleagues and my colleagues in the eddie condon believe me this is just complaining a lot so i complained a lot and not making a living wage inside his pencil unit do that so one of the things we really need is a serious economic study here in kansas there's an excellent one out of wisconsin i've seen some here

are some california there's no other michigan showing the farmers make somewhere between seven fifteen island for fifteen hour for conventional there's just not enough to pay back student loans and in healthcare and stuff in and i just i don't have an answer for it really don't think that's the rub that's where we're going to fall short until we really did have that you know ex million dollars worth of whom and for investment income that were not keeping in the state because we don't have an of growers that to do that and pale living wages says that is the issue ronda jk teaches at kansas state university and still university of kansas we're also an issue as the price of farm ground and so the price of farmlands killing has been going up dramatically all across the united states and so for new farmers to enter unless they are but the children are full of farmers to pass along and even if they are the children of farmers to pass on a long they will have a hard time

paying for it and even i come from a a farming family was for kentucky grain farmers there the kind of industrial farmers that we've been beating up on today oh no i don't know of any of them who don't have at least one of those spots working on what they call it well health insurance they cannot support themselves even if their one thousand acres or more without a wage earner off of our own we live happier here and have the year in vermont ministers a vermonter and one of the things that people are doing the air and then they just have learned that this is what they have to do is they have to add value it's all about that adding value for example you can keep selling you know killing herself selling your milk to these big corporations so they stop a really great example is a couple women who later in life decided they wanted to farm and they started dairy farming

and people said well you know you're really you're gonna have to increase you heard it and if i've heard of these people who are believers but they they said but we only increase or her we don't wanna supervise people we want and nail art house so they'd decreased their herd and they started making cheese and they started rotating they let the house rests they raise vegetables while the house arrest they made she's so they say eric we'll be by their cheese we buy and that their world famous cheese now because they said we don't want to supervise other people will want to grow big and have to add value and more and more people in vermont are doing that you know aren't our neighbors our um have started before mean the teenager wants to do it he fell in love with it and they're looking at you know mobile slaughterhouses and they have somebody come and ann do it right the air and they're adding goats and chickens and i know it sounds a lot of times it sounds kind of pie in the sky but there's

more and more demand on people are opening restaurants and people just demand it has to be local people has to be local versions of you can't tell me what farm that lettuce was wrong and that you know if you know if i can't go to the farm it and we don't buy anything except chicken where we can and more and more people are singing a lake if if we can have that we don't learn anything you know we just we only want locally grown stuff i mean i look as well because we live here in lawrence we can get local staff and vermont weekend by from neighbors and know where everything is that i really think it is possible i mean i don't i just i know we have a very rough road ahead and you know it's it's very hard i believe everything that's should i know but i just have a little bit of how well the alternative system is totally in place is not going away but it is going to be

his only affordable why certain people and for those like you and me whose children are grown to have disposable income who can afford to pay a little more on our that that system is there for these people but there isn't a whole lot of folks who it's not really it's not really possible for them unless we begin to somehow restructure the whole foods system and all of us here are talking all about our stomachs and about oh where our food comes from or not talking about food workers we're not talking about people who are producing them processing or fruits and serving a two is in the restaurant's bees and the we have an economic system that is well becoming increasingly bifurcated and the people are bringing us our food or at the bottom one third of them are food insecure or and they're the ones are given a surface if we had a system like that we have to think about a radical transformation in the overall system is long

time stockholder and i would dare and i have invested a thousand dollars to keep that very open its declared bankruptcy least twice i know i will lose my money but i'd drive across town to buy that no because i think it tastes wonderful and i believe strongly in that kind of system but you know i'm a college professor i can afford to do that although lots of other people cannot and so unless we find a way to share from perhaps who can afford this alternative system it's wonderful that we can but we have to find a way for the have nots were also have access to those kinds of healthy foods and vegetables and make and an end and make it affordable and available to so many more people the mcconnell you again kansas state university if rhonda jang gi didn't enter veil and it's very inspiring i would love to do that same incubator for

manteca trying to do it in manhattan with the us to farm but i've also had some experience with value added that it's not as easy as it sounds it sounds like a b grade and two years ago we had a tobacco auctioneer and lawrence called country for tomatoes and there's a whole group of a sewing or tomatoes to the co op for fifty cents a pound when we know we can take him to farmers markets on for two three dollars a pound or so on to co opt so into ourselves basically for fifty cents a pound we would go to a place where we were scanning them a certified kitchen what will block by the time we put all that cost in and hardly paid ourselves anything for canning them but we had to put him on the shelf like by going to court and you can find it for two dollars the court ended they just weren't selling end and he'd ask them to pay five dollars a quarter to vegas and if you can in yourself i mean that's what you're paying yourself serve at your home in order to unfortunate hungary and every night at an aspect i've looked at comes out to be handsomely to that i have my fruit crops class do an exercise you don't do this at home if your favorite fruit look at the how much it cost in the

grocery store looked up a recipe pay for all the ingredients in the recipe then look at the cost of jelly or jam on the store shelf and you'll find that it doesn't pay to make your free to enjoy your jam every top prices soliciting it again if you can pay yourself lesson we tell so many madison isn't a panacea diet works to some places and to just be real quick public service announcement i tried it is same thing with my wall so raise sheep so i can sell a wall it's beautiful spinning all but there's just a mountain of hands there's a summer has been i started making it into sweaters and scars and sated and carrie kahn in by a scarf from parodies a farm that it's hard to sell its harder to sell scarves that is really good you know because people again college professor for itself there are really a couple thoughts about prices you know have tried to work through it for a gruesome question whether the part where those again paul johnson

of the kansas rural center i think what we have to go after yours different food choices that are made by what people spandex suit on in this country for example when you average it out every american drinks forty four gallons of soda pop a year which are twenty gallons of coffee twenty thousand operating hours bottled water in that alfred hughes isn't such were one what this food advocate would like to see is cutting that soda pop consumption in half more than a ten gallons a year and having that available for from truly nutritious and unhealthy foods certainly i think we've got to get after helm how much a nurse or packaging and processing of foods that we do you know when you know some us comedian or have to learn to cope again that as you know people have to price as much as surfing the internet or heard you know look in on their youtube site or whatever you know they're going to have to get it and third lane you have a different paradigm and monster this before

many times for what we spend on a prescription drugs summit was their diabetes or high blood pressure or whatever then it's katy bar the door in what are you pay whatever you have to do to fix that elements what would look that healthy food as a way to save us from diabetes or heart attacks or you know things of the bar talk about twenty or thirty years from now maybe we should have a different value on on food is medicine and them and then eased the part of federal and state policy debate that we've we have not had in this country why would argue we also need to think about very differently about on farm subsidies and it unlike many people argue that we ought to have more of an anomalous of them and we ought to have price support system by come from kentucky a world where tobacco is a vegetable and anne until two thousand five there was a federal tobacco program dr no problem any of you have negative feelings about

the back it's not good for our health but it was very very good for farmers in kentucky it kept small farmers on the land to pay for the pickup send their kids to college you know all sorts of things why because there were price support you know when you put that the backup plan in the ground how much you're going to get for it and so there's limited production you could only grow so much of certain kinds of tobacco and you knew what you were going to get weaker would go use that as a model to go back to ensuring that there are adequate price supports for products including fruits and vegetables and that there are tobacco and on his new orleans won't get bigger get out solo small farmers who were using to back at them supplement their incomes to stay on their family farm there are gone now and they've all either gotten bigger gone now and so we have not really reduced the amount of bakken consumption in this

country but we have in fact that a lot of people who work of family farmers growing not just the back of the sheep and cattle and vegetables and weave and they are of those folks are not able to do it anymore so we need to think about we bagged a lot of food we bagged fresh fruit why should we as a people pay for it why should we we ok adequately if we can't we're not willing to pay enough for tomatoes in the grocery store why not subsidized tomato growers in ways that they can provide us with what we want but we do it for corn farmers and rice farmers in why not for long prison vegetable farm until last october for topeka hard to say but it is it seems to me a reasonable thing that we could do we really value the middle of the european union what we do here there's been a lot to talk about demand and consumers and avoiding with their money but how do you deal with that in the areas where their fruit songs and food deserts and consumers don't have the ability to make a choice it's a dilemma that

access is really to say years as i talked about it have to be that they have the resources to be a little by the fact that you also have to be able to get through it again barbara leclaire of the kansas health institute on and they in some places they're having programs in place on dear son actually a federal grant program that incentivize same twenty and retail outlets back in some of these areas have been designated as as food deserts local zoning and planning can sometimes help two to ensure that we get help the retail back into these locations that it's a it's a challenging and at the same time that we lack access this fits want concept and at the overwhelming access to the unhealthy choices has been shown in studies to have justice justice much influence in a negative way but there are things we can do to control that also and the question first to voluntary in applied

for kansas rural center dot org where you can sign up for calls a reporter helen mary find do a weekly report on policies against it but the issue is my question is at the rose center we had bob martin who was the chair of the pew commission on animal agriculture he came to speak to us need what e t a year ago to have lost track but he described the dude began lobby as having the a to the many a big tobacco with the personality of the nra my question is do you all have any read on how powerful the food lobby is in terms of keeping the structure the way it is so that we do pay a lot of money and that the packaging and i am the middleman it takes that chunk of the dollar any idea we have the organization for competitive markets has been was founded nineteen ninety eight kansas city it's a made up primarily of

of mainly travel men and women but other folks as well tom we have been doing battle with a long they get now for a long time it's not encouraging you can go on google and blue organization for competitive markets says arthur yeah it is one of the main with a prayer for a president on the treasury the current president is all mike how great from si presses kansas who has been a pioneer and mobile slaughter unit standoff are things and on is really at the forefront of that of sort of one of the alternatives that is emerging we have decided we we we gone down the road of lawsuits and trying to other kinds of things that we finally hit upon the beach or fall and the

cost national cattlemen's beef association brings in about forty million dollars or thereabouts a year nationwide whenever power sold half of that dollar a dollar is going to the checkoff half goes to the state have ghosts of the incipient and so they are financing for big date which is ultimately putting small farmers out of business and so we have decided we're going to tackle that we don't have a lot of money were not a big organization so please join up but we have partnered with humans humane society of united states that does have a million eleven million members and lots and lots of money and a good lawyers and we are working to home examine that and already are in iowa and some other states powers are beginning to question that the use of that money and is it being

used there's some indication that there may be some illegalities there have been low density of the payback some money that it in the chekhov was not supposed to be used for lobbying supposed to be used for the unknown because what's for dinner got milk those kinds of campaigns that come from shirt off but there're have been cases worse the news for a lobbying and so there is an audit that currently is so we've been pushing for all of it alone we're hoping that if we can we've gotten a lot of information through the freedom of information act and we're now or will not warriors are looking out over on we hope that if we can ultimately cracked that not that's not really the right metaphor but if we can do that we can and quick and and keep them from essentially give us financing the gag which is in turn putting us out of business that will one say like a level playing field but make a lot more and so we're hoping that

that is so we're hoping that that will have some payoff down the road but it's a very very big hill to climb well there is a bear are or spiritual goals for something like thirty chuck offers a whole bunch of them there are a growing dissatisfaction by growers of over how much it's essentially forcing growers of those commodities to pay for speech that they may not agree with and so as a free speech issue and there is an increasing number of individuals fall in beef but in other commodities who are beginning to say i don't agree with how the money's being used and i don't want to be forced to support a speech that i don't agree with i don't have a sense of you know my fingers on the pulse of like how strong does the anti sustainable lotteries are and that you can see that reflected in like how much money was spent to defeat those gmo bills you know in california

washington i mean it's huge right if you just follow the money that i do have a suggestion for kansans which is i'm glad we're talking about policy here because i feel like the last two years we just play wack a mole like in every year there's some emergency comes up in the state legislature and last year was a stupid corporate bill will allow corporate farms whenever they want and then the uniforms a sustainability thing in old ally the word sustainable development or something such my job title is sustainable agriculture have particular thing and i can't believe i'm not really so it's just absurd so why don't we overwhelm the legislature was something positive if you idea there used to be a database that you can search for the national association of state legislators legislatures and i couldn't search of the other day because they have to be a staff member to log in or something but i have to filed under printed out a couple years ago every state except kansas has local fruit legislation that they've passed some other michael why it requires hotels to buy a certain percent of their food is local a lot of states

require schools to buy percent certain percent of their food is local all kinds of things to promote local food and we have zero zero zero zero one and we do have friends in the legislature policy they are so go to call out tell anyone else work was somebody endless just overwhelm him was some positive bills is that a discipline welcome more like kansas rural center and they can't dispel foundation and a couple of other we are working on a comprehensive policy suggestions for a state like the planned modeled on iowa to the repeated political center did that so it is in the works and we have to have a draft by the end of the year of what we would recommend and it says statewide round that we have farmers we have buyers if consumers people working on an active place again kansas will center got word would keep you in touch with what's happening you've just heard a panel discussion sponsored by the k u comment and the environmental law society at the university of kansas it featured barbara leclaire of the kansas health institute professor rhonda jackie of

kansas state university professor don stull of the university of kansas and paul johnson of the kansas rural center again if you'd like to hear their comments in their entirety their archive their website katie art that hey you got it thanks to charlie smith who recorded this program on january twenty third two thousand fourteen empty caleb hall president of the quai you environmental law society the kansas rural center is just announced their lineup for the two thousand fourteen farm and film conference and thirty fifth anniversary celebration the conference on sustainable agriculture will be november seventh and eighth in manhattan you can find out more at kansas rural center dot org i'm kate mcintyre kbr percent of the production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas