Synopses & Reviews
From the War on Poverty to new farmers' markets, a food expert tackles America's dangerous dietary split With a new Foreword
Closing the Food Gap exposes America's dangerous dietary split: from patrons of food pantries, bodegas, and convenience stores to the more comfortable classes who increasingly seek out organic and local products. Calling largely on his own experience in food activism, and mixing in surprisingly witty observations, Mark Winne ultimately envisions realistic partnerships in which family farms and impoverished communities come together to get healthy, locally produced food onto everyone's table.
Synopsis
This powerful call to arms offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table, " blending] a passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor" (Dr. Jane Goodall) In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone?
To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another.
Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with the benefits of CSAs and farmers' markets; in Closing the Food Gap, he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically comic stories from his many years running a model food organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level.
About the Author
For 25 years
Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. During his tenure with HFS, Mark organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city's lower income and elderly residents. Mark's work with the Food System included the development of a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, Connecticut's Farmers' Market Nutrition Program, several farmers' markets, a 20-acre community supported agriculture farm, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.
Winne now writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication work for the Community Food Security Coalition. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in The Nation, Hartford Courant, Boston Globe, In These Times, Sierra, Orion, Successful Farming and numerous organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
To learn more about Mark Winne, visit is web site: www.markwinne.com.
Table of Contents
Introduction I’ve Come to . . . Shop?
The History
Chapter One Suburbia, Environmentalism, and the Early Gurglings of the Food Movement
Chapter Two Reagan, Hunger, and the Rise of Food Banks
The Reactions
Chapter Three Farmers’ Markets: Bringing Food to the People
Chapter Four Community Gardens: Growing Our Own
Chapter Five Food Banks: Waste Not, Want Not
The Current Landscape
Chapter Six Re-Storing America’s Food Deserts
Chapter Seven Growing Obese and Diabetic; Going Local and Organic
Chapter Eight Community Supported Agriculture: Communities Find the Way
Chapter Nine Public Policy: Food for the People
Chapter Ten Income Disparities, Poverty, and the Food Gap
Conclusion Resetting America’s Table
A Note on Sources