Cathy Stanton: A bigger story behind food security

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Published: 11-25-2023 8:00 AM

I appreciate the Recorder’s continuing coverage of local food issues with the article on the recent hearing of the Special Commission on Agriculture in the Commonwealth in the 21st Century [“Charting state’s course toward food security,” Nov. 17]. There’s a bigger story that didn’t come through in the article, about how land use, food assistance, racial equity, policy, and our region’s agricultural sector intersect.

Food assistance in the U.S. has historically been tied to the incredibly overabundant industrial food system. Three-quarters of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget goes to nutrition programs like SNAP and WIC, and the national network of food banks relies heavily on surplus food donated or purchased at a steep discount.

Massachusetts has been a leader over many decades in trying to shift away from dependence on industrial surplus and toward purchasing from farms in the state and region. These farms have struggled for many decades to compete with the economies of scale of national and global supply chains.

It is slow work to rebuild the capacity and connections needed for a more resilient regional food system, especially for farmers who don’t already own land. That includes many farmers of color and people either just starting out in agriculture or displaced from farmland in the recent or more distant past.

We’re fortunate to have many champions of this work around the region, including the New England State Food System Planners Partnership, which is spearheading the “New England Feeding New England” initiative. (The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative is one of the partners in that effort, not the lead as the article suggested.)

Massachusetts’ Healthy Incentives Program is one very important model of how local food purchasing can be linked to food assistance. The article stated that “the participation rate is very low,” which gives a misleading impression of this vital and innovative program.

Anyone eligible for SNAP is also eligible for HIP, and it’s true that so far only a small percentage of SNAP recipients take advantage of this additional benefit. But over the past six years, HIP has channeled millions of dollars into local food production. Nearly $14 million is allocated in the state’s 2024 budget.

Scaling up further will take time and continued public and legislative support to keep “connecting the dots” between feeding everyone well and supporting our neighbors who are producing good food.

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