Obama on Food – Part 1

One hurricane, an election and a new year later, I am still trying to figure out the answer to my own question. Here is part one of my quest to answer the question: If food were the only topic I cared to base my vote on, who would I choose? Read the full questioning post here.

The problem with this question is its inherent vastness. There are few issues that do not, in some way, make their way back to the food supply or onto family farms. And the ones with the most direct links are fraught with conundrum. Is blanket support for agriculture good for food as a whole in an age where corn and soy dominate and genetically modified organisms are ubiquitous? Are more stringent food safety regulations a good thing when they represent an unfunded mandate and therefore a considerable burden on small producers? After hours of listening and reading, I’m not promising any answers. But I now have a lot more questions.

The Farmer vote – a finicky barometer at best

Though it’s just one farmer’s account, Matt Russell, owner of Coyote Run Farm in Lacona County, Iowa, says that voting based on what’s best for both his small, and his parents’ large agricultural operation is what brought him to vote for President Obama twice.

“If you are like us, you haven’t been in love with every single food and agriculture decision from this administration, but the good stuff will all go away if Obama loses this election and historically speaking there’s a bunch of good stuff,” wrote Russell and his partner Patrick Standley in an email to customers before Obama’s reelection – as reported by AgWeek.

“When we started our farm in 2005, our county Farm Service Agency office wasn’t interested in our fruit and vegetable production,” said Russell. “For the last three years, we have had tremendous support from our county office for our farming enterprises.”

Despite Obama’s support for the farm bill and the Republicans’ implication in suppressing it, the Democrats did not bring it forward in the campaign, even in states where it would play.

University of Iowa professor and Iowa political expert Steffen Schmidt (not to be confused with Msnbc’s Steve Schmidt) told Harvest Public Media* that silence on major farming issues may be in the numbers – that there simply are not enough farmers anymore to warrant direct campaigning.

The farmer vote is also pretty unpredictable as farmers are a diverse group and don’t always vote on professional issues as a pre-election New York Times piece elaborated.

And now that the election and inauguration are in the past, the farm bill is still a prisoner of other legislation – with the old deal extended for nine more months in conjunction with the January 1 fiscal cliff deal. So the farm bill, which provides not just subsidies, but also conservation programs and stabilizing measures for dairy farmers, will never succeed or die on its own merit. This dynamic is not just to the detriment of heartland farmers, but also of their own doing as laid out by Tom Laskawy’s January 11 article for Grist.org.

The disunity of farmers when it comes to national elections, and the disability of the farm bill to come to the fore of debate both seem to support the original consensus void hypothesis – one that food writer and sustainable food patriarch Michael Pollan articulated in  Andrea Seabrook’s wonderful new podcast Decode DC.

In Seabrook’s “Voter Guide” podcast, Pollan said,

“What happens in America is when the two political parties agree on anything, politics vanishes. It’s very hard to have a political debate when the Republicans and the Democrats are on the same side.”

Familiar no?

Apart from watching the preferences of interested parties, one of the only direct addresses to food policy in the entire campaign was a question and answer administered by United Fresh, a produce industry trade organization.

In this Q&A, published in it’s likely quote-approved entirety here, Obama stayed very safe, but touted his marked achievements:

“I am also expanding regional food markets and have bolstered the number of farmers markets by 53 percent since 2008. Under my leadership, agriculture has been one of the fastest-growing parts of our economy, creating one out of every 12 American jobs.” – Obama

This statement is supported by a recent move by the USDA to offer a new scheme of loans targeting small farmers dedicated to selling there wares locally – a good idea to be sure. But no proactivity in the realm of artisanal and heirloom can make up for inaction and stalemate on the ordinary.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Courting the foodie vote

Last night in the aftermath of the final presidential debate, Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes had a discussion about concensus. The thesis of this argument was that when one candidate is weak on a particular issue, he simply defers to the opponent’s position. This creates a false sense of concensus and, in most cases, moves the discussion on to other issues where the two actally disagree. Rachel and Chris pointed out that this leaves a dangerous dearth of dissent. It posits the false claim that there is only one course, one correct opinion and does not further a national discussion or even a proper airing out of the issue. In this case, the issue at hand was our course in Afghanistan, but a similar argument could be made for any issue not given attention or time in what has been a long, long campaign.

Campaigns cannot cover everything, I will admit. But, they are not necessarily about the most important issues, or the ones people care about the most. The campaign, and to some extent the media, but mostly the candidates, decide what they want to talk about and build the discord themselves. Food, it seems, has fallen prey to this phenomenon. Food policy affects all of us, yet in this election cycle, it is boxed into the frame of Prop.37 and allowed no larger scope. So I ask then, what if I were a food voter?

If this were the only topic I cared to base my vote on, who would I choose?

Honestly, at this point I have no idea. But I am sending in my absentee ballot tomorrow, so before I do, I’m gonna find out.

What if Chelsea Market was in East Harlem?

This space could fit in anywhere in Manhattan, but it sits in east Harlem waiting for more like it to come along.

Two weeks ago, if you had asked me if an indoor market in East Harlem could draw Manhattanites from all over, I would have scoffed. Those of us above 110th street are more than happy to take the really-not-all-that-long sojourn down to Chealsea Market, but the reverse seems to happen very rarely. But lo and behold,  after last week’s launch of Hot Bread Kitchen (HBK) Almacen, I am beginning to feel like a believer.

HBK is a fairly well-known success in New York. A peppy young master baker (Jessamyn Rodriguez, pictured below in red) starts a training program for immigrant women to gain culinary skills that eventually morphs into an incubator kitchen that runs 24-7, giving women the opportunity to start their own businesses and develop their skills. But after five years of success stories and break-neck growth, the operation needed a face if they were to atrract the foot traffic to match their superior products.

HBK Almacen is now the welcoming stall in La Marqueta, an historic building on Park Avenue. Mayor LaGuardia opened the building, then called the Park Avenue Retail Market, in 1936 and since then it has fallen in and out of favor with vendors and shoppers. Though HBK has taken up much of the space where hundreds of vendors once hawked, the front end has been a sleepy place of late.

The design of the HBK storefront suggests that a revival is on the agenda. Brilliantly understated and vintagey without referencing any time period or geography, the space does not conflict with the relatively unaesthetic rest of La Marqueta. In fact, the sanded-down indstrialism of the space brings out the industrial elements of the rest of the vendors and elevates them too. Hope Knight, chief operating officer for the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone said that a destination market where people can enjoy a Saturday morning is the goal for the space. In this endeavor, aesthetics cannot be overlooked and Almacen can definitely tick that box.

Besides  a charismatic new face, the winning quality that Hot Bread Kitchen has in its pocket is confidence. Visit HBK at any greenmarket around the city and you will see that they do not want to you to buy bread, tortillas or pastries because you suport the cause. They want you to buy their wares because, they are really, really good.

Take the corn tortillas for example. Made from heirloom blue, yellow and white corn, this humblest of items is superior to any I’ve ever had. They are nutty and thick but not mealy or crumbly. Even this item, usually a throwaway wrapper for whatever goodie is inside, is worth savoring in and of itself.

And Almacen has lots of items just like this that make the trip worth it. The specialty of the house for example is the comically named “Bialy al Barrio”- a traditional bialy with egg and cheese baked on top and then covered in hot sauce.  The sourcing for the non-bakery items too, like the coffee and specialty snacks and candies are all purposefully chosen and as local and unique as possible. The store is open Monday through Saturday from 8am-5pm and has a full menu of varied global cuisines for snacks and lunch.

La Marqueta’s future is still uncertain but Almacen definitely serves as the first crucial ingredient in this market recipe.

Hot Bread Kitchen Almacen – La Marqueta – 1590 Park Avenue at East 115th Street