Eating locally on SNAP: The Intersection of Access, Leisure, and Labor (Introduction)

Since I am already acutely aware of the realities that come with being on a SNAP budget, I wanted to use this challenge as opportunity to apply a food justice lens to both the production and consumption ends of the local food system.  Patricia Allen, the Chair of the department of Food Systems and Society at Marylhurst University writes that minimally, food security “includes the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods and the assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways” (2004: 43). Food security is an important part of food justice. However, if we only look at consumer access to food, we miss the injustice embedded in how food is produced.

In their work, Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi argue that “the demand for justice in the fields and workplaces that produce and process foods” is at the core of a “food justice ethos”(2010: 38).  In a review of the field of food studies, Guptill et al (2013) ask us to imagine a triangle representing the complex social, personal, and global factors that go into our food choices.  The apex of this triangle being “responsibility” (7).  They go on to argue that “being responsible means being aware of one’s place in the food chain–of the enormous impact we have on nature, animals, other people and the distribution of power and resources all over the globe” (9).  I offer that while responsibility is crucial, it cannot fall at the feet of the poor, as “voting” with SNAP dollars is not a viable option. With these issues in mind, I will be using this challenge to highlight the ways accessibility, time and leisure, and labor intersect in local and organic food.

In this blog, I will detail my experiences trying to source and eat local organic food produced with fair labor.  I will be attempting to do this on a snap budget.  I will juxtapose this experience with eating locally as a “socially conscientious” yet ultimately leisure activity of the middle and upper classes in which the labor conditions of local food is often an invisible input into their meals. I have not set a specific date to start , but once started, this exercise will roughly have three overlapping parts.

1. In order to capture food justice as it relates to consumer accessibility, I will be paying specific attention to accessibility of the food as it relates both to the affordability and the amount of effort required for me to obtain and prepare it.  However, unlike the traditional SNAP challenges, my position as a SNAP recipient puts me in a unique position to highlight the hidden aspects of actually being on a SNAP budget that are often lost in the snap challenge exercise typically assigned to undergraduates.
2. In order to turn the social justice lens towards the labor conditions hidden behind the moral veil of local and organic foods, I will detail my experiences of trying to locate my food from farms committed to using fair labor practices.
3. In order to highlight local food as a leisure activity, I will dissect the available menu at The Grit, a local slow food restaurant in the Whitaker neighborhood. I will then contrast this to the other two parts of this exercise in hopes to illustrate how, when applying  a food justice lens to local and alternative agriculture, the issues of food accessibility, leisure and labor are all intricately connected in meaningful ways.

Rules and Assumptions

In establishing my rules, I am working with the following assumptions:

• There are multiple definitions of local food.
  • My first attempt will be to find food at the county level or within 50 miles of me. If that is unobtainable, I will look for food grown within a 6 county level, or roughly 100 miles. From there I will try to obtain food only within Oregon. From that level, I will look at options grown in the Northwest, roughly 400 miles. These specific boundaries are taken from the Willamette Food and Farm Coalition’s locally grown guide.

• My ability to verify fair labor practices is limited.
  • First I will try to find food sourced from the few farms that PCUN works with, however, these are limited and seasonal. I will also try to find out more information on the farms by using the Locally Grown Guide.  I will attempt to purchase all of my food from the local natural food stores or markets rather than the larger stores who claim to sell local food, this way I can talk to the people working there to see if I can find information about the farms they source from.

•  The process of obtaining and remaining on food stamps is something that is not addressed in the basic snap challenge.
  •  I will incorporate a narrative of the requirements I have met just in the past few months in order to remain on SNAP.

• A person on snap is more than likely juggling a lot of demands on their time such as children’s school schedules, unpredictable work schedules, swing shifts, night-shifts, etc.
  • I will log the time I spend on all activities surrounding feeding myself and my son.   This includes shopping, meal planning, meal prep, and cleaning the kitchen after (or before) meals.

• A person on snap who is trying to transition to a more local diet would more than likely already have non-local products in their kitchen beyond just dry goods, oils, and spices.
  •  In the event I cannot create a full local and organic meal, I will allow myself to use items from my kitchen.

• For a variety of reasons, a snap recipient is not likely to do their shopping daily or even every week, but more likely to make one or two larger trips throughout the month.
  • Once I officially begin, I will attempt to get all my menu needs for the week in one day and not go to the store during the entirety of the experiment, noting that even this doesn’t capture the reality of having to plan meals ahead on SNAP and what reaching the end of the month feels like.

• It is highly likely that a SNAP recipient is a parent of one or more children. This is also something that most undergraduates taking this challenge do not, and cannot, capture in their experiences. Furthermore, feeding children is often complicated by more than just a child’s tastes for food.
  • While I will document the specific dietary needs of my child and the challenges of meeting those needs at the local level in an accessible and socially just way, I will not allow the challenge to compromise his diet in anyway.

 Sources

Allen, Patricia. 2004. “Perspectives of Alternative Agrifood Movements. Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. Polity. Cambridge.

Gottlieb, Robert and Anumpama Joshi. 2010. “Growing and Producing Food” Food Justice. MIT. Boston.

Guptill, Amy E., Denise A. Copeton, and Betsy Lucal. 2013. “Principles and Paradoxes in the Study of Food,”  Food and Society: Principle and Paradoxes. Polity. Cambridge