Sen. Tom Brandt Introduces “Farm to School Program Act”
[Jan/Feb 2021]
On January 14, 2021, Senator Tom Brandt of Plymouth introduced LB 396 to expand the scale and reach of Nebraska-produced food by creating a state farm to school program administered by the Department of Education with the cooperation of the Department of Agriculture. The program will provide networking resources for Nebraska schools, local vegetable and fruit growers, and meat producers to increase the quantity of quality local food served in our school cafeterias.
The bill, which grew out of an Agriculture Committee interim study task force report, LR 337, authorizes the creation of a “Farm to School Network” composed of local producers, school officials, cafeteria managers, and other stakeholders that would focus on connecting farmers, market gardeners and nearby educational institutions to help supply the fresh foods, and dairy and meat products needed to serve Nebraska children. “This is Economic Development 101,” Sen. Brandt stated after introducing the legislation Thursday morning. “Nebraska has been missing out on a huge economic opportunity to grow our local economies. Here in one of the agricultural powerhouses of the world, we’re hemorrhaging both our tax dollars and our food dollars from our communities and school districts by purchasing out-of-state food to feed our kids.”
On January 14, 2021, Senator Tom Brandt of Plymouth introduced LB 396 to expand the scale and reach of Nebraska-produced food by creating a state farm to school program administered by the Department of Education with the cooperation of the Department of Agriculture. The program will provide networking resources for Nebraska schools, local vegetable and fruit growers, and meat producers to increase the quantity of quality local food served in our school cafeterias.
The bill, which grew out of an Agriculture Committee interim study task force report, LR 337, authorizes the creation of a “Farm to School Network” composed of local producers, school officials, cafeteria managers, and other stakeholders that would focus on connecting farmers, market gardeners and nearby educational institutions to help supply the fresh foods, and dairy and meat products needed to serve Nebraska children. “This is Economic Development 101,” Sen. Brandt stated after introducing the legislation Thursday morning. “Nebraska has been missing out on a huge economic opportunity to grow our local economies. Here in one of the agricultural powerhouses of the world, we’re hemorrhaging both our tax dollars and our food dollars from our communities and school districts by purchasing out-of-state food to feed our kids.”
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…Here in one of the agricultural powerhouses of the world, we’re hemorrhaging pictured at left; Sen. Tom Brandt, District 32
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The National School Lunch Program is the largest restaurant chain in the country and Nebraska should be aiming to source the bulk of what is served in school cafeterias right from local producers, including beef, chicken, dairy, grains, dry beans and in-season vegetables and fruits. The bill aims to keep these food dollars and property tax dollars at home circulating in our local economies. With children always needing to eat and schools constituting a stable, institutional market, farm to school is one of the most robust economic development tools a local community can employ.
But farm to school programs, the Plymouth farmer and lawmaker stressed, are about more than just sourcing and serving food. Through classroom instruction, field trips and hands-on gardening, students learn more where their food comes from and how it is made. “Farm to school is not only educating a new generation of savvy consumers and healthy eaters,” Brandt said, “it’s a training ground for the farmers and market gardeners of tomorrow.”
“Farm to school benefits our economy, our student’s education and health, as well as markets for our farmers. Farmers and school administrators have unique needs and they often aren’t aware of the other’s experience. A state-coordinated commitment to form the relationships and consistently address the issues would be immensely helpful,” Justin Carter of the Center for Rural Affairs and an LR 337 task force member said. “Farm to school efforts can keep children focused on the skills they need for success while simultaneously creating an appreciation of Nebraska’s diverse agricultural economy and heritage,” Alex McKiernan of Robinette Farms said. “Bringing Nebraska foods into Nebraska schools will open our children’s minds to the possibilities and opportunities right in their very own communities.”
But farm to school programs, the Plymouth farmer and lawmaker stressed, are about more than just sourcing and serving food. Through classroom instruction, field trips and hands-on gardening, students learn more where their food comes from and how it is made. “Farm to school is not only educating a new generation of savvy consumers and healthy eaters,” Brandt said, “it’s a training ground for the farmers and market gardeners of tomorrow.”
“Farm to school benefits our economy, our student’s education and health, as well as markets for our farmers. Farmers and school administrators have unique needs and they often aren’t aware of the other’s experience. A state-coordinated commitment to form the relationships and consistently address the issues would be immensely helpful,” Justin Carter of the Center for Rural Affairs and an LR 337 task force member said. “Farm to school efforts can keep children focused on the skills they need for success while simultaneously creating an appreciation of Nebraska’s diverse agricultural economy and heritage,” Alex McKiernan of Robinette Farms said. “Bringing Nebraska foods into Nebraska schools will open our children’s minds to the possibilities and opportunities right in their very own communities.”
In This Season of Frenzied Overconsumption
Resolve To Live More Simply
( so others can simply live )
[Nov/Dec 2021]
If you’re fortunate enough to be ‘middle class’, you’ve been able to hop in the car whenever you want, eat whatever you’re hungry for, go shopping, spend money on recreation, and maybe even fly somewhere for a holiday.
Consumption has become such an enthroned part of our American way of life we’ve equated it with ‘freedom’. So long as we’ve got the money to pay for it, we’re free to move around at will, eat out, shop till we drop, trade up for a nicer car, a nicer home (in a ‘nicer’ neighborhood), and then ‘throw away’ what’s ‘old’ or out of fashion. This consumer drive is so ingrained in our psyches, it’s now reflex. We don’t give it—or its impact on the ecosystem—a second thought.
But with the coronavirus and the climate crisis, we have no choice but to start rethinking the way we live.
By limiting our mobility, sheltering at home and social distancing have not only reduced transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic—they’ve simultaneously reduced our ability to go out and consume. The lockdown on the global economy has had a further dampening effect on our consumer spending, with supply shortages and price increases on everything from toiletries to groceries (particularly meat).
Like our “Greatest Generation” great-grandparents during the Depression and World War II, middle-class Americans now find themselves having to make do with a lower level of consumption—concentrating on the bare necessities needed to live, and not a lot more. Instead of being a temporary state of affairs, however, this retrenchment is the wave of the future. The prevailing threat of pandemic and climate disruption ensures that ‘doing with less’ will be the ‘new normal’ from now on… And ‘Living Simply’ our only viable lifestyle option.
And, it turns out, cutting our consumption won’t kill us. Half of the world already lives on less than half of what we do, so we know it can be done. But making these necessary cuts—both for own health and the planet’s—will require a permanent cultural shift in our perspectives and attitudes.
If you’re fortunate enough to be ‘middle class’, you’ve been able to hop in the car whenever you want, eat whatever you’re hungry for, go shopping, spend money on recreation, and maybe even fly somewhere for a holiday.
Consumption has become such an enthroned part of our American way of life we’ve equated it with ‘freedom’. So long as we’ve got the money to pay for it, we’re free to move around at will, eat out, shop till we drop, trade up for a nicer car, a nicer home (in a ‘nicer’ neighborhood), and then ‘throw away’ what’s ‘old’ or out of fashion. This consumer drive is so ingrained in our psyches, it’s now reflex. We don’t give it—or its impact on the ecosystem—a second thought.
But with the coronavirus and the climate crisis, we have no choice but to start rethinking the way we live.
By limiting our mobility, sheltering at home and social distancing have not only reduced transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic—they’ve simultaneously reduced our ability to go out and consume. The lockdown on the global economy has had a further dampening effect on our consumer spending, with supply shortages and price increases on everything from toiletries to groceries (particularly meat).
Like our “Greatest Generation” great-grandparents during the Depression and World War II, middle-class Americans now find themselves having to make do with a lower level of consumption—concentrating on the bare necessities needed to live, and not a lot more. Instead of being a temporary state of affairs, however, this retrenchment is the wave of the future. The prevailing threat of pandemic and climate disruption ensures that ‘doing with less’ will be the ‘new normal’ from now on… And ‘Living Simply’ our only viable lifestyle option.
And, it turns out, cutting our consumption won’t kill us. Half of the world already lives on less than half of what we do, so we know it can be done. But making these necessary cuts—both for own health and the planet’s—will require a permanent cultural shift in our perspectives and attitudes.
At its heart, ‘Simple Living’ is about seeing ourselves as just ‘plain members and citizens’ of the earth’s community of life: coequal with the soils, waters, plants and animals, with no special rights or entitlements. The earth, it turns out, does not ‘belong’ to us humans. We are not the natural world’s ‘conquerors’. In fact, it’s we humans who belong to the earth. And by following Mohandas Gandhi’s prescription for ‘living simply’—taking no more than we need—we make it possible for others in the vast community of life to ‘simply live’.
For all of us who’ve enjoyed a middle-class standard of living, this is going to unquestionably require a top-to-bottom re-tooling of how we go about our daily lives: including the acquirement of discarded skills from great-grandma’s and great-grandpa’s day. Here then are some steps to living a simpler life that are more in keeping with what our sorely overtaxed and overwrought ecosystem can realistically accommodate:
• Reduce your private vehicle transportation (walk or bike wherever you can)… Under the ‘sheltering in place’ guidelines, we’re already supposed to be staying put as much as possible. But to conserve resources as well as reduce our carbon footprint, when you must use a car, try to bundle as many of your errands as you can into one trip. And then come right back home to your neighborhood where you can walk and bike to get around.
• Pledge to eat less meat and dairy… The average American eats a whopping 222 pounds of meat a year (compared to the average Rwandan’s 22 pounds annually). Americans also—vegetarians included—yearly consume 650 pounds of dairy per capita. Eating this ‘high on the food chain’ three times a day is primary driver of global warming and biodiversity loss. To ensure that every person on earth gets at least some pasture-raised protein regularly, the World Resources Institute calculates that developed nations need to reduce their meat-based consumption back to the equivalent of one-and-a-half hamburgers per week. Working for social justice begins with what we choose to put in our mouths.
• Cook at home, eating a mostly plant-based diet… We’re so programmed to build a meal around meat and/or dairy that cooking vegetarian or vegan can take some getting used to. But it’s worth it (especially when you’re cooking with ingredients you grew yourself). Dry beans and peas; potatoes; sweet potatoes; grains like wheat, corn, millet, sorghum and oats; milled whole grain flours and meals for baking; mushrooms; seeds and nuts; and the utter cornucopia of vegetables and fruits out there all make for the possibility of eating well, eating local and eating low on the food chain. What better time to get into the kitchen and start exploring than when we’re stuck at home sheltering in place? The internet has tons of vegetarian and vegan recipes you can try out.
• Convert inedible lawn into garden and grow some of your own food (and if you don’t have garden space, plant in containers or windowsills)… In the built urban environment, we don’t have much land available for food-growing, but what do have, we invariably squander on lawn—even though we as humans can’t eat grass and in the city we can’t keep the animals (cows, sheep, goats) that do. This dangerously wrong-headed mindset is part and parcel of the city dweller attitude that our sole role in the food system is to consume, to be ‘eaters’… and somebody else, somewhere, somehow will grow it for us. If nothing else, the COVID-19 crisis is showing us who those nameless, faceless food workers are, how risky their work is, and how vulnerable our global food system is to shortages and scarcity. To keep stuffing our mouths, urban eaters are going to need to start pulling their weight in the food system—growing the perishable food crops (the lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini) that the city can grow better than anyone else, because what we’ll harvest will be fresher and therefore more nutritious.
• Buy locally grown food whenever you can… If we want a more secure local food supply, then, with our dollars, we’re going to have to support local producers who are out there this very minute in the sun and heat trying to grow it. Making ‘low price’ the ONLY criterion for what we buy is going to torpedo any effort to create a vibrant local food system. Farmers grow for markets, and without markets they don’t farm. “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” whenever you can. It’s a down payment on always having something for dinner.
• Buy only what you need and stop using ‘shopping’ as recreation… With our fixation on consumerism, shopping has been turned into a recreational pastime. “Wanna go shopping? We can just browse and window shop and see if we see anything we like.” But with the inevitable contraction in the economy, that frivolous behavior will be abating in favor of satisfying material needs. Fashion, new car models, the latest smart phone devices will be the first to go, as they are inessential, are ethically unjustifiable given the damage their production inflicts on the ecosystem, and, in any event, will be beyond most people’s financial reach. If we don’t need it to live, it’s superfluous consumption and just making our environmental situation worse.
• Take the ‘No Fly Pledge’ and scrap your vacation travel… Hardly anybody’s flying right now, but rest assured there will be a big push to revive the airline industry. As flying is the single worst thing you can do for your carbon footprint and fewer than 1 out of 5 people on earth has ever even been on a plane, we need to give up the notion once and for all that air travel fits anywhere in the practice of Simple Living.
• Change your recreational habits… So we shouldn’t travel, shouldn’t shop for recreation, shouldn’t eat (much) meat and dairy, shouldn’t waste energy, water or food? Is there anything we can do to make life worth living? Sure there is. We can garden, cook tasty food, read books, write, make music, make art, take walks, exercise and play games, socialize with friends, fall in love, raise children, take care of aging loved ones… We honestly don’t need superfluous consumption to be happy, when, after all, the best things in life are free.
• AND FINALLY, Start seeing your neighborhood as your ‘world’ — as YOUR “Beloved Community”. In an age of pandemics and growing climate disruption, creating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the ‘Beloved Community’ right in our own neighborhoods (where people can live with mutual respect and cooperate with one another) will be a material necessity. Unable to get out and about like we used to, obliged to stay put where we are, we’re going to have start seeing our neighborhoods as our world and a place we hold dear. Our immediate neighbors will be our social network and lifeline—and we, in turn, will be theirs… Living simply together so others can simply live.
For all of us who’ve enjoyed a middle-class standard of living, this is going to unquestionably require a top-to-bottom re-tooling of how we go about our daily lives: including the acquirement of discarded skills from great-grandma’s and great-grandpa’s day. Here then are some steps to living a simpler life that are more in keeping with what our sorely overtaxed and overwrought ecosystem can realistically accommodate:
• Reduce your private vehicle transportation (walk or bike wherever you can)… Under the ‘sheltering in place’ guidelines, we’re already supposed to be staying put as much as possible. But to conserve resources as well as reduce our carbon footprint, when you must use a car, try to bundle as many of your errands as you can into one trip. And then come right back home to your neighborhood where you can walk and bike to get around.
• Pledge to eat less meat and dairy… The average American eats a whopping 222 pounds of meat a year (compared to the average Rwandan’s 22 pounds annually). Americans also—vegetarians included—yearly consume 650 pounds of dairy per capita. Eating this ‘high on the food chain’ three times a day is primary driver of global warming and biodiversity loss. To ensure that every person on earth gets at least some pasture-raised protein regularly, the World Resources Institute calculates that developed nations need to reduce their meat-based consumption back to the equivalent of one-and-a-half hamburgers per week. Working for social justice begins with what we choose to put in our mouths.
• Cook at home, eating a mostly plant-based diet… We’re so programmed to build a meal around meat and/or dairy that cooking vegetarian or vegan can take some getting used to. But it’s worth it (especially when you’re cooking with ingredients you grew yourself). Dry beans and peas; potatoes; sweet potatoes; grains like wheat, corn, millet, sorghum and oats; milled whole grain flours and meals for baking; mushrooms; seeds and nuts; and the utter cornucopia of vegetables and fruits out there all make for the possibility of eating well, eating local and eating low on the food chain. What better time to get into the kitchen and start exploring than when we’re stuck at home sheltering in place? The internet has tons of vegetarian and vegan recipes you can try out.
• Convert inedible lawn into garden and grow some of your own food (and if you don’t have garden space, plant in containers or windowsills)… In the built urban environment, we don’t have much land available for food-growing, but what do have, we invariably squander on lawn—even though we as humans can’t eat grass and in the city we can’t keep the animals (cows, sheep, goats) that do. This dangerously wrong-headed mindset is part and parcel of the city dweller attitude that our sole role in the food system is to consume, to be ‘eaters’… and somebody else, somewhere, somehow will grow it for us. If nothing else, the COVID-19 crisis is showing us who those nameless, faceless food workers are, how risky their work is, and how vulnerable our global food system is to shortages and scarcity. To keep stuffing our mouths, urban eaters are going to need to start pulling their weight in the food system—growing the perishable food crops (the lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini) that the city can grow better than anyone else, because what we’ll harvest will be fresher and therefore more nutritious.
• Buy locally grown food whenever you can… If we want a more secure local food supply, then, with our dollars, we’re going to have to support local producers who are out there this very minute in the sun and heat trying to grow it. Making ‘low price’ the ONLY criterion for what we buy is going to torpedo any effort to create a vibrant local food system. Farmers grow for markets, and without markets they don’t farm. “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” whenever you can. It’s a down payment on always having something for dinner.
• Buy only what you need and stop using ‘shopping’ as recreation… With our fixation on consumerism, shopping has been turned into a recreational pastime. “Wanna go shopping? We can just browse and window shop and see if we see anything we like.” But with the inevitable contraction in the economy, that frivolous behavior will be abating in favor of satisfying material needs. Fashion, new car models, the latest smart phone devices will be the first to go, as they are inessential, are ethically unjustifiable given the damage their production inflicts on the ecosystem, and, in any event, will be beyond most people’s financial reach. If we don’t need it to live, it’s superfluous consumption and just making our environmental situation worse.
• Take the ‘No Fly Pledge’ and scrap your vacation travel… Hardly anybody’s flying right now, but rest assured there will be a big push to revive the airline industry. As flying is the single worst thing you can do for your carbon footprint and fewer than 1 out of 5 people on earth has ever even been on a plane, we need to give up the notion once and for all that air travel fits anywhere in the practice of Simple Living.
• Change your recreational habits… So we shouldn’t travel, shouldn’t shop for recreation, shouldn’t eat (much) meat and dairy, shouldn’t waste energy, water or food? Is there anything we can do to make life worth living? Sure there is. We can garden, cook tasty food, read books, write, make music, make art, take walks, exercise and play games, socialize with friends, fall in love, raise children, take care of aging loved ones… We honestly don’t need superfluous consumption to be happy, when, after all, the best things in life are free.
• AND FINALLY, Start seeing your neighborhood as your ‘world’ — as YOUR “Beloved Community”. In an age of pandemics and growing climate disruption, creating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of the ‘Beloved Community’ right in our own neighborhoods (where people can live with mutual respect and cooperate with one another) will be a material necessity. Unable to get out and about like we used to, obliged to stay put where we are, we’re going to have start seeing our neighborhoods as our world and a place we hold dear. Our immediate neighbors will be our social network and lifeline—and we, in turn, will be theirs… Living simply together so others can simply live.
