What is a good citizen? Dr. Plastic

Super Doctors. Ep. 2.    Dr Plastic

October 21, 2018

What is a good citizen? Watch and learn. Thank you dearest Sa Ra for sharing with us.

SUPER DOCTORS Ep. 02 – Dr. Plastic

Meet the man who's doing everything right: an inspiring tale about a doctor who combines his commitment to saving the environment with providing free healthcare.

Posted by Local Heroes on Monday, October 15, 2018

America is the world’s largest weapons exporter.

William GearyFollow

America is the world’s largest weapons exporter. I was curious to see what this looks like over time, so I mapped the flows of arms transfers leaving the U.S. f

America is the world's largest weapons exporter. I was curious to see what this looks like over time, so I mapped the flows of arms transfers leaving the U.S. from 1950 to 2017. Full video is available here: https://vimeo.com/279923192?quality=1080p. The underlying data is freely available from the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database.

Posted by William Geary on Monday, July 16, 2018

Patagonia’s Official Endorsement of Two Senate Candidates Is a First for the Company

Esquire

Patagonia’s Official Endorsement of Two Senate Candidates Is a First for the Company

“It’s about standing up for the millions of Americans who want to see wild places protected for future generations.”

By Jonathan Evans        October 19, 2018

image

Kathryn Wirsing

Patagonia has never been shy about its activism. The brand was built for the outdoors, and the folks in charge believe in conserving wild spaces so that future generations can enjoy nature just as much as—hopefully even more than—we do right now. This is the brand, after all, that took a very public stand against the Trump administration’s move to eliminate two million acres of protected federal land in Utah.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that Patagonia is now taking things a step further: for the first time in the company’s history, it’s officially endorsing two Senate candidates. The first is Jacky Rosen, who already serves in the House and is running for Senator of Nevada. The second is an incumbent, Senator Jon Tester of Montana.

From Patagonia’s statement:

Patagonia has fought for the protection of wild places since its founding and has been encouraging its community to vote with the planet in mind since 2004. The company is endorsing candidates for the first time this year because of the urgent and unprecedented threats to our public lands and waters. Nevada and Montana are two states where Patagonia has significant company history and a long record of conservation accomplishments, and where the stakes are too high to stay silent.

Hundreds of corporations back political candidates. The difference with our activism is that we put our logo on it.

Rosen and Tester are both Democrats who the company feels will fight to protect public lands and waters—though it’s perhaps worth noting that their affiliation wasn’t mentioned in Patagonia’s public statement. “This is not born from a desire to get into partisan politics,” it reads. “In fact, it’s the opposite—it’s about standing up for the millions of Americans who want to see wild places protected for future generations. That’s something we will always do, regardless of political party.”

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, for his part, was a little less willing to stick to the party (or, I guess, no-party) line:

We are supporting Jon Tester because he gives a damn about protecting public lands—and, like US, he’s committed to fight back against anyone who doesn’t. He goes to work every day for the 95 percent of Montanans who believe recreation on public lands is a priority, unlike Republicans in Congress who only serve the fossil fuel industry.

Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, though, there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on: Nature is good. Preserving unspoiled spaces so generations that come after us can also enjoy all that purple mountain majesty we keep going on about seems like a no-brainer. For some folks nowadays, it’s not. Here’s to Patagonia for taking a stand.

Oh, and a reminder: VOTE.

This is the world’s fastest-sinking city

NowThis Politics shared a post.

October 18, 2018

This is the world’s fastest-sinking city (via NowThis World)

Jakarta: The World's Fastest-Sinking City

No major city is sinking faster than Jakarta, where some areas are sinking an average of roughly 10 inches per year. How did this happen and will it be able to stay afloat?

Posted by NowThis World on Thursday, October 18, 2018

Watch this veteran confront Trump’s interior secretary over his efforts to shrink national monuments

NowThis Politics
October 20, 2018

Watch this veteran confront Trump’s interior secretary over his efforts to shrink national monuments

Veteran Confronts Trump's Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke over National Monuments

Watch this veteran confront Trump's interior secretary over his efforts to shrink national monuments

Posted by NowThis Politics on Saturday, October 20, 2018

Republicans undertake a last-minute push of desperate lying

Washington Post – The Plum Line

Republicans undertake a last-minute push of desperate lying

By Paul Waldman, Opinion writer      October 19, 2018

The most common theme in campaign ads isn’t Trump. It’s pre-existing conditions, according to Opinions writer Paul Waldman. 

This is the second in our series of short videos analyzing the ads candidates are airing as the midterm elections approach. Today: preexisting conditions!

Because the video itself doesn’t engage in any fact-checking, I thought I’d clarify what’s false and what’s true. I’ll let President Trump sum up the position Republicans have now settled on:

Donald J. Trump: All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!

I count five separate lies in that tweet, but let’s focus on the idea that “All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions.” As our video shows, this has become a common refrain among Republican candidates, claiming that despite what Democrats are alleging, they would never, ever seek to take away protections from people with preexisting conditions.

That is simply a lie.

Here are the facts. Until the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, insurance companies routinely denied people coverage if they had a preexisting condition, or they said that they would cover you, but the insurance would not cover that condition or that part of your body. Or they would offer you coverage, but set the premiums so high that you couldn’t possibly afford them. The ACA outlawed that practice, mandating both “guaranteed issue” (they have to cover you) and “community rating” (everyone gets charged the same premium for the same plan regardless of whether they have a preexisting condition).

Republicans are still saying that if they win back control of Congress, they’ll try again to repeal the ACA. And right now there’s a lawsuit in federal court filed by 20 Republican-run states seeking to have the entire law nullified. That lawsuit is supported by the Trump administration and pretty much every Republican.

In an act of truly awe-inspiring chutzpah, one of the people who brought that lawsuit, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, is airing an ad in his run for Senate saying how committed he is to protecting those with preexisting conditions — a protection that would disappear if his lawsuit succeeds. It’s like if you found your neighbor smashing your car with a baseball bat, said, “What are you doing?!?” and he replied, “I would never do anything to harm your car.”

The best Republicans can do to justify this epic mendacity is to say that while they support taking away preexisting condition protection now, they’ll bring it back later with some future piece of legislation, so it’s no problem. Many of them point to one of a couple of bills floating around Congress, but like most of what Republicans do when it comes to health-care policy, those bills aren’t particularly serious and don’t do what they claim to do. For instance, one version would require insurers to cover you if you have a preexisting condition, but allow them not to cover you for that condition. It’s a scam.

Republicans are airing all these ads because they’re terrified about how effective this issue is turning out to be for Democrats. Even Trump seems to have figured it out. When one party collectively decides they’re all going to repeat an obvious lie, you know there’s something important going on.

A Change to Farm Bill Conservation Efforts Could Spell Disaster for the Corn Belt

Civil Eats

A Change to Farm Bill Conservation Efforts Could Spell Disaster for the Corn Belt

As lawmakers debate whether or not to merge two crucial farm conservation programs, the future of farm pollution in Iowa—and other Midwestern states—hangs in the balance.

By Julia Poska, Farm Bill, Farm Policy       October 18, 2018

Molly Schintler and Derek Roller of Echollective Farm have been growing a diverse array of vegetables on 19 acres 25 miles outside Iowa City since 2001. While the farm is not certified organic, they use sustainable methods, crop rotation, and other eco-friendly practices and steward 20 acres of woodland in an effort to put people and the environment first.

“Obviously being a viable business is important,” said farmer Molly Schintler. “But it’s also really our priority to be thinking about how we can best feed our community in a way that’s good for the planet.”

To help balance those interests, Echollective recently signed onto the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program that encourages comprehensive natural resource conservation on working lands.

Molly Schintler and Derek Roller of Echollective Farm. (Photo credit: Giselle Bruskewitz, Food Hub Manger at Field to Family)

Molly Schintler and Derek Roller of Echollective Farm. (Photo credit: Giselle Bruskewitz, Food Hub Manger at Field to Family)

The program will recognize Echollective for its past conservation efforts and requires the farmers to enhance their current practices with additional activities. With the CSP funds, Schintler and Roller will mulch large areas, run soil tests, and plant nearly an acre of native fruit trees and pollinator habitat over the next five years.

“These are things that we want to do anyway, but it’s easy to not make them a priority,” Schintler said. “We signed that contract, so for us it’s a binding agreement that we’ll get these things done.”

The Nation’s Leading Conservation Program

The Conservation Stewardship Program began as the Conservation Security Program in the 2002 Farm Bill, and its current iteration was first authorized in the 2008 bill. The nation’s leading conservation program by acreage, CSP pays farmers to improve their practices in ways that benefit the air, water, and soil without taking land out of rotation like the Conservation Reserve Program requires them to do. It focuses on continual conservation and bases compensation on several factors, including time and resources invested and the expected degree of conservation benefits.

As of 2017, CSP covered an estimated 72 million acres; the vast majority of those acres are on large, conventional farms such as the thousands of Iowa corn and soy operations that surround Echollective—operations where farmers are generally less likely to have conservation practices on their to-do lists without funding.

The future of the program and Echollective’s contract are uncertain, however. The 2014 Farm Bill expired on September 30 after Congress proved unable to agree on a new bill, in part because of disputes over CSP and debate over cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The House of Representatives has proposed cutting CSP and rolling its “best features” into the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a similar conservation program for working lands without a long-term commitment. If this happened, EQIP would absorb $3 billion previously allocated for CSP. The Senate’s more moderate farm bill, on the other hand, would maintain the status quo and maintain the separate programs. Either way, the direction Congress goes will have major implications for farmers and natural resources around the U.S.

Spotlight on Iowa 

In Iowa, farm conservation focuses mainly on the interlocking challenges of soil health and water quality. A lack of crop diversity, reliance on synthetic fertilizers, and the fact that much of the soil sits uncovered by plant life for around six months a year in the ag-intensive Corn Belt make soil susceptible to nutrient loss.

“We know the corn and soybean system is what we call a ‘leaky system,’ so it leaks nutrients,” said Chris Jones, a research engineer with the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research.

Jones said the two main nutrients of concern, phosphorus and nitrogen, leak differently. Phosphorus mainly enters streams through overland runoff. As water travels across the surface of exposed soil, it picks up phosphorus particles and carries them into nearby waterways. In Iowa, all rivers and streams eventually drain to the Mississippi.

Highly soluble nitrogen dissolves in the water, and moves through networks of underground pipes called drainage tile. These systems keep once-waterlogged fields dry enough to cultivate but flush nutrients into the same waterways. Not only have nitrogen levels reached a crisis level in Iowa, where filtration costs millions and public utilities have been pitted against farm communities, but runoff from the state (along with 31 others) makes a significant contribution to the algae blooms that have created a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where low-oxygen conditions are inhospitable to life.

study Jones and his colleagues published in April found that Iowa contributes on average about 29 percent of Mississippi River dissolved nitrate, though it only accounts for 5 percent of the total land draining into the river.

Conservation practices such as planting cover crops, adding streamside vegetative buffers, and cutting down on tillage can help keep soil and nutrients from entering the water. Ultimately, Jones thinks increasing crop diversification with less leaky options is the best solution.

Jones said government conservation programs like CSP and EQIP are crucial to implementing such solutions in Iowa, where only about 2 percent of land is under state or federal control. Implementing conservation solutions on private land requires accessible programs that incentivize active conservation or land retirement, he added.

“In Iowa this land is so extremely valuable, compared to other farmland in other parts of the U.S. or the world, so land retirement is probably not something that’s going to happen in the short term,” Jones continued. “We need programs that target working lands.”

Some conservationists worry that if the farm bill rolls CSP into EQIP, conservation practices like those needed to solve Iowa’s water problem will take a hit.

“[CSP] is a very vital program across the country because it’s a program that has milestones and benchmarks,” said Alex Schmidt, president of the Conservation Districts of Iowa.

He said about half of Iowa counties invest more money in CSP versus EQIP. The preferred program depends on local needs and the approach of the county’s conservation commissioners. He worries that lapsed a gap in funding between now and whenever the new farm bill passes will further stall a sizable backlog of Iowa farmers waiting for acceptance into conservation programs.

The Farm Bill and the Future of Farmland Conservation

Schmidt said the draft Senate farm bill is the best case-scenario for conservation because it keeps the two programs separate.

Alyssa Charney, senior policy specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), agrees. “The Senate really offers a bipartisan path forward for getting a farm bill passed across the line, and that is especially true for conservation programs,” she said.

She also takes issue with much of the public messaging around the House’s proposed elimination of the Conservation Stewardship Program. “It’s inaccurate to call it a merge or ever a consolidation of programs because it’s not keeping the core elements of CSP.”

Those core elements include the CSP’s eligibility threshold and comprehensive nature, which require producers to take the conservation practices they have already implemented “above and beyond.”

Charney said most of the House’s proposed $3 million boost to EQIP likely would not go to stewardship-type contracts, based on language in the House draft. She said that because acreage eligible for CSP is divided based on the proportion of a state’s total agricultural land, states like Iowa in the middle of the country will take the hardest hit.

Conservation practices needed to solve Iowa’s nutrient runoff problems, like diversified crop rotation and cover cropping, are the types of high-level activities CSP currently promotes, Charney said. And losing that would be a big blow to the state, and others like it. Iowa Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley expressed support for maintaining current CSP funding through their proposed GROW Act in March.

Laura Crowell, the Iowa public affairs officer for USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), said EQIP is Iowa’s number one conservation program, though both ultimately help get conservation on the ground.

“All of our programs follow the same standards and specifications,” she said, “so whether it’s CSP or EQIP, it’s going to be the same practices and the benefits will be the same.”

She said there is a lot of overlap in activities both programs encourage, and stressed the importance of soil health for both farmers and nature.

Cromwell said current CSP contracts must legally be funded until they expire regardless of the program’s status in the new Farm Bill.

Farmer Schintler still worries, though. She said Echollective would not be able to complete all their designated projects without CSP funding, and would certainly be unable to re-enroll in the program after five years.

“As a farmer, you’re not paid for your time,” she said. “I feel really respected in a program that says they’re going to pay me for that time and effort. That’s definitely not the norm.”

Schintler said she’d support the potential change if it streamlined processes or helped the overall farm bill budget. But she questions why congress would cut such a reputable conservation program considering the serious water and air quality challenges we face as a nation.

And she notes, conservation matters for everyone who eats, breathes, or drinks water. “The food system allows everybody else to do all the things they do on a daily basis. They should care about food producers and the farm bill,” Schintler said.

Republicans created HUGE deficit to slash OUR Social Security and Medicare

Occupy Democrats

Reagan budget chief: Republicans created HUGE deficit to slash OUR Social Security and Medicare

Reagan budget chief: Republicans created HUGE deficit to slash OUR Social Security and Medicare

This is 🔥 Kudos to Reagan budget chief Bruce Bartlett for calling out Republicans!

Posted by Occupy Democrats on Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Why the Midwest’s Food System is Failing

Civil Eats

Why the Midwest’s Food System is Failing

The heavily agricultural states in the middle of the country aren’t actually feeding their people. But the 2018 Farm Bill offers an opportunity to change that.

By Karen Perry Stillerman, Commentary, Food Policy      August, 2018

If you’ve perused the new 50-State Food System Scorecard from the Union of Concerned Scientists, you’ve probably noticed a seeming contradiction. As shown on the map below, the heavily agricultural states in the middle of the country aren’t exactly knocking it out of the park when it comes to the overall health and sustainability of their food and farming systems. On the contrary, most of the leading farm states of the Midwest reside in the basement of our overall ranking.

OVERALL STATE FOOD SYSTEM RANKINGS

Map: Overall State Food System RankingsSo what’s that about? A couple of reasons stand out to me.

First, much of what the Midwest grows today isn’t really food (much less healthy food).

Greeting card: greetings from corn corn corn USA

Funny/not funny

It’s true. While we often hear that the region’s farmers are feeding America and the world, in fact much of the Midwest’s farm output today is comprised of just two crops: corn and soybeans. There are various reasons for that, including some problematic food and farm polices, but that’s the reality.

Take the state of Indiana, for example. When I arrived there in 1992 for graduate school (go Hoosiers!), I bought the postcard at right. That year, Indiana farmers had planted 6.1 million acres of corn, followed by 4.55 million acres of soybeans. Together, the two crops covered more than two-thirds of the state’s total farm acres that year.

The situation remains much the same today, except that the crops have switched places: this year, Indiana farmers planted 6.2 million acres of soybeans and “just” 5.1 million acres of corn. Nationwide, soybean acreage will top corn in 2018 for the first time in 35 years.

Regardless of whether corn or soy reigns supreme, the fact is that most of it isn’t destined for our plates. Today, much of the corn goes into our gas tanks. The chart below shows how total U.S. corn production tracked the commodity’s use for ethanol from 1986 to 2016:

US Total Corn Production and Corn Used for Fuel Ethanol Production

Reprinted from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center.

The two dominant Midwest crops also feed livestock to produce meat in industrial feedlots, and they become ingredients for heavily processed foods. A 2013 Scientific American essay summarized the problem with corn:

Although U.S. corn is a highly productive crop, with typical yields between 140 and 160 bushels per acre, the resulting delivery of food by the corn system is far lower. Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported.  Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.

All this is a big part of why, when UCS assessed the extent to which each U.S. state is producing food that can contribute to healthy diets—using measures including percentage of cropland in fruits and vegetables, percentage of cropland in the top three crops (where a higher number means lower diversity), percentage of principal crop acres used for major animal feed and fuel crops, and meat production and large feeding operations per farm acres—we arrived at this map:

RANKINGS BY FOOD PRODUCED

Map: Rankings by food producedAs you can see, the bottom of our scorecard’s “food produced” ranking is dominated by Midwestern states. This includes the nation’s top corn-producing states—Iowa (#50) and Illinois (#48), which together account for about one-third of the entire U.S. crop. It also includes my one-time home, Indiana (#49), where just 0.2 percent of the state’s 14.7 million farm acres was dedicated to vegetablesfruits/nuts, and berries in 2012.

Now let’s switch gears to look at another reason the Midwest performs so poorly overall in our scorecard.

Today’s Midwest agriculture tends to work against nature, not with it.

In addition to the fact that the Midwest currently produces primarily non-food and processed food crops, there’s also a big problem with the way it typically produces those commodities. Again, for a number of reasons—including the shape of federal farm subsidies—the agricultural landscape in states such as Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana is dominated by monoculture (a single crop planted year after year) or a slightly better two-crop rotation (you guessed it, corn and soybeans).

These oversimplified farm ecosystems, combined with the common practice of plowing (AKA tilling) the soil before each planting, degrade the soil and require large applications of fertilizer, much of which runs off farm fields to pollute lakes and streams. Lack of crop diversity also leads to more insect pests, increasing the need for pesticides. Moreover, as corn is increasingly grown in dry pockets of the Midwest such as Kansas and Nebraska, it requires ever-larger quantities of irrigation water. Finally, the whole system relies heavily on fossil fuels to run tilling, planting, spraying, and harvesting equipment.

No wonder that whether we look at resource reliance (including use of commercial fertilizers and chemical pesticides, irrigation, and fuel use) or, conversely, implementation of more sustainable practices (reduced tillage, cover crops, and organic practices, among others), most Midwest states once again lag.

RANKINGS BY RESOURCE RELIANCE

Map: Rankings by resource reliance

RANKINGS BY USE OF CONSERVATION PRACTICES

Map: Rankings by use of conservation practices

But Midwestern farmers want to change the map.

To sum up: In general, the Midwest is using up a variety of limited resources and farming in ways that degrade its soil and water, while falling far short of producing the variety of foods we need for healthy diets. Not a great system. But there are hopeful signs that the region may be starting to change course.

For example, in Iowa, more and more farmers are expanding their crop rotations to add oats or other small grains, which research has shown aids in regenerating soils, improving soil health, and delivering clean water, while also increasing productivity and maintaining profits. Diversifying crops in the field can also help to diversify our food supply and improve nutrition.

Back in my alma mater state of Indiana, farmers planted 970,000 acres of cover crops in 2017—making these soil protectors the third-most planted crop in the state. And in a surprising turn of events just last week, Ohio’s Republican governor signed an executive order that will require farmers in eight Northwest Ohio watersheds to take steps to curb runoff that contributes to a recurring problem of toxic algae in Lake Erie that hurts recreation and poisons Toledo’s drinking water.

A recent UCS poll provides additional evidence that farmers across the region are looking for change. Earlier this year, we asked more than 2,800 farmers across the partisan divide in seven states (Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) about federal farm policies that today incentivize the Midwest agricultural status quo. Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated they are looking for a farm bill that prioritizes soil and water conservation, while 69 percent supported policies (like farm-to-school supports) that help farmers grow more real food for local consumption. More than 70 percent even said they’d be more likely to back a candidate for public office who favors such priorities.

Speaking of the farm bill, things are coming to a head in Congress this summer over that $1 trillion legislative package that affects all aspects of our food system. As the clock ticks toward a September 30 deadline, the shape of the next farm bill is in question, with drastically different proposals passed by the House and the Senate. Critically important programs—including investments that could help farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere produce more healthy food and farm more sustainably—are at risk.

This article originally appeared on the Union of Concerned Scientists blog, and is reprinted with permission.

Iowa farm photo CC-licensed by Don Graham

How the Navajo Nation Is Reclaiming Food Sovereignty

Civil Eats

How the Navajo Nation Is Reclaiming Food Sovereignty

Through cooking classes, outreach, and social media, a new generation of Native Americans are reconnecting to Indigenous foodways.

By Andi Murphy, Food Deserts, Food Justice     October 17, 2018

Chef Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz driving “the mutton,” or the Mobile Unit for Training and Nutrition (MUTN). (Photo courtesy of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.)
In the middle of the Arizona desert, within the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, sits a half-acre garden oasis, bustling with fresh-grown veggies and flowers. Planted in 2016 as part of Coffee Pot Farms in partnership with the local Teesto Chapter, the garden now sprouts a plethora of greens as well as broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, and amaranth. The bushy rows of chilies, potatoes, corn, and garlic stand defiant in the dry desert landscape.

At Coffee Pot Farms, master gardener Artie Yazzie and others host gardening classes and tastings in an effort to teach locals about the varieties of fruits and vegetables that grow in the desert and how they can use them in the kitchen. It’s a response to the lack of cooking skills within the Navajo Nation, a result of the hardships Navajo people have long faced, including forced assimilation and poverty.

Collecting potatoes at Coffee Pot Farms in Dilkon, Arizona. Photo courtesy of Cherilyn Yazzie, co-owner of Coffee Pot Farms.

Collecting potatoes at Coffee Pot Farms in Dilkon, Arizona. Photo courtesy of Cherilyn Yazzie, co-owner of Coffee Pot Farms.

Native chefs and farmer all across the country have been working for years to take control of traditional and contemporary foodways in order to alleviate the ongoing problem of food insecurity in their communities. But growing food isn’t enough if people on the reservation don’t have the time or experience needed to prepare it.

“It was sad, here were some people trying to make a difference by growing the food,” says Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, a chef and holistic healer who has spent time at Coffee Pot Farms. “But [broccoli] was literally going to waste because no one knew how to cook it.”

Ruiz is part of a multitude of Native-led attempts to address the health, nutrition, and access to healthy food in the Navajo Nation. She leads cooking lessons in rural, Native Southwest communities out of a food truck known as “the mutton” or the Mobile Unit for Training and Nutrition (MUTN). In addition to the more traditional gardening-and-cooking programs, video bloggers and Instagram celebrities are spearheading digital-first efforts to bring Native foodways—including culture and traditions associated with indigenous foods—to Native people by way of their smartphones and tablets.

Changes like these are urgently needed in the Navajo Nation—and many other poor Native communities. The Navajo Nation is the biggest and most populous reservation in the country, and is largely considered a food desert. There are just 10 grocery stores serving the 150,000 Navajo people living there—one grocery store for every 15,000 people. There are many more convenience stores that stock cheap foods high in calories and fat, such as shelf-stable pastries, chips, soda, bread, and sweets; and plenty of places to get fried, fatty foods like frybread and Spam-and-potato breakfast burritos.

Chef Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz demonstrates how to properly hold a knife on the Mobil Unit for Training and Nutrition (MUTN). Photo courtesy of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.

Chef Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz demonstrates how to properly hold a knife on the Mobil Unit for Training and Nutrition (MUTN). Photo courtesy of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.

This lack of access to fresh, whole foods has predictable consequences: Native Americans have the highest rate of diabetes in the country, according to the Indian Health Services and National Health Interview Survey. To try to address these crises, funds from the Navajo “junk food tax”are distributed to 110 chapters on the reservation for health initiatives, nutrition classes, and community gardens.

At the STAR School near Flagstaff, Navajo students learn about growing food and cooking as part of their curriculum. The Navajo involved in the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program are prescribed fresh produce as part of the Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE) program. And at the political level, a Diné Food Policy, currently under consideration by the Nation’s president and vice president, focuses on food sovereignty—or taking control of food in the Nation to promote health, economics, and self-sufficiency. With a food policy in place, the Nation would have more control over the foods that make their way into grocery stores and make it easier for local farmers to sell their crops.

Not only is Ruiz part of this effort to eat healthier, she’s helping Navajo people reconnect with indigenous foods that grow in the desert—such as wild parsnips, cholla buds, wild spinach, and more.

For some, eating these foods has been an eye-opening experience. “So many people didn’t think about food access as [involving] the food available on the landscape,” Ruiz says.

‘Survival’ Foods

In her classes, Ruiz focuses on what the community already has, and doesn’t have. So in addition to using wild, native ingredients, she also incorporates ingredients that are affordable and available in Navajo grocery stores, such as broccoli and sweet potatoes. She says what she doesn’t do is come into a Native community and start teaching people how to make complicated sauces using expensive ingredients. In fact, Ruiz doesn’t even usually describe herself as a chef; she calls herself a cook when she’s out and about in the MUTN.

On the Navajo Nation, lack of access to kitchen equipment and resources can also make cooking difficult. Appliances like food processors and mixers can cost hundreds of dollars, money that is simply not available to the 43 percent of Navajo people who live in poverty.

Ruiz says that some students in her classes had never before used a large knife or had any sort of cooking lessons, like those offered in some public high-school home economics classes. And that, along with the lack of access to fresh food, speaks to the larger challenge ahead of Ruiz and others: Navajo food culture has coalesced around “poor man’s foods” or “survival foods.”

Miss Tse’ii’ahi 2018-2019, Kaylee Mitchell, sports a new BlueBird Flour dress. Photo courtesy of Jerrica Mitchell.

Miss Tse’ii’ahi 2018-2019, Kaylee Mitchell, sports a new BlueBird Flour dress. Photo courtesy of Jerrica Mitchell.

DIY signs advertising frybread, Navajo tacos, Navajo burgers, tortilla burgers, and Spam-and-potato breakfast burritos take up more space than street signs in small Navajo towns. On the reservation, these foods are a favorite. The 11,000 members of the “Navajo and Pueblo Cooking” Facebook group post a steady photo-stream of potatoes, tortillas, and frybread.

And Bluebird Flour, a brand of bleached white flour sold in a white cotton sack, has become nearly symbolic of Navajo culture. The bluebird logo is made into aprons, earrings, entire two-piece dresses, and incorporated into all facets of contemporary Navajo culture.

“Everything we eat today is processed food, and that’s what is killing us,” says Lena Guerito, nutritionist with the Navajo Nation Special Diabetes Project, a program that includes lessons on food nutrition for Navajos with diabetes. The main foods on a lot of Navajo people’s plates are potatoes and bread, she said. And that’s hard to change.

The “survival foods” so common in the Navajo Nation were born in a time of need. In the late 1800’s, the Navajo were forced by the U.S. government from their homelands in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah to a prison camp in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

“People returned [to Navajo lands] to find themselves with new foods that were provided by the U.S. government,” including flour, coffee, and lard, says Denisa Livingston, community advocate and community organizer for Diné Community Advocacy Alliance. “We have become accustomed to thinking that’s what food is.”

In her work as an advocate for food sovereignty—Livingston is the first woman to be elected as the Slow Food International Indigenous councilor of the Global North—she spearheaded the Navajo Nation’s junk food tax initiative. She also started focusing on where cooking habits are formed: mom’s cooking.

“When we look back at what our moms cooked and what our grandmas cooked, I think we have the opportunity to question if [what we’re eating now] really is authentic mom’s cooking or if it’s survival food; and also question if we’re ready to change,” says Livingston.

To her, changing the definition of mom’s cooking is part of the larger, Indigenous movement for food sovereignty. On a small scale, this work can take place at kitchen tables, where people teach their children to cook and value food, she says.

“Increasing the biodiversity on our palate,” is key to spicing things up, Livingston says. “When we experience new foods, new tastes, and new food adventures, it lifts up our spirit and it makes our hearts and minds full. I really believe that our people deserve those kinds of opportunities.”

‘The Fancy Navajo’

Experiencing diverse flavors, ingredients, and restaurants also contributes to personal culinary education. But those things can be added to a long list of things many Navajo people don’t have access to, Livingston says.

Alana Yazzie. (Photo credit: Chelsea Toyi)

Alana Yazzie. (Photo credit: Chelsea Toyi)

And that doesn’t mean the passion for food and adventure is not growing on the reservation. For Alana Yazzie (no relation to Artie Yazzie), culinary adventure meant leaving her parent’s kitchen and setting up one of her own.

“When I got to college and I was exposed to more people, I was out there running with it and learning and trying as much as I could,” Yazzie said of her food adventures. For so long “I was on this restricted diet, and then I was no longer under parental control. I had the power and resources to buy things on my own.”

While in college at Marquette University in Wisconsin, Yazzie broadened her food horizons: Not only did she try colorful, sugared cereals like Lucky Charms for the first time, she also learned about other cultures’ cuisines from her new Indonesian and Filipino friends. She found a love and appreciation for fresh vegetables, backyard gardening, and cooking.

Today, Yazzie is a lifestyle and food blogger in Phoenix who goes by the online name, “The Fancy Navajo,” and has 5,700 followers on Instagram. She has posts recipes such as blue corn quiche, blue corn muffins and pumpkin pancakes, and Navajo boba almond milk tea.

She didn’t always eat this way, though. Yazzie grew up on survival foods, including Hamburger Helper and other foods that came with powdered just-add-water sauces, she says. Her family made ends meet and, as a result, there wasn’t much extra money for eating out, so a lot of cooking happened in her house. From her mother, she learned how to cook dinner, and from her older brother, she learned how to bake.

“[Since] a young age, I’ve always been fascinated with cooking,” Yazzie says. “I’ve always thought of cooking as a family, community-type gathering.”

This summer, Yazzie harvested more kale than she needed from her backyard garden and ran out of ideas for how to use it. She asked her followers and fans on social media for suggestions and they responded with dozens of healthy recipes, she says. It surprised her, a little bit, to see so many suggestions coming from the reservation.

“People are eating kale there,” she says. “It made me happy. Whatever is happening, it needs to continue.”

This paradigm shift is about more than just shared knowledge, says Ruiz. Learning to feed yourself well is also about self worth. “People need to feel like they’re in power, which is hard from a colonized view. We’ve been taught that we’re not important,” she says.

Chef Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz keeps an eye on progress on the Mobile Unit for Training and Nutrition. Photo courtesy of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.

Chef Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz keeps an eye on progress on the Mobile Unit for Training and Nutrition. Photo courtesy of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.

That’s why Ruiz has positioned herself in a role that allows her to speak to other Native people in a way that shows them she  understands where they’re coming from. They’re not being talked at by an outsider who’s telling them to stop eating everything familiar to them. That, she notes, obviously hasn’t worked in the past. Instead, Ruiz believes that Native-led programs that meet people where they are and use a mix of traditional foodways and 21st-century tools can help chart a new course for food and health in Navajo Nation and beyond.

This article was produced in partnership with Dame Magazine as part of their new podcast, The Fifty One, which explores what national issues look like for women at the local level, starting with a first season focused on food access in their communities. The full episode is embedded below; read more about The Fifty One in Dame Magazine, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.