Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Several members of the Internet Food Association, including my colleague Spencer Ackerman, went to the Atlantic City Food & Wine Festival and got an interview with Tom Colicchio. Colicchio is the head judge on Top Chef and the owner of the Craft restaurants around the country. He is also, like a lot of great chefs, heavily involved in programs to fight hunger. He's working on a documentary, tentatively to be titled Hungry in America, about the problem (his wife is documentary filmmaker Lori Silverbush). And he had some interesting things to say on the subject.
"The face of hunger is families. It's not about the kid in Africa with flies swarming over his face," Colicchio explained. "It's homebound elderly, it's military families, it's people who have to make a decision between medication or buying food."Set against a two-level showcase of small plates and wines representing fare from Atlantic City hotel kitchens, the Elizabeth, NJ chef waved away an impatient publicist to continue talking about the institutional impediments to basic nutrition that keep 38 million Americans -- and 13 million children -- hungry. Farm subsidies are a particular target. "You're taking acres and acres of land that could be used for food production and turning it to gas production," Colicchio noted. "And it costs more gas to grow ethanol than the ethanol you actually get out of it. It's crazy. And this is all about farm subsidies, and it's all about senators protecting their constituencies."...
Colicchio's passion about hunger might be hereditary. While he made his name at high-end New York restaurants like the Gotham Bar & Grill and his mid-90s venture Gramercy Tavern -- and Craft might well be recession-proof -- his childhood in Elizabeth, one of New Jersey's perennially underserved urban centers, provided something like the opposite of a white-tablecloth perspective. "My mother ran a cafeteria in New Jersey," Colicchio said. He and his brother were unable to convince her to retire, long after their success made it unnecessary for her to continue working. "She said, 'You know what? I know that these kids who are coming in, I know that the breakfast we're doing and the lunch that we're doing, this could be the only meal that they're getting all day long.'"
A lot of celebrity chefs are active in combating hunger, working with groups like Chefs for Humanity, which is Cat Cora's organization.
Comments
The ethanol this is a bit maddening. While the argument about productive farmland being used to grow corn for bio-fuels is, of course, a problem there is a rather large elepant in the room. The idea of employing marginal and outright "waste" land that could be used to grow either switchgrass or hemp, both of which have shown promise in the area of biofuels, is virtually ignored by congress. The largest property holder in the U.S. IS the U.S. and a lot of that land is of little or no use for anything in particuar. Of course such a program would be a little tough for the congress to be in favor of, unless of course they could get somebody like, hmmmm, ummm, oh I don't know--HALLIBURTON--to manage it a loss.
Posted by: democommie | August 9, 2009 9:39 AM
It is the farmer who choose to grow corn for ethanol, they have lobbied for it. Although if they did grow other crops, are they going to give it away? Hunger in this country is about not being able to afford food, not the scarcity. I would venture to say there are surpluses but our government is not buying it, since it can be sold overseas. Helps to balance the trade deficit.
Posted by: Hathor | August 9, 2009 12:41 PM
The largest property holder in the U.S. IS the U.S. and a lot of that land is of little or no use for anything in particuar.
I guess, if you're not a big fan of trees and wildlife.
Posted by: Drekab | August 9, 2009 7:06 PM
There's not enough spare land to grow the biomass we'd need for biofuel without putting pressure of agricultural production. If biofuel is ever going to happen (and that's a big if) it will be genetically modified algae grown in vats or something.
Posted by: James K | August 10, 2009 1:07 AM
Drekab: Or all those bits of free land out in Nevada owned by BLM, free fro the taking if you don't mind no water, roads or other services.
I thought I heard, years ago, that much of the milk int he country was thrown int he ocean to keep milk prices up. Is that still true/ was it ever true?
Posted by: JustaTech | August 10, 2009 2:44 PM
Hathor, part of the reason taht so many farmers choose to grow corn, whether it is for ethanol, animal feed or the ubiquitous HFCS is precisely because of those subsidies. Those subsidies make it not only affordable to grow corn, but also profitible to grow nothing but corn. The problem isn't that someone's being unfair to the farmers or that someone's being silly about "what if they grow other crops" the problem is that the subsidies that make corn such a rosy picture artifically devalue other crops as well as making marketing table quality corn a losing proposition. Growing ethanol is more profitable than growing food. Growing HFCS is more profitable than growing a vegetable. Growing feed for cows and pigs is more profitable than growing feed for hungry little kids. The problem, as Colicchio stated, is the system. And yes, that does make the affordability of food more of a problem...where do you think those subsidies that are given for producing corn for every reason under the sun but feeding people come from? The government dosen't have it's own money, it uses OUR money, yours and mine and everyone else's to grow a food crop that we can't eat. It's entirely irresponsible that welfare for an industry supercedes welfare for starving families, but there it is.
Posted by: Kate from Iowa | August 11, 2009 2:27 PM