TFT Interview: Debra Eschmeyer of FoodCorps

I did this interview with food world leader Debra Eschmeyer of FoodCorps back in 2011 for The Faster Times (RIP).  I found it on Archive.com, footnoted in a Wikipedia article about FoodCorps. Presto! The links aren't live anymore, but at least I have an archive of it on my site now.  Here's a PDF, too. Download TFT Interview_ Debra Eschmeyer of FoodCorps _ The Faster TimesThe Faster Time

In every social justice movement, there’s a tension between the grassroots advocates who want immediate solutions, and elected officials, who inevitably compromise the movement’s ideals. The food justice movement is no different. But 31-year old Debra Eschmeyer has spent her career proving that you can (and must) marry idealism to political pragmatism. After growing up on a dairy farm in Ohio, Eschmeyer went to work on agriculture policy issues at the National Family Farm Coalition in D.C. Later, she was the spokesperson for the National Farm to School Network, which gets food from local farms into school cafeterias. At the same time, she served as a Kellogg Food & Society Fellow, a prestigious two-year fellowship that supports leaders who are working to create a healthier food system. As a Kellogg Fellow, Eschmeyer and several of her colleagues—including Curt Ellis (producer and director of King Corn) and Cecily Upton (a former staffer at Slow Food USA)—began cooking up an exciting new project: a national service organization that teaches public school students about food and nutrition.Called FoodCorps, the program is a scalable national response to the epidemics of childhood obesity and diet-related disease. Building on the AmeriCorps model, FoodCorps trains young adults to educate K-12 students who live in high-obesity, low-income communities. FoodCorps members will help students plant edible gardens, show them how to prepare healthy, simple meals, and drive it all home with lessons on nutrition.

Eschmeyer squeezed in an interview with me during a rare free moment between running FoodCorps, tending a 13-acre organic vegetable farm with her husband in New Knoxville, Ohio, and traveling to the National Farm to School Network’s annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. She spoke to me about FoodCorps, how the Obama administration is doing when it comes to child nutrition, and why young people are more likely to play a video game about farming than actually get their hands dirty.

FoodCorps sounds like a Peace Corps for school food, wheremembers get paid a stipend to do one year of service with anonprofit. Tell me more.

At FoodCorps, we focus on three pillars of work: Building school gardens,so kids have experiential knowledge; nutrition education; and local foodprocurement. Research by the Centers for Disease Control hasdemonstrated that engaging children in growing food leads to healthyeating habits that last a lifetime. Research also shows that on average,children participating in farm-to-school programs consume one moreserving of fruits and vegetables a day than kids who don’t.When I worked for the National Farm to School Network, I receivedthousands of comments from around the country saying, “I love the ideaof a farm-to-school program, but how do I get started in my community’sschool? Our budgets are tight and we just don’t have the sweat equityand labor to pull it off.” Now I have an answer: FoodCorps! One of themost game-changing aspects of FoodCorps is that we’re dedicatingresources to high-obesity, limited-resource communities—schools whereover 50% of the students are on free or reduced lunches. We’ll be incommunities like the Tohono O’odham nation in Arizona, where Type IIdiabetes was once unheard of, but where children as young as six arebeing diagnosed with the disease.

How many locations will FoodCorps be in starting this fall?We have amazing partners that we work with in 10 states: Arizona,Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, NewMexico, North Carolina, and Oregon. Selecting host sites was anextremely competitive process. We had 108 organizations from 39 statesand the District of Columbia apply, within a relatively short window. I thinkthis shows the maturity of the movement. 

And how many FoodCorps members are there?We’ll have 50 members in 2011. The idea is to start with a strong cadre of50 at the 10 host sites and then grow, so that in a decade we can have1,000 members in all 50 states. We received over 1,230 applications forthis year’s team.

That’s a lot of applicants for just 50 spots.I know! We’re officially more competitive than Harvard or Teach forAmerica. The applications were above and beyond awe-inspiring andbrilliant—and also a fascinating glimpse of what has inspired the nextgeneration. Back when Michael Pollan published the Omnivore’sDilemma, we had conversations that it was the Silent Spring of the foodmovement. And lo and behold, the number of FoodCorps applications thatquoted Pollan was incredible. We have such a self-empowered andeducated generation—they want to not just vote with their forks but votewith their whole being through service. They were all so motivated andpassionate and all had personal experiences that validated why theybelieve so much in our vision. I’ve never felt more confident about thefuture of our country when it comes to reversing childhood obesity.

Who funds FoodCorps?The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Corporation for National andCommunity Service (AmeriCorps), the Woodcock Foundation, the ClaneilFoundation, the Wallace Genetic Foundation, and anonymous privatedonors.

Typically, there’s a lot of red tape that gets in the way of schoolsserving produce from their own gardens in the cafeteria. Howdoes FoodCorps get around that?In most states, regulations don’t directly address school gardens, so youend up having to figure out how to meet each state’s concerns. We’vebeen working with Tufts graduate students who’ve developed a templateschool garden policy for our 10 states so the food safety and regulatoryconcerns have been documented. But schools in our program will alsobuy from local farmers.For those who are getting push-back from their school district, Irecommend reading “Fresh, Healthy, and Safe Food: Best Practices forUsing Produce from School Gardens,” and then contacting your state’sDepartment of Health. Be prepared to cite the federal memo that allowsserving food from the school garden. If they say you can’t do it, ask themto point you to the specific part of state code that says so. There’s a goodchance schools can meet the standards if they know what they are upagainst and are already following the guidelines in the food safetybrochure.

Michelle Obama has done a lot to advocate for backyard gardensboth at home and at school. What did you think of the ChildNutrition Reauthorization Bill (the bill that funds the NationalSchool Lunch Program) that her husband signed into law?I’m actually very happy with the end results of the bill. If you had askedme that question three years ago, I wouldn’t have said the same thing.The bill needed to be passed and I was delighted that we could get thefunding increase for school lunches, considering the budget climate thatwe’re in now. We were able to increase the reimbursement funding by sixcents per lunch—and improve nutrition standards. And now the Secretaryof Agriculture can set standards for all food served on school premises.There’s mandatory funding for farm-to-school programs. We’ve beenfighting for that for six years! Those were substantial wins.

When I volunteered for New York City’s Wellness in the Schools,a bunch of us went to Capitol Hill to ask our senators andrepresentatives to push for 70 cents more per child. I couldn’thelp but see six cents per child as a big disappointment.“The perfect can be the enemy of the good,” became my mantra over thepast couple of years. We got as good as we could get in this political andfiscal climate. And we have to soldier on. If that bill hadn’t passed lastyear, we wouldn’t have gotten even the six-cent increase.And you need the advocates—the people who say we need an extra 70cents per lunch. But in the end, you need to come together. We’re makingdecisions now that are going to affect people 20 years down the road.Every edging forth is important.

How do you think the Obama Administration is doing with foodand agriculture policy overall?They’re doing as well as I expected. On certain issues the Obamas havebeen amazing. The Let’s Move! campaign has been brilliant. MichelleObama is obviously a great spokesperson—getting people active, havingfun. (Have you seen the Beyoncé video?) I’m very grateful for the energyshe’s putting towards improving the health of the next generation.This administration has been great with efforts such as Know YourFarmer, Know Your Food and the Childhood Obesity Taskforce Thesethings are really transformative.Regarding farm policy, there could be a lot of improvements. Congress islooking to trim any and all fat, so we’re going to have to protect what wehave now. It’ll be interesting to see how the USDA works within thatenvironment.One of the gains of the last Farm Bill was an office of Advocacy andOutreach at the USDA. And they have a Beginning Farmer and RancherDevelopment Program—that’s something we’ve been working on for adecade. But if program funds are cut, then we go back to square one.

What was your response to that article in the Atlantic last year byCaitlin Flanagan, in which she argued that edible schoolyards aredepriving our children of a “real” education?My initial response was, “Really? This is what you’re spending your timeon?” But her role was provocateur. And as it happens, I think she gave usa gift. A whole bunch of us came together and wrote letters—novelsbasically—about all the benefits of school gardens. It helped us thinkmore critically about various facets of our program. In the end, we cametogether with some amazing stories, talking points, and new friendships.You know how you talk to your best friend about the work you do and youdon’t have to defend it or explain it? If you have these conversations withsomeone who you don’t agree with, you become stronger. We explainourselves better after such conversations.

The next farm bill is around the corner. What are the top threeitems you would like to see change?It’s a $307 billion bill! It’s very heavy—there is so much that could betackled in it.Instead of focusing on the detailed items I would change—there are somany that it would be difficult to focus on three—I would like to focus onno-cost solutions.• Get an insider guide to farm policy out there to the general public thatputs us all on the same page. Each of the many groups that comprise thefood movement has a different agenda. But what are the things we can allbe on the same page about?• Develop a realistic agenda. In the end, these are the lofty goals that wewant to achieve, but here are the things we know we can achieve in the2012 Farm Bill.• Ensure that the voices that are being heard are the grassroots and thefarmers—especially beginning farmers. They all bring legitimacy to thecause. We love journalists, chefs, and nonprofits—that’s what makes ourfood movement go ’round. But we need to make sure that the people whoare actually farming every day, who will be impacted the most by theseprograms, have a voice in this conversation.

I get the sense from talking to you that the so-called food justicemovement is growing and gaining mainstream support.Brian Walsh recently wrote an article in Time Magazine about how quicklythe food movement has become a measurable force in American society—and how it may eventually eclipse the environmental movement.However, he also pointed out that while the Sierra Club has 1.3 millionmembers nationwide, Slow Food USA (the food movement’s mostdynamic and visible group) only has 20,000 members. (Author’s Note: Since Walsh’s article was published in February, Slow Food USA’s membership has grown to 24,000.)So we still have a long way to go, but the food movement is slowly andsteadily building. 

My question is: why are there so many people on FarmVille and yet wecan’t get those same people interested in farming? I became addicted toFarmVille when I was in DC, but as a dairy farmer’s daughter, I wasperturbed by the chocolate milk coming out of a brown cow! And younever slaughtered your pigs, you just petted them for truffles. Such agreat opportunity for real farm education missed.

What’s your definition of food justice?I was an editor of Food Justice (the new book by Robert Gottlieb andAnupama Joshi) so I spent several years thinking about the definition.Food justice seeks to ensure that the benefits and risks of where, what,and how food is grown, produced, transported, distributed, accessed andeaten are shared fairly. It represents a transformation of the current foodsystem, including but not limited to eliminating disparities and inequities.