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podcasts and fun social media challenges be sure to keep an eye out for our weekly and sell mean connections emails that list upcoming events and opportunities to stay connected today's webinar is being recorded and will be posted on the college's website for those who cannot make it live today please use the q a button on your screen to submit questions today's food security and sustainability webinar is being moderated by nikki laura and casey kavanagh mickey is an alumna from the class of 2006 nikki has been a staff member at the college since 2013 and is the new director of the melia center for community engagement casey kavanagh is a current senior here on the hilltop casey is majoring in criminal justice and social work she is an active she is active in several offices on campus including the melia center and campus ministry and has a passion for food security and sustainability thank you for being here with us today i'm going to turn it over to nikki now nikki thank you for having casey and i we're excited to be here to discuss this important and timely topic of food security and sustainability and we're really lucky to have two alumni who work in the field and they're going to provide us with their experience during the pandemic dave and catherine could you please take some time to introduce yourself and your background in your work and let's start with dave sure i'm dave dumarisk and although i wasn't born into a farming family i began working on local farms at a very young age and working by a side by side with older older farmers i learned how to grow literally from the f from the ground up and after i graduated from saint anselm college with a degree in philosophy and a certificate in french in 1994 i began serving as a crop extensionist with the peace corps in the andes of ecuador and then towards the end of my service there one of the farmers i had worked for in my youth had passed away and his family asked if i wanted to return to the u.s and lease the farm so with no other plans at the time i figured why not and so at the age of 23 i was a self-employed farmer in massachusetts and one of the first things i did was to plant begin planting latino and asian crops for the local populations in lawrence and and then being fluent in spanish that helped me to get a good staff and kind of made it easy for me to get into the marketplace selling to local bodegas and stores in the nearby cities then the next year i expanded into the boston area some selling to latino stores in jamaica plain and farmers markets in chelsea dorchester east boston revere lynn all over the area finally you know more locally in andover north andover beverly then i expanded the farm in future years to my e street farm in tewksbury and the hill orchard in westford so now i have all these farmers markets and three farm stands and then in 2008 i began to begin our community supported agriculture program where members receive a box of produce each week and this has slowly grown over the years so that now it's a year-round program we have several greenhouses we grow in about two acres of greenhouses so we're harvesting year-round put a lot of product in storage as well next week we'll be sending out about 700 boxes each box i estimate feeds about three people in the summer it grows to about 2 000 boxes per week so at the peak of our season we're feeding over 6 000 people through our csa program with a staff of a little over a hundred and that's about half our production goes into the csa so we we probably feed in the peak season at least 10 000 people per week and with this large dedicated team the farm has grown to include all these different acres in three different towns and the greenhouses have become a larger and larger portion of the business in the off season we also grow about 20 acres of fruit on those hundred acres not just vegetables we don't really have much for animals besides about a dozen beef cows that feed a lot of the not so great produce in 2017 we constructed and finished off a new very green packing facility which includes solar panels and geothermal heating and system heating and cooling system water cisterns that collect waste water from our produce rinsing areas and the consumers that go to our different farm stands and our farmers markets find that you know we we keep our produce available to people of all different levels of affluence it's not just meant for the low income people in a lot of those cities that i mentioned it's also meant for the higher income people um in the higher end communities and so from the production to the distribution uh we've done a lot of different things to make sure that food is available to all in addition to all this food all this production locally i've also you know done a lot of work with international foreign uh development in in africa and central asia and latin america so i've had a lot of different experiences that have given me a lot of insight and perspective into how the food system locally here can be improved that's it thanks dave catherine thank you and uh hello to everyone my name is katherine drenin lin i was the class of 2009 and i was an international relations major and has spent the majority of the last 10 plus years in communications and the social services sector for the last seven years i've been working at the greater boston food bank and oversee our media relations external communications and public anti-hunger policy work and advocacy for those of you who are not familiar with the greater boston food bank it's the building right behind me uh i am not there but virtually speaking i am always there uh we are the largest hunger relief organization in new england and a member of feeding america which is the umbrella organization of our nation's food bank system so our food bank is one of the largest food banks in the country and we cover about 75 percent of the state of massachusetts and provide food to 190 cities and towns across that region so within eastern massachusetts we distribute food to nearly 600 food distribution partners and programs primarily pantries and in addition to that we have shelters meal programs and mobile distributions at health centers schools and senior centers so a majority of our work we're an operations warehouse if you look behind me we uh really you know we walk into our building uh it's like walking into a costco uh we are the wholesaler and food distributor for many of our charitable food system in our state in massachusetts i should say in addition to food distribution food acquisition and distribution and logistics we are also doing uh policy work so our our mission is to end hunger here and so we are not only addressing the immediate acute need for food access but also looking at long-term sustainable issues and uh pursuing policy that is going to you know get to the root causes of this issue long-term and that is i'll just end there because i know we're going to get into a lot of issues on on food insecurity and and the work that uh we've been doing and the impact of coven 19th on there thank you catherine um so interesting to listen to your backgrounds and how different they are and how different your organizations are but yet you fall under these areas of caring about food insecurity and sustainability so could the two of you tell us a little bit more about what food insecurity and sustainability are maybe a definition in some examples sure i can start by with food insecurity so food insecurity is defined by the us department of agriculture is not knowing where your next meal will be coming from so that unknown around you know whatever is in your refrigerator and not knowing when you'll be able to afford getting another grocery bag of groceries or putting food on the table for your family that's really what food insecurity means and uh and hunger is a symptom of that so it's uh hunger is more of the physical feeling i think a little easier to understand but food insecurity is really that measurement that a lot of us in the food hunger relief world use to measure this problem thank you and dave do you want to expand on that and maybe tell us about sustainability sure i mean to start with i mean the food security i think you know has different um aspects that for a food system to be considered secure um food has to be available so obviously it first has to be produced um and then it has to be distributed then the question is is it accessible to the consumers um can they get into the stores can they afford it so oftentimes that affordability is kind of the second leg then can they use it is the food safe did it arrive in good condition uh is it rotten and then also another part of that is do they know how to cook it sometimes people get food that they don't know how to consume and then the final leg would be the sustainability which actually it's more um the stability of it and that's kind of the long-termness is are all these things available in the long-term future or are we good for today are we good for this week are we good for a month are we good for the year or you know looking out 20 years is this system sustainable and stable and that's where the sustainability fits in can our soils produce the crops long term for this generation for the next generation for the generation after that and are we producing the food and distributing it in a way that doesn't destroy our climate our world as well and i believe all those things are possible oftentimes there are more political issues that are involved than anything else thank you um it sounds like it's a complicated process and we're going to continue to unpack that today so maybe we can move next to catherine and you can tell us a little bit about where the greater boston food bank gets its food and your collaborations with program like dave's sure so that's typically the first question we get when people walk into our warehouse and they see the volume of food i'm talking racks and racks and racks and aisles of food you know where is this food coming from because i think a lot of us at least i even understood this before i started working at the food bank you know uh uh you know do a food drive you know your local food drive i mean that actually the food that we receive from you know your local church food drive or at a grocery store makes up about less than one percent of the food that the greater boston food bank is actually distributing and i think that some of those donations go farther almost at the local level than at our um larger scale facility um so we're we're uh basically two two things we're donating we're getting donated product and we're purchasing a lot of products so it's about 50 50 and the donated product comes from lots of different places we've got great relationships with retailers so all of your big name retailer distributors like stop and shop and you know food suppliers we're getting lots of bulk you know talk about tractor trailer loads and pallets of donations so that's a big source of the donated product we also are receiving donations from local farms and and produce so if there are you know especially over the last year we've seen you know some farms wanting to move product quickly they had contracts with um you know schools or hospitals and you know that those contracts were almost cut off immediately and so they needed to move that product quickly um so they donated it to us and then another piece of the donated piece is um is a food rescue um sort of program where you know at grocery stores you'll see prepared food um that is you know clearly at the end of the day or in the two days it needs to go somewhere and rather than coming to us in our facility we'll redirect it to a local community um so if there's a shaw's or a market basket in you know lowell we might redirect it to a pantry in lowell rather than redirecting it to us and then going out the door so those are the that's the donated product and then on the purchase side we purchase a lot of food we've actually increased the amount of private fund raised purchasing by a hundred and thirty percent this past year um but we're there's sort of three buckets of purchase food so uh we are we're buying food with private fundraised money um and that's the 130 percent increase about two or two to three million dollars a month we're spending on just our own private fundraise dollars and then we also get uh funding from our state so through our state budget process we actually get about um this past year 30 million dollars that went to four food banks across the state so we're we're the largest and there's two other uh feeding america food banks and a fourth independent and they get funding from the state so we're doing a lot of purchasing through that program and then also we get funding through the u.s department of agriculture and that is a additional product that is technically you know we go on to a website and pick out the product that we want to purchase um and whatever is a bit available um and i and the last point is pretty important because uh the the money that we get that we're able to use to purchase ourselves and the money that we get through the state that gives us the flexibility um to provide variety of quantity quality food and the product to obtain and acquire the products that perhaps are harder to get for our pantry partners so you know they might be able to get canned goods but they might it might be a little harder for them to get their hands on fresh produce or milk and um it's we actually do business with about 40 plus farms across the state um farmer dave's is one of our longest and most uh wonderful partners and i'm not just saying that because he's on the line he's been really um awesome to work with and um but it's you know we work with a lot of those farmers but also vendors that are in the state i do think it's really important because i i think farmer dave will get into this you know the sustainability piece um you know we aren't necessarily in ag state but uh we're actually bringing a lot of food that we're consuming into the state of massachusetts but we're we're trying our best to do as much as we can um with the money that we we've got so we're um so we're trying to you know always balance like using the dollar um that we have with you know investing back into our community so that's the challenge we have with the the money that we have but those are kind of it's a long answer about where we get our food but um but important for i think uh the public to understand how complicated it might it is i think that people don't know how complicated it is um and probably know even less um from your perspective dave of how farms help with all that so looking forward to have you expanding on that sure so i mean when i look at you know we grow at least 100 different crops so we're extremely diverse uh we're harvesting now 12 months of the year with our new storage facilities we're able to store at least a quarter million pounds of food that you know would get harvested in say october november we're able to store that with modern storage controlled atmosphere in some cases some of it right into the next may so for example we have carrots and beets pretty much year round now apple's pretty much year round so these new technologies have allowed us to improve our ability to to serve our community and when i first got into business i would say about 50 percent of our product went directly to the consumer and 50 went to you know local stores and things like that my goal has been to get as close to 100 um direct to the consumer over the years right now we're probably around 95 so about 50 goes into our csa program then 20 to 25 percent farmers markets 20 to 25 via our farm stands which leaves you know five to ten percent uh for wholesale and donations and things like that so somewhere between probably two to five percent of our product goes to the merrimack valley and greater boston food banks um if you look behind catherine's head our truck usually other side our truck will back in to door 11 or 12 which are the refrigerated docks uh and usually the truck will hold between eight and 12 pallets usually um and the truck will back in and gets unloaded and goes up on those racks and gets distributed all around eastern m ssachusetts catherine has a very efficient system running there um it's a system i think massachusetts should be very proud of and a lot of people don't realize all the work that's being done there um so i mean every year we about to probably an average of 200 000 pounds of produce uh of ours goes to the greater boston food bank so that's somewhere between one and two hundred pallets total um we usually start delivering in july and we'll oftentimes go till the next april with the last products being usually apples did i answer your question yes thank you so much um thank you both for your introductions and definitions and it's really interesting to hear about the collaboration between programs like yours um you kind of want to shift directions and this year has definitely posed some unique challenges and we're wondering if you could speak on how kovit has impacted your respective areas of the foods sure dave i'm happy to jump in first so for us and i think for many uh americans kind of watching the news almost overnight food insecurity and hunger became a front page issue um so for in in boston and and in massachusetts i should say uh food insecurity actually increased um by 59 uh across the state uh in our service area it was actually actually at 66 percent even greater than the rest of the state and that is actually the largest increase in food insecurity compared to any other state in the nation so there's a lot of reasons for that that we estimate um i think we were one of the states that closed down earliest and had one of the highest or the highest unemployment rate back in june and through the summer we once again while that unemployment rate has gotten better the latest report that just came out finds massachusetts still again topping that list as the highest unemployment rate i think we have a lot of service industry in the state of massachusetts a lot of hospitality higher education and and so a lot of vulnerable communities and while not while i think every single community across the state has experienced some sort of hardship and there is food insecurity that absolutely exists in every single city and town uh when you look a little further and deeper into the data you'll see that there the communities that we're hurting before kovid are their hardships have deepened even further so um so that's kind of what we're we're focused on uh almost immediately overnight you know we can talk a lot uh i could talk all night about the changes and the impact to our operations and to the greater boston food bank but we've pretty much had to reinvent uh how we distribute food and the food that we're acquiring and distributing and how it gets to the last mile the client that's in need we've increased our food distribution by 60 percent and according to our agency reporting uh they're serving around 600 000 people per month and that's about 100 increase uh over last year so just incredible need that we're seeing incredible demand on our system at the food bank but also our network partners so you know we have had to do a lot of pivots and changes over the last year to kind of adapt um to this new reality of social distancing and and uh and and acquiring more food but uh the the the that story is true just uh the same with our partners on the ground so they're the the ones you know we've never stopped or closed our doors since the beginning of the pandemic and i think something that we're really proud of is that a really resilient and strong network partners that are on the ground that are distributing food and never once during the pandemic was there less than about uh 10 of our partners closed at any given time and why that matters is you know for many of you who've seen the images across the country of lines of miles and miles of cars at food banks the greater boston bourbon wouldn't have to do anything like that because we have so much so much resiliency in the communities and and almost every single community has at least one in many communities multiple organizations that are on the ground making sure that the food is getting out to people so that's something that i think we are are a silver lining proud of but also recognize just the exhaustion that's gone on over the last years you know people have not stopped and we know the greater boss food bank you know there's not there's there isn't going to be a vaccine for hunger um people are vaccinating they're going to start going back to work but people are going to be in this state for a very long time so that's sort of what we're bracing ourselves for is you know taking a breath and stepping back and thinking okay how are we going to continue this work through the next year to five to ten years because history has shown us you know looking at the 2008 recession it took us about 10 years to recover to pre-recession food insecurity rates so that's sort of what we're preparing for not to be grim but we just we just know how long it takes to recover from an economic crisis like this thanks so much kathryn you made some really awesome points and adapting is definitely a really big thing and especially at this point and pandemic and we can turn over to dave and steve how has uh this impacted your area of system sure so i mean when the pandemic first hit you know every there was just so much uncertainty if you think back to last march i mean my wife and i for a couple days were just thinking should we just should we not plant any seeds this year um you know is this the year to have a sabbatical a year of rest that we'd really love to have um but then we realized you know we need we've been growing for our community for so long our community looks up to us and looks forward to having you know all this food that we produce so it would be doing we would be doing a disservice to our community if we didn't grow so we decided to get going not knowing would we have a staff i mean you know we hire 100 people every year that's a lot of people if nobody could work who would do the work of of of on the farm so we had a lot of questions like that and then a lot of um everything's just kind of shut down we were still growing um everybody was still coming to work on the farm which was interesting um and the demand just skyrocketed uh luckily so 2019 we did not offer our csa in the winter uh january february of 2020 was the first winter that we did so we have extra product and storage so coming into april we had more product and storage than we ever had and um [Music] the product that we had was available to more csa members so we started in march with about 300 csn members i think by the time we got to may we're up to about six feet 900. luckily we had that product then what we started to see is a lot of the small food pantries were not eating as they previously had because volunteers a lot of the volunteers were older we started to get more request local food pantries for donations what we started to do was we figured maybe circumvent the whole system because the system we weren't sure how well the system was holding out so we started uh offering donated products directly to people on the farm so we just sent out an e uh facebook blast saying if anybody wants to stop by on saturday morning we're going to have free food we ask that only those that are in need come and when some like 200 people show up and look a lot of our you know the quality apples and beets and carrots and greens out of the greenhouses and just gave the community and people loved it and so we were already used to making all these donations we just figured we need to because we are logistically located amongst the comm our abilities to give to the community are so much easier than a farm that's way off you know hours and hours or an hour from from the population so having this farm amongst the community i think is a feature that an emergency conditions is invaluable the last time something similar to this was september 12th and 13th of 2001. just after 9 11. if you remember everything kind of shut down trucks were stopped because they weren't sure if a truck had a bomb or anything like that the phone started ringing off the hook because people were concerned that the trucks were not coming across the country with food to service the new england area and people started calling the local farms hey can i get some food from you i don't know if trucks are going to be coming in or not that was two days of mayhem and then suddenly and then things started to loosen up march of this year started to turn in something similar only it was a little bit more gradual and the effects are but the effects of it are becoming much long-term it's clear from both of your answers that they're we're going to be dealing with the fx for a while um and it's amazing to hear how you guys just pivoted and adapted so quickly um and so speaking of pivoting there's a question in the chat so i thought we could throw we could pause and answer it um it goes back to what you're talking about before dave about working getting your food directly to the consumer um so the question is hearing that dave is looking to move all of his business direct to consumer how does this impact your partnership with the food bank as long as we are a farm farm and to like to produce food and we always like to produce more than we think we need so we're always going to have overages for example i mean when i first got back from ecuador um a friend of mine that i met in ecuador who was a priest from the new england area he had a parish in lawrence and a lot of our product that didn't sell at the local farmers market we would donate to him his parishioners would sell it after mass and then they would take that money and send it to a hospital in ecuador so we we i'm always looking for ways to move extra product that benefits the community so being again being a farm we're always going to produce more than we need and so we're always going to have you know product available for the greater boston food bank i don't really have anything to add to that i mean i think that yeah i think as long as you're you're in operation uh dave i think you know we do um we do purchase from a lot of farms as well in in addition to receiving that donated product so yeah like i said most farms good farmers don't usually have a lack of product they have a lack of markets that's why people often you're concerned oh with a growing population are we going to be able to feed the world i've worked all around the world and i can assure you if the world's population doubles we're still going to be able to feed the world's world's population it's a matter of distribution yeah i i think that there's never been an issue of there being enough food in the system um it's it's at least from my vantage point talking about food insecurity and food access and hunger it's like there's enough food out there it's just is it going in the right places um and do people have access um whether it be affordability or you know knowing where to go to get it i'm wondering if you guys could expand on that a little bit as i was listening to you talk about the impact of covid and how the groups were already struggling were hit the hardest i was wondering you know about concrete examples of how do you pivot and make sure people have the access when they already have barriers um so if you guys could talk a little bit more about how you do that and what that looks like i think from our perspective that's a pretty open-ended question even though it doesn't sound that open-ended um i mean there's many ways to pivot i mean to a certain extent this spring you know it's like how do you suddenly produ go from producing a box of food for 300 families a week to 900 families a week that's not easy and you know things take time to grow however when you're growing in a controlled atmosphere of greenhouses or controlled environment rather of greenhouses i have the ability to increase the temperatures so normally i'm trying to grow things as sustainably as possible not use fossil fuels if i don't if not needed but i have backup heating systems in greenhouses so what did i do i mean you know in march seeing things start to um you know happen i just slowly cranked up the temperatures in the greenhouses and we harvested probably three times as much greens out of our greenhouses uh this past year than we ever have yes we spent more fuel to do so however think that if you think back i mean fuel was also stuck so fuel prices came down so it was kind of nice financially because i mean it was kind of the lowest fuel prices that we've seen uh probably in 15 years to compensate and get that extra production uh that we were looking for and then you know again farmers farmers are pretty smart and resourceful and resilient so if we see the need we can usually fulfill it but it takes does take time however you know seeing that those numbers were skyrocketing we have greenhouses so we started a lot more transplants in the greenhouses so that we were you know the second we could plant things outside we're putting in transplants like crazy and with a transplant you can harvest you know a month earlier than otherwise so we're filling our fields as fast as we could to react to the situation um and then a drought hit us this year um so we did get smacked around quite a bit but we persevered and pumped an awful lot of water millions of gallons of water to get through and and yeah i mean this year i'm pretty proud of what we did honestly we probably produced more this year than we ever have uh and that's that says a lot about you know the team here on the farm that we're all committed to the mission at hand to to grow a lot more food you know for the community it's really interesting oh sorry go ahead no it's okay i can hold off on my comment i'm just gonna say it's really impressive to hear about how you're meeting the different means of the needs of the community so catherine if you have anything to add yeah i was just gonna comment and um validate uh dave's initial statement that the question it you go in a lot of different directions and i think it's what's cool is you got very two different you know perspectives here and i think from my our perspective you know around access and making sure meeting the need i think one of the things that we talk a lot about is and i feel like i'm spending a lot of time talking about is that while we're in one of the largest hunger crisis crises of our lifetime we're kind of also in a moment where there have been there's a lot of access in terms of programs and benefits that are coming down from the federal level so um you know and so for my job it's it's not only you know we're talking we're focused on the greater boston food bank and how much food we can get out through the charitable food system to make sure that there is food available if anyone needs it right there you know today but i think another piece of this is making sure that people are aware of the resources that are available to them so i'll just use one example you know snap the supplemental nutrition assistance program is a huge benefit and in terms of scale especially in crisis is much more equipped to respond and so for every one meal you know that the food banks in massachusetts are providing snap can provide five and what's good about snap there's a lot of things that i could talk a lot about that but um the one thing especially in massachusetts is that it relates to dave you know if if i'm on snap i actually have access to what's called a program called healthy incentives programs so it's it's a a benefit part of snap that actually helps double the dollars on your snap card at local farmers markets or csas so if i'm on snap i could actually use my snap dollars to buy a csa from dave and then get double those dollars back on my card so i can go to the grocery store and pick out whatever else i need um you know i'm making it sound much more simpler simple that it is but um you know snap that benefit's been boosted by 15 like there's a lot of benefits um that are available to people so while it's devastating what's happening right now um you know there are definitely resources available it's just i always think about the end user and it's very it's um it can be really complicated and frustrating to igure out you know the the spider web of resources available to someone do i go to my local food pantry do i sign up for the what is the snap thing what's wic what's the school meal piece there's a lot of different avenues to to go down but uh there are some there are resources that are available right now thank you so much catherine and um it's really great to hear your perspective on that as well um i'm wondering if you could kind of talk a little bit more about how some of the current policies are impacting our food system from your perspective or anything that you might like to see change from policy standpoint catherine go ahead sure sure um so i sort of touched on it in my that last statement um but uh i guess i'll just step step back and say through the stimulus packages at the federal level there's been a lot that's come down in response and to provide relief on those that are struggling during this time um as far as food you know the first cares act that came out pretty quickly early on in the pandemic that's been a big one um and a lot of things have come out of that there have been um you know increases uh to unemployment benefits uh there have been increases to you know the snap program there have been there have been new programs that have been implemented um that you know have provided more food into the system um and so and then there's just been a lot of money made available um which has allowed for you know purchasing food and and being able to implement um you know changes and and and programs um i think one thing that i probably failed to mention in my earlier response around kind of like how we've shifted and pivoted i mean it i think people forget that for a non-profit to shift in this time and go completely remote i mean i've been remote since march 10th or so so and and i'm along with about 40 other employees at the greater boston food bank who have completely need to be outfitted and are working remotely um that's that's money um infrastructure that's had to be put into place and then on the you know distribution side a lot of investments that have had to take place to make sure that you know our organization and the partner organizations that we work with are equipped to respond and a lot of investments around refrigeration and trucks and space heaters and tents and things to do outside distributions and so a lot of that money has gone towards those types of activities and investments but more recently um you know there was a stimulus package that came out um in december that had some really good uh nutrition policy elements in in that and we're sort of um right now running against the clock we're working on getting another stimulus package passed and there's a number of elements in there around expanding snap benefits and wic benefits extending universal school meals so right now for you know anyone that has a child in the school public school system have access to school meals and that's good for anyone really anyone that has a child in the school system 0 to 18. so that is another resource that we're looking to extend and also there's a another policy that came out of this pandemic which is called pandemic ebt which is sort of like snap but it a little less complicated because it's an automatic enrollment you get a card in the mail if you have a child in the school system public school system and um that was money that was just put on a card and you just have to activate it with a pin you don't have to go through you know an online application and put in any economic or um you know your income um and meet those eligibility requirements uh so it's just been made really simple so that's another program that has been extended massachusetts has been pretty um very good leader in that respect and getting our state agencies kind of getting those programs up and running because i think that that's a big thing the federal government can kind of enact and push these policies down but the states have to actually implement them and so that that i will say our state has done a really good job of that and in massachusetts but um you know it varies from state to state so lots of policies i think i'd be remiss to say to not say that this new administration is definitely approaching the issue of nutrition and hunger very very differently than any other president in the last you know 20 years or or more i think both sides of the aisle i mean to come out very very strong and you know sign executive orders within the first week of inauguration around nutrition as an economic priority is just very different so i think for us thinking about this long-term um you know issue and solutions and policy solutions um there are a lot of things that are really exciting moment for a hunger advocate because we're looking at this at tackling this in a very different way not just putting a band-aid on the problem but thinking about you know how are these benefits calculated and how are these programs effective um and if they're not and if they're not enough then why and let's extend and keep these flexibilities in place um and then i think the other you know piece is you know talking about increasing minimum wage because i think ultimately people just need to earn a living wage to be able to put basic needs um at the forefront so i could speak a lot about the policy piece but i will end there because i'm sure dave has a lot of a different perspective too on the agriculture policy so i mean yeah it all policy all goes back to politics uh since the great depression what 90 years ago and seeing poverty and food lines and starvation the us government has had a policy of trying to lower food costs in the country as much as possible to make more money available to other things and grow the economy in many different ways and we've done a great job at that and now the united states has some of the lowest food costs in the world i mean if you go to india people tend to spend 50 of their income on food you know in parts of europe it's 20 30 percent in the us it's about 10 so we've done a great job you know with that policy trying to push down those those those costs however just like we've seen with walmart when you have a very competitive market pushing down prices and the consumers trying to pick the lowest price um options the quality of the product with time also goes down because the producers are trying to figure out how to produce it at a lower cost to get into the market so they've done studies where for example apples 50 years ago had twice as much nutrients in it in them as the typical apple of today why is that because producers have figured out how to get more apple uh off of a tree um to get it into the marketplace but today you have to eat twice as many apples to get the same nutrients as those apples of a year ago or 50 years ago so in one hand we've done great lowering the cost on the other hand we haven't done a very good job at increasing the nutritional value of the food that we're eating so you've got all these different factors at play and unfortunately the you know i said it goes back to politics and a lot of it goes back to the food bill which happens every five years and that comes out of congress and congress has two houses one of which is are made up of senators there's two senators in every state a lot of states in the middle of the country are a big ag and those senators are pushing for their constituents and pushing for those big ag products of corn and soybean and wheat and rye trying to push those products more into the food system whereas a lot of the coastal states you know have a little bit more of an eye on the nutrition value but they're outnumbered by the senators in the middle of the country so again it goes back to politics and it's tough to get consensus on these issues so the u.s even though we export a lot of food we are now in the past 10 years we have become a net food importer which a lot of people don't realize yes we export a lot of those grains but if you go to the supermarket most of your fruits and vegetables especially at this time of year are imported and most farmers in other countries love to export to the us because we have money so while other countries like for example in canada they used to have very high unemployment how do you employ people you boost your agriculture in the us we traditionally have also had low unemployment so there has not been an impetus to try to create jobs by boosting agricultural production with with with the increase in unemployment with covid will there be a shift in that to try to increase jobs via agriculture i don't know in canada they always had high unemployment they did a lot to try to improve agriculture there and now canada exports an awful lot of food into the u.s another example i spent time working in ethiopia we all remember about starvation and famines in ethiopia they came out of a a communist dictatorship um in the 70s their situation was very bad it was not a capitalistic system obviously agricultural production was not a focus now ethiopia even though its population has doubled in the past 30 years is a net food exporter so again it goes back to the government and the government policies and it also goes back to the consumer because should we be eating tomatoes in the middle of the winter here probably not where are those tomatoes probably coming from right now most likely mexico should we be eating as many you know avocados and mangoes maybe not we should the consumers also have a choice and that their choices in large part guide the market but because we're in a capitalistic system if there's money to be made the marketing system is going to push to make those sales so it's this gradual evolution because of all these different forces and factors that have gotten us to the point where we are will we change moving forward i don't know i hope so but if we do change it's going to be a gradual change because it took us a while to get where we're at dave i think that's um a great transition as i'm looking at the time and we only have eight minutes left and that listening to both you talk about your areas of expertise and policies and things that need to change i'm wondering if you could both talk a little bit about what the people listening or watching this webinar later can do because this is a really big topic and a big issue and both your perspectives show both locally and nationally and globally there's things to be done so i'm interested how do i help what do i do from our perspective we always say you know there's uh there's about three things you know you can volunteer you can donate and you can act um you can advocate and i think um it is a big problem and i think what i think i talked to a lot of students and different uh different groups and they i think feel really overwhelmed and it can be very overwhelming and i think i think you gotta start you know locally like if if this is an issue that matters to you you know find out what your local community is doing um you educate yourself if there's a pantry in your area donate to that pantry go volunteer um you know or you come volunteer with us we're we're we're still taking volunteers a lot less than we used to but i think that we didn't talk about the labor issue right now but definitely that's a big one in this food system is is the lack of volunteers um needed so donate your time um and and educate yourself and then you know if you're if you're able donate money because uh you know that is definitely what's going to fuel you know the ability to for at least for the greater boston food bank and our partners to continue to respond during this immediate crisis but i think you know as dave said you know it is political very political vote vote for people that are caring about these issues that prioritize these issues um and and advocate uh with the current um you know people that are in office in public office and and ask them are they you know prioritizing this issue how have you voted on x y y z issue um and you know it's it can be intimidating but um they need to hear from us because they work for us i would say um vote also with your dollar um we all eat every day um what we eat and how we choose to eat probably has some of the greatest effects on our economy and our society so i mean if you go to europe if you go to supermarket in europe the displays say exactly where everything's from we've tried to push for country of origin labeling in the united states but a lot of the big corporations don't want it because they want to have the option of growing in california growing in mexico growing in costa rica and not really make it so blatant where it's coming from but if you look at the labels and you see where things are coming from you have a choice do i want to buy that apple from chile or do i want to buy that apple from new hampshire everybody has an option and you know i mean when i worked in the republic of georgia it was it was interesting you'd go to a restaurant there and i mean i don't speak georgian but my translator would have a conversation with the waiter or waitress about the quality of the product where it came from how does it taste and what you ate was determined on what the quality of of the product going into the meal was we can all be doing that in our daily lives and you know here it seems weird to ask your waiter you know where those tomatoes grow but there's nothing to stop us and you know by posing the questions sometimes it starts the conversation um thanks that makes a lot of sense um and really practical steps from both of you that i think people could go out and do tonight if they're going out to dinner or tomorrow sign up to volunteer um casey and i are trying to be cognizant of the time there's four minutes left so we wanted to give you guys a couple of minutes to give final thoughts dave there is a question in the chat i don't know if you want to wrap it into your final thought or maybe get the information later but someone was really curious to hear how you found a hundred farmworkers and what your pay scale was um so i don't know if you want to take that in like a 30 second answer and then give our final thoughts and we'll pass it to katherine sure um so i mean we have 20 people that work on the farm year round we have a lot of employees from the local community drake at methuen lowell lawrence um that have been working us for with us for years every year we also host about 20 uh international ag interns so about 20 of our staff comes in from overseas they all have agriculture degrees or about to graduate with a degree in agriculture they come from many different countries in africa latin america vietnam vietnam south korea philippines hungary italy republic of georgia ukraine they come from all over um and i've got three arriving later this week um so yeah how does that answer your question it's not easy because a lot of people don't want to work on farms my spanish ability helps a lot because there's a lot of you know more recent immigrants that speak spanish and not that much english but they have a lot of ag experience and they want they love working outside you know in agriculture so me being able to communicate directly with them and not have to go through a transit or anything like that probably gives me a little step up great thank you pass it over to catherine um final thoughts i mean i just want to thank you all for those who spent their time i know a lot of people are spending a lot of time on zoom these days um but just thank you to say nays for hosting this conversation with dave and i and bringing this issue that is clearly very multifaceted to the alumni audience and i think you know if people have questions please let us know or please be in touch with me myself and dave um we want to hear from you we i personally love networking and hearing from um the community um and how else you know to figure out how else they can you know be involved in this issue um i'll just kind of leave it at you know i think food insecurity was an issue hunger was an issue far before pancovid it has definitely highlighted uh this very strong problem in our country in in our in our region but it's clearly very interconnected with other issues i think there's no people aren't just hungry ou know clearly there are other trade-offs they're making about housing uh transportation uh jobs and wages and so i think that this is um we what we didn't really touch on is that it is just so multifaceted in terms of you know being interconnected with these other social issues issues so i think if anything um as in selbyans i think uh walking away tonight with just wanting to be more educated and learn about why uh you know hunger exists and what um where the food comes from is i think really important lesson that i hope everyone will do and we are at six o'clock dave i didn't give you your final thought you just answered that question anything to add in a couple sentences before we no it's a very complex um issues and you know every country around the world actually grapples with it we're not unique in this united states um but again like i said earlier i mean we all eat every day it should be more at the forefront of the average citizen's mind i believe i know there's a lot of things going on in facebook all the time but um i wish more of it was uh circled around food but that's maybe just because i'm i'm engrossed in it every single day so eat well um be healthy and support local great ending thank you so much for your time um it's been great to hear it from you and learn from your perspective so we're lucky to have this time with you you're welcome thank you