By Sophie Mariam
What is Proposition FF?
This November, Colorado voters have the opportunity to begin rebuilding our state’s food economy to put our children, workers, and families first. Proposition FF presents an opportunity not only to ensure all students get the nutrition to reach their full potential, it’s also a chance to harness the full capabilities of our local food economy by shifting decision-making power back into the hands of the students, families, and communities who are most affected.
Proposition FF would allow communities across the state to reinvest public money in ways that create opportunities for the hardworking Colorado farmers and food service workers who grow and prepare the food our kids eat. The measure is paid for by capping a tax break for people who earn over $300,000 a year. Recently, over 100 local nonprofit organizations came out in support of Proposition FF.
How will Proposition FF help schools and local farmers?
We all believe Colorado should be a place where our food systems are built by Coloradans, for Coloradans, in a way that promotes widely shared economic prosperity. However, our current food policies are falling woefully short. Colorado’s existing school lunch program allows the vast majority of public money we set aside to feed kids to flow into the pockets of wealthy, out-of-state agribusiness corporations.
Many large food corporations are able to provide cheap products only by cutting corners like underpaying their employees, often pushing workers and their families into food insecurity and sacrificing the long-term viability of the land. Moreover, long supply chains from farm to fork can often feel out of reach, making it hard for Coloradans to understand the economic impact that the food on our plate has the power to make.
Meanwhile, many Colorado farm owners are struggling to compete with these corporations. Roberto Meza is a first-generation farmer who co-founded Emerald Gardens, a 35-acre, year-round agricultural operation right outside Denver. Current policies at the U.S Department of Agriculture, coupled with the meager budgets many Colorado public schools are given for food procurement, push schools towards buying cheap, often highly processed foods from big suppliers.
The deck is stacked against small farmers like Roberto due to what says are “intentional barriers set up to incentivize larger corporate farm producers and suppliers, and to de-incentivize values-based, small and midsize scale producers and suppliers.”
The dominance of big agribusinesses over local farming operations is insidious. Not only does it dominate our state’s school lunch program, but insufficient food budgets and capacity for local sourcing mean this is the status quo for how other public and semi-public institutions like hospitals interact with the agricultural sector more broadly. Meza is building an alternative model, which emerged from a time when many food suppliers in Colorado were experiencing an unforeseeable crisis.
How did the pandemic play a role?
At the height of the pandemic in spring 2020, many farms lost their main sources of revenue as local restaurants shut down for the public health emergency. Levels of food insecurity across the state skyrocketed as families struggled to make ends meet, and donations to local food banks couldn’t keep up with demand. But a creative solution emerged to address both these problems: food banks received emergency federal funds, which allowed them to supplement donations by buying food directly from Colorado farmers like Meza.
Instead of letting small farming operations go under and Colorado kids go hungry, farmers like Meza stepped up to meet the needs of local communities by forming a new organization called the East Denver Food Hub. Meza, both as a farmer himself and the leader of multiple cooperative farming operations, is creating a local, values-based supply chain to, as he says, “work with farmers that honor the land and support worker dignity.” He’s linking small farmers with the demand for fresh food in local communities to create a new model for addressing community food needs while keeping farmers’ business models viable.
But these farmers can’t keep this effort to advance food justice going alone, and public policies aren’t currently built to support local, family farmers. Proposition FF would help scale up Roberto’s model for food justice to more communities by breaking down some of the barriers preventing local farmers from contracting with schools, creating what Roberto calls an “equitable supply chain from seed to table.”
Sophie Mariam writes for Colorado Fiscal Institute.