El Paso has a long way to go

There is an excellent op-ed piece over at the Newspaper Tree. Political economist, Johanna Wallner, has written a call-to-arms: Diabetes? Easy answer: Eat smart. Type 2 Diabetes is preventable without some miracle drugs. We just have to eat smarter as she says. El Pasoans eat too much junk food, consume far too many high fructose corn syrup drinks, have too much fat in their diets and have too much of the wrong kind of fats in their diets. The result: obesity and diabetes.

Unfortunately, much must be done to turn the culture around from fast food to local, indigenous food; from supermarkets to urban gardens and even a resurgence of farms - outdoors or indoors.

Government policy doesn't encourage it. Want to have a farmers market at a park in the City of El Paso? Applying park fees it will cost the market operators $345 if they were to rent a 1 acre or less parcel of land from 7 until Noon. The hourly fee is $60 with a $45 permit fee. They could rent the space for the entire day for a flat $300 rate plus the $45 permit fee but that would only be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. This is not to mention fees vendors would have to pay, mordidas for security, street fees for closing a street partially and barricade fees. And we are just talking about a one day event. Come back the following week and you pay the same fees.

Compare that with fees on farmers markets in King County, Washington (Seattle). I helped to begin and oversee a farmers market in Carnation. The market manager in Carnation also manages a farmers market in Sammamish (a wealthy suburban neighborhood filled with Microsoft millionaires.) She tells me that:

"In Carnation we pay no money to the city for any permits and fees. The county we pay the $125 plus $25 annually for our health permit. That’s it. In Sammamish we also do not pay the city, other than $25 for the assembly fee, in fact the city gave us $40,000 to get the market going and are paying another $15,000 per year to keep it going."

Let's see, the Carnation Farmers Market is open for approximately 20 weeks per year. They pay an annual fee of $25 or $1.25 for each market day. In El Paso, to utilize a small (acre or less) city park for a farmers market that goes the same length of time (20 weeks) would be $6,900 per year! ($345 x 20 weeks.)

After 3 years on the board overseeing the farmers market in Carnation and writing a blog on local food (Conkey's Tavern) and a weekly e-letter for that farmers market 52 weeks of the year, I can tell you that no farmers market anywhere in the United States can survive El Paso fees. We simply have no policy or desire to encourage neighborhood farmers markets selling local, sustainable food.

Meanwhile, we get fatter, we do pancreatic damage, and we encourage large corporate agri-biz that has been in bed with big oil forever. We shop Albertson's where we can find food that was grown in Chile, shipped to New Jersey, shipped to Phoenix and finally shipped here. How much fossil fuel do we really burn when we drive to and purchase at the food chain store or big box store or drive down to McDonald's for that super sized high fructose corn syrup soda pop to go with our triple meat burger?

El Paso has a long way to go.