Now that you’ve seen what it is to live on $21 per week, will you help the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice work year-round by making a pledge of 21 dollars per month?

Every month ICPJ works to bring people together to work for a more peaceful and just world, whether that’s by organizing the Michigan Food Stamp Challenge, sponsoring the Washtenaw County CROP Walk, or by training people to lead discussions about overcoming racism, we are working to make the world a better place.

Your pledge makes that work possible.

Please pledge today.

What have you learned?

• What have you learned in your personal experience taking the Challenge?
• What surprised you?
• What did you expect?
• How was your experience different than that of someone who really depends of food stamps?

Here’s how it works.

The government offers subsidies to farmers. Most of these subsidies to to large farmers, and most of them go to just a few crops.

Corn is a major one.

So you’ve got a corn subsidy that mainly benefits major agribusiness companies. What does that do to farmers in the US, in the rest of the world, and to consumers.

Well, the first thing that a subsidy does is that it artificially lowers the price and increases supply. The mega-companies that benefit from the subsidy produce more and sell it for less because of the money that the government kicks in.

So what does that mean for a small U.S. farm family that doesn’t pocket as much subsidy? Their corn doesn’t sell for as much. Subsidies hurt the small US farmer.

And it’s even worse for farmers int the rest of the world. Thanks to NAFTA, a small maize (corn) farmer in Mexico is now directly competing with the subsidized US corn. While people in his village used to buy their corn locally, now they’ll buy the cheaper US corn.

Now the farmer is out of business.

What is he to do? He could try growing something else to support himself, but if it’s going to make enough money it is probably illegal. He could head to a sweatshop. Or he could head to the US (with or without his papers) to look for work–maybe as a farmhand.

Subsidies are bad for farmers in the rest of the world.

Oh, and now that there’s so much corn on the market, what can we do with it all?  Well, we can make cheap high fructose corn syrup and wonder why obesity rates are increasing.

Wholescale reform of the farm bill really is a justice issue for food stamp recipients, for small and medium-sized farmers in the US, for farmers around the world, and for our super-sized nation.

We’re making good progress on the food stamp issue. We’ve got a long way to go on the subsidy issue.

Today I too fell off the wagon by partaking in the food at the Michigan Policy Summit.

Before I get to how I’ll make this up and the deeper lessons I draw from this, let me make on thing clear.

It was not worth it.

The Summit was at the Lansing Center, which was billed as having an “award winning kitchen.” The kitchen might be great, but the food was awful.

So I had rice with bland veggies for lunch and meatballs at the post-conference reception. And a cookie and some coffee (okay, the cookie might have been worth it).

I’m not a greedy man, so I figure this takes out 1/4 pound of rice and 1/4 bag of frozen veggies for the lunch; my remaining eggs and cheese for the meatballs; and one of my remaining 2 dollars for the cookie.  It’s not a perfect substitution, but it’s close. Besides, now that I’m out of eggs and cheese, I’m going to need more beans to get any protein in the next 2 days.

Now, for the deeper lesson: being poor is isolating.

We are a species that bond over food–what does that mean when you can’t afford it?

What does it mean when you can’t afford top go out for a bite to eat with friends? What does it mean when you can’t afford to send snacks to school with your children?

What does it say about our society that some parents have to go hungry so their kids can have a birthday cake?

The rule that you can’t accept free food is one of the more artificial ones.  If we were really on food stamps, we’d accept all the free food we could get.

But as a middle-class professional, I get more free food than I need. I would have made a pig of myself, but I probably could have made it through this week on $5 and free food, largely because I’m a middle-class professional and look the part. I get fed at professional events, and I could crash other professional events without arousing suspicion.

I never could have done that when I was working at the lumber mill in Stoughton or the bait shop in Crandon.

We live in a  society where those who don’t need free food get plenty of it and there’ s not enough for those who do. Don’t believe me? Look at how many samples are out at the Whole Foods. If you an afford to pay Whole Foods prices, you can afford to buy your own cheese cube.

I see this post is becoming less a confession and more a rambling about all the thoughts I’ve been brooding over for the last five days.

It must be the meatballs.

I’m feeling a bit like a bourgeois tourist, temporarily visiting the place where others live daily. So what am I going to do about it? The easiest thing would be to continue the Challenge, to adopt it as a continuing practice. We could then calculate the amount we used to spend on food and donate the difference to any of the food relief organizations. But as someone else on this board noted, charity is not going to resolve the problem of hunger much less that of poverty.

The more difficult and ongoing task is to work for justice.

But…now things are going awry. We have used up the ground meat we bought on yesterday’s spaghetti (and took some down as burgers to a Labor Day cookout). The upside is, it’s gone–so it’s either meatless chili tomorrow, or I switch over to the later’s day menu of baked chicken legs and rice.

We’re also out of spaghetti noodles, since we bought only 1 lb., which was enough for the usual dinner and next-day lunches, but which now won’t make the 2nd spaghetti dinner we planned.

I’m not sure what the last 2 or 3 days’ dinners will be at this point. Pretty bland and boring–if I can contrive anything at all with what we bought.

I also find myself forswearing second helpings. I looked in the pot after getting one serving of rice, and there was just enough for 2 lunches, so, though I would have liked more, I stopped.

Thank goodness for the garden collards today. Perhaps I can scavenge some late-season produce from the garden for those last couple of now-question-marked dinners.

At any rate, it was an eye-opener to see how close to the line of not eating at all, or not eating well, we are at $42 if anything unexpected happens.

She’s right. Taking the Challenge is only a first step. It’s a way to open our hearts and to realize the challenges that peole living in poverty face.

But the follow up requires action.

This month the Senate is debating the Farm Bill, which sets the rules for Food Stamps and many other food-related programs. It’s important that you contact your Senator and tell them to support full funding for the Food Stamp program.

The Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism has an online tool to help you do just that. Write your Senator now.

The Farm Bill covers many other areas related to hunger in the United States and around the world. Bread for the World has an excellent briefing paper on their goals for Farm Bill reform (word document).

The Farm Bill addresses many of the other issues that have come up on this blog. For example, “Why is unhealthy food so cheap (and healthy food so expensive)?” The Farm Bill subsidies make fillers like high-fructose corn syrup artificially cheap (and provide subsidies for agribusiness mega-corporations).

The farm bill is really the food bill, and reforming it is a justice issue for America’s low-income families, for America’s farmers, and for farmers around the world.

You can take action on these other aspects of the farm bill online at Bread for the World.

Please, head Jeanne’s call and work for justice.

But I’m worried about Day 3. How will I fit in time for food?

I start the day with a 7:30 a.m. Better World Breakfast, only I won’t be eating breakfast. Then I’m in meetings solid until 1:30 (including the “show and tell” brown bag lunch).

Here’s where things get cramped. I won’t have much time in the morning for oatmeal, so it will probably be PB&J for me, and we don’t have much in the lines of leftovers from tonight’s pasta and sauce, so I might be looking at PB&J for lunch too.

Not exactly a balanced meal.

And I don’t think we have enough bread to get through with making multiple sandwiches each day.

In the scope of things, it’s a minor complaint. Still, it makes me realize how much harder working life is when you can’t just hit the coffee shop, vending machine, or restaurant to tide you over when you need to dash from one thing to another.