On Friday, November 15, the Log Lunch community gathered to hear about food policy from Winton Pitcoff, the Deputy Commissioner and Legislative and Policy Director of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. “Most people don’t think about food policy, because why would you want to?” Winton said. “Someone grows food, someone else gets it to where I buy it, I buy it, and I eat it. There are a lot of policy interventions along the way.” Food policy impacts access to farming resources, management of growing and harvesting, processing, packaging, and distribution, meaning it has implications for farmers, deliverers, restaurants, advertising, stores, and more. One in ten jobs in the United States is involved in the food system at some step.
Winton’s talk focused on food policy in Massachusetts, which he said serves as “a great microcosm of what works versus what doesn’t” in the country at large. Winton discussed three inflection points of Massachusetts state food policy over the past 50 years: the 1974 establishment of agricultural land protection, the promotion of locally grown food in the 1980s, and the 2015 statewide food system plan.
In 1974, Winton said, prices were skyrocketing and the state was experiencing food shortages. The state government created its first statewide food plan to ensure an affordable and consistent food supply, centered on protecting farmland in order to grow more food in the state. “Local production is an essential part of food security,” Winton said. “You can’t always count on the larger system to be reliable.”
Through the agricultural restriction program, farmers in Massachusetts sell the development rights to their land in order to restrict the land to agricultural use forever. The state pays farmers the difference between the development and agricultural value of their land, and there is a restriction placed on the land deed stipulating that any future owner of the land has to actively farm it. Through this program, over 75,000 acres on 1,000 farms in the state have been protected. Now, there is a federal program that provides funding for it, and other states have implemented similar programs.Massachusetts has also implemented policies to lower property taxes for farmers and license land parcels to historically underrepresented or new farmers.
However, farmland loss continues to be an issue — in five years, Massachusetts lost over 75,000 acres of farmland. Some has been converted to the built environment, but more often loss of farmland occurs because farming is not a viable option for people to make a living in the market economy, and cultivated fields return to forest. Winton emphasized, though, that this loss would be on an even larger scale if not for policies and programs aimed at protecting agricultural land.
In the 1980s, there was a backlash against farm consolidation, as people grew concerned about the carbon footprint of transporting food from large farms over great distances, and became interested in the economic and cultural value that small farms brought to local communities. Farmers benefit from selling directly to consumers, rather than to larger distributors. On average, Winton said, farmers keep less than 15 cents of every retail food dollar when they have to share the sale price with processors, distributors, and retailers. With the support for things like farmers markets, Massachusetts now leads the nation in direct-to-consumer farms.
However, farmers still have to pay attention to the larger market, as it is hard to compete with low grocery store prices that arise from economies of scale, as large scale producers save money by exploiting labor and natural resources. The federal government subsidizes unhealthy processed foods, all while encouraging people to make healthier choices that are inaccessible to them. Despite inflation, Americans pay less for food right now than anyone else anywhere in history. “The solution shouldn’t be making food even cheaper, which relies on exploitation, from increasing the buying power of consumers through better wages,” Winton said. In 2019, direct federal aid accounted for 39% of farm income in the United States. More workers in the food industry rely on federal subsidies than in any other industry. “The people who feed us are paid poorly so that prices can be kept low, but they can’t even afford the food they’re producing,” Winton said. Based on the last state agricultural census, Massachusetts farmers earn 95 cents for every dollar they spend, so most farmers survive by relying on other revenue streams. Several farmers also rely on loans, but are highly susceptible to failure due to the unpredictability of farming.
In 2015, Winton served as the project manager on the Massachusetts Local Food Action Plan. The plan arose from the idea that holistic thinking – including matters of public health, food security, environmentalism, energy production, and food waste – is necessary for successful food policy. The four overarching goals of the plan were to produce more food, create jobs and economic opportunity, protect and enhance natural resources, and reduce hunger. “We were starting from a position of strength,” Winton said. “Massachusetts has a vibrant agricultural sector, public health programs, and social safety nets, but they don’t all interact with each other, they’re siloed.”
The plan looked for ways that these programs and goals could support one another. For example, “there are lots of people who are food insecure, and lots of farmers who want to sell what they grow,” Winton said. “HIP and SNAP benefits are often not enough to feed families, and the food they can afford is less healthy.” He pointed out that the state has financial incentive to keep people healthy. The plan included a program to give SNAP households additional money to purchase fruit and vegetables at farmers markets and farm stands, meaning greater access to healthy food for poorer families and more sales for farmers. They budgeted for $4,000 in incentives in the first year, but ended up totalling $4 million. “This was completely transformative for families and farmers,” Winton said.
They also implemented a program of financial incentives for farmers to mount raised solar panels on their land. “Solar wants flat, open land, and farmers want ways to make money using their flat, open land,” Winton said. “It’s a natural connection, but regular solar panels mean the loss of farmland. You can mount solar panels up high and space them fast apart, but this is more expensive.” The incentives allow farmers to take advantage of this while still protecting the production capacity of their land.
There is also a program to reduce food waste by diverting waste to programs that rediustribute food to food insecure communities, or to anaerobic digesters. Massachusetts has banned food waste from large producers being sent to landfills, and by 2030, plans to ban food waste from the waste stream altogether. The state has also implemented a food education program in schools, through state education standards, to replace home economics programs that were phased out in the 1950s. By teaching students about food preparation, kids are inspired to eat healthier and often encourage their parents to make food at home more.
“Policy isn’t inherently good or bad,” Winton said. “The pandemic really showed us that we need to be creative in thinking about food system policy, it showed how delicate the system is. We always need to be able to respond to emergencies. We need to develop more complex and innovative policies. There is no single solution, but it does not need to be a zero sum game. The best policy does not see competing interests like that.”
The Log Lunch chefs prepared a delicious meal of sandwiches inspired by scuttlebutts and banh mi, lemongrass noodles, Vietnamese summer rolls, roasted squash, miso tahini dressing, and gochujang caramel cookies for dessert.
BY CHARLOTTE STAUDENMAYER ’25