Uptown Radio

Listen to the full piece: 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HOST INTRO

President Obama signed a continuing spending bill this week. One of the provisions protects companies that produce genetically modified seeds from being sued, even if they become a public health risk in the future. Amber Binion reports.

Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are plants that have been altered genetically to resist herbicides and pests. They also can be fortified to include nutrients like iron and vitamin A. It produces more sustainable food with fewer resources. More resistant plants allow farmers’ to do less work and harvest more crops. Alan McHughen, a plant biotechnologist at the University of California, Riverside. He says the law is designed to let big and small biotech companies recoup their investments. He is explains why the provision is beneficial.

ALAN MCHUGHEN

Farmers are business people. They have to make business decisions about what kind of crops they’re going to grow. And one of the factors that come into that decision making process is whether the seeds they buy will produce a harvest of seeds they can sell. There’s some anxiety in the farming community that lawsuits against certain crop varieties may interfere with their ability to harvest and sell the crop.

Supporters call it the Farmers Assurance Provision. It bars the federal court from stopping the sale of genetically modified crops and allows agriculture companies to sell what they’ve made. The most common GMOs on American farms are corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola. In other words, these are the most profitable crops. That means there’s a lot of money at stake. Opponents say it’s large companies that are more likely to benefit from the law, specifically bio-tech giant Monsanto. At a farmers market on the Upper Westside, anti-GMO advocates call it the Monsanto Protection Act.

MARGARET HOUGHMAN

Why should the largest company, food-processing company, in the world be protected by the government? The small farmers and the individuals need to be protected by the government.

Houghman is the regional coordinator for Greenmarket in northern Manhattan. She sells locally grown and GMO-free vegetables. She thinks there isn’t enough scientific research on the long-term effects of genetically modified food.

 MARGARET HOUGHMAN

Well, we just don’t know. It might not be anything real serious. It might be something that shows up in a generation maybe, 2 generations. We just don’t know. And the potential for it to get out of control is huge.

Michael Lapone, a farmer’s market vendor for Hawthorne Valley Farm is just plain uncomfortable with the idea of GMOs.

MICHAEL LAPONE

Children should not play with fire. And playing with genetic engineering is playing with fire and they don’t know the outcomes. They haven’t done the research.

But they have done the research says the plant biotechnologist, Alan McHughen

ALAN MCHUGHEN

Some people who don’t have any scientific background are suggesting that there are harms. But the US National Academy of Sciences has conducted numerous safety tests on these genetically modified crops and foods over the years and every time they say there are just as safe as conventionally produced foods and crops.

One thing both anti-GMO and pro-GMO advocates can agree on is the proper labeling of food products. McHughen says all foods need to have labels based on their content, for nutritional reasons. Food advocate groups are now petitioning for the government to label genetically modified food for consumers. Amber Binion, Columbia Radio News.

New Yorkers who live far away from grocery stores struggle to stay healthy (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)

Three million New Yorkers live too far from grocery stores, according to the city.

Experts call these areas “food deserts”.

That’s because it’s difficult for residents to find fresh groceries. And as a result, they’re more prone to health problems like diabetes and obesity.

A city program is trying to tackle the issue.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

SLOTKIN
A super market in a food desert is like an oasis in real one. Sometimes, getting there and back requires an arduous journey.
FADE UP. Plastic bags, carts, and talking. Grocery.
At Food Bazaar in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, shoppers fill carts with what is easily a week’s worth of groceries.
CROSSFADE: Into parking lot
Many customers walk or drive their hauls home. But, others rely on livery cabs. A store security guard hails a mini-van for two middle-aged Hispanic women, they chat with the driver.
START FADE UP THEN DOWN ON WOMEN: THE TWO WOMEN
Then they get into the cab. Doors shut.
SOUND Of Doors
They drive away. Ricky Calhoun is the store security guard who hailed the cab. He only has to walk four blocks to get here. But he sees customers from Downtown Brooklyn and even Manhattan.
CALHOUN
They have a lot taxis that take them over from the Lower East Side.

SLOTKIN
People who live in food deserts spend a lot of extra time and money, if they want healthy food options.
So in 2009, the city started offering tax incentives to grocers to build and improve their stores. This year, Food Bazaar’s parent company, Bogopa, will take advantage of the program to expand sections of this store creating more shelf space.
The tax incentive from this project and renovations at five of the company’s other stores could amount to as much eight hundred thousand dollars. Bogopa spokesperson Justin Shon says the stores aren’t the only beneficiaries.
SHON
It helps the community in that we’ll be able to expand our fresh offerings for that store and will be able to save with the sales tax on the equipment that we purchased.

SLOTKIN
In other words, the city program allows grocers to reduce the sales tax they pay on construction materials and new equipment. So far, the city program has awarded benefits to fifteen grocery stores. In some cases, companies built new markets, others were simply expanded. New York City is not the first to address food deserts with incentives. Federal and state programs have offered grants, credits, and loans for about a decade.
But building better grocery oases in food deserts is tricky. Even identifying which neighborhoods are food deserts is difficult because conditions can vary so widely between cities. In some, people drive everywhere, but in other cities, like New York, most rely on public transit. Some cities are sprawling, others — densely packed. Mari Gallagher is a researcher and consultant known for popularizing the term “food desert”. She says those variations make diagnosis difficult.
Gallagher.
There’s not a perfect distance to a grocery store. So in Harlem New York for example. That’s going to be a little different than Queens. Which will be a little different than Chicago versus other parts of Chicago. Versus Detroit or Los Angeles or Savannah Georgia.

SLOTKIN
New York City’s definition of a food desert is anywhere where the nearest grocery store is more than a ten minute walk from your door.
The city tax incentive is not the only program trying to address the issue. In 2010, New York state started co-funding a grant program with a nonprofit that helped create eighty-eight new stores in Pennsylvania. Caroline Harries, works for the Philadelphia-based Food Trust, which partially funds the state program. Harries says benefits weren’t limited to food access.
Harries
These projects have worked to create and retain over 1.67 million square feet of food retail space as well as over 5,000 jobs. We estimate that the program has been able to improve access to healthy food for over half a million penn. Residents.

SLOTKIN
But grocery stores aren’t the only way to bring better food to the deserts. Public and private programs have also tried more agrarian options.

DIMITRI
You have community gardens from these groups, and farmers markets.

SLOTKIN
Carolyn Dimitri teaches food economics at NYU. She says, on their own, none of these ideas has a big effect.

DIMITRI
My question is is the cumulative effects of these small movements going enough to increase the amount of healthy food available in a neighborhoods. I’m not convinced it is but I don’t really see a model popping up.
By September, New York City will have one more grocery store subsidized by both the city and state programs, at the edge of one of the city’s food deserts on Staten Island. Jason Slotkin. Columbia Radio News.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

By Linette Lopez

“10 years is too long!” was the rallying cry at a protest held on the steps of City Hall today. The demonstrators included a small group of parents, advocacy groups, and public officials that are demanding that the Department of Education move faster to remove harmful chemicals, called PCBs, from city school buildings. State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal lead the protest, and has been working on this problem since 2008.

“This whole issue began when there was botched window replacement project in a school in my district, PS 199. We found out that there were high levels of PCBs in the calk. At that time I introduced a bill to test every school for caulk. Right now what we’re focusing on is PBC in light ballasts in schools that were constructed or remodeled between 1950 and 1978,” said Rosenthal.

PCB is short for Polychlorinated Biphinyls. They are toxic chemicals that the government banned them in 1978. Before that, they could be found in a lot of building materials; materials that were used to build city schools. Children are most susceptible to the affects of PCBs. That’s why advocates like Gigi Garzon, from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, are demanding their immediate removal.

“It can cause disruption to their immune systems, to their development to their reproductive systems, to their respiratory system, neurological, so it’s a whole host of problems particularly with low-level long-term exposure,” said Garzon.

Current EPA safety guidelines set acceptable PCB levels at 50 parts per million. Councilman Erik Dilan, represents parts of Brooklyn. In his district, they’ve found PCB levels of 600,000 parts per million- the highest in the city. That’s 12,000 times the acceptable level. He wants the city to be open about the problem, because his constituents are getting worried.

“Lets uncover the engine of this car and see what’s really under the hood. I attended a meeting on Monday and the staff was sitting there making conscious decisions as to whether they should come to work or not. The parents were doing the same thing with their children,” said Dilan.

The city has presented a plan that would replace all lighting ballasts over the course of ten years. But parents and public officials think that’s too long. JeanAndre Sassine is a father of two from in Queens Village. He thinks the city should listen to the EPAs recommendation that all schools get tested, and that light ballasts are replaced in two years.

“Its still 2 years of children sitting in this environment but it is what it is if that’s the quickest we can do it lets get it done it 2 years and not this 10 year “one light at a time” program that the Mayor’s proposed,” said Sassine.

Most of the opposition to the 2-year plan comes from those concerned with the City’s budget. But Councilmember Vinnie Ignizio, from Staten Island, pointed out that the cost of replacing light ballasts would be covered by the money the City would save by installing greener lighting fixtures that use less energy.

“We agree with doing more with less. There are companies that will come in, change the lighting in our schools, within the 2-year time frame and the city would be on the hook for nothing,” said Ignizio.

An overwhelming majority of the City Council disagrees with the ten-year plan. That means the Department of Education will have to go back to the drawing board. Parents will be watching.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

During the State of the Union address in January, President Obama said that he knew his budget would require some sacrifices:

“This freeze will require painful cuts,” said President Obama. “Already, we’ve frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs.”

Those programs are funded in large part by Community Service Block Grants or CSBGs. The grants help groups that provide aid to needy and vulnerable Americans. Under the budget the president proposed on Monday, CSBGs would be cut by 350 Million dollars – or 50 percent. That’s drawn concern from programs that receive the grants.

Every Thursday evening, a group of immigrants crowd a small office space in Washington Heights to study American history.

“We provide free civics classes where we help individuals prepare for the citizenship exam,” said Angela Fernandez.

Until last week, Fernandez was the executive director for the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights. The group gets just under a fifth of its funding in the form of CSBGs. The Department of Health and Human Services gives CSBG money to the state via the Office of Community Service. State governments then decide how to distribute the money to individual groups. Fernandez says the proposed budget would cut funding at a time when groups like hers need it most.

“Not getting funding from the state is something that we’re going to feel,” said Fernandez.

750,000 New Yorkers would feel it, too. According to the New York State Division of Community Services, that’s how many people received support from CSBG-funded programs last year. New York receives the second largest sum of money for CSBGs. Only California gets more.

David Bradley is the executive director of the National Community Action Foundation.

He says CSBGs fund local programs that provide everything from domestic violence protection to weatherization assistance. And so he has one question for the Obama Administration.

“What particular aspect put it over the line to that made it a program to highlight to attempt to make cut to make this cuts in,” said Bradley.

Budget analyst Tad DeHaven from the CATO institute says that the fact that CSBGs do good things isn’t enough to justify them. He says the grants are wasteful and receive too little oversight.  At the end of the day, he says, decisions about CSBSs are made on the basis of politics and not necessarily sound economics.

“That’s where you get into the examples of waste and abuse and funding for wealthy areas the don’t make a lot of sense,” said DeHaven. “So for instance you now have wealthy towns in Connecticut receiving CSBG money to help building upgrades for a wine bar.”

DeHaven also points to a brewery in Michigan that is receiving CSBG funds for expansion. He said he would rather see funding come from the private sector.

For now, class will continue at the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

If the proposed budget cuts to CSBGs are approved by Congress, non-profits could start seeing effects as soon as March of this year.