Cruel Blow to Food Movement: Madoff's Ripple Effect

Food activists are likely mourning one of their own this morning: the Fair Food Foundation. The killer? Securities fraudster Bernard L. Madoff.

The fledgling grantmaking enterprise sent an email to supporters today:

The Fair Food Foundation is ceasing operation as a grant making foundation. The funds of the donors to the Foundation were managed by Bernard L. Madoff, a prominent financial advisor who was arrested for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars. Due to the loss of funding, Fair Food Foundation is no longer in a position to consider any requests for funding. We will be spending the next few weeks closing down our operation...

The loss of the Fair Food Foundation and the potential financial support it would have provided is a stinging blow to the community of activists, advocates, organizers, and funders dedicated to redesigning our broken food system.

The fledgling foundation just began taking requests this fall, focusing its efforts on food access and urban agriculture in Detroit, MI and Oakland, CA. Headed up by Oran Hestermann, who'd helped push the Kellogg Foundation towards local and sustainable food efforts, Fair Food stood to do what foundations do best: Test approaches to social problems, and model the successes so that government can copy them.

Had Fair Food gotten off the ground, it would have been the nation's first foundation dedicated exclusively to food issues.

Comments

[loril]

There is such a litany of injustice and corruption...where does it end? This one especially gets to me. I am a person who budgets stringently in other areas so that my family can continue to eat well. I could save money and buy lots of cheap, processed faux food at Wal Mart or Aldi...but we give up lots of other things so that we can use fresh ingredients, natural sweeteners and other alternatives. As much as we may miss other things in life, we believe we reap the health and wellness benefits of our diet daily. And I feel good about spending our money at the local natural food store where they employ people with disabilities and where everyone is friendly and will go out of their way to special order products for the customers.

I am really lucky to live in a community with the option like that. So many other people are stuck with what they are stuck with in their neighborhood. Others cannot afford many alternatives even if they have them. So, learning about what healthy eating is...and how best (and most inexpensively) to provide yourself with it, is an important fundamental to future health.

[skippyB]

This concerns me because while visiting SlowFood Nation this Labor Day I met an urban farmer from Oakland whose crops feed and nourish a lot of people. This is vital work.
Please consider exploring The Chez Panisse Foundation
SlowFood USA
Or consider trying to support small-scale farm operations wherever you are.

[PacificGatePost]

From New York to Geneva, corruption is rampant and complex on Wall Street.

MADOFF IS NOT SO UNIQUE
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http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-madoff-really-anomaly.html
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