I’ve mentioned plenty of times before how much of a fan I am of Michael Pollan. His books The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Now I’ve found a short, to-the-point call to arms that takes everything Pollan has been saying and demands that we fix it.
Will Allen is a former professional basketball player and was the first African American basketball player at the University of Miami, Florida. He is now a farmer and community activist, dedicated to supporting low-income and small family farmers, and bringing healthy, affordable food to urban areas. He is the founder and president of the Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative and the CEO of Growing Power, a national not-for-profit organization supporting the development of community food systems.
He has written A Good Food Manifesto for America that lays out in seven easy-to-read pages the danger we face, and what to do about it.
It is time and past time for this nation, this government, to react to the dangers inherent in its flawed farm and food policies and to reverse course from subsidizing wealth to subsidizing health.We have to stop paying the largest farm subsidies to large growers of unsustainable and inedible crops like cotton. We have to stop paying huge subsidies to Big Corn, Big Soy and Big Chem to use prime farmland to grow fuel, plastics and fructose. We have to stop using federal and state agencies and institutions as taxpayer-funded research arms for the very practices that got us into this mess.
We have to start subsidizing health and well-being by rewarding sustainable practices in agriculture and assuring a safe, adequate and wholesome food supply to all our citizens. And we need to start this reform process now, as part of the national stimulus toward economic recovery.
Go read it, then pass it around.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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6 Comments
I am a big fan of Michael Pollan, too. Thanks for this link!
I like Pollan as well, to a point. An idealist, which isn't bad. I just find some bemusement that we have arrived at the point where many of us can be well off enough to complain about the vast quantities of food made on this planet. We can forget what a blessing cheap food can be.
It just seems to me that at the moment organics, locally sourced, hippy massaged (sorry!) food is the province of the upscale eater. It's a luxury good.
No offense, I just think we should remember that industrialized food production has done some good for humanity, even as others seek a better system.
Dani, modern agriculture is wonderful. The problem with our particular system is the huge subsidies paid on a very narrow group of crops. Specifically corn and soy.
These two crops are turned into additives that make up a disturbing portion of our diets, causing multiple health problems. These health problems, in the long run, end up costing more in medical care than the original savings to buy it.
So yes, in the current system, you have to have more money to buy healthier food. If you buy the cheaper food now, you're likely to have medical problems later, which — for poor people — will likely be paid with tax dollars. So we pay tax dollars to make unhealthy food cheaper than healthy food, then pay tax dollars again to treat the health problems we've caused.
@Drew:
Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of subsidies. And I understand that things like high fructose corn syrup are no good. I'm sure guys like ADM would make plenty regardless.
I was just saing that there were some worthwhile things to keep from mass food production and it wouls be a shame to guck the baby out with the bathwater.
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