A Good Food Manifesto for America

I’ve mentioned plenty of times before how much of a fan I am of Michael Pollan. His books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, and his articles on the New York Times opened my eyes to the state of food production in the U.S. (That state is “Not Good”, by the way.)

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.