Agricultural Changes Coming To America
Last week I read the article, “Farmer In Chief” written by Michael Pollan. It is probably the most thorough article about our current food and agricultural system here in the U.S. and what we need to do to shift the agriculture policy to make it better. Pollan calls it his “Sun-Food Agenda” and it is written as an open letter to the next president. In my opinion, this article is simply amazing. And even better, Obama read it and even quoted from it before he was elected:
Obama’s quote (from Treehugger):
There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
Willie Nelson, the musician and the president of Farm Aid, wrote a letter to Obama offering him every resource that Farm Aid has available to assist him in creating a new farm and food policy that supports a sustainable family farm system of agriculture.
From the letter:
There is broad agreement that our farm and food system needs to be drastically reworked. The good news is that the work of building an alternative to the industrial food system is well underway and Farm Aid is proud to have been a leader in this work, something we call the Good Food Movement. The Good Food Movement has grown and thrived almost entirely without the support of the federal government. However, now is the right moment for the leadership of our country to take a role in this important movement. In fact the future of our economy, our environment and our health demand it.
I am waiting to see how this all will unfold once Obama takes office. The way things are run now is clearly not working for anyone on any level anymore. This has to and will change at the policy level and thankfully we have a very aware president-elect that will make sure at least some major agricultural changes take place at that level. It’s already been shifting at the grassroots level as you can tell by the huge surge in consumers buying organic produce, pasture raised meats, attending farmer’s markets, joining CSA’s and the rising awareness of people wanting to take charge of their health starting with nutrition and knowing where their food comes from.
I especially love that he wants to make school food come more from local farmers and be of higher nutritional quality. This is going to really help the low income families who rely on this food program sometimes as their kids’ only source of calories for the day.
Here is the plan from the Obama/Biden Real Leadership For Rural America pdf regarding the farm to school program:
Bring Farms to Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support providing locally grown, healthy foods to students as a part of the school meals program. This will both reduce childhood obesity and grow vibrant rural economies, supporting community-based food systems and strengthening family farms. They will support funding for farm-to-school projects for food, labor, equipment, and staff training. They also will allow schools to give priority to local sources when ordering food. Currently the USDA prohibits schools from requesting local products during the bidding process. Finally, they will expand commodity support to include the school breakfast program as well as the school lunch program.
The farm to school program is already being initiated in one school district in my county right now and I’m hoping my school district will be next to embrace this program.
This is just so great, I’m completely excited that finally I can be happy my government has listened to We The People and will act upon what is best for it’s citizens and not the corporate greed system that has been destroying us and our planet for so long.
November 18 2008 12:18 am | Health and Mel and activism and food and government and green living and news and nutrition and organics and parenting and political and school and society
November 18th, 2008 at 1:07 am
[...] Changes Coming To America Posted in November 18th, 2008 by in Uncategorized Agricultural Changes Coming To America Bring Farms to Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support providing locally grown, healthy [...]
November 18th, 2008 at 1:11 am
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November 18th, 2008 at 10:02 am
[...] Bring Farms to Schools: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will support providing locally grown, healthy foods to students as a part of the school meals program. This will both reduce childhood obesity and grow vibrant rural economies, …[Continue Reading] [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
[...] We already know that Obama/Biden have a “Plan For Rural America” which I have blogged about before so now we just have to ensure there is a really great US Secretary of Agriculture chosen to make [...]