Is the Food Revolution Here Yet? Good Article in the New York Times by Shelley Lance
An article in last Sunday’s NYT business section, “Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?” does a good job of summing up the hopes and fears of the sustainable-food movement at this moment in time, just two months into the Obama administration.
The article summarizes the movement this way:
“At the heart of the sustainable-food movement is a belief that America has become efficient at producing cheap, abundant food that profits corporations and agribusiness, but is unhealthy and bad for the environment. The federal government is culpable, the activists say, because it pays farmers billions in subsidies each year for growing grains and soybeans. A result is an abundance of corn and soybeans that provide cheap feed for livestock and inexpensive food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup. They argue that farm policy- and federal dollars- should instead encourage farmers to grow more diverse crops, reward conservation practices and promote local food networks….”
For food activists and their supporters, here are some of the rays of hope:
Michelle Obama has been acting as a champion of fresh, local, healthy food, and she started a food garden on the White House lawn last week.
Tom Vilsack, the new secretary of agriculture recently “took a jackhammer to a patch of pavement outside his headquarters to create his own organic people’s garden.” Vilsack has also been pursuing food safety, the improvement of nutrition in the school lunch program, a focus on healthy eating, and health care reform. Also, Kathleen Merrigan, a longtime champion of organic and sustainable agriculture, was named as Mr. Vilsack’s top deputy. (For more on Kathleen Merrigan, and why the food activist community is doing cartwheels over her selection, read this article from Gourmet’s website.)
Here are some of the doubts and trepidations:
“Some activists worry that their dreams of a less-processed American diet may soon collide with the realities of Washington and the financial gloom over much of the country.”
Michael Pollan, whose book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, galvanized many into thinking seriously about food issues, worries that “The movement is not ready for prime time…It’s not like we have an infrastructure with legislation ready to go.”
Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who has been battling for years to increase federal funding for child nutrition and for conservation programs cautions that changing farm policy is slow going and “does not have sharp turns.”
Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, while optimistic, reminds people that the organic industry is roughly only 3% of the overall food and beverage business.
My take on where we are after reading this article?
1. Finally we have a foot in the door. That’s huge.
2. Like it or not, we have to be patient. As Obama said, America is not a speedboat but an oceanliner. We’re not going to turn on a dime.
3. For anyone who cares about food politics, these are exciting times.
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