April 23rd, 2012 By Renata Brillinger
Part history text, part socio-political commentary and part call to action, Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill offers something for everyone from the seasoned agriculture advocate to the newcomer on the food systems scene. The newly re-issued book by Dan Imhoff comes just as the federal debate over the 2012 Farm Bill is heating up. Read More
July 13th, 2011 By Emily Gilbert and Ashwini Srinivasamohan
There has ostensibly been a dialogue among New York City legislators around food, as seen through Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s Food Works resolution, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s (at the moment dormant) NYC Foodprint legislation, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s Blueprint for Sustainable Food System initiative. But there has yet to be a watershed policy that explicitly acknowledges and addresses the connection between “cool foods” and reducing the effects of climate change. Read More
June 17th, 2011 By Haven Bourque
I work in food and agriculture, so when I sit down to a locally sourced, home cooked dinner with my family, I often think of the 2012 Farm Bill’s connection to the food on my table. Re-christened the “Food and Farm Bill” by a fierce tribe of good food advocates, the 2012 version is the most important piece of environmental legislation that Congress will enact in the next 18 months.
I have no illusion that my dinners are completely different from those of millions of Americans. Most people eat mainly processed food as a result of the billions of subsidy dollars diverted to industrial agriculture and the cheap food that is produced by it. The next Farm Bill is our best shot at fixing these flaws in our food system.
Good news: the Environmental Working Group (EWG) is fighting for better policies that would make local and organic dinners like mine the norm rather than the exception, including turning its attention to the 2012 Farm Bill. Read More
June 1st, 2011 By Vicky Rateau
The movement for reform to our flawed food system is growing stronger every day. Cooks, consumers, and campaigners alike are waking up in increasing numbers to the dangerous and unsustainable impacts of the way much of our food is grown, sold, and consumed.
This progress could not come at a more important moment. Our global food system works only for the few–for most of us it is broken. It leaves consumers lacking sufficient power and knowledge about what we buy and eat and almost a billion people hungry worldwide, millions of whom live here in the U.S. Read More
March 23rd, 2011 By Wayne Pacelle
What do Florida and Iowa have in common when it comes to animal agriculture? They’ve both been hot spots, past and present, for the movement to combat some of the worst abuses in industrial agribusiness. And now the factory farming industry is fighting back in both states—and their latest methods represent their biggest overreach yet. Read More
March 1st, 2011 By Nevin Cohen
On February 17, 2011, the San Francisco Planning Commission passed a resolution approving a new urban agriculture planning code that would allow a range of urban gardens and farms to be located throughout the city. The new code creates an agricultural use category with two sub-uses (Neighborhood Agriculture and Urban Industrial Agriculture) that represent different scales and intensity of food production. Read More
January 17th, 2011 By Tom Laskawy
In a piece on the EPA’s attempts to save the Chesapeake Bay as well as USDA’s new policy of acknowledging risks of genetic contamination or organics by GMO crops, Tom Philpott has a key insight about industrial agriculture:
In both the case of the Chesapeake Bay watershed’s vast chicken factories and that of GM alfalfa, industrial agriculture is admitting that it needs to trash its neighbors and the surrounding landscape to thrive. It wants us to believe that there are no alternatives if we want to feed ourselves plentifully.
The idea that protecting the environment is a luxury we can’t afford is a standard defense for corporations in many sectors–though typically only trotted out by the dirtiest industrial polluters (e.g. coal and oil companies). Read More
November 5th, 2010 By Andy Fisher
When bad things happen, someone inevitably mentions that the Chinese character for crisis is the same as for opportunity. Is there a silver lining in Tuesday’s election for our movement’s efforts to reform food and farm policy in the upcoming Farm Bill? I don’t have any answers, but would like to lay out some of the factors that may affect the next Farm Bill and speculate on how these factors could shape the final bill.
March 31st, 2010 By Paula Crossfield
Anna Lappé’s latest book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, investigates the intersection between the environmental crisis and the food system in more detail than any book that has come before it. Lappé’s rendering makes us realize the imperative of addressing these issues, and empowers us to do so by demystifying corporate spin, giving thorough examples of people making change, debunking the myths for maintaining the status quo, and more. Lappé talked to me last week about climate friendly farming, policy and the state of the food movement. Read More
March 29th, 2010 By Paula Crossfield
Confident after his success with health insurance reform, President Obama exerted his executive power on Saturday by making fifteen appointments during the Senate’s recess. Among the appointments was Islam Siddiqui, who will now be serving as the Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (I’ve written here about what that job entails). Read More
January 22nd, 2010 By Tom Laskawy
In a ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court rolled back campaign finance laws to the pre-Watergate era:
Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.
The 5-to-4 decision was a doctrinal earthquake but also a political and practical one. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision, which also applies to labor unions and other organizations, to reshape the way elections are conducted.
I’ll say. Corporations will now be able to run ads supporting or opposing particular candidates up until the day before an election. While unions will likely gain the same right, they have never been able to spend more than a fraction of what large corporations typically do in an election year. Read More
December 8th, 2009 By Jim Goodman
“And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers, but the family farmers and the American People.” President-elect Barack Obama, December 17, 2008, Chicago, Illinois.
The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy. It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short. Read More