“The appropriate measure of farming then is the world’s health and our health, and this is inescapably one measure.”  —Wendell Berry

In July, I argued that the House’s decision to split out the gargantuan Nutrition Title from the Farm Bill might signal a new era for those of us seeking fundamental reform of agriculture and food systems. This is the second in a three-part series where I lay the groundwork for why unification is crucial for the food movement and how public health can tip the balance of power to ensure the good food movement will prevail in the struggle over the future of our food system.

As I said then, this Farm Bill schism may reveal a fracturing of a longstanding alliance that has stymied needed policy change. Now, I’d like to highlight the most powerful framing the food movement is using to create a food and agriculture system that solves problems rather than creates them. This frame is emerging steadily but merits more focus and amplification. It promises to attract enough public support to overcome growing resistance from industrial food corporations and the legislators they control.

Although the Farm Bill comes before Congress every five years, fundamental changes to the legislation emerge only in response to crisis. Food Fight, Dan Imhoff’s excellent book on the Farm Bill, reveals this history of crisis management. Born in the 1930s, the first Farm Bill was a response to two crises: The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. It established three core activities that remain to this day: Farm revenue stabilization, conservation, and hunger relief.

Truly fundamental changes to the bill did not occur until after 1996, when, with the Freedom to Farm Act, Congress had sought to end supply management systems and subsidies that had helped to stabilize farm revenue for half a century. Without supply management, farmers over-produced and prices crashed. Congress backtracked and created today’s complex and lopsided subsidy programs, which were written by lobbyists working for corporations benefiting from the public investment. That response to crisis has not served the nation well.

Part of what makes us human is our ability to think ahead to avoid or reduce the magnitude of crises. Today’s food movement is a manifestation of that kind of forward thinking. But it’s also a confluence of many interests tactically responding to related problems.

The anti-hunger, food justice, environmental justice, buy-local and labor communities are responding to bad fiscal, economic, and social policy (including structural racism) that has allowed persistent poverty and is now quickly shrinking the middle class. The environmental and sustainable agriculture communities are responding to degradations caused by industrial farming, fossil fuel production, and consumption.

The anti-obesity, school food, locavore, animal welfare, Slow Food communities, natural food entrepreneurs, and sustainable farmers and ranchers are responding to the effects of industrial agricultural production and industrial (fast) food consumption, but for different reasons.