Clearly, we need to bring new ideas to the table.
If we want a healthier diet, and I say this as a livestock producer, we must move to a diet less centered on animal products. Moving away from grain-fattened livestock will reduce corn and soy acreage making more land available for staple food crops, rangeland and forests.
We need to explore new ways of local food production; hoop houses, grass-based livestock and seasonal eating. We need to produce good food locally and our government must enact economic reforms that enable everyone to afford that food.
Internationally, governments must promote the needs of people over those of market. Blind devotion to free market economics has given us more poverty, more hunger and an ever increasing gap between rich and poor. We must reject the idea that we need to produce cheap food for the poor. We cannot expect farm workers in any nation to labor for less than a fair living wage.
Will USDA continue to bow to economic pressures and pump more grain onto the world market, or actually make meaningful food policy reforms? While breaking up some pavement at USDA and replacing it with a “garden” is a nice start, I wonder, are there any big picture reforms in the pipe?
For the American people, Secretary Vilsack, more of the same will mean more of the same. Without these fundamental reforms, as author Raj Patel puts it we will be left both ”Stuffed and Starved”.
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