Two great recent pieces about the struggle to make a market for local food in our increasingly processed foodscape. First, the always reliable Michael Pollan looks again at the relationship between our food choices and obesity, this time through the lens of what the federal government does. It isn't pretty. However, he concludes by noting that a public health coalition is pulling together to get a better Farm Bill this year -- probably something we ought to start organizing on, here in farm country.
Second, Tom Philpott at Grist looks at some of the struggles of local food markets in a rigged system.
If you have any interest in slow food, local food, being healthy, being sustainable, global warming, or helping the family farm, these are two must-reads. To my mind, we need two things: first, a plan for slowly scaling up our local food markets beyond the farmers' market, and, second, we need to get together and start working for change for a better Farm Bill. The impacts of that bill are tremendous, and are only now starting to be understood--not just its impacts to farmers, or to our food system, or our environment, but also to poverty in third world countries, where subsistence farmers are driven off their land, as their crops are undersold by subsidized American food--this is a crucial cycle of dependency that prevents the Third World from standing on its own (which, incidentally, can create more immigration for the U.S.).