Panelists included Michael Pollan, author and campus journalism professor, Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group and Ken Hecht, executive director of California Food Policy Advocates.
Pollan, the most prominent of the four, underscored the importance of funding healthy, sustainable agriculture. He noted that “it’s easy to get lost in the weeds” in the complexity of the proposed 2012 update of the bill, which is passed about every five years. He argued the importance of using subsidies in the bill to alter the American diet from its current highly processed state.
“The least healthy calories are the cheapest,” he said. “We need to diversify our farms. We need to diversify our diets.”
Other panelists spoke to other aspects of the bill, including how it will affect agriculture in the state as well as the food stamp program for low-income families.
“(We need to) defend food stamps and subsidies,” Cook said. “(We need to) hook kids on fruits and vegetables when they’re in schools.”
Ross spoke of the growing problem of aging farmers, which, she said, may leave California — the state that produces the most crops in the union — in crisis.
“We need 100,000 new farmers,” she said, citing that for every five farmers over the age of 65, there is one farmer aged 25. “We have to double our agricultural output to produce food for a growing population.”
Sara Grossman covers research and ideas.
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More nonsensical crap that passes without critical examination from the author of the article. We don’t need 100,000 more farmers, nor do we need more subsidies. Get the government out of agriculture, let farmers who can’t hack in the marketplace go out of business and find other careers, and dump federal subsidies for ethanol production.
The problem is that if we let the free market alone regulate the agricultural economy we have little control over what gets put into the food itself and how it is produced. You can always ramble on about how “if I don’t want to have such-and-such treated food I just won’t buy it” but if NOBODY is producing it, or if it is so expensive (supply-demand) it’s not much of a “choice” anymore. This is the problem with the free market…everyone technically has freedom to choose, but often there is only one choice (unless you’re lucky enough to be able to grow all your own food or something). And what’s wrong with creating 100,000 new jobs providing an absolutely vital service to the country?
So what? No producer is going to sell food that is going to be harmful, getting rid of government regulation in agriculture will not get rid of our system of tort laws. Also there will always be non treated food even in a non regulated market if there is demand, that is how supply and demand work. But enough of the free market, the United States is broke, like it or not we just cannot afford farm subsidizes anymore
“No producer is going to sell food that is going to be harmful”
Do you pay attention to the world around you??? Need I even cite all the different shit that is put into our food?
“Also there will always be non treated food even in a non regulated
market if there is demand, that is how supply and demand work.”
And this is an artifact of deregulation…when the companies are allowed to grind up the rest of the cow and put it in your patties, they will BECAUSE IT SAVES THEM MONEY. Does that work out well for you? No. Say you want to buy real good patty beef, but no one sells it for less than $50/lb because the only people who DO do it because it’s some sort of “cause” that they believe in, because there’s no money in it (compared to churning out slime for $.10/lb) otherwise. The price is so high because of supply/demand: obviously a small company operating with higher costs and lower revenues will have to charge more per unit product. Can you afford to eat actual hamburgers for $50/lb like you would otherwise? Hell no! So you are FORCED by the “free” market to buy the cheaper food. So then only the rich people can afford to eat healthily, while the poor people die of crazy-ass diseases and disorders brought on by all the chemicals and processes employed to maximize profit on the part of the company. So much for “freedom”; TRUE liberty must be backed by ECONOMIC as well as civil freedom and democracy.
“our system of tort laws”
Ummm, do you even know what a torte is? It’s a civil lawsuit filed for personal grievance and damages (i.e. that lady at McD who spilled coffee on herself). Not really sure how this is related to the rest of your sentence???
“like it or not we just cannot afford farm subsidizes anymore”
The US currently spends about $20 billion annually on farm subsidies. (http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/farmincome/govtpaybyfarmtype.htm) Two points here: 1) This $20 billion is coming from taxpayer money. All taxpayers buy food at the supermarket. If you cut this $20 billion, the farmers will have to raise the money to balance their budget via price increases on the food they sell. So you pay less taxes, but pay equally more at the supermarket. Net change = 0. 2) The US spends twice as much on OIL subsidies than farm subsidies (one of these products is harmful and has replacements, the other is not and does not) (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0309/Budget-hawks-Does-US-need-to-give-gas-and-oil-companies-41-billion-a-year) Plus, the US spends 70x more than this (at least) a year on “defense” related activities (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/)…so you’re saying rather than subsidize the nation’s farmers to grow our food we should keep spending $1.4 tr/year to kill people 10,000mi away?
If you don’t understand how tort law can help prevent agricultural companies from harming individuals then my point just flew way over your head
Well-informed comments. Also of great importance is the rapid spread of GMO (genetically modified foods) without labeling. Friend of the common folk Obama has installed Monsanto lawyer Michael Taylor as Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of the FDA and he thinks no regulation is just fine. They are doing a massive experiment on us without consent in yet another crazed drive for ever-expanding profit margins. A ballot initiative to force labeling of such products in California is circulating, please support it. If seeds designed to prevent farmers from saving seed for the next season wasn’t bad enough, GMO farm-raised salmon now threaten the wild gene pool.
Once we were promised, by the likes of Monsanto, plants that would make their own pesticides. What we got was “Round Up Ready” soy and corn, designed to stand up to ever more massive doses of herbacide as the weeds adapt to the chemicals designed to kill them. Farmers are trapped in a cycle of increasing costs, the environment bears an increasing chemical load…and oh Monsanto gets an increasing market for its herbacide.
You’re not a very convincing source of info on this subject if you can’t even spell “herbicide”.
”The problem is that if we let the free market alone regulate the
agricultural economy we have little control over what gets put into the
food itself and how it is produced.”
BS. Nobody forces you to buy food from any one source. Would you continue to patronize a restaurant or fast food place that serves you crappy, overpriced food? Same for groceries and produce. Once again, lefties make excuses to justify their desire to control what others eat.