These past few years have seen statist encroachments into every area of American life. One of the least appreciated of these is Michelle Obama’s attempt to dictate our diets, particularly our children’s diets. Were there more federal force or dollars behind that effort, perhaps we’d take it as seriously as it deserves. Yet it’s worth a moment to reflect that at one time, meddling with our food supply stood at the heart of federal policy. There’s nothing to prevent Washington from revisiting that era with a somewhat different orientation…say, one that prioritizes limiting the fiscal damage done by ObamaCare.
But wait: what have we here?
How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans’ well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality and the federal budget. Yet we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole.That must change.
The food system and the diet it’s created have caused incalculable damage to the health of our people and our land, water and air. If a foreign power were to do such harm, we’d regard it as a threat to national security, if not an act of war, and the government would formulate a comprehensive plan and marshal resources to combat it. (The administration even named an Ebola czar to respond to a disease that threatens few Americans.) So when hundreds of thousands of annual deaths are preventable — as the deaths from the chronic diseases linked to the modern American way of eating surely are — preventing those needless deaths is a national priority.
I’m a small farmer and woodsman, not a policy wonk. As such I can unequivocally say: We already have and have had a de facto “national food policy” for some time. It is one rooted in fascism and operates as a revolving door through which corrupt politicos and lobbyists travel between the corporate world of the likes of Novartis, Monsanto and Dow to the big government fantasy world of the Washington behemoth known as the USDA.
It is sold to us as “official science” under the guise of the globalist’s marketing plan formerly called the “Green Revolution”. It has no party affiliation and has gone by various names through the past several administrations. It contains an Imperial element whose stated goal is to “feed the world”. Empirical evidence based in common sense and the experience of anyone who has ever farmed (not run an agribusiness, yes, there is a difference!) suggests however that before all is said and done, it will poison us all!
While I do have some respect for the writers Bittman and Pollan, in that they have raised important issues that if you don’t already know of will require some self-education, they should stick to writing and academics and let farmers do what they know how to do, farm. Besides, if they (or anyone for that matter) don’t, farmers may quit and then, well, you can guess the rest. No one, including myself could really blame them.
If I believed we should have a “national food policy”, (and I don’t) I’d suggest it be written by Joel Salatin. That policy would probably be worded something like: “There will be no set standard American Food Policy other than to have no standard American Food Policy”.
If anyone here doesn’t know Salatin, they should.
While the author’s claim: “The most troubling possibility is that after decade upon decade of gradualism ever trending toward totalitarianism, the United States is largely ready to become a new Soviet Union under a “democratic” facade…if given the “right” rationale for submitting to such a regime.” may be true, the fact is that the “new” Russian Federation is going in quite the opposite direction, towards decentralizing their agriculture. We Americans could stand to learn a thing or two from the lessons learned the hard way by the Russians as their agricultural policy (or whatever it’s called) today looks more like that of the US in the 1800s!
Anyone here ever heard of the “Homestead Acts”?
I think the Russians have….
http://www.naturalnews.com/037366_Russia_home_gardens_food_production.html
-Robin