Current food policy is stuck in a cheap fuel rut that leads to a number of unsustainable practices. The next president will have to deal with a rising crisis regarding food and farms.
Michael Pollan wrote a highly detailed food policy overview for the New York Times Magazine this past weekend titled “Farmer in Chief.” This feature outlines the evolution that’s necessary to revamp farming away from fossil-fuel agriculture to a solar-food economy.
Pollan argues that the next president must revamp farm policy due to increasing fuel prices and the connection between poor health and cheap calories. Pollan also argues for greater protection of farmland, equating food security with national security, and urging greater regulation of development around our cities to preserve farms:
“National security also argues for preserving every acre of farmland we can and then making it available to new farmers. We simply will not be able to depend on distant sources of food, and therefore need to preserve every acre of good farmland within a day’s drive of our cities. In the same way that when we came to recognize the supreme ecological value of wetlands we erected high bars to their development, we need to recognize the value of farmland to our national security and require real-estate developers to do “food-system impact statements” before development begins. We should also create tax and zoning incentives for developers to incorporate farmland (as they now do “open space”) in their subdivision plans; all those subdivisions now ringing golf courses could someday have diversified farms at their center.”
Read the full feature here.
