This post is based on the upcoming book Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All
by Oran Hesterman
A Broken Food System
Our food system is failing many of us. Originally designed to produce abundant food at low cost, it now destroys some of what we hold most precious—our environment, our health, and our future.
While many of us have become more conscious about the impacts of our personal food choices, we can’t fix the broken food system simply by changing what’s on our plate. The answer lies beyond the kitchen: it relies on our willingness to be fair food “solutionaries” in our communities, in the institutions where we work, and with policy makers.
Beyond Your Kitchen
This is a moment when you can make a difference if you harness your voice, beliefs, passion, and resources to promote a fair and healthy food system. If you are ready to participate in creating a fair food future beyond your own kitchen, one place to start is in your community.
- Instead of using just your personal purchasing power to fill your own fridge, you can help create a community buying club so that your friends and others in the community can combine their food purchasing efforts and support a fairer food system.
- Instead of growing a vegetable garden in your back yard, consider participating in or supporting a community garden so more people in the community have access to land, water, and shared information.
- And instead of focusing on how you can directly access great food at farmers’ markets, consider supporting efforts that assist those in historically underserved communities to obtain greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
To read the rest of this post and learn about shifting institutional purchasing power as well as ways to get involved in food policy change, click here.
