by Slow Food USA
On this day after the election, the staff of Slow Food USA took a moment to talk about how we can build on the momentum of Barack Obama’s historic Presidential win. While we’re hopeful that our new President and all the men and women elected in races across the nation yesterday will put the FOOD back into food policy, we understand that we can’t assume anything. We know that to help make change in our broken food system, much of the work must come from the ground up while we keep our leaders’ feet to the fire.
Journalist Michael Pollan, a Slow Food Advisory Board member, recently wrote a great letter challenging the next President to improve our nation’s food policy. In an October 23 article in Time Magazine, President Elect Obama responded, saying that our current industrialized food system is “creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs.”
We need to work with the incoming administration to create new green collar jobs; to increase the availability of fresh food in underserved communities and urban food deserts; to fight for small farmers and food producers who supply the thousands of farmers’ markets and CSAs across the country; and to bring healthy food and educational gardens into the public school system so that our children can grow up healthy and understand their connection to the land and the food they eat.
Make a start by signing on and adding your comments to the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture and the new Call to Action for food system reform organized by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis.
We have a long road ahead. Together, we must ensure that good, clean and fair food is accessible to all Americans. Through our collective voice and hard work around the country, a new food system is possible.
