Hollyer Than Thou

So here I am, casually checking my gmail, when I open a message from Roots of Change (an organization that sponsors developments in sustainable agriculture by giving grants) that the Natural Resources Defense Council (a serious, intellectual environmental legal and lobbying group) is sponsoring some sort of challenge to improve the implementation and propagation of sustainable food. One that awards $10,000. The winner will be selected by the co-framers of the Food Declaration, which is a very broad collection of aims for U.S. food policy.

Why in holy mushrooms am I so interested in this? After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan), followed by Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser), I am just obsessed with food policy and the bundles of goodies that come with it, which are mostly questions:

• Why is it so hard for meatpackers to unionize?
• Why do conservative governments tend to favor agricultural subsidies?
• Is the government ignorant or aware of the safety and health abuses happening in modern food production?
• Why are there so, so many “grassroots” organizations dedicated to change, and no serious organizations?

Log onto the ACLU or NRDC websites. Though both organizations are concerned with consumer’s and public rights, one focusing on abuses by the federal government on certain things we as Americans are entitled to, the other focusing on the environment, I don’t see why neither has a website section devoted to agriculture.

It would look unseemly, perhaps, for urbane groups to talk about farms, because what’s so complicated about little farms? But farms aren’t little any more, and they’re not even farms, they’re agribusiness. So far, the USDA (which Theodore Roosevelt created to look after consumers’ rights) prefers loosened regulation, and the centralization of the food supply, not to mention the efficient but toxic practice of monoculture (especially of corn). The USDA isn’t functioning as a consumer protection group; it looks upon agribusiness as a friend, and not as a charge needing regulation. It’s not just inappropriate, it’s really unhealthful.

I digress, perhaps. I just think it’s about time someone started up the Eater’s Lobby. Not the Food Lobby—that’s Heinz and Kraft and Mickey D’s—or the Ag Lobby—that’s Monsanto (the inventors of almost all the [genetically modified] corn you eat; hint: it’s almost all genetically modified) and Tyson. The Eater’s Lobby would instead be the eater’s advocate, focusing on a series of things, which I think the California State Senate seems to get: they want to improve “food safety, sustainable farming, food security, and animal welfare” in my dear state’s agricultural system.

Right on. I think, when I’m older, I’ll do the Eater’s Lobby, but I’ll pick a name for it that doesn’t sound like a cheap cafe at the bottom of a Downtown office building.