Dear Mr President Elect: The Food Issue

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http://www.nytimaes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?emc=eta1 & pagewanted=\

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12, 2008

The New York Times

THE FOOD ISSUE

Farmer in Chief

By MICHAEL POLLAN

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much

of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the

campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have

had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration —

the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril.

Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the

commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our

supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping

prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But

with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap

and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is

that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself

confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that

the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national

security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Complicating matters is the fact that the price and abundance of food

are not the only problems we face; if they were, you could simply follow

Nixon’s example, appoint a latter-day Earl Butz as your secretary of

agriculture and instruct him or her to do whatever it takes to boost

production. But there are reasons to think that the old approach won’t

work this time around; for one thing, it depends on cheap energy that we

can no longer count on. For another, expanding production of industrial

agriculture today would require you to sacrifice important values on

which you did campaign. Which brings me to the deeper reason you will

need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the

entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration:

unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the

health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food,

these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them

you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and

eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will

have to change if we hope to solve them. Let me explain.

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http://www.nytimaes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?emc=eta1 & pagewanted=\

printOctober

12, 2008