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Here it is at last, well-documented investigation that shows how we have all been manipulated into bad health by the food industry; people who have literally made a killing off us by getting us hooked on synthetic food. It’s a problem that just can’t be fixed with a bag of Bunny Luv baby carrots. 
Knowing where your food comes from – and getting to know your farmer – is a critical step in knowing what’s IN your food. Once you’ve decided to take the plunge and sign up for a CSA, how do you know who’s real? Success breeds competition and sometimes that competition is fudging it. Some of those CSAs you’re looking at are not REAL CSAs. 
Another year passed; 2011 was a quite the year in the food world! Here are a handful of “hot button” topics that sent us to our keyboards with heads shaking. What ARE we doing to our food, our families, and our future? 
Big Food and Big Ag are doing their best to keep their products on the shelves, on the tables, in school lunches, and in the minds of children all the while posturing to offer healthier foods. Big Money is now in the act and the lobbying is hot and heavy. Is it getting too hot in the kitchen? Marion Nestle took a look at the latest direction the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign is going and noted: “Apparently, she has given up on encouraging food companies to make healthier products and stop marketing junk foods to kids.” Ms. Obama announced that she will now focus on getting kids to be more active. 
Face it, this is another peremptory move by Big Ag and Big Food – full of the usual propaganda – to win over consumers as they move to prevent new regulations and restrictions ranging from tighter rules on pesticide applications to a potential ban of routine, preventative use of animal antibiotics. I admit, if they really could repair the environment that they have despoiled, or restore the public health which they have damaged, or even think about sharing the wealth with the workers who they’ve cheated, I might jump over to their side. Don’t hold your breath! 
We’re in the middle of the 2012 Farm Bill legislation negotiation, most of it conducted by city slickers who have no idea what small integrated family farms are up against. And, just this week, it was reported that the Washington Post had eliminated its food safety beat and the Des Moines Register had eliminated its Washington bureau, letting go long time ag correspondent Phil Brasher. I expect our news coverage of food and agriculture issues will soon begin to sound like this. 
Journalism is necessary to inform the public and maintain our democracy. The agriculture beat was once an important area of coverage at all major outlets, delivering information about rural areas as well as policy making on food in Washington. But the “agriculture beat” has been dying a slow death for five decades. 
Wendell Berry is emerging as a figure who is much-saluted but little-heeded by those in power. Yet his critique is as relevant today as it was when this book was first published in 1977. |
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