Jim Hightower
This forum was edited by Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant and director of the Chez Panisse Foundation in Berkeley, California.
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U.S. Economy
David E. Gumpert:
As financial markets reel from the US financial crisis and tainted Chinese dairy products are sold around the world, we're learning hard lessons on the limits of globalization.
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Food & Nutrition
Eric Schlosser:
Affluent foodies embrace sustainable agriculture, oblivious that ordinary people--especially the poor--don't have a seat at the table.
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Environment
Frances Cerra Whittelsey:
Biofuels have become the new villain in the climate change and food crisis debate. But America's consumption of meat is a bigger part of the problem than the cars and trucks we drive.
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Myanmar (Burma)
Allan Nairn:
We can blame the Burmese government for the unfolding tragedy in the wake of the cyclone. We can also blame ourselves.
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Civil Rights & Liberties
David E. Gumpert:
State and federal authorities are relying on undercover agents to entrap dairy farmers.
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Agriculture
Walden Bello:
How "free trade" is destroying Third World agriculture--and who's fighting back.
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Agriculture
David E. Gumpert:
As struggling dairy farmers seek profits by responding to rising consumer demand for raw milk, regulators are taking a hard line.
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U.S. Economy
Katrina vanden Heuvel & Eric Schlosser:
We should apply FDR's principles of relief, reform and reconstruction to our current financial crisis.
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Food & Nutrition
Eric Schlosser:
Affluent foodies embrace sustainable agriculture, oblivious that ordinary people--especially the poor--don't have a seat at the table.
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Wages & Hours
Eric Schlosser:
Today's relentless arguments against a higher minimum wage suggest that Roosevelt's battle is not yet won.
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Economic Policy
Jim Hightower & Susan DeMarco:
People are wriggling free of the fetters of corporate culture.
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Working Conditions
Eric Schlosser:
Low wages, segregation and dangerous working conditions in a North
Carolina factory reveal a meatpacking industry where labor laws no
longer matter.
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Agriculture
Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Troy Duster, Elizabeth Ransom, Winona LaDuke, Peter Singer, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Eliot Coleman & Jim Hightower:
How do we fix our dysfunctional relationship with food? Alice Waters
leads a forum with Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Peter Singer and
others, who suggest, for starters, that we stop buying factory farm
products, get involved in farm policy and outlaw the marketing of junk
food to kids.
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Civil Rights & Liberties
Jim Hightower:
In the undeclared war against dissent, disagreement has become a crime.
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Issues »
In the very short span of about fifty years, we've allowed our
politicians to do something remarkably stupid: turn America's
food-policy decisions over to corporate lobbyists, lawyers and
economists. These are people who could not run a watermelon stand if we
gave them the melons and had the Highway Patrol flag down the customers
for them--yet, they have taken charge of the decisions that direct
everything from how and where food is grown to what our children eat in
school.
As a result, America's food system (and much of the world's) has been
industrialized, conglomeratized and globalized. This is food we're
talking about, not widgets! Food, by its very nature, is meant to be
agrarian, small-scale and local.
But the Powers That Be have turned the production of our edibles away
from the high art of cooperating with nature into a high-cost system of
always trying to overwhelm nature. They actually torture food--applying
massive doses of pesticides, sex hormones, antibiotics, genetically
manipulated organisms, artificial flavorings and color, chemical
preservatives, ripening gas, irradiation...and so awfully much more. The
attitude of agribusiness is that if brute force isn't working, you're
probably just not using enough of it.
More fundamentally, these short-cut con artists have perverted the very
concept of food. Rather than being both a process and product that
nurtures us (in body and spirit) and nurtures our communities, food is
approached by agribusiness as just another commodity that has no higher
purpose than to fatten corporate profits.
There's our challenge. It's not a particular policy or agency that must
be changed but the most basic attitude of policy-makers. And the only
way we're going to get that done is for you and me to become the
policy-makers, taking charge of every aspect of our food system--from
farm to fork.
The good news is that this "good food" movement is already well under
way and gaining strength every day. It receives little media coverage,
but consumers in practically every city, town and neighborhood across
America are reconnecting with local farmers and artisans to
de-industrialize, de-conglomeratize, de-globalize--de-Wal-Martize--their
food systems.
Of course, the Powers That Be sneer at these efforts, saying they can't
succeed. But, as a friend of mine who is one of the successful pioneers
in this burgeoning movement puts it: "Those who say it can't be done
should not interrupt those who are doing it."
Look around wherever you are and you'll find local farmers, consumers,
chefs, marketers, gardeners, environmentalists, workers, churches,
co-ops, community organizers and just plain folks who are doing it.
These are the Powers That Ought to Be--and I think they will be. Join
them!
About Eric Schlosser
Eric Schlosser is the author of the bestseller
Fast Food Nation: The
Dark Side of the All-American Meal and
Reefer Madness.
more...
About Marion Nestle
Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition, food studies and
public health at New York University, is the author of
Food Politics
(California) and
What to Eat (North Point).
more...
About Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of
California, Berkeley, is the author of
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural
History of Four Meals (Penguin).
more...
About Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry, author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and
essays, has farmed a hillside in his native Henry County, Kentucky, for
forty years. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the
T.S. Eliot Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry and the John Hay
Award of the Orion Society.
more...
About Troy Duster
Troy Duster, director of the Institute for the History of Production of
Knowledge at New York University, holds an appointment as Chancellor's
Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
more...
About Elizabeth Ransom
Elizabeth Ransom is
a sociologist at the University of Richmond whose work focuses on
globalization, food and the changing structure of agriculture.
more...
About Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke directs the White Earth Land Recovery Project and works on
issues of bio-piracy, indigenous rights and renewable energy. Her five
books include, most recently,
Recovering the Sacred (South End), and she
is a two-time Green Party vice-presidential candidate. She lives on the
White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Her parents met when her father
was selling wild rice.
more...
About Peter Singer
Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. His
most recent book, co-authored with Jim Mason, is
The Way We Eat: Why
Our Food Choices Matter.
more...
About Dr. Vandana Shiva
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor and
author. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology, a public interest research organization.
more...
About Carlo Petrini
Carlo Petrini is the founder of the University of Gastronomic Sciences
in Piedmont and Emilia Romagna, Italy. This article was translated from
the Italian by Corby Kummer.
more...
About Eliot Coleman
Eliot Coleman, who has been a farmer for almost forty years, is the
author of
Four Season Harvest and
The New Organic Grower (both Chelsea Green).
more...
About Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower (http://www.jimhightower.com) is a syndicated newspaper
columnist, a radio commentator and the author of six books, including
Thieves in High Places (Plume).
more...