Letter to the President on Food Policy...

I am becoming increasingly interested in the web of food-agriculture-health-climate change policy, and found Michael Pollan's interview on NPR's Fresh Air to be quite enlightening. The original source of this interview is an open letter to the next president authored by Pollan, which appeared in the NYT magazine earlier this month.

Our agenda puts the interests of America’s farmers, families and communities ahead of the fast-food industry’s. For that industry and its apologists to imply that it is somehow more “populist” or egalitarian to hand our food dollars to Burger King or General Mills than to support a struggling local farmer is absurd. Yes, sun food costs more, but the reasons why it does only undercut the charge of elitism: cheap food is only cheap because of government handouts and regulatory indulgence (both of which we will end), not to mention the exploitation of workers, animals and the environment on which its putative “economies” depend. Cheap food is food dishonestly priced — it is in fact unconscionably expensive.

It is time to stop accepting the premise that food grown sustainably using the sun's power is more expensive. It is imperative that the negative externalities and implicit subsidies be considered when evaluating the true cost of this "food."

Lots more interesting stuff from Pollan can be found on his site. I would strongly recommend both The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I love the title for In Defense of Food, as it echoes one of the best books ever written, Crick's In Defence of Politics...