Food Revolution

This article, by Michael Pollan, is a plea to the Obama administration to reform, revolutionize the food system. I also just read this NYTimes article, which discusses that now is probably a good time to prepare for a food revolution.

I don't see a food revolution happening any time soon, the earliest maybe if Obama gets re-elected, then in his 2nd term. And for optimization and maturation of these new, revolutionary food policies, that would probably take another 10 years. The world's livestock alone contributes 18% of all greenhouse gases, and one pound of feedlot beef needs 5,000 gallons of water to produce. Anyway, the amount of environmental damage is pretty filthy. His article talks about some practical solutions to the problem. He points out that government policy is what created this mess, and so government policy is what can clean it up. Additionally, Obama has already started tapping into his power of example. He's hired his Chicago chef,Sam Kass, to work alongside the Bush chef, Cristeta Comerford. Sam Kass apparently is into healthy eating and local, organic food (Comerford also likes orgainc). And Michelle Obama has planted a vegetable garden at the White House. These are all very promising signs; good thing there is the food lobby to be in their faces promoting this stuff.

One of the ambitious ideas Pollan suggests is to have a 2nd barcode for grocery store items, which when scanned can tell you about where the product is from, how it was produced (like if they used pesticides or fertilizers, or compost from the community, etc), what sort of processing it has gone through, and if it's an animal product, then you can see how the animal was treated and exactly where or maybe even how it was slaughtered (so you can be aware of whether or not you're purchasing a product from a factory farm or a polyculture/sustainable farm). Sounds impossible almost, given the complicated food networks that we've built up. Pollan calls for regional food networks, or decentralizing the system. So that we don't have to depend on gasoline to truck produce from far away to where we are. Anyway, it's all in his article.