We’re delighted to see that food politics and the movement away from industrialized agriculture has become quite the hot topic lately. It’s true that this important cause has had a small group of dedicated followers in our country for decades, but over the past few years the number of people who have jumped onto the sustainable food train has increased dramatically.
The recent revitalization of this movement is due in large part to the work of UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food), and we at Drishti are strong supporters of Mr. Pollan and his food ideology! We also found this thought which we recently read quite intriguing: because every single one of us makes a conscious decision about what we eat on a daily basis, food politics is an issue to which we are all personally connected. This is one compelling reason that the sustainable food movement has the potential to become very powerful in the not-too-distant future.
Over the past month or so, we’ve come across several compelling food-related articles in the media, and we thought you might find some of them interesting:
1) Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article entitled “Many Summer Internships Are Going Organic“. This interesting piece is about “a new wave of liberal arts students who are heading to farms as interns this summer, in search of both work, even if it might pay next to nothing, and social change.”
2) The NRDC started a great interactive web page titled “Eat Local” which produces for you a full report of all produce which is currently in-season in your area – simply input your state and the current season, and voila!
3) The Food & Water Watch website launched a fun and informative tool called “The Global Grocer: Where is Your Produce From?” which simulates a grocery store-shopping experience (complete with sound effects!) and provides pertinent ‘food miles’ information for each item that you add to your ‘cart’.
4) Here’s an informative graphic created by the New York Times which details the locations of organic farms vs. conventional farms throughout the U.S.
5) This is a piece from The Huffington Post which reminds us that making the “right” food-buying decisions is not always as simple as choosing “organic” over “conventional”.
6) And lastly, we heard this fascinating piece on NPR about a “Cancer Train” that runs in the Punjab state of India and its connection to pesticide-using farms in the region. The train has been given its eerie name because an inordinate percentage of its regular passengers are cancer patients. From the piece:
People say they never used to see so many cancer patients in this farm region. Cancer was considered an urban disease, suffered by people who lived in cities choked with industry and pollution.
But research by one of the most respected medical institutes in India recently found that farming villages using large amounts of pesticides have significantly higher rates of cancer than villages that use less of the chemicals.
Awesome post Drishti! Food lovers everywhere thank you …. I speak for them