And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m voting Obama!

I decided years ago that, though I care about many issues, I had to focus on just a few when really educating myself. You know, reading studies, paying attention to policy here and abroad, just generally being wonky. I picked education and the environment, because really, without those two, you have no future.

I’ve since added one. Or rather, become super-wonky in one subspecialty: Food. 

Not just how to cook it. I’ve started really deeply immersing myself in nutrition, in agriculture, in studing foodways and foodchains and how that porkchop on your plate got there. I’ve discovered some really terrifying and fascinating stuff. Our entire agricultural world is built on a fragile infrastructure of on-demand shipping, cheap oil, tragicaly huge monocultures, extraordinary use of pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers, and it’s deeply deeply unhealthy. Not to metnion vulnerable to attack from a thousand deliberate or accidental vectors.

Food has become, in many ways, I think, one of the central issues of our time. 

Read Omnivore’s Delimna. Seriously. If you think and eat, you need to read this book.

Anyway, during the primaries, with not a lot to choose between the two (policy-wize), I picked Obama over Hilary because he’s at least mentioned food policy. And now Michael Pollan has written a brilliant and important article outlining an ambitious and vitally necessary food policy for the next president. (Someone please ask this man to be an advisor! Please, please, please, put Michael Pollan in charge of our food!) 

And Obama actually READ THE ARTICLE. And COMMENTED ON IT!

Praise the Lord and pass the (locally grown, heirloom, organic) potatoes!

~ by jamanda on October 31, 2008.