In the richest country in the history of the world, it is a moral failure that millions of Americans go hungry, that children’s diets are ruled by the profit motives of junk food manufacturers, and that small family farms are vanishing, swallowed up by agribusiness conglomerates. It’s high time we stand up and demand a food system that serves the people, not just the profit margins of a select few.
Our current food system – designed to benefit Big Ag – has led to a landscape where unhealthy food is cheaper and more accessible than healthy options, contributing to an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and other health crises. At the same time, too many go hungry while our small farmers struggle, our soil degrades, and our environment suffers.
We need to rebuild a food system that promotes environmental sustainability, supports small and mid-sized farms, and ensures all Americans have access to fresh, nutritious foods.
Big Ag has too much control over what we eat, how it’s grown, and what we pay. This power stifles competition and innovation and must be curtailed. To begin with, we must enforce antitrust laws to break up the giant agribusinesses that dominate the market, and we must prohibit the revolving door between agribusinesses and regulatory agencies, ensuring these bodies serve the public good.
We must also revamp our farm subsidies, shifting away from supporting monoculture and big agribusiness to incentivizing organic and sustainable farming practices. This means investing in regenerative agriculture, which rebuilds soil organic matter and restores degraded soil biodiversity. This is not only good for the environment, it’s also good economics. It’s time to turn the page from an agriculture of depletion to one of regeneration.
Next, we must ensure that every American has access to fresh, locally grown food. This means expanding programs like SNAP and WIC, building more community gardens, and creating food hubs that connect local farmers directly with consumers. And it means we guarantee three nourishing meals a day to all children in public schools. No child should have to sit in class hungry because their family cannot afford to feed them, and no one should have to choose between paying rent and buying healthy food.
Additionally, we need to address the issue of food deserts and swamps in our cities. It’s unacceptable that in many urban areas, the only accessible food options are fast food. We need to open public grocery stores – as is now being prototyped in Chicago – so that every American has access to affordable nutritious food near their home.
Finally, we must ensure that workers throughout the food chain, from farmworkers to restaurant employees, are paid a living wage, work in safe conditions, and have the right to unionize. It is a disgrace that many people who work with food every day cannot afford to feed themselves or their families.
With my aforementioned food policies and many more – from making animal farming humane to giving farmers the Right to Repair their own equipment – the fight for a fair food future is about more than just what we eat. It’s about environmental justice, it’s about economic justice, and it’s about the health of our nation. The time for change is now.
