Why did the issue of agricultural reform slide off the national stage . . .?
The ultimate answer . . . hinges on the misguided categories . . . agricultural reformers have long used: . . . organic/conventional, . . . GMO/non-GMO, family farm/industrial farm, local/non-local, . . . [have] . . . outcomes that. . . have started to render food reform unpalatable to most political actors.
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. . . . [P]rogressive politicians have backed off . . . political reform for agriculture: It might require confronting these myths — organic is healthy and pure and always a better option than conventional — with. . . scrutiny that could be detrimental to progressive-minded farmers who benefit from the confusion (and vote Democrat). It would. . . alienate the base. . . .
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If there is . . . any hope of bringing agriculture back to the plate of national politics, we need to move beyond the dichotomies that frame our current debates. . . . A starting point might be to shift our thinking away from how food is produced to . . . What is it that we’re even producing? . . . What if we . . . focused on nutritional rather than caloric density? A simple idea. . . with profound political implications, perhaps profound enough to work its way back to the political stage . . .
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: The Politics of Food Reform Has Disappeared From the Democratic Agenda
