Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
by Marion Nestle
Mar
29
2012
Resources on the farm bill: Dissenting and otherwise
The spring 2012 issue of Dissent is devoted in part to food politics. It includes my article Utopian Dream: A New Farm Bill.
In this same issue, Sarah Leonard offers Nature as an Ally: An Interview with Wendell Berry.
The legal advocacy group, Public Health Law and Policy, has produced two useful resources on the farm bill:
- Growing Change: A Farm Bill Primer for Communities: This is a basic guide to farm bill provisions related to nutrition and prevention of obesity.
- ‘Complete Eats’ Legislation: The Farm Bill and Food Systems Planning: This article in Planning & Environmental Law (subscription needed for anything past the first page) describes specific policies and programs that affect food system planning at the local level.
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is doing a series on What’s at Stake in the Farm Bill.
Oxfam America has a report and infographic on what the farm bill needs to do about international food aid.
And don’t forget:
- Daniel Imhoff’s, Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill, Watershed Media, 2012: This is the stunningly illustrated second edition of Imhoff’s lucid explanation of the farm bill and the vast number of issues it covers.
