Michael Pollan Cares About the Farm Bill (And You Should Too)
Our favorite Bay Area foodie starchild, and Omnivore’s Dilemma author, Michael Pollan, was at it again last week. He moderated a panel on Wednesday night to discuss the 2007 Farm Bill on the UC Berkeley campus. The Farm Bill-– which gets reviewed about every five years – has been under the spotlight this year.
No longer a little-known piece of farm legislation that would dictate agriculture funding and policy while no one was paying attention. This year, food and farm advocates are pushing hard to publicize the Farm Bill so that the majority of the money isn’t going to big farmers and lobbyists. Instead, they’re trying to gear the money and programs for the Mom and Pop farmer, the fledgling farmers market, the scrawny urban garden, oh yeah, and the grossly obese school child with his school-sponsored chicken nuggets. All the usual neglects.
This is our second Michael Pollan event this month (yup, we’ll admit it), and we brought along some friends to the panel discussion. But this wasn’t really the kind of event to turn the nonbelievers into Michael Pollan groupies like us-- "Pollanized" as several panel speakers joked (a little cult-sounding actually, but we appreciate farmers making puns).
By SFist Jessie
The panel speakers came from all different farm/ food interest groups, including Chef Ann Cooper , who runs the Berkeley School lunch programs with Alice Watters, and Ken Cook who heads up the Environmental Working Group, among others. George Lakoff (author of that Don’t Think of An Elephant! hit) made some remarks at the end, but we had to leave – so if anyone was there, let us know what you thought.
Ann Cooper was all lunch lady-pep, reminding us that the Farm Bill is behind those nasty school lunches. She’s doing some radical stuff (by USDA standards), serving up healthy and natural school lunches in Berkeley as opposed to the usual tater tot- fruit cocktail menu. Yes, maybe she went a little far when she said that the Farm Bill could push our species towards extinction by condoning the current school lunches. But then again, with one third of kids expected to have diabetes by the time they graduate high school, maybe a little melodrama is good.
The so-called ‘Food Fight’ talk almost turned a little ugly toward the end of the discussion when “Talks-A-Lot” George Naylor, president of the National Family Farms Coalition pissed off Ken Cook. We were on the edge of our seats for that brawl, but Michael Pollan calmed everyone down before it got too heated (Oh Michael! It was just getting fun!)
Stay tuned for more as the Farm Bill continues to get publicity. We care about your food and farmers here at SFist. As long as our (ok, small) crush on Michael Pollan continues, we’ll keep bringing you coverage.