NRDC honors sustainable food movementBy Steven T. Jones
Even though I tweaked them at the end of my bike story this week, the Natural Resources Defense Council should be commended for recognizing the importance of pushing for a sustainable food system, which it did on Saturday night at the Academy of Science with its first-ever Growing Green Awards.
Journalist and awards chair Michael Pollan has been the food movement’s idea guy and de facto leader, a role he’s not entirely comfortable with. “There’s no question I’m an advocate as a journalist,” the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and other important works told me. “But the difference is as a movement leader, you speak for the movement, and I need to continue to speak for myself….As a journalist, your first obligation is to your readers.”
To illustration the conflict, he noted that he was disappointed in President Barack Obama’s choice of Tom Vilsack for agriculture secretary. A movement leader mindful of access and relationships might have held his tongue, but Pollan said he wrote, “It looks like agribusiness as usual.”
Yet Pollan said he was happy to see Vilsack tap Kathleen Merrigan, a true food movement leader, for the number two spot. While there’s been lots of talk of reform and improvements to the food system, achieving that means challenging agribusiness. Pollan noted the danger of corporations co-opting eco-chic ideas: “I’m really concerned when Monsanto starts using the word ‘sustainability.’”
As Pollan and the award winners that night said, there is a need to show that the shortcomings in our food system – from monocultures to over-reliance on fossil fuels to super-polluting factory farms – are connected to a wide range of other important issues, from energy to public health.
Jamie Harvie, founder of Health Care Without Harm, notes that the medical establishment is united to opposing the extensive use of antibiotics in agricultural, which are used to fend of animal infections caused by overcrowded and intensive conditions. “Health care has an interest in sustainable food production,” said Harvie, who has been working to educate officials and the public about the connection, particularly as the Obama administration seeks to lower health care costs. “Then we can change the whole dynamic.”
Other winners include advocates for sustainable agriculture, farmers, a catering company that uses only local and sustainable food, and Ann Cooper, the departing director of nutrition services in Berkeley Unified School District.
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