Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?

AS tens of thousands of people recently strolled among booths of the nation’s largest organic and natural foods show here, munching on fair-trade chocolate and sipping organic wine, a few dozen pioneers of the industry sneaked off to an out-of-the-way conference room.

Although unit sales of organic food have leveled off and even declined lately, versus a year earlier, the mood among those crowded into the conference room was upbeat as they awaited a private screening of a documentary called “Food Inc.” — a withering critique of agribusiness and industrially produced food.

They also gathered to relish their changing political fortunes, courtesy of the Obama administration.

“This has never been just about business,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, the maker of organic yogurt. “We are here to change the world. We dreamt for decades of having this moment.”

After being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House, which has vowed to encourage a more nutritious and sustainable food supply.

The most vocal booster so far has been the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emphasized the need for fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food and, last week, started work on a White House vegetable garden. More surprising, perhaps, are the pronouncements out of the Department of Agriculture, an agency with long and close ties to agribusiness.

In mid-February, Tom Vilsack, the new secretary of agriculture, took a jackhammer to a patch of pavement outside his headquarters to create his own organic “people’s garden.” Two weeks later, the Obama administration named Kathleen Merrigan, an assistant professor at Tufts University and a longtime champion of sustainable agriculture and healthy food, as Mr. Vilsack’s top deputy.

Read more . . .

Related articles

• What’s Obama Doing For the Food Industry? (laist.com)
• Kathleen Merrigan, organic foods expert, tapped for No. 2 agriculture slot (sciam.com)
• Score One For Sustainable Agriculture: Obama to Nominate Kathleen Merrigan to be Deputy Secretary of USDA (treehugger.com)
• A Sustainable Undersecretary of Agriculture for Obama? Hungry For Change (takepart.com)
• The Stonyfield Farm Story – Gary Hirshberg (myventurepad.com)
• The First Lady’s Food Agenda (chefann.com)

Random Posts:

• Catch of the Freezer
• Biogas Climate Benefit Greater Than Previously Thought?
• Peer-to-peer Networking Takes Internet Out Of The Equation
• Predictive Powers: A Robot That Reads Your Intention?
• What Do Venture Capitalists Know?

Related posts:

1. Food Revolution That Starts With Rice
2. False fears threaten food supplies
3. Industrial Farming is Giving us Less Nutritious Food
4. Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms
5. Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food

Tags: food inc, food revolution, Innovation, michelle obama, organic wine, secretary of agriculture, sustainable agriculture, sustainable food supply, vegetable garden

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Innovation, NY Times, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.