Food policy should be everyone’s business

Our quadrennial obsession with the Electoral College has now passed, and the election has produced a president-elect with so much—ranging from a war in Iraq to a national economic crisis—on his plate.

While food policy isn’t going to be the main entrée, several writers have recently made persuasive cases that it needs to command much greater attention than in years—in fact, decades—past. As business leaders concerned with sustainability, we need to view federal food policy and the private sector response to it as a serious and pressing matter.

Author Michael Pollan last month argued that the new President should view himself as “Farmer in Chief” and make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of the next administration. He warned, “unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change”—top issues both candidates pledged to address.

Healthcare is expensive, and the cost is growing for many reasons. One of the biggest is the cost of treating preventable chronic diseases including four linked to diet - heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. The overabundance of cheap grain – spurred by government subsidies – has driven down the price of “empty” calories through the food chain, increased average calorie intake by 18 percentover 25 years, and contributed to massive obesity rates. Much of this cost is borne by businesses.

Energy independence is critical, but it will be impossible to achieve without reforming agricultural practices and food distribution networks. No one looking at country-of-origin labels on supermarket produce, meat or seafood should be surprised to learn that the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy except autos—a whopping 19 percent. Do we really need to offer consumers oranges from three continents simultaneously—or are they there simply to make our fossil fuel-powered mega-marts look full?

Mitigating climate change will require more than just acquiring LEED certification for office buildings or increasing fuel efficiency standards for cars. Our food choices, in fact, contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other human-induced activity—incontrovertibly one-third of the total.