The future of our food system is at a critical juncture, says Arty Mangan, Food and Farming Program Director for Bioneers. “The industrial agriculture industry says that they want to feed the world, but at what cost?”
The cost Mangan is referring to is the system of subsidies that eliminates crop diversity, cost structures that force out small farmers, international trade agreements that favor free flow of grain over local food security, and farming methods that favor profit over food safety or environmental health.
“The system has been rewarding the wrong thing,” Mangan concludes.
One of the main methods being used to transform our food system is localization. The power of localization becomes clear when discussing the “multiplier effect.” If a dollar is spent at a chain store to buy imported produce, only about ten cents ends up in the local community. In contrast, if a dollar is spent at a local market buying locally produced food, that dollar ends up generating over $5 in local benefits.
After allowing my 13 year old daughter Hannah to sit on the couch
all summer and watch TV, while surfing the net for days on end, my
guilt that nothing worthwhile was filling that pretty little head of
hers was mounting. I started looking for things to do in this
wonderful town of ours. I definitely wanted to go to the Lautner
exhibit at the Armand Hammer Museum and Hannah saw a picture of one of
his houses and was actually interested too, but then I saw something on
Daily Candy talking about an event at the Santa Monica Library and
thought “Aha! This’ll be the thing I do. This’ll be the antidote to all
those episodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I was going to take
Hannah to a symposium on Food and Climate Change.”
Around 6 years ago, our family took a trip to France. Our friends
have a house in Ramtuelle, a Medieval city built in a circle
overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean. Honest, it does sparkle. We
frolicked on Pamelonne Beach, made famous by the production company
filming And God Created Woman with Brigitte Bardot and we ate at Club
Cinquante Cinque (55). 
FOOD HUGGERS
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