Eat the Vote
Author: Stett Holbrook | Published: December 21, 2016
Eating is a political act, so says Michael Pollan, in that it offers three opportunities a day to choose what kind of food system you want, even more if you’re really hungry. That sentiment takes on new significance as a KFC-loving proto-fascist is about to take office in Washington.
As of this writing, Donald Trump has yet to name his nominee for secretary of agriculture, which says something about how much importance he places on the position. There have been a few names bandied about, but I’ll go out on a limb and say whoever gets tapped for the job will be a staunch defender of oil-addicted Big Ag and factory farms and no friend of small, regional farms, the likes of which help define the North Bay and support its rural economy.
While current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has helped increase funding for the organic industry and provided more support for vegetable growers of all types, America’s food industry and the farm bill that drives it is still dominated by fat-cat commodity farmers and the lobbyists and Farm Belt politicians who do their bidding. That’s not about to change, and the gains made by sustainable agriculture in the North Bay and beyond will need more politically motivated eaters than ever.
Michelle Obama’s organic garden on the White House south lawn will be hard to remove because it was recently fortified with cement, stone and steel, but don’t get too attached to it. As a fan of McDonald’s, and with the belly to prove it, Trump will probably not eat much produce from the garden. Replacing the garden (which reportedly produced 2,000 pounds of produce a year for the White House kitchen and local food banks) with an artificial grass putting green would be much more his style.
To be sure, shopping at the farmers market, buying organic lettuce and growing your own food is not going to starve the beast that is Trump. But it’s a good place to start and one of the better-tasting forms of protest available for those who want to defend a host of social, economic and environmental goods produced by an environmentally sound local agriculture.