Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture

Sign on to the Roots of Change
Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture
http://fooddeclaration.org/

We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.

Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation. Individuals, producers, and organizations have a duty to create regional systems that can provide healthy food for their communities. We all have a duty to respect and honor the laborers of the land without whom we could not survive. The changes we call for here have begun, but the time has come to accelerate the transformation of our food and agriculture and make its benefits available to all.

We believe that the following twelve principles should frame food and agriculture policy, to ensure that it will contribute to the health and wealth of the nation and the world. A healthy food and agriculture policy:
1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.
2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.
3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.
4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.
5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.
6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.
7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.
8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.
9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.
10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.
11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.
12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.
Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic lines. We pledge our votes, our purchases, our creativity, and our energies to this urgent cause.

The Declaration is meant to provide

1. A clear statement of what kind of policy is needed now, endorsed by a broad base of organizations and individuals with a long-established commitment to a healthier food and agriculture.
2. An invitation to all Americans to join in the improvement effort by taking action in their own lives and communities and by offering them a way to call on policymakers to support comprehensive change.
3. A set of principles from which policy makers can craft policy that will lead to a healthier system.

Four specific problems to overcome
1. Current policy is mired in a 20th century industrial paradigm, where the primary goals are limited to production volume, efficiency of feeding, and ensured profits for commodity producers and those they supply, thereby, benefiting too few.
2. People, ecosystems, and rural economies are becoming less healthy as a direct result of current American policy.
3. The efforts to solve food and agriculture challenges are not being addressed to the degree required by the scale of the problems.
4. The last farm bill cycle confirmed that too few control the debate and they are focused on protecting the status quo rather than aiding the broader population of the nation.

Solution: A new overarching rationale for food and farm policy

A clear and concise picture of an alternative paradigm that will be better for the entire nation is needed. The last several farm policy cycles indicate that if reformers seek success, 2008 is the time to begin preparing for the next one.
The purpose of US food and agriculture policy must emerge from a set of holistic principles that compel masses of Americans to take a stand by changing their own food related activities and by declaring to the Congress that the nation wants more change.
Health is the key concept. A new framework must support improvements in community and individual health, which are both linked to health of the natural environment and the economic strength of rural communities.
A new purpose and guiding principles for policy must lead to a new set of federal programs that benefit national health not merely those who provide cheap calories.