Willie Nelson - Why We Must Occupy Our Food Supply

[Tony Gosling]

"Our food is under threat. It is felt by every 
family farmer who has lost their land and 
livelihood, every parent who can't find 
affordable or healthy ingredients in their 
neighborhood, every person worried about 
foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened 
food safety laws, every farmworker who faces 
toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work."

Willie Nelson | Why We Must Occupy Our Food Supply
Posted by Vincent L. Guarisco on February 24, 2012 at 2:19pm
http://12160.info/profiles/blogs/willie-nelson-why-we-must-occupy-our-food-supply

Emacs!

Willie Nelson performs in North Carolina, 06/16/11. (photo: Getty Images)


Why We Must Occupy Our Food Supply

By Willie Nelson and Anna Lappe, Reader Supported News

24 February 12

  Our food is under threat. It is felt by every 
family farmer who has lost their land and 
livelihood, every parent who can't find 
affordable or healthy ingredients in their 
neighborhood, every person worried about 
foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened 
food safety laws, every farmworker who faces 
toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work.

When our food is at risk we are all at risk.

Over the last thirty years, we have witnessed a 
massive consolidation of our food system. Never 
have so few corporations been responsible for 
more of our food chain. Of the 40,000 food items 
in a typical U.S. grocery store, more than half 
are now brought to us by just 10 corporations. 
Today, three companies process more than 70 
percent of all U.S. beef, Tyson, Cargill and JBS. 
More than 90 percent of soybean seeds and 80 
percent of corn seeds used in the United States 
are sold by just one company: Monsanto. Four 
companies are responsible for up to 90 percent of 
the global trade in grain. And one in four food dollars is spent at Walmart.

What does this matter for those of us who eat? 
Corporate control of our food system has led to 
the loss of millions of family farmers, the 
destruction of soil fertility, the pollution of 
our water, and health epidemics including type 2 
diabetes, heart disease, and even certain forms 
of cancer. More and more, the choices that 
determine the food on our shelves are made by 
corporations concerned less with protecting our 
health, our environment, or our jobs than with 
profit margins and executive bonuses.

This consolidation also fuels the influence of 
concentrated economic power in politics: Last 
year alone, the biggest food companies spent tens 
of millions lobbying on Capitol Hill with more 
than $37 million used in the fight against junk 
food marketing guidelines for kids.

On a global scale, the consolidation of our food 
system has meant devastation for farmers, forests 
and the climate. Take the controversial food 
additive palm oil. In the past decade, palm oil 
has become the most widely traded vegetable oil 
in the world and is now found in half of all 
packaged goods on U.S. grocery store shelves. But 
the large-scale production of palm oil - driven 
by agribusiness demand for the relatively cheap 
ingredient - has come at a cost: palm oil 
plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are razing 
rainforests, releasing massive quantities of 
greenhouse gases and displacing Indigenous communities.

 From the global to the local, nothing is more 
personal than this threat to our food. And 
nothing more inspiring than the movement that is 
fighting back. On Monday February 27, tens of 
thousands of people - including farmers and food 
workers, parents and students, urban gardeners 
and chefs - will participate in a Global Day of 
Action to Occupy our Food Supply.

Occupy our Food Supply is a day to both resist 
Big Food and highlight sustainable solutions that 
work for all of us. On February 27, more than 
60Occupy groups as well as environmental and 
corporate accountability organizations are 
joining together. From Brazil, Hungary, Ireland, 
Argentina, the United States and beyond, people 
will be reclaiming unused bank-owned lots to 
create community gardens; hosting seed exchanges 
in front of stock exchanges; labeling products on 
grocery store shelves that contain genetically 
engineered ingredients; building community 
alliances to support locally owned grocery stores 
and resist Walmart megastores; and fighting back 
against industrial giants Monsanto and Cargill.

The call to Occupy our Food Supply, facilitated 
by Rainforest Action Network, is being echoed by 
prominent thought leaders, authors, farmers and 
activists including the Indian environmentalist 
Vandana Shiva, Food Inc.'s Robert Kenner, and 
authors Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, Gary Paul 
Nabhan, and Marion Nestle, among others.

As Michael Ableman, farmer, author, and founder 
of the Center for Urban Agriculture puts it: "We 
need to focus on what we are for as much as what 
we are against; occupying our land, our soils 
with life and fertility, our communities with 
good food. We need to work to rebuild the real 
economy, the one based on seeds and sunlight and 
individuals and communities growing together."

If you eat food, grow food, love food, join us to Occupy our Food Supply.

Anna Lappé is author of Diet for a Hot Planet: 
The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork 
(Bloomsbury USA) and a board member of Rainforest 
Action Network. Willie Nelson is founder and president of Farm Aid. 
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