No less an authority than Willie Nelson is writing in the Huffington Post, calling on people to Occupy the Food System. Big Agriculture is just as one-percenty as the banks, says Nelson, with most of the resources concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations — and the government isn't doing anything to help.
Our banks were deemed too big to fail, yet our food system's corporations are even bigger. Their power puts our entire food system at stake. Last year the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Justice (DOJ) acknowledged this, hosting a series of workshops that examined corporate concentration in our farm and food system. Despite the hundreds of thousands of comments from farmers and eaters all over the country, a year later the USDA and DOJ have taken no action to address the issue. Recent decisions in Washington make clear that corporate lobbyists have tremendous power to maintain the status quo.
Efforts to support independent and family farms have been undermined by the Obama administration, which has caved to lobbying pressure from corporate giants, says Nelson.
Willie Nelson's an old hand at these issues — he's been fighting for small family farms since 1985. He's like the Bono of farms. And he thinks Big Food is as material a threat to the country's well-being as any other giant corporation or bank with too much political power.
Nothing is more important than the food we eat and the family farmers who grow it. Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, destruction of our soil, pollution of our water, and health epidemics of obesity and diabetes.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as it were.
