The Deep Dish

What are the biggest challenges for the food system you've seen this last year?

I think that this last year, these last two years basically, have kind of blown the lid off much of what we had previously lived with as the food system. From food insecurity to service issues to just the gamut . . . have all kind of been upended, exposed, and hopefully it’s all being reshuffled. It has just been an incredible time to live through and it has called into question so much.

As you look ahead to 2022 and beyond, do you see potential solutions that we might work toward or things that give you hope?

When I received the James Beard lifetime achievement award, in the acceptance speech I said, “It's as though Mother Nature has given us a cosmic time out and said, ‘Go to your room and think about it.’” And in our thinking about it, I do hope that we will begin to come up with new suggestions and thoughts, and alternate ways of being and doing. 

And lot of those things are already in the works. We’ve seen seismic shifts over the last 18 months—shifts that have upended systems that have been around for certainly decades and possibly centuries. Just in that brief space, so much has been called into question and brought into scrutiny. And I think what we're getting out of it is change in what I hope is a real way and not just lip service. 

“High on the Hog,” the Netflix series based on your book, was recently renewed for a second season. Do you think there is a new space being made for the Black experience in food, including in food media?

I think that is happening. There are so many new outlets and new possibilities, new ways of looking at things. There are new people looking at things, and when there are new people, there are new eyes, and when there are new eyes, there are new points of view. Hopefully it's not a blip on the screen. And, while I certainly know that they are not fast enough for some people, changes are seemingly occurring. Now, the question becomes: Is it a fad or is it permanent? And I don't know. Nothing will tell us that but time.

 Looking back on 2021, what do you see as significant challenges that need to be addressed in 2022?

The challenges we’re facing in 2022 are, at their root, the same that we’ve faced since the founding of the U.S. food system: 1. the mentality that puts profits over people and the planet, and 2. white supremacy and the historical and current legacy of racism. 

As climate chaos continues to accelerate, we’ll see more false solutions put forward by big corporations that are trying to maintain their power and profit: market solutions like alt-meat, which are themselves doing nothing to end the greenhouse gas pollution caused by CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and that maintain a corporate stranglehold over the industry, and policies like carbon offsets that allow corporations to continue business as usual.

People are overwhelmed and tired, and when that happens, it’s easy for them to get complacent. COVID-19 and the 2020 uprising brought some of the ways that our food system exploits working people and people of color into sharp focus. In 2022, more than ever, we’ll need sustained effort to make real changes in the fight for safe and dignified working conditions and for decentralized food systems that enable Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color to thrive.

There’s also a big and important election in 2022, and many parts of the country will see a resurgence of blatant white supremacy and corporate control. If you were paying attention in 2021, you know that Stephen Miller and his cronies have been using the courts—which they’ve stacked over the last few decades—to stop BIPOC farmers from receiving the debt relief they were promised by all levels of the current federal government. They’ll be using this election cycle to further erode any hope of a liberated future, and we’ll need to go all out to ensure that policymakers who are truly accountable to people can take office. 

What solutions, policies, or practices have you seen implemented or proposed that could make a positive difference?

Investment in these grassroots power-building efforts will make the difference—making sure that frontline folks have the resources to lead the solutions needed for their own communities. When people are able to create these solutions, it offers pathways for policy solutions like a few that we’ve seen drafted this last year. The Justice for Black Farmers Act and the Protecting America’s Meatworkers Act are just two examples of new legislation that lay a framework for the kinds of changes we seek. Getting frontline folks into positions where they can hold power, write policies, and ensure that institutions are working for them—whether that’s the USDA’s new equity commission or local, city-level commissions, or into conversations with key staff at congressional offices—can make a huge difference.

There are so many examples of work that HEAL members are doing that inspires me. Organizations like Rural Community Workers Alliance, Public Justice, and Venceremos have come together across geography and used a range of tactics, from walkouts to lawsuits to policy advocacy, to fight for worker protections. Farmer groups like La Semilla and Cooperativa Agricultura in New Mexico and Operation Spring Plant in North Carolina have been growing and distributing food in their communities. They’ve shown that when a crisis hits, communities can and will support each other. 

We’re also organizing with the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, Black Farmer Fund, Minnow Project, and other groups to grow the pool of resources to invest in BIPOC leadership. This builds on the work of the open letter that we jointly published in 2020 calling out philanthropy—and it’s going to continue to grow. We also worked with allies like Land Stewardship Project, which have organized white farmers to speak out in support of debt relief for BIPOC producers.

What else should we keep in mind for 2022?

It’s going to take all of us—and the diverse resources, relationships, skills, and expertise that each of us have—to make the scale of change that we need. Folks can’t keep expecting that there is some individual figurehead who will wave a magic wand or say a few key words to solve the interrelated problems of food insecurity, biodiversity loss, and inhumane immigration policies that are all symptoms of a food system premised on capitalism and white supremacy.

None of us will survive unless we understand that our struggles are interlinked. We know that we can’t buy our way or eat our way out of white supremacy, capitalism, and climate chaos. But we can organize by investing in our relationships with each other; by listening, learning, and taking action in solidarity. And by moving resources to the frontlines and building collective power, we can create a future where we can all thrive. 

What do you see right now as the most significant challenges for your work?

The big challenge for workers right now is the labor shortage in all [meat] processing plants. Workers are seeing huge absenteeism, and the plants are not slowing down production. Workers are now exposed to more injuries and accidents than before the pandemic. Some companies, like Tyson [which mandated vaccines early on], feel like they've done enough to protect workers, but it's really not enough. Last year, a lot of workers got sick with COVID, and many died. But the conditions are worse this year. It’s been devastating for workers, and they are drained physically, emotionally, and psychologically. There is a lot of desperation and not as much leverage to change conditions. 

Given all of that, what are your priorities for 2022?

We will continue helping workers to organize because it's just shocking that after 20 years, we still don't have protections for essential workers. That there is still a debate about what OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] should do. Right now, there are some workers organizing in some plants. It has been very effective to really empower workers, and do direct actions like petitions and strikes. 

Given all that you've done in the last several years to shine a spotlight on these efforts, is there any kind of hope on the horizon? 

The pandemic has shown the horrible conditions that [meat processing] workers have long endured. I've been organizing for seven years, and despite the situation, what I see is more workers willing to speak up and to not stay silent as before, even though Tyson has a strong influence in many towns, and workers are still fearful they won’t have community support. I see hope in that, because if workers are afraid, they won’t share their stories and people are not going to know what's happening inside the plants. We are not going back to the shadows where nobody wanted to talk about the working conditions, and there is still a lot of work to do. And it's been challenging for us to reach people because of the pandemic, but there is an opportunity to build on this movement.

What do you wish more people understood about your work?

The biggest challenge is that people misunderstand the difference between charity and justice. They often think that through charity, they can fix things, but charity is just a band-aid on the problem. And even though workers do need charity right now—that’s because there is no justice. They want livable wages, they want dignity, so they don't have to expose themselves to injuries for life. There are a lot of disabled immigrants in my community who are unable to find jobs because of the injuries they suffered working in processing plants. These people have voices, but nobody wants to hear them. It's important for people to understand that people need community support and to be uplifted. 

You recently appeared on “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” Is there more opportunity now in the mainstream media to help lift up those worker voices than there has been in the past?

The media has been paying more attention to our organizing for the past 20 months. And that certainly has helped to lift up workers’ voices, because at the end of the day, these companies work so hard to silence them, and they've been effective. That is a huge change, because companies now have to be held accountable for the atrocities they have been doing to these vulnerable workers who are mostly immigrants and people of color—and who have been working nonstop to feed the nation. 

In your testimony to the Senate Agriculture Committee, you described a “true national nutrition crisis.” What do you see as the biggest factors contributing to that crisis?

Our food system has dramatically changed over 40 years, and it's changed in broad ways, from how we grow our food, to how we process it, to how we sell and market and eat it. And those changes together are contributing to a tidal wave of obesity and diet-related illnesses. So, it's critical that we act upon the drivers of that crisis that we already know and then expand our science to figure out the ones that we don't understand yet.

What are the big gaps you see from a research perspective?

I would say maybe we know 40 percent of what we need to know about the heart and 25 percent of what we know about diabetes. Every nation in the world has growing [rates of] obesity, and we don't really understand the drivers of it. [We don’t understand] why we are actually getting more obese. There is also huge disagreement about the best diet for turning this around—a low-fat diet, a low-carb diet, the Paleo diet. Some people say we have to eat natural food. Some people believe it's all pesticides and additives and we have to eat “clean” food. There's no consensus. 

Finally, we don't understand the thousands of things that are in our food. There's evidence that cocoa and green tea might be good for us, but why? How do nutrition and the microbiome impact autism? What about fertility, or brain health? We don't even understand those conditions. It doesn't mean we're paralyzed and we shouldn't take any actions; but there's a lot we don't understand.

What do you think of the efforts taken by the current administration and Congress on food and nutrition policy so far? What is working, and what needs work?

The administration and Congress should be congratulated for addressing acute food insecurity. There have been huge, successful efforts to combat food insecurity through expanding SNAP, emergency waivers for schools, Pandemic EBT, and many other programs. On the flipside, there has been very little done to address nutrition insecurity. If we're going to get calories to people without working on the nutritional quality of the food, we've only solved half the problem.

You’ve called for a national nutrition strategy and a White House conference on nutrition, both as part of a bigger federal government effort. Why do you think these efforts will be effective?

The Government Accountability Office report that came out in September highlighted the challenge and the solution. It identified 200 different federal efforts fragmented across 21 agencies that are aiming to address nutrition. They're not harmonized, and there is not a strategy to bring them together, so they haven't been effective. They said very clearly that diet-related diseases are deadly, costly, and preventable and that we need an actual federal plan. If we don't have a plan, we're not going to fix the problem.

The last time the federal government sat down and looked at our food and nutrition landscape was in 1969 at the White House Conference [on Food, Nutrition, and Health]. That led to some major changes in our food policy and programming. So, 53 years later, we need to do that again. 

Are there any policy initiatives going into 2022 that you think could make a real difference?

There is interest in a White House conference on hunger and health; both the House and the Senate have had bipartisan bills that have proposed it. Secretary Vilsack has said he supports it. If that happens, it has to be accompanied by a commitment from the White House and Congress to actually implement the recommended policy. And I think that could be really positive. 

I think that there are at least some members in Congress who understand the principle of “food as medicine,” the fact that the biggest single missing thing in our healthcare system is addressing food, and that there are effective ways to do that, whether it's produce prescription programs or medically tailored meals. 

Nutrition science also has to be advanced. We’re on the cusp of incredible new discoveries and starting to understand nutrition, and if we can accelerate that with stronger science it would be very important. USDA has a pretty big science budget, and if they’re able to shift and ensure that their science focuses on not just agricultural production but on the nexus between production, human health, and sustainability, that would be a big advance. NIH has started to respond to calls for more nutrition science research. They've launched a precision nutrition initiative. They've created a new office of nutrition research in the office of the director. Those are small changes, but they are changes, so I'm hopeful. And on a more practical political level, there's the Child Nutrition Reauthorization and the farm bill that have to happen, and so there are opportunities there.

As we prepare to enter a new year, are there any policy measures that you believe need more attention? 

My first priority is to start regulating food industry efforts to get people to eat junk food or what we are now calling ultra-processed foods. These are the heavily processed products—what Michael Pollan called “food-like objects”—that don’t look anything like real foods. 

To do this, we have to keep food companies out of public policy and public health decision-making. The prevalence of obesity increased rapidly starting in the early 1980s. Since then, any time the government has attempted to regulate the food industry or make unambiguous recommendations about what people should and should not eat, the food industry would block those attempts, weigh in, and the advice came out in euphemisms. 

Dietary guidelines use euphemisms; they talk about nutrients (salt, sugar, saturated fat) instead of the junk foods that contain them. I want guidelines to say what they mean: Avoid or minimize intake of ultra-processed foods. We now have hundreds of studies showing a link between frequent consumption of ultra-processed foods and being overweight, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, even overall mortality. A well-controlled clinical trial done by a first-rate investigator at National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows that feeding people a diet based mainly on ultra-processed foods makes them eat more calories—500 more a day—without realizing it. Let’s do a big public health campaign against ultra-processed foods that teaches people what they are, how to recognize them, and why they should be eaten in smaller amounts. I think that would make a big difference. 

As Michael Moss's work shows, these foods are addictive or semi-addictive. People really love them and “can't eat just one.” Dietary guidelines should make that clear. And no question, we need to stop companies from marketing these products to kids. For this, food and beverage companies have no business being at the table when public health recommendations are addressed. 

What are you feeling optimistic about? 

Students! I get to teach young people who get these issues, care about food, and want to use food to change the world. They want food systems that are healthier for people and the planet. They understand food inequities and want to redress them. They totally get what’s not working about our current economic systems and want to use food to fix those problems. The future is theirs and I want to do all I can to cheer them on. 

What do you see as our most significant challenges in the food system? What will make a positive difference?

The pandemic continues to be at the forefront of challenges nearly every sector is facing, and the agricultural sector specifically has faced enormous hurdles over the past two years. This is evident in millions of Americans’ daily lives—supply chain issues are straining the food system and making everything more expensive. All the pandemic-related challenges coincide with the impacts of the climate crisis, which is already affecting Maine. 

These are some of many reasons we must pass the Build Back Better Act, which demands climate action. The bill would invest over $27 billion in climate-smart agricultural conservation initiatives, the largest investment in conservation since the Dust Bowl. As a member of the House Agriculture Committee and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, my focus in 2022 and beyond will be on working closely with the USDA to implement the Build Back Better Act and ensure the agriculture research, conservation, and forestry investments have the biggest possible impact for climate change.

You've connected a number of important dots in your proposed Agricultural Resilience Act. Are there other aspects of the farm bill negotiation process that you have your eyes on as it starts back up? 

Being part of the congressional delegation that traveled with Speaker Pelosi to Glasgow for COP26 made me take stock of what we as Americans and members of Congress can do right now to stem the effects of climate change. Passing climate- and ag-focused legislation is at the top of the list. Ideas from the Agriculture Resilience Act have already passed the House in appropriations bills and the Build Back Better Act, and I’m hopeful we can count on the Senate to act so they can soon become law. After that, there is still a long list of investments, policies, and programs from my bill that Congress should consider as we start work on the 2023 Farm Bill.

What gives you hope about the food system for the year ahead?

There are always reasons to be hopeful. Without hope, we wouldn’t fight for what we believe in. Between the challenges of the pandemic and the extreme weather faced by our farmers and the nation, the understanding of the challenges we are facing has reached far beyond just policy makers into all corners of our nation. Far more people—of all political beliefs—understand that we need to act with urgency, and we need to take bold action. These are the conditions we need to move forward making the investments and policy changes we desperately need, and our bipartisan effort to pass the historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act last month is proof that it’s possible to work together and get things done for the American people, our society, and our environment.

Looking back on 2021, what were the most significant challenges that need to be addressed in 2022? 

An ongoing challenge is the problem of language, and how food justice, food access, and food sovereignty get collapsed into the same thing when they all have different political demands and policy implications. One of the biggest challenges is for us to get very, very clear about what they mean and what's at stake for each of these kinds of approaches for thinking about food. 

The biggest challenge we're going to see for a long time is how do we decouple questions of food access from solutions that almost always focus on adding a new supermarket or grocery store. As long as our food system hinges on large corporations in that way, we're going to always have concerns about food access and inequality, because there's no way to do this altruistic work of everyone-deserves-to-eat through companies whose bottom line is to make a profit. 

There's also so much more work we need to do around understanding what sovereignty means in the U.S. context. We need to consider questions of Indigenous sovereignty, while thinking about whether sovereignty applies to other groups as well. Land and land policy are at the center of questions around sovereignty, and one other thing we might think about in a classic Marxian sense is who's controlling the means of production, who's setting wages, who is determining what is grown, when, where, and why.

What solutions, policies, or practices do you think could make a positive difference?

One practice is that we can always build relationships and coalitions across difference. I have a colleague at the University of Texas who does Indigenous food studies and food sovereignty work. We meet and we talk about sticky things like: What does land ownership mean? When the Justice for Black Farmers Act was released, we spent a lot of time talking about it in relation to Indigenous sovereignty in the U.S. What I love about this practice of working with her is that it's not based on us agreeing on everything. I get to learn a lot from her, and I hope she learns a lot from me. 

Most of us get overwhelmed when we think about all the big problems we’re facing, like hunger and climate disaster. I'm not suggesting that people bury their heads in the sand, but I do think there's something much more manageable for most of us if we start where we are and think at a very local level. You might be able to engage in mutual aid on a local level, or you might be able to work with a local farm or garden. It’s not going to solve big problems, but it might give you some sense of hope. 

Where do you see progress taking place? Is there anyone you look to for inspiration? 

I have been really impressed with the Buffalo Food Equity Network in Buffalo, New York. It's trying to bring together stakeholders from different kinds of institutions—across class, racial and ethnic groups—to think about how they want to transform their food system. 

I'm always shouting out the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. It's my Northern Star on most days for not only meeting people's basic needs but also for trying to transform systems. They work really hard to think through questions of land and infrastructure for Black farmers, both urban and rural. These are questions like: How do we make sure people have what they need? How do we link landless farmers with people who have land? 

The classroom has also been a source of inspiration and hope. Whenever I think the world is gonna fall completely apart, I [encounter] students who are so much smarter than I was when I was 18. They’re more aware of things that are happening in the world. They're bold, they're brave, and that's the mark of people who know we have everything to lose.

What else gives you hope right now?

There are questions around food justice and food access that have migrated to the mainstream in ways that I think could be productive. Even just the fact that so many people are now familiar with the “food justice” term can be something we leverage in real, transformative work. 

Mutual aid has kept me really hopeful. If we're doing it right, mutual aid forces us to think about the difference between helping your neighbor and charity. I'm challenged by that a lot. Trying to think through how we connect our giving to real sustainable change and building alternative networks makes me hopeful. 

I’m also very hopeful about abolition movements in the U.S. and about the work that’s connecting what abolitionists have been working on with prisons, jails, and cops to the food system.

What were the biggest challenges you saw in the food system in 2021? 

I spent the last year and a half working on a documentary about the food system and what COVID has revealed. My overall take is that we had an extraordinary opportunity and we didn't take it. I really did think that we would come out of it and see the [true] costs of the fact that we've privileged efficiency over everything else, what the dangers of that were. 

In the middle of the pandemic, everybody was saying, “Well, it's really clear, we need local food hubs. We really need to set up antitrust cases and go after the biggest monopolizers in the food system. We really need to think about setting up [more] local meat processing plants, [more] places where local farmers can store, freeze, and process food.”

It became so obvious where the big problems in the system were. In the restaurant business, we all looked at it and thought, “Wow, this business is exploitive. It's a bad business model. It's ridiculous that restaurants didn't have more than a week before they were out of money. Clearly, we need to rethink the model.” 

And then it was over and everybody went back to business as usual. And it's kind of depressing. 

How many times are we going to have to go through this before we really do understand that we have a serious problem? We can't feed ourselves and we could, so easily, just by changing who we support and how we support them. 

Are there any bright spots that you see?

The bright spot is in racial justice. This is the first time that [many] Americans have really understood that Black farmers have been robbed for the last hundred years. [That story] flew under the radar and now it isn't anymore. There's been a real understanding that people of color need to be growing their own food. That's a really positive thing. And we’re seeing it change right before our eyes. We’re seeing a real push to figure out ways to support Black farmers. It's too little, too late—but at least it's happening. 

And the documentary you're working on? 

They’re editing it now. We started out basically trying to bear witness to what was happening during COVID. I felt strongly that this was going to be a change point. I talked to 12 chefs on a weekly basis and farmers and ranchers and fishermen and policy people across the country for 14 months. It was hundreds of hours of [interviews]. And in the end, it turned out to be much less about what COVID wrought and much more about what our food system is and what we have to do to change it.

Is there anything else that gives you some hope for 2022?

I've been writing about food for 50 years and we have never had a more engaged public than we do now. What gives me hope is young people. I really think this is the first generation that truly does understand that their food choices, and their food activism, can make a difference. I'm very encouraged by where young people stand on all of this and how angry they are about climate change and the fact that old people won’t do anything about it. 

I think we're in a bad patch right now, but I'm really hopeful that this young generation isn’t going to put up with it. There’s a lot of energy in this movement. People understand that we can't sit around very much longer. And that does really give me hope. So, while in the short term I'm not optimistic, in the long term I am.

For 2022, what are some of the most significant things you’re working toward?

I think one of the most exciting things for us at First Nations is our breastfeeding and first foods work. We are going to be working with Indigenous communities on encouraging breastfeeding, but also the barriers to breastfeeding. That's the missing piece in our food sovereignty work. And so we're using that program to empower communities to look at how women and children get their initial understandings of health, nutrition, and food. By focusing on breastfeeding and first foods, we get to focus on women and children, who are really the pillars of nationhood, the pillars of nutrition. There's always this third-party arbitrator who tells us whether or not we're eating the right things, or how we should be growing our food. But, ultimately, when we're born into this world, we have mothers, grandmothers, and aunties who are our nonverbal teachers of what it means to be healthy and connected to our community and our food. 

At the onset of the pandemic, Indian Country was in the crosshairs. How has your work changed since then?

I've learned a lot. One, I've learned that I have to trust Indigenous people—our knowledge and our own internal reactions to what's happening in the world. Because, ultimately, we were able to respond to COVID. At first, I saw food supply chains fail and food not getting to Indigenous communities. But, maybe a month or two later, what I saw was incredible—communities coming together, people checking on elders, hunters sharing their meat—it was an incredible time of togetherness, even though it was in reaction to a very tragic failure of our supply chains. Indigenous communities came together nonetheless, and with a strength that I haven't seen, ever. 

And in 2022, we have several opportunities to strengthen food supply chains; we're looking at how to restructure food pantries and food banks in Indian Country so that they're supportive of food sovereignty, as opposed to being a kind of mainstream food surplus dump. And that is exciting, because Indian people are taking control of their own food distribution points, their own supply chains, their own food banks and food pantries. We also have a program focused on food storage. One of the things we saw in COVID was a need to more massive amounts of food. But many Indigenous communities didn't want refrigerated semi-trucks or refrigerated buildings, because they believe it's energy intensive, and against some Indigenous values to hoard food like that. We're looking at how food storage plays into the different models of food supply and food systems. 

What else is making you feel hopeful right now?

I've been working with a small elementary school called Keres Children's Learning Center, made up of Keres-speaking children in an immersive language program, and we talk weekly about food. I am 100 percent sure that our future is going to be great, because these children understand food systems in such a pure way; that food is a way to show community and show love. There's so much care in these children and they teach me so much every day.

What are some of the big issues in 2022 you’ll be working on?

There’s always what’s realistic and politically feasible, and what should be happening. I’m in the second category. Next year is about preparing for the farm bill and I don't see any reason why the public should be investing in commodity agriculture. It doesn't conform to what the USDA itself recommends in its Dietary Guidelines, it creates all kinds of nutritional and environmental havoc, and only a small number of farmers actually experience a net financial benefit. 

We have an urgent need to change the way that land is used, to respond to and mitigate climate change. There is no way that you can modify the present row crop-dominated commodity system into one that makes substantive contributions toward climate change. Everything that people talk about, such as the gradual adoption of cover crops and other [environmentally] friendly practices, are basically just yielding the edge. As long as we are in a monocrop system with heavy dependence on fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, we’re not really going to be doing much for carbon storage in the soil. 

What we need is perennial cover [i.e., grass, shrubs, and trees], to rewild a lot of that land, and more buffers to keep water clean. And, whereas in the past, that argument might have sounded like taking valuable land out of production, now we can all see that it's putting land into valuable carbon sequestration for the long term, which is what we all want. 

We should be producing less of the stuff that makes us sick. To the extent that there's public-sector participation in agriculture, it should be in support of only those crops and foodstuffs that conform to the Dietary Guidelines for all Americans, [which recommends that half of all meals be comprised of fruits and vegetables]. If we do that, it would reorder the industrial agricultural system and there would be health benefits, environmental benefits, and benefits for climate change. That’s the dream.

No one in industrial agriculture will agree to any of that, of course. But the majority of people that benefit from commodity payments are actually very large-scale farms, many of whom don't need subsidy payments to survive. And that's a very small number of farmers. To the extent that farmers want to cooperate with a genuine climate change agenda, then it makes sense that we should be supporting them in making the transition. I don't think that we should commit to payments in perpetuity because that get us into the moral hazard of essentially paying people to do the right thing. But there needs to be a transition period during which there is a political case for subsidies.

What's making you feel hopeful right now?

This administration, and specifically the folks at the USDA, are a completely different breed than we've worked with in the past. On almost every issue that we bring to the USDA—ranging from nutrition to racial equity to local foods and things like waivers for line speeds at meatpacking plants—these folks agree with us, so far. And they are doing everything possible to send money outside of their usual farm bill authority—primarily money that they got from the American Rescue Plan—toward [under-supported] communities than they've [done] in the past. They're taking leadership in debt relief for farmers of color, including trying to figure out a legislative strategy to overcome the litigation that claims that it is discriminatory against white farmers. It’s a completely different USDA and that gives me great hope. We're able to take advantage of getting resources to communities and issues that previously were not on their radar, and definitely not priorities for any generation of USDA that I’ve ever worked with.

What do you wish everybody knew or understood better about your work?

The big thing that I wish all of us were aware of is that we have created a system that—by its very design—is extractive and exploitative of people. And even though we know better, we're applying 21st-century technologies to 16th- and 17th-century mentalities about how to conduct agriculture, including exploiting people, concentrating wealth, and denuding and polluting the environment. 

Even the thing people claim has been the greatest success—productivity—is false, because it's coming with huge trade-offs—the loss of soil, the pollution of drinking water, and the emission of greenhouse gases that are essentially burning up the planet. The entire system needs to be rethought, including what the purpose is, and who should benefit. That's a huge conversation, because it means you have to undo a lot of premises that have to do with the creation story of the country. And that's the work that we're in the middle of.

That's all for this month's issue of The Deep Dish. Thank you for reading, and thank you for being a member of the Civil Eats community. If this is your first time reading The Deep Dish (welcome!), be sure to check out our previous issues: 

• September 2021: Climate Change and Ag
• October 2021: Plastics in the Food System
• November 2021: Food Security