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.Alternative agrifood movements have introduced and expandedconcepts of sustainability and food security within powerful agrifood insti-tutions in the United States.The movements have made great strides inchanging or at least diversifying the perspectives and methods withintraditional agrifood institutions such as the usda.It is remarkable howmuch has already been accomplished, given highly constraining politicaland economic environments.In this chapter I review some of the ways inwhich federal agricultural policies have been inconsistent with the envi-182 Together at the Tableronmental and social priorities of alternative agrifood movements.I thendiscuss some of the reasons for this, such as inertia and the lack of democ-racy in the policymaking process.Creating policies that are consistent withenvironmental and social priorities presupposes alliances between diversesocial movements and within alternative agrifood movements.While muchprogress has already been made in this direction, there are challenges informing alliances that need to be taken into account.Still, successful con-nections are being made between social and environmental movements onlocal, national, and international levels; some of these are highlighted atthe end of this chapter.Configurations of U.S.Federal Food and Agricultural PolicyFood and agricultural policies and the political economy from which theyflow have constituted the most dominant force in shaping agriculture overthe past half-century (Clunies-Ross and Hildyard 1992).The official goalsof U.S.food and agricultural policy seem reasonable enough.They haveincluded providing an adequate and secure supply of food at reasonableprices, stabilizing farm incomes, ensuring consumer safety, preserving fam-ily farms, and more recently, conserving resources.But how well have thesepolicy objectives been met? This section addresses the effects federal foodand agricultural policies have had on economic democracy.EnvironmentIt is well known that federal farm programs have contributed to environ-mental problems in agriculture.For example, fertilizer and pesticide pollu-tion, soil erosion, and groundwater depletion have been driven at least inpart by commodity support programs, especially those concerned with foodand feed grains, cotton, and sugar (Young 1989).These programs affect pro-duction decisions on two-thirds of the harvested cropland in the this coun-try (nrc 1989).Appearance-driven grading procedures for produce alsoencourage the use of pesticides.Thus, agricultural resource conservationprograms are opposed in practice if not intent by other governmental pro-grams.While the omnibus farm bills since 1985 have included more envi-ronmental provisions than any previous farm bills, these have been mostlymarginal additions to the overall entrenched set of traditional farm policies.Overall, American food and agriculture policy has been skewed toward busi-ness priorities, not environmental soundness or consumer health.The Politics of Sustainability and Sustenance 183Food and HealthIn policies related to food and health, the government has seemed to priv-ilege the preferences of industry over those of social well-being.A case inpoint is the development of the food pyramid, intended as a national nutri-tion education graphic.The usda spent almost a million dollars to assuremeat and dairy interests that the food pyramid graphic did not present aneconomic threat to their industries, despite the fact that many of the majorAmerican diseases are related to consumption of these food groups (Nestle1993).Still, the original graphic, which depicted a lower number of dailyservings of meat and dairy than what is shown on today s food pyramid,was withdrawn because of persistent industry protests.Apparently, poli-cymakers were unconcerned with the negative reaction of the nutritioncommunity to this withdrawal because the nutrition community is com-paratively small relative to the meat and dairy industry and lacks theirpolitical influence (Sims 1998).Similar conclusions about prioritizing busi-ness over health in food and agriculture policy can be drawn in the waythat pesticides are regulated [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]