an article I wish I'd written

Do check out the article by Michael Pollan from yesterday's New York Times over in the links. He's covered, in a compact article, many of the issues we need to address in a renewed Farm Bill. (Unfortunately not bio-fuels, but hey - you can't do everything in three pages.) While I find it easy to gripe about the more stereotypical folks from Marin and Berkeley, I think Pollan manages for the most part to avoid elitism in his writing about the food system. God bless him for pointing out the difference in the cost of subsidized industrial food and fresh food in ways we can grasp. It fits right in with the eat local theme for this week - the challenge of doing so on a budget. And Pollan's reminded us once again that real change will require more than consumer choices. It will take political creativity and nerve as well as some systems revisioning.