Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, Oran B. Hesterman (PublicAffairs, 2011)
FAIR FOOD is an enlightening and inspiring guide to changing not only what we eat, but how food is grown, packaged, delivered, and sold.
A host of books and films in recent years have documented in great detail the dangers of our current food system, but advice on what to do about it largely begins and ends with the admonition to “eat local” or “eat organic.” This advice is not helpful if, as Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush once pointed out, you can buy ketchup where you live, but no fresh tomatoes.
Just as you can’t impact the course of climate change by simply switching to CFL bulbs, you can’t fix the broken food system by simply growing a backyard garden. It requires redesigning our food system.
Enter FAIR FOOD, an inspiring guide to changing not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed and sold.
Author and renowned food pioneer Oran B. Hesterman divides FAIR FOOD into three parts:
Part I introduces our current food system, how and why it evolved as it did, and the ways in which it no longer serves us well.
Part II describes four key principles a redesigned food system should embody and offers examples of how various individuals and organizations have started to integrate these principles into their enterprises, providing inspiring new models for producers and consumers, businesses and communities.
Part III offers a practical guide to how you can participate in collective action to precipitate big changes in our food system, from your kitchen to your community to your state house and the White House. Dr. Hesterman’s menu for change offers the reader questions to ask at farmers’ markets, tools for starting buy-fresh/buy-local campaigns; advice for forming buyer’s clubs that purchase food directly from farmers and fishermen, and guidance about the legislation to support at the local, state, and federal levels.
The time for systemic, practical, and widespread action is at hand, and FAIR FOOD is the ideal resource and guide for readers who want to be a part of the fair food revolution.