I wish more bloggers would do this — go somewhere and then write about it. Jacob Wheeler of WorldChanging Chicago attended the Chicago Food Policy summit last week:
“We must ‘change the food system or die,’ proclaimed Kendall Thu, an associate professor of anthropology at Northern Illinois University. The way food is gathered, grown and distributed shapes a human society, he explained. And we are in the middle of a food revolution because our society currently boasts the lowest percentage of farmers in our history. As farmers reach retirement age and as their farming culture fades away, in come multinational food conglomerates to replace them, and that only increases the discrepancy between haves and have-nots in terms of food access, health, economic and social justice with respect to food.”
OK, I’d just as soon have real farmers out there, if anyone wants to do the work, and I patronize them when possible. But I have trouble following the logic here. What exactly is the connection between having lots of farms that are 40 acres and not having a lot of poor people?