"Good Food For All Agenda"
Before last night, I didn't even know that there was a real food movement in LA. My bad, now I know.
Just two months old, the LA Food Policy Council is working to capture and coordinate the momentum of LA's food movement to make policy tools that will provide a more secure/sustainable regional food system for Los Angeles. Priorities: boosting regional economies, market building, hunger elimination, improving equitable access, facilitating urban agriculture, and food system education. They've come out with a comprehensive report, the Good Food For All Agenda, with full-on charts, graphs, stats, and next step recommendations.
I'm especially interested in the regional economy aspect of the movement because I think our current economy is too insecure, dependent on outside fickleness over which we have little control. Like foreign oil supplies and failed banks :( For the sake of economic resilience, I think investment in local entrepreneurs along with increased regional circulation of funds might be worthwhile. (I'd prefer a cute family business to a faceless one anyways since they're more likely to invest and recirculate funds within the region.)
Apparently, until the fifties, LA County was the largest agricultural producer in the US. Who knew. Currently, LA County spends about $25 billion per year on food. We can at least try to capture more of that $ and profit some off our sunny weather, fertile land, and readily available labor, because who can live without eating? The market is there. Might as well use our unique position in CA to build a stronger piece of the economy through food by facilitating the growth of community-based/family-owned growers, distributors, vendors, restaurants, businesses, etc.
(Although, one of the major road blocks I can think of is that of subsidies, and that's a whole 'nother discussion that deals with the distortion of price, competition, real value, okay it's time for me to run away now.)
No comments:
Post a Comment