Frances Moore Lappé, “The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities,” The Nation, October 3, 2011

The author of the 1971 bestseller Diet for a Small Planet has authored an essay that examines how global agriculture has changed since then. While Francis Moore Lappé notes that 1 billion people are hungry and agribusiness is concentrated in few hands—“in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations—with boards totaling only 138 people—had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales”—a global grass-roots food movement “has been gaining energy and breadth for at least four decades.” Among other matters, Moore Lappé discusses growing popular opposition to genetically modified crops and increases in connectivity through community-supported agriculture programs and farmers’ markets.

Included with the essay are responses authored by Vandana Shiva, “Resisting
the Corporate Theft of Seeds”; Eric Schlosser, “It’s Not Just About Food”; Raj
Patel, “Why Hunger Is Still With Us”; and Michael Pollan, “How Change Is
Going to Come in the Food System.” Shiva began a program in India to create
community seed banks that counter “the corporate control of our food system
and the role of governments in increasing, rather than stopping, the corporate
abuse of our seeds and soils, our bodies and our health.”

Schlosser, who authored Fast Food Nation and co-produced “Food, Inc.,”
lauds the increase in farmers’ markets and inner-city community gardens,
but suggests that more is needed to improve the lives of Americans, stating
“Without a fundamental commitment to social justice, the estimated 1-2
percent of Americans who eat organic food will be indistinguishable from the
1-2 percent who control almost all of this country’s wealth and power.”

Pollan teaches journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and has
written frequently on food-related subjects. He contends, “the food movement
can claim more success in changing popular consciousness than in
shifting, in any fundamental way, the political and economic forces shaping
the food system or, for that matter, in changing the ‘standard American diet’—
which has only gotten worse since the 1970s.”

Pollan also comments, “It’s worth remembering that it took decades before the campaign against the tobacco industry could point to any concrete accomplishments.” Pointing to a 50-year gap between scientific findings about smoking and health and the industry’s loss of influence among policymakers, Pollan notes, “By this standard, the food movement is making swift progress.” According to Pollan, one of the lessons that food advocates can learn from the antismoking campaign is that when “overcoming the influence of entrenched power, it helps to have another powerful interest in your corner—an interest that stands to gain from reform.” He suggests that states and the insurance industry, which may be “on the hook for the cost of the American diet,” could be those allies.