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Twelve Principles to Eat By
A Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture Premieres at Slow Food Nation

September 4, 2008
By Wendy Wasserman Edible Iowa River Valley

I imagine that a typical Thursday afternoon at San Francisco’s City Hall is abuzz with the business of the city: policy debates ringing through each meeting room, civil service discussions spilling into the hallway, and wedding ceremonies dominating the Rotunda.  But on Thursday, August 28, as City Hall emptied out for the day, a large crowd of several hundred people gathered at the base of the Great Staircase to officially kick off Slow Food Nation and illustrate their shared commitment to a healthy food and agriculture policy that accomplishes the following:
1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.
2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.
3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.
4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.
5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.
6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.
7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.
8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.
9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.
10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.
11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.
12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.

These are the twelve principles of the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, a Roots Of Change initiated project.  The motivating concept of the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture is to recognize that existing farm and agriculture policy is mired in structural paradigms which don’t address the current realities of compromised natural resources, unsustainable energy sources, environmental upheaval, continually expanding population growth and a fundamentally flawed food system.  The Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture offers a blueprint, laid out in these twelve basic principles, for what we, as common participants in America’s food system, believe responsive and responsible food and agriculture policy should address at the community, state and federal levels. dscf6042 copy.jpg

Over the spring, under ROC’s leadership, Dan Imhoff, author of “A Citizen’s Guide to the Farm Bill” was recruited to lead a core drafting team for this document.  Others included ROC’s own Michael Dimock, Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch, and myself.  Our task was to synthesize all we knew about our food system policy – from its shortcomings to its potential, from its flaws to its promises, from its history to its future, and figure out how to outline what not only we can and should expect from our leaders in developing a healthier food and agriculture policy, but also what we can and should demand from ourselves.  We strove for language that would be bold and visionary, yet accessible and meaningful to our leaders, our communities and ourselves.

Over the summer, we organized a series of listening sessions among some of the country’s top thinkers, activists and leaders in food and agriculture policy to assist in framing the vision, the core elements and the mission of the document.  The original framers included Keith Bolin, President of the American Corn Growers Association (ACGA); Jim Braun, Slow Food and Illinois Local Food & Farm Coalition; Randall Gray, former national conservation biologist, USDA; Fred Kirschenmann, Leopold Center and Stone Barns Center for Urban Agriculture; Maricela Morales, Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy; Michael Pollan, journalist and author; Richard Rominger, former Deputy Secretary, USDA; August Schumacher, Jr., former Undersecretary, USDA; Larry Yee, Association of Family Farms; Alice Waters; and Mark Winne, Community Food Security Coalition and the author of ”Closing the Food Gap”.

After careful consideration of every word and every principle, a draft of the Declaration was circulated to a wider group of advisors, like Wendell Berry, Winona Duke and Marion Nestle who were instrumental in honing, shaping and commenting on the language and the tone of the document.  With their help, Richard Rominger, farmer, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and former Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture observed “This Declaration … is the preamble for the next generation of farm policy.”

And before we knew it, over 150 people and organizations from 22 states were rushing to be original endorsers of the document before its debut that Thursday in City Hall.  By the time Slow Food Nation’s official events were over, an additional 3500 individuals and organizations endorsed its principles.

dscf6094.jpgThe Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture is now entering its next phase.  The document will soon start to travel around the country, gathering signatures and connecting us all in support of its basic principles.  It has also been posted at fooddeclaration.org, where it is open for public comment for 90 days.  In addition, ROC is beginning to coordinate a series of white papers to offer more specific policy recommendations informed by these 12 principles

In the meantime, these are twelve basic principles I think we can all agree to live, and eat by.

To read, comment on, and/or endorse the full version of the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, go to fooddeclaration.org .

Wendy Wasserman lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where she is the Publisher of Edible Iowa River Valley. She has been in the food marketing, policy and education world for nearly twenty years, and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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