Our food system is broken. Giant corporations continue to rake in astronomical profits from industrial livestock, poultry and feed production at the expense of our communities, animals, farmers, workers and the environment.
Fortunately, there is a growing movement to steer our food system away from the production of grains to feed animals in factory farms and toward growing food that nourishes people. We should support farmers raising livestock on pasture and growing foods like vegetables, fruits and nuts in order to incentivize them to produce healthy food for their neighbors, treat animals with respect, and create a more humane and fair system. Such a shift would protect our air and water, and help the 82% of rural communities that have been harmed by industrial agriculture.
The Food, Not Feed Summit, an event recently hosted in Washington, D.C., by a broad coalition of stakeholders, reaffirmed for me that there are many people eager to see improvements in our food and farm system. I am grateful to the wide-ranging alliance of health, faith, environment, labor and animal advocates and farmers that have come together in recent years to make American agriculture more equitable, sustainable and humane. I am also grateful to those who came together for Food, Not Feed, to reimagine our food and farm system for the better.
I hope that my legislators, Rep. Summer Lee and Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, will pass a 2023 Farm Bill that reflects these values and moves American agriculture away from the existing factory farm model that is hurting us all.
Micah Wintner
Munhall