This is such a great piece--thank you! The combination of history and thoughtful ideas for moving forward is so powerful. I love this idea: "A country that has settled the quantity question should judge its farm policy on a different axis: outcomes per calorie rather than calories per acre. That means measuring nourishment (aka: better health and wellness outcomes) delivered and surplus routed to people instead of landfills."
I especially appreciated framing around obesity and hunger as two sides of the same failure, which is something we understand intuitively in this work but needs to be called out continuously.
One thing I'd add that I think strengthens your case is that *I believe* the 4,000-calorie figure actually strips out corn and soy going to feed, ethanol, and exports, and the food that actually reaches people skews heavily toward the cheapest engineered calories because that's what the commodity system is built to produce (because food conglomerates want cheap inputs so they can sell cheap processed food).
So what's "misrouted" isn't neutral calories waiting to be redirected but a supply that's already been shaped, upstream, into animal protein, added fats, refined grains, and sweeteners which really reinforces your point about judging the system by what it produces, not by how much.
This is such a great piece--thank you! The combination of history and thoughtful ideas for moving forward is so powerful. I love this idea: "A country that has settled the quantity question should judge its farm policy on a different axis: outcomes per calorie rather than calories per acre. That means measuring nourishment (aka: better health and wellness outcomes) delivered and surplus routed to people instead of landfills."
Really strong explanation of the challenges of Agricultural policy amongst Food Politics.
You have written this so well and said what people need to do to start working on these problems which need change!
I especially appreciated framing around obesity and hunger as two sides of the same failure, which is something we understand intuitively in this work but needs to be called out continuously.
One thing I'd add that I think strengthens your case is that *I believe* the 4,000-calorie figure actually strips out corn and soy going to feed, ethanol, and exports, and the food that actually reaches people skews heavily toward the cheapest engineered calories because that's what the commodity system is built to produce (because food conglomerates want cheap inputs so they can sell cheap processed food).
So what's "misrouted" isn't neutral calories waiting to be redirected but a supply that's already been shaped, upstream, into animal protein, added fats, refined grains, and sweeteners which really reinforces your point about judging the system by what it produces, not by how much.