WSJ: U.S. closes antitrust investigation into seed industry, Monsanto.

[proverbialwisdom]

1. GREAT ARTICLE: ...what’s missing in food politics is “a public that demands these [reforms]..."

Multiple embedded links.

http://grist.org/food/moment-of-truth-is-the-food-movement-for-real-or-just-talk/

Moment of truth: Is the ‘food movement’ for real — or just talk?

By Tom Laskawy
17 Oct 2012 9:42 AM

At the start of the Obama administration, the newly minted president, the same one who quoted Michael Pollan, immediately and disappointingly set about enforcing the food and farm policy status quo. To some political analysts, this came as absolutely no surprise. Ezra Klein, who now writes for the Washington Post but was blogging for the American Prospect at the time, explained the dynamics of the situation:

The broader community of folks who eat food — all of us, more or less — don’t clearly see the connection between policy and plate and so pay little attention to federal action. Our interests are largely lost because there’s little in the way of political reward for serving the silent. Expecting Obama to change that because he read a magazine article is a sucker’s bet. Obama’s picks are traditional because he’s a rational politician, and he’s subject to the same incentives all politicians are subject to. The answer isn’t in better, or more enlightened, politicians. It’s in changing the surrounding political incentives. People who want farm policy to become food policy need to find ways to become louder.

This has been the great challenge for the “food movement” ever since. In last week’s food issue of the New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan himself points to the greatest opportunity yet for the movement to raise its voice — passage of California’s GMO labeling referendum, or Prop 37. For the movement, says Pollan, the ballot measure is “something capable of frightening politicians and propelling its concerns onto the national agenda.”

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Public health advocate Kelly Brownell of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity says that what’s missing in food politics is “a public that demands these [reforms] and that gives politicians cover to take these actions.”

Huber and Pollan come to the same conclusion: Without proven political power, i.e. the literal or figurative “people taking to the streets” phenomenon a political movement needs to flex its muscles, real reform will fizzle out.

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