Young Farmer Testifies Next to CEO

"The big guys know they're in trouble," said Stephen McDonnell, CEO of Applegate Farms, which employs 1000 farmworkers in South America. He spoke next to a young farmer and a Food writer on a panel hosted by Baruch College's Journalism department called, "Can Healthy Food Feed America," last night.

Applegate may relatively not be one of the "big guys," and what brought the man to the table may have been his interest in the Food Movement, especially the rise in buying from farmers markets, and eating more fruits and vegetables instead of meat even though his company is basically a meat business, however, they do not use artificial hormones on their animals.

The young farmer, on the other hand, in his mid twenties perhaps, works on a farm that breaks even, and is owned by a wealthy couple that launched the farm out of an interest in Sustainable Agriculture. He's one of a movement of young people that are taking up the challenge of being a Sustainable farmer.

The question: "Can healthy food feed America," of course wasn't totally, holistically examined in the short period of time, but the subject of various routes of changing the Food System and how students can be involved came up. Of course, David Orr, the young farmer provided the example of being the change, becoming the Local, Sustainable farmer.

Despite how much a movement actually grows of people purchasing Local, Organic and Humane Food, there will still be a crisis of local farmers falling off the map in Upstate New York. "New York State farmers ... only make half as much per acre as farmers in other parts of the country," says NYC Council Member Quin according to Gotham Gazzette (an article written by a student). The article also goes into depth about Ethical Food also coming into low income neighborhoods. But despite these awesome activist actions, these allocations of Healthy, Sustainable Food don't necessarily increase the production of this food. The Broken Food System, to a large degree, has brought us the Hydrofracking controversy, since farmland is most targeted by the Natural Gas Industry. Therefore, we need more young farmers and large systematic change that transfers subsidies from Industrial Ag to Sustainable Ag. And since a historic Food Safety Bill was just passed, there may be some hope in actually targeting the next Farm Bill or other Food Policies.

It came up in the discussion that one activist role that students in particular could take is through the Real Food Challenge, and attending the Northeast Food and Justice Summit of February 2011 in Boston, in which hundreds of students will attend. The RFC is a campaign launched by students in 2005 that unites students that want to transfer their own school's food money to Sustainable Food.