FOOD SAFETY, FOOD SECURITY AND FOOD POLICY By Sonia Salas, Associate Vice President, Science
“The political forum is just one more place where farmers’ power seems to be slipping away. Concomitantly, agriculture and food system outsiders’ influence over farm policy appears to be gaining ground.” – Ray A. Starling in Farmers versus Foodies: A Look at the Outside Forces Forging the Future of Farming and Food. Food safety, food security and food policy play a critical role in ensuring the availability, accessibility and safety of food. If we search on the internet, we will find that food policy impacts all of us because it encompasses laws and regulations to manage food production, distribution, consumption and safety, impacting food choices and the information consumers receive about food. Focusing on the effect of the latter, the information available to consumers influences their food choices and the nutritional quality of consumers’ diets. If we search for the meaning of “activism,” we will see it is a practice of taking action to effect social, political, economic or
environmental change. But change does not necessarily result in improvement. This story is not about activism or bad policies but instead addresses the need for public-private collaboration and the importance of data-driven decisionmaking to inform effective policy. We live in an era where anyone can state “facts” without supportive evidence or where pieces of partial and incomplete information are used to present or misrepresent the whole or the entire picture. Now, more than ever, collaboration and data-driven information is crucial. In the last 50 years, the domestic production of fresh produce in the U.S. has continued to shrink, while the cost of producing food in the U.S. continues to increase. Based on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service data, the domestic production of top specialty crops consumed in the U.S. has been declining or remained relatively steady while the imported volume of these crops has continuously increased at a high rate. See a few examples below (lettuce, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, grapes).
11 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com September | October 2024
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