Where shall I start? I hate food policy. I think it should be everybody’s responsibility to feed their own family members. And, yes, I still believe families are a what-a-concept. My reasoning goes like this: Dependency is bad. Cooperation among friends and trusted allies is good, but one should “never” depend on somebody else for essentials. If one does, then the source could go to the dark side one day and demand the dependent to do stupid dog tricks to survive. A righteous government, therefore, would be working against evil parties attempting to control the growth and distribution of food. The local food policy guys are on some level mindful of this in their use of the term “food access.” May they and their benevolent successors continue in that vein.
A couple other irks on the subject are the constant reports about hunger in the area. I try to be sympathetic, but I don’t consider obese children with ten free meals a week from schools, backpacks of food to take home for holidays and weekends, snacks at daycare, food stamps, and food pantries to be on a par with the disease-ridden little skeletons wasting away under the rule of African kleptocrats. This fact combines with a statement in a recent article that makes it sound like the Asheville-Buncombe Food Policy Council is a mission looking for a problem:
One big obstacle to developing effective policies has been the lack of pertinent regional data. Several city council members (including Gordon Smith, one of the food group’s initial organizers) have called for a system of metrics to gauge the group’s progress.
A third issue would be the connection the group has with “community organizing,” and “social justice.” Lo!
