Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture
We, the undersigned, believe that food and agriculture offer essential solutions to the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us is a half century of industrial food production, spurred on by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of calories and profits.Ahead lie spiking energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, growing population, and the contradiction of widespread hunger and obesity. These realities require a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the ways we grow, prepare, and distribute food must celebrate our cultures and humanity, providing sustenance, justice, and beauty.
Food and agriculture must be made healthy, for people, for animals, for communities, forthe land, and for nature. Governments have a duty to protect the land and people from malnutrition, unsafe food, corporate exploitation, and ecological degradation. Individuals, organizations, and producers must work concurrently to create regional solutions that provide healthy food for their communities.The change has begun and the time has come to accelerate this urgent transformation.
We believe that the following thirteen principles can and must be employed to enhance the health and wealth of the nation:
1. A healthy food and agriculture system forms the foundation of secure societies and a stable world as well as human and community health.
2. A healthy food and agriculture system rests on policies and programs that provide sustenance and food sovereignty to all people around the globe.
3. A healthy food and agriculture system protects the limited resources ofproductive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.4. A healthy food and agriculture system uses renewable rather than the non-renewable resources. 5. A healthy food and agriculture system emerges from a biological rather than an industrial mindset.6. A healthy food and agriculture system prevents the exploitation and domination of people, land, water, genetics, processing, and markets by nations, corporations, or other entities.7. A healthy food and agriculture system upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all workers.8. A healthy food and agriculture system fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domesticated and wild species; diversity of foods, flavorsand traditions; diversity of ownership. 9. A healthy food and agriculture system depends upon a national commitment to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, and nutrition.10. A healthy food and agriculture system requires thorough national dialog and regionally adopted policies regarding technologies used for production. 11. A healthy food and agriculture system informs citizens about how food is produced, where it is from, and what it contains. 12. A healthy food and agriculture system requires policies and economic structures that support regional farm and food networks. 13.A healthy food and agriculture system affirms the dignity of all our relatives, whether they have hands, fins, wings, hooves or roots. Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic systems. We pledge our votes, purchases, creativity, and time to this urgent cause.
