Issue Position: Food Justice

Issue Position

Food impacts every aspect of our lives, from the workers who produce our food to the nutrients we consume. I grew up in rural Whatcom County, where my father ran a nonprofit focused on agricultural education and training, and my early career focused on food and agricultural policy in developing countries. I believe our food systems should build a thriving economy for workers, protect our environment, and provide access to healthy food for everyone. We need action at the federal level that will:

-Align federal food subsidies: The Federal Government is the largest purchaser of food in the world, and it must use that purchasing power to support a healthy food system. While the Federal Government recommends a diet of 50 percent fruits and vegetables, just one percent of farm subsidies go toward such nutrients. Shifting federal subsidies to bolster the production of healthy food must be a priority.

-Strengthen federal food assistance: Everyone should have access to affordable, healthy food. Proper nutrition is particularly important to the wellbeing of our children, and impediments to accessing healthy food is felt most strongly by low-income communities and people of color. Expanding programs like SNAP, Farmers Market Nutrition Program, and the USDA Farm to School program will improve families' access to nutritious food.

-Fight climate change: Agriculture, especially livestock, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Federal farm policy must create incentives for producers to sequester carbon, expand funding to research sustainable agriculture practices, and support a national carbon pricing system that favors environmentally friendly farming practices.

-Preserve our natural resources: Agriculture is the largest consumer of water in the nation, poor farming practices lead to deforestation and soil degradation, and food waste in landfills is the largest contributor of methane emissions. Our federal farm policy must reward those producers that work to fight these environmental challenges, fund farmland preservation efforts, and expand programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

-Protect workers and improve social equity: Five of the eight worst paying jobs in America are in the food system, impacting people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds the most. Our broken immigration system has created an underclass of workers who lack legal status, making it harder to enforce and improve basic labor protections. To ensure workers are treated fairly, we must increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, modeled after the City of Seattle plan, pass comprehensive immigration reform, and include agricultural workers under the protections of the National Labor Relations and the Fair Labor Standards Acts.

-Build a thriving economy: Food and agriculture are at the center of our economy, and must be treated as such. To ensure the sector continues to grow, we must expand credit and crop insurance programs, increase funding for local and regional food infrastructure, label GMO products to protect U.S. agriculture exports, and increase funding for organic agriculture research and support for farms transitioning to organic food.

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