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No Farms No Food? A Response To Baylen Linnekin, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

You have likely seen the bumper sticker, bold white text on a green background, reading “No Farms No Food.” The sticker is a product of, and in fact a tagline for, the American Farmland Trust. On the one hand, the point is obvious: As American Farmland Trust puts it, “[e]very meal on our plates [c]ontains ingredients grown on a farm. We all need farms to survive.” On the other hand, what seems like a plain statement on its face, “no farms no food,” is not so simple. Farms produce affordable food, they produce vast quantities of food, they produce healthy …

Food Localization: Empowering Community Food Systems Through The Farm Bill, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Brian Fink, Alexandra Schluntz

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Our intent in this Article is not to delineate foods that are local or not local, nor is it to lionize one agricultural production method over another. Rather, we hope to build on the literature that for many decades has documented how local communities have emerged as influential actors on the American food system through establishing control over local supply chains often alongside national and global supply chains. We begin with Part I, which explores how some food-system scholars have conceptualized these democratic changes occurring. We look to Thomas Lyson’s concept of civic agriculture, which attempts to move corporation-oriented communities …

Eating Is Not Political Action, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Graham Downey, D. Lee Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Food and environment are cultural stalwarts. Picture the red barn and solitary farmer toiling over fruited plains; or purple mountains majesty reflected in pristine waters. Agriculture and environment are core, distinct, American mythologies that we know are more intertwined than our stories reveal.

To create policy at the interface of such centrally important and overlapping American ideals, there are two options. Passive governance fosters markets in which participants make individual choices that aggregate into inadvertent collective action. In contrast, assertive governance allows the public, mediated through elected officials, to enact intentional, goal oriented policy.

American mythologies of food and environment …

Farming And Eating, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay argues that the “us versus them” rhetoric that dominates food and agriculture policy today drives a wedge between farmers and food consumers. Together, farmers and food consumers could form a powerful coalition to challenge the true obstacle to sustainable and equitable food production: concentration of market and political power elsewhere along the food chain.

Food Court, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article, focusing on produce and grain, discusses the environmental and climate change impacts of food production, processing, packaging, and distribution, which ultimately contribute to both economic and social costs. The article addresses environmental energy costs in the food supply. Figure 1 shows, for example, the significant amount of energy used in various aspects of food production, transportation, and processing.

Much of this article's focus will be on commodity crops. Along with wheat and rice, corn and soybeans constitute the world's most popular planted and consumed crops. The United States is the leading producer of corn, growing nearly 40 percent …

Owning What You Eat: The Discourse Of Food, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay examines the role of communication in the formation of law and social norms and the implications of that role for animal law and ethics. Part III contextualizes animal law within contemporary risk society. Part IV looks at how efficiency has transformed from an economic concept into a normative guideline and discusses how that transformation has affected animals and agriculture. It tracks the rise of industrial agriculture and ties it to this fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of efficiency. The essay concludes with some thoughts on how to reformulate contemporary notions of efficiency and ethics to account for the …