Rocky Road Trippin’

Chef Rocky Barnette and some of our staff from the outreach team will be hitting the road for 11 days of food philosophy.

One of the best traditions of summertime is the road trip. At Food & Water Watch, our version is called the Chef Rocky Road Trip! Tomorrow, Chef Rocky Barnette and some of our staff from the outreach team will be hitting the road for 11 days of food philosophy. They are driving across the country to explore the current state of our food system by visiting a few farms and food festivals, cooking up some delectable recipes from sustainable ingredients, and talking to people about the policies and practices that affect our food choices—namely, the Farm Bill.

Why the Farm Bill?

Fixing our food system cannot be accomplished by voting with our dollars at the supermarket alone. In order to affect positive change to our current system of production, processing and distribution, we need to pay attention to many of its working parts. All of these parts are addressed and governed by one critical legislative vehicle—the Farm Bill—and every food issue we work on at Food & Water Watch is an effort to improve it.

Our current Farm Bill is set to expire September 30, 2012.  The writing of the new bill will begin in early 2011.  This means that we have a lot of work to do until then–less than a year, in fact. The road trip is our way of getting a conversation started.

Chef Rocky and crew will be traveling through the Midwest, visiting with farmers, meeting with local groups, cooking at farmers’ markets, and sharing the truth about our broken food system with elected officials across the region. He’ll be blogging from the road every day of the trip, so check back in with us to find out what’s he’s up to each day.

-Rich Bindell

You can take action right now by telling Congress to ensure there is fair competition in the marketplace. Tell them it’s time to finally take on the monopolies in our food system.