If you're going to change the food system, there is a lot that you, the consumer, can do on your own; but in the end, it will be very important to make changes at the national level.

The corporatization of something as basic and intimate as eating is, for many of us today, a good place to draw the line.

I have had the good fortune to see how my articles have directly benefited some farmers and helped build markets for their products in a way that preserves land from development. That makes me a hopeless optimist.

Farms produce a lot more than food; they also produce a kind of landscape and a kind of community.

Food is not just fuel. Food is about family, food is about community, food is about identity. And we nourish all those things when we eat well.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

People eating the western diet of heavily processed food, of lots of meat and added sugar and added fat, and very little whole grains and fruits and vegetables.Populations who eat that way have seriously high incidences of chronic diseases.