“Food during my early years was a very difficult issue for me. I grew up in an addictive family. My mother had serious problems with alcohol and prescription drugs. I was an overweight kid. I can remember back in those days there weren't the strategies that there are today to deal with those issues.”
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Local and regional food systems are about opportunity.
The food pyramid is very complicated. It doesn't give you as much info in a quick glance as the plate does.
In the past 40 years, the United States lost more than a million farmers and ranchers. Many of our farmers are aging. Today, only nine percent of family farm income comes from farming, and more and more of our farmers are looking elsewhere for their primary source of income.
If you think of what food is, it's the energy we use to do our daily work. I want people to know about the USDA. This is a very important department. It's not fully appreciated as such.