I’ll believe there’s a food movement when Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are forced to talk directly about food issues. I’ll believe we’re effective when I see the routine use of antibiotics outlawed and when that first CAFO closes. I’ll know we’ve started to win when anyone who wants to farm real food has land on which to do it, when there are high-quality school lunches that are free for all, when we’ve started talking about providing that same quality dinner to anyone who needs it. Until then, we have a lot of work to do.

Here is the link to Dr. Nestle’s original column that Bittman references.

And a sobering reflection from someone in the comments of Nestle’s piece:

When will the food movement take up issues of farmer justice aka fair wages and some degree of security for those who grow food (at much higher risks than most other careers)? The food movement has left farmers behind in its quest to improve the food system. We aren’t heard. We aren’t even asked what our priorities are. If folks want their food grown “better,” farmers need to be paid for their work. And that includes farmworkers, some of the most mistreated and underpaid people in our food system. Pay us more. We work much longer days and get paid much worse than the academics, policymakers, and activists who are agitating for all this change in the food system, yet we reap no benefits. If anything, farmers must work harder to accommodate these changes, and often the benefits accrue to the top (aka the corporations). Unless the goal of the food movement is to further marginalize farmers, then it is definitely NOT winning. It is merely overseeing changes at the margins in a system that devalues the hard work and labor that goes into growing food, that pumps big money into the hands of the few, and that keeps people unhealthy. These so-called winning efforts are a distraction from the big pictures issues. If the food movement isn’t winning, who is? Corporations who will make even more money from consumers AND farmers as they “healthwash” their images while further consolidating control over the choices we make.