What's Your Foodprint? Greening Your Food...and Your City Council

Gene Baur is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

Our food choices have profound consequences, not just for our own health, but for the well being of other animals and the entire planet. Choosing sustainably grown plant foods instead of animal products is the single most important thing that we can do as individuals to lighten our environmental footprint.

Growing societal awareness about industrial animal agriculture is spawning a food movement in the United States. Citizens oppose factory farming and want healthier food produced in a more responsible way, and the market is now beginning to reflect these sentiments. Farmers markets, which enable consumers to meet farmers, are popping up in both rural and urban areas. Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs) where citizens invest in a farm at the beginning of the growing season and receive shares of the harvest throughout the year are expanding. Backyard gardens and Community Gardens are also sprouting up, and there is even a Community Garden, dubbed "The People's Garden," at the U.S.D.A. headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama has planted an organic garden at the White House to promote healthier eating. Grocery stores, restaurants and other retail establishments are offering soymilk and other plant-based alternatives to cows' milk and other vegan options are increasingly accessible, as well.

Significant advancements are underway, but federal and state laws and policies continue to support cruel and unsustainable factory farming systems. Industrial agriculture is entrenched in the political process and has exerted inordinate influence over lawmakers. Now animal welfare, environmental, consumer, and health organizations are beginning to weigh in, to challenge factory farming's stranglehold.

In addition to working on federal and state legislation, Farm Sanctuary has launched a Green Foods Campaign to urge passage of Green Foods resolutions at the local level. These measures get to the heart of the problem and encourage people to eat more plant-based foods, and promote sustainable, local and just food systems by supporting farmer's markets, CSAs and community gardens. To get involved, please check out Farm Sanctuary's Web site and learn about introducing a Green Foods resolution in your community.

Eating plants instead of animals, and choosing local, organic and sustainably grown options, creates positive change, individually and collectively - as the old slogan goes, "Think Globally, Act Locally."

Photo credit: USDA