HEAL Platform for Real Food

The current dominant agricultural system is setup to produce waste at every stage of the food chain, from farm (e.g. excess chemical fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide runoff) to consumer: 40% of food intended for human consumption is wasted, and our food and agriculture system accounts for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.

This waste has ethical, environmental, and economic ramifications. We need to close the loop and ensure that the true cost of food is accounted for throughout the supply chain, discouraging overproduction and damaging environmental practices, integrating agroecological and ecologically responsible fishing practices along the way. We want a food system that ensures that the full use of food produced – including animals captured at sea – from human consumption to composting and recycling, recognizes the true value of natural resources that go into food production and maintaining these resources as a public good.

Our Solutions

  • Create incentives and a market for farmers to employ environmentally-beneficial practices
  • Create Carbon Tax to penalize excessive carbon added to the atmosphere and tax the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides
  • Fund development of zero waste initiatives and infrastructure, with a focus on cooperative and community-owned operations
  • Loosen cosmetic standards for food and incentivize alternate markets for produce seconds
  • Establish an initiative to reduce and recapture food that is otherwise wasted by consumer, grocery, and hospitality food streams
  • Standardize and improve date labeling: implement a standardized rule of law for labeling and distinguishing between harmful and not harmful foods
  • Lower the maximum contaminant limit (MCL) standards for pesticide/fertilizer residues in water and regularly test all water sources and disclose results publicly. Impose fines on chemical manufacturers, not farmers, when there are violations
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