Why food policy is worth fighting for: Chellie Pingree at TEDxManhattan

tedxmanhattan.org
pingree.house.gov
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree moved to Maine in the 1970s, and after graduating from College of the Atlantic she started a small farm on the island of North Haven. A knitting business she started in the early 80s soon grew to ten year round employees producing knitting kits and books that were sold in hundreds of stores across the country.
After serving on the local school board, and as the town's tax assessor, Chellie was elected to the Maine Senate in 1992 and after serving four terms-two as Senate Majority Leader-went on to become the national President of Common Cause.
In 2008 Chellie was elected to Congress to serve Maine's 1st District. Not only was she the first women from this District to ever be elected to Congress, her election marked the first time in American history that women have made up a majority of a state's Congressional Delegation.
In Congress, Chellie has introduced the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act-a comprehensive package of reforms to agriculture policy that will expand opportunities for local and regional farmers and make it easier for consumers to have access to healthy foods.
Chellie is still a small business owner today, owning and operating the Nebo Inn and Restaurant on North Haven, which features locally grown food.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

[@kennethclark1669]

Chellie was right on with this talk. Most of the people I know here in Maine always look for organic foods in the market and in the summer you can find us at the farmers markets.

[@maureensharpe9987]

As a farmer, I found out that the invasive species Dog Strangling Vine , confused the monarch, laid their eggs on it thinking it was milk weed, and the caterpillars ate the dog vine and it was toxic to them, killing them.

[@geneharri]

Thank you Chellie;; Lets be vigilant and keep big government out of our back yards. People do a better job of making good choices than "Big Brother" holding hands with "Big Business".

[@RyanCrossOfficial]

how do we make this a national movement?

[@FireweedFarm]

She's wrong in comparing the subsidy programs with the My Plate nutritional needs, because she presents the farm bill only as a spending program. Really, the farm bill originated as a market management program with minimum farm price floors like minimum wage and living wage, with no need for subsidies. Congress then reduced, more and more (1953-1995) these programs, then ended them (1996-2023). Prices fell, right behind price floors, with few exceptions, because free farm markets "lack price responsiveness" "on both the supply and the demand side for aggregate agriculture." Fruits and vegetables have Market Order programs, and many of them still exist, but do little to help prices. But grain and cotton prices have long been lower than fruit and vegetable prices, even if you add subsidies on top of prices (measured by % of parity). So they're helped less by the farm bill, not more, as she claims (while leaving out the larger body of data). The majority of farmers in most regions fought against price reductions over the decades and fought against adding subsidies, (subsidy programs were added after years or decades of lowering prices). Chellie Pingree has not supported the fair price programs, in fact, no current Democrats do, though most did in the past. So she supports the cheapest of cheap prices for junk food, CAFOs and export dumping. But does she know this? ( I gave her agricultural staff information on this on two occasions. See my "Farm Bill & Food Bill" and "Farm Bill History" playlists.)

[@jamesc5758]

Did she seriously just say "if you plot migration right along side roundup use... you'll see it correlation"? Correlation isn't a verb... Politicians shouldn't try to talk science because they don't know anything about even the simplest scientific terms.

[@johnbrock8809]

James Chooi I am confused what your issue is. You attacked her grammar, and then you claimed it is an issue of her not knowing science. That makes absolutely no sense. I think we should be glad to have a federal lawmaker who (because of her line of work) actually understands these important issues.