VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb speaks with Ron Krupp, author of "Lifting the Yoke: Local Solutions to America’s Farm and Food Crisis".
Krupp started one of the first farmer’s markets in Brattleboro back in the 1970’s. He also does occasional commentaries for VPR on farm-related issues. Krupp says the country’s food supply is increasingly under the control of a handful of global corporations that-like the financial institutions before them-are under-regulated and aided by powerful lobbying groups in Washington.
The result, he says, is a growing epidemic of obesity fueled by heavily subsidized products that crowd out healthier foods, and an economic stranglehold on the mass food market that’s pricing out family growers.
But Krupp devotes a large section of his book to solutions, many of which he says can be found in our own backyard.