ellievanhoutte's Flickr photostream/Creative Commons

The sustainable food movement has just gained some serious momentum with this week’s announcement of the US Department of Agriculture’s  ‘Know Your Farmer Know Your Food’ program, which aims to connect consumers to local producers.  I’m thrilled to see that Washington is responding to the growing demand for healthy, sustainably produced food by taking steps to increase access for everyone.  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan are making it clear that they understand the widespread benefits of locally produced food:

Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food.

Check out this video of Secretary Vislack explaining the new program to learn more:

The USDA has already allocated $65 million to funding ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiatives, including the creation of Farm to School Tactical Teams, aimed at helping connect kids with where their food comes from and help schools get locally grown foods into school lunches.  As you may know, we here at TakePart are very much in favor of improving school lunches, and the initiative will hopefully go far towards helping to improve children’s health across the country.

There are plenty more excellent initiatives in the works and this week is full of cool events to help launch the ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ program, including the debut of the White House Farmer’s Market today!  We’re not of the industrial food-woods yet, but we’re on our way to building a sustainable food system.

Stay tuned for the launch of the ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ website tomorrow, and get to know your local farmers using the action link below.