Cory Booker: Vegan Senator Joins Committee For Agriculture & Nutrition

With a past history in supporting small-scale farmers as well as taking steps to ban factory farming, Vegan Democrat Cory Booker has become the newest member to join the Senate Committee For Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, in an effort to restore balance in the broken food chain.

Becoming the first vegan senator to join the Committee, during his work as the former Mayor of Newark, Cory Booker observed the broken food system up close. Calling massive sections of the country as ‘food deserts’ (empty of healthy foods), Booker emphasizes the need for change and hopes to empower family farmers and fight climate change.

As a vegan diet follower himself since 2014, Booker hopes to fix the current food system that he believes has been ‘broken’ by large multinationals by joining the committee that focuses on agriculture, nutrition, food policy, and hunger. “Our food system is deeply broken. Family farmers are struggling and their farms are disappearing, while big agriculture conglomerates get bigger and enjoy greater profits. Meanwhile, healthy, fresh food is hard to find and even harder to afford in rural and urban communities alike. In the richest country on the planet, over 35 million Americans from every walk of life are facing food insecurity.”

Last year, the New Jersey Democrat proposed a bill to empower small-scale farmers and put an end to factory farming by 2040. Under the Farm System Reform Act, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) would not be allowed to open and the present large facilities would be phased out by 2040.

Inspired by measures implemented in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, one of Booker’s other proposals is the Climate Stewardship Act that involves planting 15 billion trees to restore deforested landscapes as well as support for voluntary climate stewardship practices on over 100 million acres of farmland.

Aside from this, the animal advocate introduced a bill in 2018 to restrict experiments on monkeys and for the Food and Nutrition Education in Schools Act, Booker has received funding that will provide students the opportunity to learn about ‘healthy food practices’.

Our food system is deeply broken. Family farmers are struggling and their farms are disappearing, while big agriculture conglomerates get bigger and enjoy greater profits. Meanwhile, healthy, fresh food is hard to find and even harder to afford in rural and urban communities alike. In the richest country on the planet, over 35 million Americans from every walk of life are facing food insecurity

Senator Cory Booker

With Senator Booker on the Committee, there is a scope for better sustainable policies in the U.S as he pushes for animal as well as worker protections along with environmental checks on animal farming.

Joining his passion for environmental justice, House Democrats in the U.S released a comprehensive report in July last year with an aggressive climate emergency ‘action plan’ that aims to eliminate the country’s emissions by 2050 in order to reduce the 29% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The 500-page plan contains defined actions that the federal government under full Democratic control will take across all sections of the economy along with crucial investments proposed for infrastructure, clean energy, and achieving environmental and social justice. 

Lead image courtesy of Cory Booker’s Facebook.