This new edition offers a timely update to the leading textbook dedicated to all aspects of U.S. food policy. The update accounts for experience with policy changes in the 2014 Farm Bill and prospects for the next Farm Bill, the publication of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the removal of Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status for trans fats, the collapse of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty, stalled child nutrition reauthorization legislation, reforms in food-labeling policy, the consequences of the 2016 presidential election and many other developments. The second edition offers greater attention both to food justice issues and to economic methods, including extensive economics appendices in a new online Companion Website.
As with the first edition, real-world controversies and debates motivate the book's attention to economic principles, policy analysis, nutrition science and contemporary data sources. The book assumes that the reader's concern is not just the economic interests of farmers and food producers but also includes nutrition, sustainable agriculture, food justice, the environment and food security. The goal is to make U.S. food policy more comprehensible to those inside and outside the agri-food sector whose interests and aspirations have been ignored.
The chapters cover U.S. agriculture, food production and the environment, international agricultural trade, food and beverage manufacturing, food retail and restaurants, food safety, dietary guidance, food labeling, advertising and federal food assistance programs for the poor.
The author is an agricultural economist with many years of experience in the nonprofit advocacy sector, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and as a professor at Tufts University. The author's blog on U.S. food policy provides a forum for discussion and debate of the issues set out in the book.
About the Author: Parke Wilde is a food economist and professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Boston, USA. Previously, he worked for the Community Nutrition Institute and for USDA's Economic Research Service. He received his Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University, USA. At Tufts, Parke teaches graduate-level courses in statistics and U.S. food policy. His research addresses food security and hunger measurement, the economics of food assistance programs and federal dietary guidance policy. He is a director of the Tufts/University of Connecticut Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Program. He has been a member of the Institute of Medicine's Food Forum and of the research committee advising AGree, a national food policy initiative. He is on the editorial board for Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy and keeps a blog at usfoodpolicy.com.
