We are, as you well know, in the midst of a hotly contested election cycle in the United States. Many people have very strong feelings about the candidates.

As an advocate for healthy and sustainable food systems, I’ve tried to work equally with Republicans and Democrats, and indeed with people of all political perspectives. It seems to me that all of us want safe and healthy food for ourselves and for our families. And that all of us want clean air, clean water, and fertile soil.

Today, it’s the Democratic party that is often more identified with protecting the environment. But it was, in fact, a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, who first launched the conservation movement in the United States, which has in turn given rise to the modern environmental movement. And it was another Republican president, Richard Nixon, who, despite his many flaws, led the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Whatever our political persuasion, each and every one of us eats food. And each and every one of us has a stake in how healthy our food is, and how it’s produced.

Our food, and how it’s grown, has, in fact, an enormous impact on our health, and also on the economy, on the environment, and on our national security. Those impacts are so great that food and agriculture have to be considered among the dominant issues facing our nation and the world today.

At the Food Revolution Network, we’ve undertaken a serious inquiry into what kinds of food and agriculture policies we might expect from the two leading Presidential candidates if they were to become our next President.

In this inquiry, we’ve researched each of the candidate’s statements about food and agriculture. We’ve examined their policy proposals. We’ve studied what their respective party platforms say about food and agriculture. We’ve looked into each of their histories, both personal and political, regarding food issues. We’ve looked into the funding they’ve each received from players in the food and agriculture world. And we’ve done a thorough investigation into the food and agriculture advisors they’ve each surrounded themselves with, and who they’ve chosen to include in and to head their food and agriculture committees. In this process, we’ve uncovered some extremely potent and little-known information.