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With the presidential debates drawing to a close this week and Election Day coming up, we're finding that everyone's got politics on their mind - and for good reason.  This week's featured read is from Michael Pollan who wrote a thorough and detailed open letter to our next 'Farmer-in-Chief' in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine's Food Fights! issue.  He encourages the US's next leader to bring the important issue of food quality and safety into the discussion and see the new administration address some issues that are important to all of us. An Open Letter to the Next Farmer-in-Chief

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

What changes would you like to see in food policy in the coming years?