The food system is extremely complex, but we tend not to recognize that, because when we walk into a grocery store, the items we want are right there.
Most people give little thought to how the products get to the store.
To raise awareness of these issues, Maretzki helped establish the Northeast Network for Food, Agriculture, and Health Policy Education in 1988. Funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the project united land-grant university experts from 12 northeastern states and the District of Columbia. They collaborated to develop educational materials on the history and current status of the food system in the Northeast, connections between diet and health, and ways in which local, state, and federal policy decisions affect different sectors of the food system. She and a college-wide team of specialists are developing new ways to help cooperative extension agents explain the food system to the general public, such as by using theater as a teaching tool. Everyone depends on this intricate web of businesses, but very few people understand how the system works and how we can influence it with our purchases, our support for certain businesses and laws, and our participation in policy debates about food issues.