Think Globally, Eat Locally
Dinovella, Elizabeth
Books Think Globally, Eat Locally The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan The Penguin Press. 450 pages. $26.95. By Elizabeth DiNovella Most of us are...
...He figures in how much petroleum is required to transport crops across the country not to mention the petrochemicals used in big agriculture...
...Pollan's trek takes him to Salinas Valley (the same area where the recent E. coli outbreak originated) and visits a "Big Organic" farm that sells the majority of "spring mix" salad bags found in supermarkets and co-ops...
...We will also have to adjust our policies...
...Once upon a time, our food came from the ground...
...The best way to examine our national dysfunctional relationship to food, Pollan decides, is to trace the origins of meals derived from different food systems-industrial, organic, and food foraged from the wild...
...Though we may count calories or carbs, we don't really know where our food comes from...
...It is very much in the interest of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, the better to then assuage them with new products," writes Pollan...
...A few years ago, one of my friends happened to be my farmer...
...Pollan does a good job of sleuthing out the true costs of food...
...The Mexican farmers couldn't compete with the huge industrial farms taking root in their country...
...Michael Pollan answers this question in his latest book, The Omnivore's Dilemma...
...My local farmers have taught me to eat seasonally and to never settle for a mushy tomato trucked in from Mexico in January...
...The industrial food industry takes advantage of this quandary...
...And though they didn't taste as good as they did earlier in the summer, they were still better than the berries I could have bought at the grocery store, shipped from Chile...
...I come from a family that enjoys food...
...I didn't expect to find those luscious berries in September...
...Food now travels, on average, 1,500 miles to reach our plates...
...Big Organic has at least one crucial positive aspect: It keeps tons of chemical fertilizers off of crops and therefore out of our water supply...
...The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on poison gases developed for the war) is the product of the government's effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes...
...We buy tomatoes spliced with fish genes, eat corn that is genetically modified, and cut into steaks carved from cows, natural herbivores, that have been fed processed bovine parts...
...If we want to change our insane food system, we will have to adjust our palates...
...An elegant writer, he explains both complicated chemical processes and the finer points of animal liberation philosophy with ease...
...Naylor, L?pez G?mez, and Alcocer de Leon are part of an international movement that challenges this military industrial food complex...
...Organic milk can travel 1,500 miles across the country, too, just like regular old milk...
...His previous book, The Botany of Desire, scrutinized the symbiotic connections between plants and people...
...I would have bought some if I did, for I had faith that my local farmers weren't tainted by E. coli...
...I thought this was a bit of an exaggeration, but the more I read the more I became convinced...
...Sometimes what we eat can kill us...
...Pollan does an excellent job mapping out the path of organics, from its humble beginnings to the fights at the USDA about what the word "organic" means...
...It seduces us and allows us to believe that we aren't just buying a gallon of milk, we are supporting a family farm, a way of life...
...He ran a community-supported agriculture farm that sold shares in the spring...
...And he loves food...
...Chemical runoff from farms contaminates our water tables...
...The United States actually imports food for human consumption while we dump cheap-and highly subsidized-corn on the global market...
...Mexican farmers were losing their farms, just as the farmers in Iowa and Wisconsin had in the previous decades...
...Excess nitrogen in our watersheds has created huge dead zones in the Northwest and the Gulf of Mexico...
...Pollan calls the vibe at Whole Foods "Supermarket Pastoral...
...A journalist by trade, Pollan is an ideal person for this task...
...Our public health system faces epidemics of diabetes, childhood obesity, and heart disease, all related to our diet...
...I also miss knowing who grew my food...
...Pollan tallies other costs as well, such as the destruction of communities...
...Most of the food grown in Iowa isn't for us...
...My friend no longer farms, and I do miss his fresh veggies...
...Our food system depends on consumers' not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the check out scanner," he writes...
...The organic market, once on the fringe, has expanded into an $11 billion industry and is the fastest growing sector of agriculture...
...He came to The Progressives office, along with Emilio L?pez G?mez and Jose Luis Alcocer de Leon, two Mexican farmers who were invited by the National Family Farm Coalition to visit the Midwest...
...I also bought some raspberries, which were a treat...
...Pollan wonders how long industrial chicken operations would last if consumers could see how chickens were processed...
...When the spinach scare happened, I looked for spinach at the farmers' market but didn't find any...
...Food is one of the places where globalization meets fierce resistance...
...For local food chains to succeed, people will have to relearn what it means to eat according to the seasons," writes Pollan...
...Indeed, the most powerful protests against globalization to date have all revolved around food," writes Pollan...
...How did we become so split off from food...
...The chemical fertilizer industry was born from leftover ammonium nitrate, used in making explosives, the government had after World War II...
...Now a lot of it comes from the lab...
...Elizabeth DiNovella is culture editor of The Progressive...
...Pollan meets George Naylor, a corn and soybean farmer from Churdan, Iowa...
...From France to India, from Italy to South Korea, farmers and eaters are saying no to "cheap" food...
...But it remains a precarious system, caught between competing values...
...Cheap food costs us dearly...
...Pollan leaves the large farms and spends a week on a small family farm in Virginia that represents the best of a locally supported food system...
...How, exactly do three counties in California cause grocery stores across the country to take spinach off the shelf...
...Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing...
...The high yields Naylor gets from his monoculture fields couldn't happen without added nitrates...
...Naylor no longer feeds his family with what he grows, but he does contribute to the enormous corn and soybean harvests that end up becoming, through the magic of chemistry, the high-fructose corn syrup in our soda pop, and the emul-sifiers and "natural" additives that find their way into two-thirds of all processed food...
...The organic label is more ambiguous than you may think...
...And let's not forget the emptying of the countryside of Mexico...
...But when people die because of spinach-spinach!- ignorance can suddenly horribly turn deadly...
...Humans eat most anything, and therein lies our dilemma...
...These large organic farms are a contradictory mix of hippie values, industrial machinery, and niche marketing...
...Corn has replaced people in Churdan, Iowa, and elsewhere in the Midwest...
...But the reality is more complicated, and often enough we are still buying milk from a cow that doesn't enjoy luxuriating on a grassy pasture...
...The same companies that produce organic foods also sell cigarettes...
...It's hard to imagine that just a few generations ago, most of our food was local...
...We've traded free energy from the sun for pricey petroleum...
...But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: Spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer...
...It is only a matter of time before the next outbreak of E. coli...
...Big Ag thrives precisely because so many of these costs are hidden, especially environmental ones...
...Serious thought was given to spraying Americas forests with the surplus chemical, to help out the timber industry," writes Pollan...
...Although some farm workers, many of them immigrants, may get better treatment on organic farms, it's not a given...
...By Elizabeth DiNovella Most of us are ignorant of what we eat...
...But I didn't really love seasonal produce until I moved to Wisconsin...
...Alcocer de Leon told me they were surprised to see our local farmers struggling for the same reasons they were struggling...
...Instead, the same multinational companies were reaping all the gains from industrial cultivation and screwing family farms across borders...
...The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the petroleum consumed in the United States (about as much as automobiles do)," he writes...
...Organic costs a lot, too...
...Not very long...
...Since his farm was within the city limits, he was able to transport his crops by bicycle...
...I bought some Swiss chard instead...
...He starts his search in the cornfields of Iowa, and there we find clues to our current predicament...
...I buy food at a local co-op, not at Wal-Mart, though it, too, now stocks organic products...
...But even in the coop I can't avoid the problems of our industrial food system...
...Now autumn is upon us, and I crave Yukon gold potatoes and spaghetti squash...
...Modern warfare and industrial agriculture are entwined...
...Naylor tells Pollan that he grows his corn for "the military industrial complex...
...There is nothing tastier than woodsy morels in May, wild blackberries in July, or cherry tomatoes-as sweet as candy-in late August...
...We can no longer afford to subsidize food that makes us sick or kills us...
...I now buy food at the local farmers' market, but it doesn't give me the same satisfaction...
...I considered myself a somewhat savvy shopper until I read this book...
...Pollan wonders if Big Organic is really any better than the industrial agriculture it mimics...
...From May until October, I got a box full of fresh produce...
...Towns in many Mexican states, including Oaxaca, Michoacan, and Jalisco, are now populated mostly by young children and the elderly...
...This farmer slaughters his chickens outside and invites his buyers to come and see for themselves how his food is produced...
...it's for cattle...
...A few years ago, I met George Naylor...
...They thought the cheap corn invading their lands must be benefiting Midwestern farmers...
...Today, it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate...
...Our obsession with inexpensive food is directly linked to immigration...
...We have to take a stand, and the best place to start may be from our seat at the dinner table...
...Eat the wrong mushroom and we're goners...
...organic," "free-range," and "sustainably farmed" have become advertising labels...
...Our bewilderment in the supermarket is no accident...
Vol. 70 • November 2006 • No. 11
