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TechnoratiMichael Pollan's Food for Thought
The writer and activist Michael Pollan has no interest in becoming Barack Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, thank you very much, even though there are a lot of people who think he'd be perfect for the job.
Pollan disagrees. Laughing, he told my colleague Bill Moyers on the latest edition of public television's Bill Moyers Journal, "I have an understanding of my strengths and limitations... I don't want this job," then turned serious as he added, "What Obama needs to do, if he indeed wants to make change in this area -- and that isn't clear yet that he does, at least in his first term -- I think we need a food policy czar in the White House because the challenge is not just what we do with agriculture, it's connecting the dots between agriculture and public health, between agriculture and energy and climate change, agriculture and education."
There's been an Internet-fueled citizen's movement to draft Pollan for the cabinet post. As the author of countless articles and such books as The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, his thorough reporting, literally getting his hands dirty working on American farms and writing about it, has made him one of our country's greatest experts on how and what we eat.
In an open letter to whoever would become our next president -- or "Farmer in Chief," as he put it in the October 12th New York Times Magazine -- Pollan wrote, "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...
"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."
In 2007, before the financial meltdown had even struck, some 32 million Americans -- at least one in nine households -- had trouble putting enough food on the table. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, food banks across the country are struggling to meet a surge of people uncertain about their next meal. They've seen a 20% increase in demand -- middle class families, they say, account for most of the growth.
And the day before our annual Thanksgiving binge, the Washington Post reported, "The number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina."
Contrast this with the big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses -- "A welfare program," as Time Magazine described it, "for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water, and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals and depopulate rural America."
In a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Obama cited a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office: "From 2003 to 2006, millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff to qualify for such subsidies," he said. "If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as president."
All well and good, but as a senator, Barack Obama supported that monster farm bill (although he was absent for the actual roll call). He also supported the production of ethanol (a politically expedient move when the Iowa Democratic caucuses were at stake), even though using corn for fuel rather than food raises the price of grain and results in huge emissions of greenhouse gases.
Thus, where food and agriculture are concerned, connecting the dots, as Michael Pollan told Bill Moyers, is a tortuous journey involving internecine politics, international diplomacy, big business, every branch of government and every issue from morbid obesity to homeland security.
Pollan is hopeful that Obama will take advantage of his oratorical skills and bully pulpit to set an example for the American people, perhaps even suggesting "meatless Mondays" for the country -- which, according to Pollan, would have the ecological effect of taking 30-40 million cars off the road for a year -- and encouraging home gardening and eating locally; supporting the small farmers who grow fresh food nearby -- without chemicals or subsidies.
"I think we have to figure out different solutions in different places, and it's not all or nothing," he said. "We need to let a thousand flowers bloom. We need to try many things in many places, and figure out what works...
"Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer's market. Get out of the supermarket... Plant a garden... Declare your independence from the culture of fast food."
Regardless of who Obama chooses as his Ag Secretary, it will be interesting to see if the new president sees fit to make Pollan an unofficial advisor on food issues, an influential voice in his -- you should excuse the expression -- kitchen cabinet.
16 Comments so far
Show AllIt is long past time when attention should be aimed at the way we eat. This problem can be summed up as:
Putting Profits Before People.
Reverse that and the problem is solved.
To begin, animals raised for human consumption must be treated humanely and with respect: No injections to make the animals fatter. Injecting animals with hormones and antibiotics is harmful to meat-eating people.
The way we eat, the foods presented to us at food stores, the so-called western diet, has resulted in the great increase of high blood pressure, heart attacks and other heart problems, diabetes, and obesity in our society.
High fructose corn syrup as a sweetener should be banned. A side-effect other than obesity is that, rather than satisfying, it makes people long for more.
All of this affects the health care system adversely... sick people, and many sick people without health insurance to assure their treatment.
All this can be adequately handled if people are valued over profits. It won't be done voluntarily by greedy food producers. An informed and strong government oversight and enforcement is a must.
I admire and appreciate Pollan's voice now; I think he's gone above and beyond to understand current food issues, including learning how to hunt. I'm discouraged about the idea of "meatless Mondays," as it perpetuates the myth that meat eating is part of the problem.
As a Buddhist farmer who raises, slaughters and eats his own meat, I've been around the issue of vegetarianism for years. I admire the ideal of harmlessness, and I feel it is an important one to hold, to carefully avoid causing unnecessary harm to living beings. There is no doubt that the current system of raising meat industrially is inhumane and unsustainable, with its system of feedlots and dirty, dangerous slaughterhouses. Same goes for "modern" dairy and egg production. If a "meatless Monday," which would be observed by a tiny proportion of the population without enforcement, would set industrial ag back, I'm all for it.
This being said, humans will never stop raising animals and killing them for meat. Everywhere in the world where they can, people raise domestic animals and hunt wild animals, and always have, and always will. This is because animal fat and flesh are essential for human nutrition. That's why they taste so good! I hear the howls of protest, they remind me of the howls of wolves on the range. I know many political vegetarians think that they hold this subversive view that undermines the agbiz establishment, but the truth is exactly the opposite. Please check http://www.westonaprice.org/ for the scientific research that proves that animal foods are essential, and the dark history of a long campaign by entrenched interests against real human nutrition, and small-scale agriculture. If you rightfully view Pollan as a hero, remember that he is not a vegetarian, and he actually takes responsibility for his meat consumption by doing some of the killing himself.
Arturo,
Everything you wrote about eating meat was also written about slavery in the US south 160 years ago, people were saying humans always had slavery and always will have slavery.
Only those abolitionist nut-case extremists thought otherwise.
---USAn---
To Joe Hope:
I'm a vegetarian, and I have no intention of putting my "filthy hippy paws" anywhere near your ribeye. And that's not because I don't eat red meat. neither, do I think, has Pollan.
Maybe you simply misinterpreted the statement. Maybe you're just ignorant and can't tear your eyes away from the slab of meat in front of you long enough to finish a sentence.
Eating meat isn't bad. Some people need it. If you do, then great. What he's saying by suggesting "meatless mondays" is that people not eating meat for one day would decrease emissions, "which, according to Pollan, would have the ecological effect of taking 30-40 million cars off the road for a year."
Pollan couldn't care less about your ribeye, Joe. It's the earth he cares about. And your ribeye is just getting in the way a little. Maybe a lot.
enjoy your steak
"Vote with your fork, ... Go to the farmer's market. Get out of the supermarket... Plant a garden...." A much more important thing to do would be to go out and stand beside a real farmer/activist for a while and learn what they know about the farm bill that the mainstream media and progressives do not.
I applaud Michael Pollan for raising important food issues in a scholarly way, we needed a lot more of that, but he remains politically naive. He simply doesn't understand or deal forcefully enough with the history and current realities of farm politics, as I've commented in response to his "Farmer in Chief" piece (Common Dreams 10/10/8). To his credit, Pollan did briefly stand beside George Naylor, and he knows better than what Winship says here about subsidies, as I'll explain below. Still, he's a weak advocate on the crucial issues and would be eaten alive as Sec of Ag., as any "city slicker" would.
Thankfully Winship didn't suggest David Beckman of Bread for the World as Ag Sec., another Moyers/Winship favorite (see my comments 7/19/8 Moyers/Winship, Common Dreams "Mothers Milk...;" and to Bread's 11/7/8 Common Dreams Newswire PR). At least Pollan (mentored by George Naylor) is that rare species, an anti-dumping progressive, with regards to the U.S. farm bill's Commodity Title. I'm speaking here of real world policy impact, not mere profession of the values of anti-dumping.
OK, specific falsehoods here. "The big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses:" Actually most of this goes to the nutrition title, and most of the commodity title money goes as compensations for massive losses. It's directly proportional: the bigger the subsidy, the bigger the loss. Main farm program crops (corn, wheat, cotton, rice, soybeans, grain sorghum, barley, oats, on the vast majority of US farmland acres) lost (vs. full costs, excluding subsidies) about 200 billion 1981-2006, losing every year except 1996. (Also WITH subsidies, all commodities studied by ERS lost money overall for the total years studied. See "Commodity Costs and Returns: U.S. and Regional Cost and Return Data" online.) If a smaller farm lost 10,000, a larger one lost 100,000, or 1,000,000, except for some economies of scale. The big subsidy complaints are against farms losing the big bucks, but no mention is made of the losses. Meanwhile, yes, massive agribusiness gets enormous gains, but not out of the $307 billion. No, it's hidden. It's that farm commodities lack "price responsiveness" (search that and Daryl E. Ray) so they're usually low without price floors and supply management. So in lowering and eliminating these policies, the output complex (grain/cotton buyers) has gained big billions and probably trillions historically from below cost gains. Restore adequate (above full cost) price floors (with supply management) to end it (and then no subsidies are needed). See nffc dot net. Otherwise antisubsidy talk is fluff.
Obama is no better, (including as indicated by the discussion here of "millionaire farmers,") though when I pressed him on this in Cedar Rapids, he indicated that he knew about it, that "what farmers really need is a price in the marketplace." But since 2002 the Democrats have been for pure dumping, like the Republicans, with smokescreen agribusiness protection ("safety net" subsidies to hide massive losses on exports and in domestic markets). So "all [is NOT] well and good." Is Obama smart enough and courageous enough to try a farm parity economic stimulus like the New Deal and the Steagall Amendment of 1941? Odds are very low and Obama's new antisubsidy smokescreen reinforces this. (Again, I'm FOR subsidy ELIMINATION, but ONLY WITH adequate price floors and supply management, and also price ceilings and strategic reserves on the top side).
Falsehood: Not to deny any ethanol environmental problems, it has raised corn prices some, but that's antidumping and good, not bad. That helps poor farmers worldwide, stimulating their economies with economic multipliers, and helping to end poverty and hunger, if continued long enough. (Though the suddenness and volatility causes hunger short term, and volatility (ie. no floors and ceilings) fuels speculation which can hurt poor enormously.) Farm share of the US food dollar is probably under 8% overall, and for program crops like corn and wheat, probably about 1% for corn flakes and bread. That's if you subtract the input share (ie. input complex herbicides, fertilizers, livestock pharmaceuticals, etc.) from farm share (as done by Stewart Smith). So it's more falsehood about farm vs. food prices. And subsidies (but not price floors) only cause a few percent + or - of these commodity prices, according to most econometric studies (ie. see Tufts Univ., Paradox of Agricultural Subsidies, p. 21).
Also: " Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration." In fact the corporate food policy lobby is huge and has dominated. It's been priority one. Pollan's out of the loop. "The era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close:" well, since the peak in July, corn prices are down about 55%, soybeans 50%, etc.
What's "tortuous" and "internecine" in U.S. politics, strangely, (since progressives and mainstream media, for example, don't understand the issue) is trying to get our politicians to favor policies where the U.S. would make a profit on exports (against the powerful corporate lobby's wishes!).
Sorry to be provocative, but seriously, let's get up to speed on these issues folks.
Brad Wilson,
I enjoy your comments and your informed criticism of food policy discussions. However, sometimes I get lost in the details you present with rapid-fire statistics. I think that you agree with most of those you would characterize as politically naive about farm politics in that what we need is to promote sustainable farming that produces healthful and nutritious goods and provides good livings for farmers big and small. Why not try to refocus your comments so that they relate directly to your arguments for reform? That would help me, one of those naive to farm politics, to understand the issues better, which is your aim, I believe.
For instance, what is the relationship between price floors and subsidies? Which groups support price floors, and which oppose them?
Thanks for your comments.
"Pollan is hopeful that Obama will take advantage of his oratorical skills and bully pulpit to set an example for the American people, perhaps even suggesting "meatless Mondays" for the country"
There are very few things Obama could do that would make me dislike him. But this is one of them. If you're afraid of eating meat, if you think it's murder, fine. But keep your filthy hippy paws off my ribeye! (BTW I seriously doubt Obama would suggest "meatless Mondays")
To Joe Hope:
I'm a vegetarian, and I have no intention of putting my "filthy hippy paws" anywhere near your ribeye. And that's not because I don't eat red meat. neither, do I think, has Pollan.
Maybe you simply misinterpreted the statement. Maybe you're just ignorant and can't tear your eyes away from the slab of meat in front of you long enough to finish a sentence.
Eating meat isn't bad. Some people need it. If you do, then great. What he's saying by suggesting "meatless mondays" is that people not eating meat for one day would decrease emissions, "which, according to Pollan, would have the ecological effect of taking 30-40 million cars off the road for a year."
Pollan couldn't care less about your ribeye, Joe. It's the earth he cares about. And your ribeye is just getting in the way a little. Maybe a lot.
enjoy your steak
Much beef is razed on public lands even forests where the cattle pull out the grasses that hold the dirt in place which causes erosion that then damages the forest and the streams. A fellow looked at the cattle working on the grasses up a fairly steep mountain slope in the public forest of the Sierra adjacent to California's Sequoia National Park and remarked, aptly, that the cattle were as a plaque of locusts.
Much beef is raised on burned off, bulldozed off, once lush forest lands in Brazil for grazing cattle and growing feed for cattle. The soil, no longer protected by the forest, washes away, nutrients in the remaining soil are leeched out, and washed away leaving sterile barren land that in a few years can no longer even grow cattle feed.
Pen-feeding operations of cattle contaminate not only the land the cattle stand on - sometimes chest deep in a soup of mud, urine, and fecal matter - but also contaminate nearby fields and streams. The infamous e-coli-contaminated spinach from California not long ago that sickened many and even killed was due to cattle fecal contamination.
And if the above weren't destructive enough, recent published research revealed that the gasses given off by cattle and their fecal matter throughout the world create more to the green-house effect than all the motor vehicles in the world.
To put it simply: the craving for meat is killing the planet humans need in order to survive.
The public consumption of large quantities of meat has contributed to the high incidence of certain cancers and heart disease in the United States which has a major effect on driving up the high cost of health care in the nation.
It has long been observed that animals, including red-meat Republicans become irritated and aggressive on high meat diets.
So it might be appropriate to say: keep your filthy right-wing paws off my planet with your meat addiction.
"Much beef is razed on public lands"
Only where there is hoof and mouth disease. Other than that, beef is razed on barbecues.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
Sigh, spell-checkers can't substitute for careful reading. Oh, well, I could say the land is being razed by the cattle. Perhaps in my sub-conscious I was thinking that.
"I think we have to figure out different solutions in different places, and it's not all or nothing,"
God, I wish people could understand this.
Let go of your egos and your one-trick-ponies. We are ALL needed and the answer lies in us all doing different things.
Please, no more single-solution fascism!
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
Its good that Pollan proposes meatless mondays, but it was truly Bush-like idiocy to suggest that we need more hunting on public lands.
The less idiots with guns pretending to be wolves and cougars (i.e. real hunters who are born with the equipment to do it and cant be sadists about it like humans can) the better.
Wildlife has its own problems without humans adding more problems because they are too selfish and stupid to give up the meat diet.
With the absence of traditional predators, deer populations grow to unsustainable levels. Unchecked, ravenous deer can clear a forest bed of all the tender seedlings needed to maintain forest regeneration. At some point, sufficient forage needed to over-winter ceases to exist--the result being, vast numbers of weak, starving, and freezing deer dying slow, tortuous deaths. You find that preferable?
I always find it interesting how "waste in Government" is railed against in departments like the Department of Acgriculture and such.
The reformers are all going to clean up this waste because it an incorrect use of taxpayer dollars.
49 million to be saved!!
In the next breath an announcement of increased military spending made with those 26000 dollar hammers and a further 800 billion handed over to some banking enterprise.
PK
It would be a surprise indeed if Obama chooses anyone for Secretary of Agriculture who is not part of or at least a supporter of big agribusiness. Much as the health care industry is dominated by pharmaceutical and insurance companies, agriculture is dominated by chemical companies, grain companies and multi-national food processing companies. Farmers have little choice of markets, little incentive to produce food for local markets and prices that do not reflect even the cost of production.
In a country that is, as Raj Patel puts it, "Stuffed and Starved" either obese or undernourished, some sort of coordination must be established, as Pollen says, connect the dots.
We have the capacity go feed ourselves, to grow healthy food, to establish health care for all, but current government policies encourage exactly the opposite. Lets hope Obama shows us something.