Just finished reading this: The Omnivore's Delusion:Against the Agri-Intellectuals. (It's brief, go read it for yourself). A while back, Nicole & I listened to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto and thought it worth considering.
I don't like *icides. I don't want to eat poison, even it minute quantities. I don't like thinking of pigs, chickens, cows, etc. living in boxes barely larger than their own bodies. I don't like the idea of thousands of animals corralled into a very small area, eating nearly-indigestible feed and consequent force-fed antibiotics. I really don't like the manure ponds at such facilities. I am scared by monoculture, understanding that it can result in a worldwide repeat of the Irish Potato Famine. I am righteously indignant at the thought of a corporation engineering the genes of a food plant, such that a farmer must purchase seed for every planting (rather than reserve some of the previous crop as seed). I'm not concerned that an insect-resistance gene will migrate from a corn plant to the surrounding shrubs. I'm mildly concerned that such a gene might migrate from an engineered apple tree to the local wild apple population. That could wipe-out an entire food-chain, starving everything preying on apple-eating insects. For all these reasons, I prefer to purchase organic and free-range foodstuffs.
But . . . It doesn't take much of a mathematician to multiply average yield per acre (using organic methods) by number of available acres, to get "not nearly enough." The simple, brutal fact is that primitive methods of food production won't feed all of us. As far as I can tell, no one has shown that crops grown with modern insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers are actually harmful to eat. Someone has shown that organic food is neither more nor less nutritious than conventionally produced food. I enjoy ham, and eggs, and grilled chicken. If I'm going to continue eating them often, they need to be produced as efficiently as possible. That means cages and feed-lots.
I think the idea that we humans must tread lightly on this earth is reasonable. The more I think about it, the more organic food production strikes me as yet another instance of the myth of the Golden Age. I.e., that the best way to tread lightly is to "resume" doing things "naturally." There's nothing "natural" about capturing and domesticating prey animals. Neither is clearing meadows to sow preferred food plants, "natural." Humans haven't been "natural" for 10,000 years. "Natural," for us, is a starving, diseased, parasite-riddled hunter/gather. I'm coming to think of organic food production as an expensive facade, a way for some of us to convince ourselves we're treading lightly.
If I want meat animals to be treated better (and I'm beginning to wonder if, for example, "free range" is really better than a cage to a chicken), then I should stop eating meat. When they are an expensive luxury, they'll be treated very well. If I don't like monoculture, I should be purchasing food from local farmers that don't grow the "standard variants" of commercial crops. (Why local? Because one of the biggest impetuses that led to monoculture was the need to grow variants that shipped well.) If I want food plants that require fewer pesticides & herbicides, I need to support things like genetically engineered disease & pest resistance, perennial-ized food plants, and salt & drought-tolerant crops (irrigation is a slow method of salting your own fields). Which is not to say I should endorse every endeavor; I can't decide, for example, if terminator genes are good or bad. Lab-grown, artificial meat also gives me difficulty. Lastly, I still think Pollan & Co. have some valid points. Snickers bars, for example, are not food. Ideally, and this paragraph is very idealistic, I should be buying tomatoes, onions, and garlic to make my own sauce, rather than buying it from Paul Newman.
I don't like *icides. I don't want to eat poison, even it minute quantities. I don't like thinking of pigs, chickens, cows, etc. living in boxes barely larger than their own bodies. I don't like the idea of thousands of animals corralled into a very small area, eating nearly-indigestible feed and consequent force-fed antibiotics. I really don't like the manure ponds at such facilities. I am scared by monoculture, understanding that it can result in a worldwide repeat of the Irish Potato Famine. I am righteously indignant at the thought of a corporation engineering the genes of a food plant, such that a farmer must purchase seed for every planting (rather than reserve some of the previous crop as seed). I'm not concerned that an insect-resistance gene will migrate from a corn plant to the surrounding shrubs. I'm mildly concerned that such a gene might migrate from an engineered apple tree to the local wild apple population. That could wipe-out an entire food-chain, starving everything preying on apple-eating insects. For all these reasons, I prefer to purchase organic and free-range foodstuffs.
But . . . It doesn't take much of a mathematician to multiply average yield per acre (using organic methods) by number of available acres, to get "not nearly enough." The simple, brutal fact is that primitive methods of food production won't feed all of us. As far as I can tell, no one has shown that crops grown with modern insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers are actually harmful to eat. Someone has shown that organic food is neither more nor less nutritious than conventionally produced food. I enjoy ham, and eggs, and grilled chicken. If I'm going to continue eating them often, they need to be produced as efficiently as possible. That means cages and feed-lots.
I think the idea that we humans must tread lightly on this earth is reasonable. The more I think about it, the more organic food production strikes me as yet another instance of the myth of the Golden Age. I.e., that the best way to tread lightly is to "resume" doing things "naturally." There's nothing "natural" about capturing and domesticating prey animals. Neither is clearing meadows to sow preferred food plants, "natural." Humans haven't been "natural" for 10,000 years. "Natural," for us, is a starving, diseased, parasite-riddled hunter/gather. I'm coming to think of organic food production as an expensive facade, a way for some of us to convince ourselves we're treading lightly.
If I want meat animals to be treated better (and I'm beginning to wonder if, for example, "free range" is really better than a cage to a chicken), then I should stop eating meat. When they are an expensive luxury, they'll be treated very well. If I don't like monoculture, I should be purchasing food from local farmers that don't grow the "standard variants" of commercial crops. (Why local? Because one of the biggest impetuses that led to monoculture was the need to grow variants that shipped well.) If I want food plants that require fewer pesticides & herbicides, I need to support things like genetically engineered disease & pest resistance, perennial-ized food plants, and salt & drought-tolerant crops (irrigation is a slow method of salting your own fields). Which is not to say I should endorse every endeavor; I can't decide, for example, if terminator genes are good or bad. Lab-grown, artificial meat also gives me difficulty. Lastly, I still think Pollan & Co. have some valid points. Snickers bars, for example, are not food. Ideally, and this paragraph is very idealistic, I should be buying tomatoes, onions, and garlic to make my own sauce, rather than buying it from Paul Newman.
