Growers and Grocers

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Do you lie awake at night wondering where your food comes from? Do you toss and turn over the real meaning of organic, or whether your meat eats grass or grain? Are you easily distracted by the idea that the US government pays farmers to grow corn that nobody needs? Then you might just be suffering from the Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Following four different meals back to their very beginnings along four separate and distinct food chains (industrial, organic industrial, organic sustainable and hunting and foraging) author Michael Pollan explores where our food comes from and how our choices are affecting our health and our environment. Anyone who isn’t yet convinced that just about everything to do with our food systems is political needs to sit down and read this book.

Like similar books published recently, such as What to Eat by Marion Nestle and The Way We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, the Omnivore’s Dilemma is predisposed to favouring organic sustainable eating over the other options. Pollan explores a typical fast food meal to show exactly how much our diet depends on corn, right down to the beef in our burgers. Looking as closely at the factory farm complex as he is allowed (Pollan could not gain permission to enter an abattoir and be present on the killing floor during processing) , he is still able to paint a stark and often frightening picture of the standard industrial diet, particularly as it relates to the use of vital resources:

I don’t have a sufficiently vivid imagination to look at my steer and see a barrel of oil, but petroleum is one of the most important ingredients in the production of modern meat, and the Persian Gulf is surely a link in the food chain that passes through this (or any) feedlot. Steer 534 started his life part of a food chain that derived all of its energy from the sun, which nourished the grasses that nourished him and his mother. When 534 moved from ranch to feedlot, from grass to corn, he joined an industrial food chain powered by fossil fuel – and therefore defended by the U.S. military, another never-counted cost of cheap food.

Organics find a bit more favour, but Pollan’s harsh words for the organic supermarket stylings of chains like Wholefoods have sparked a very public argument between himself and Wholefoods founder John MacKey. The argument probably isn’t over, as the organic certification standards keep changing and more and more industrial producers and sellers opt in, the growth in farms that produce organic food on a huge industrial scale will continue to grow.

Pollan offers his highest praise for the organic sustainable meal. He spends some time on Polyface Farm in Virginia with farmer Joel Salatin. Under the premise of constant rotation and symbiotic relationships, Salatin raises beef, pigs and chickens, often using the waste of one to improve the next. For instance, during the winter, the cows are kept in a barn where their waste is allowed to build up, layered with straw and handfuls of corn. The corn ferments and in the spring when the cows are put out to pasture, the pigs root through the cow dung in search of the corn, stirring it up and quickly turning it to compost for the pasture. In the fields, the cows are moved frequently and chickens are put in the fields after them. The chickens dig through the cow patties for bugs and grubs, breaking up the cow patties and adding their own nitrogen-rich waste to the mix, which in turn fertilizes the grass so it can grow again and the cows can come back to start the process all over again.

Pollan takes part in the weekly chicken slaughter at Polyface and remarks on the fact that customers drive an hour or more to pick up their organic, sustainably-raised chickens as Salatin refuses to sell to stores, retailing only through a few Farmer’s Market, with most of his sales going to local restaurants. This is my one issue with the premise of Salatin’s set-up and with the general philosophy of “buying local”. How much fuel is wasted as each of those customers (many based an hour or more away in Washington DC, some even half a day’s drive) travel all the way to Polyface for one chicken? The same is true of CSA set-ups that require customers to pick up their weekly produce. If at least part of the goal is to help the environment, then many of these farms should figure out a way to do a weekly delivery to a central pick-up point rather than expect customers to drive a hundred miles or more for a chicken or a box of zucchini.

With his final meal being one of hunting, gathering and foraging, Pollan sits down at a steakhouse with a book by animal rights activist Peter Singer and tries, in his own book, to justify his habit of meat eating. With the hunting portion of his project close at hand, he tries desperately to come up with a few good reasons for what he plans to do.

To be honest, this is the point at which Pollan lost me. He at least has enough sense to be embarrassed by the “man versus beast” prose that he inserts into these chapters, and enough good sense to be thoroughly squicked by the fact that he has not only killed a wild pig but that pig is full of (can you believe it??) blood and guts, but the arguments he offers to try and refute Singer’s claims (and for the record, I’m not a huge fan of Singer’s – the guy can be a bit extreme in his opinions), which he refers to as “The Vegetarian’s Dilemma” seems a little like drawing at straws. And while he makes a point that reflects my own philosophy of vegetarianism. “ What’s wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle”, he still seems a tad too desperate about being parted from his beloved steak.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a tough book to handle in many ways. There is far more to what we eat than brightly coloured packaging and cello-wrap, and most of it isn’t pretty. There is a huge political machine in place that influences our decisions at the supermarket and at the table, and Pollan wants us all to be able to see past the smoke and mirrors to know where our food really comes from. We can only hope that the philosophy of slow food, lovingly prepared and humanly and sustainably raised will eventually trickle down to the “meals in 30 minutes” crowd who keep the industrial food system (both traditional and organic) in business.