Highlights from Michael Pollan’s talk in the Twin Cities, April 19, 2007

From notes of attendee and enthusiast Will Winter, DVM (Will is Thousand Hills' consulting veterinarian and overall wellness, sustainability and love-of- good-food advocate.)

MICHAEL POLLAN for President! Yes, he is great indeed. I was blessed to be able to join about 400 other lucky ducks today who got to spend the bulk of the day soaking up the wisdom, humor and wise counsel of this writer of nature. Michael Pollan is an environmentalist-naturalist who prefers most of all to write about nature but preferably from the GARDEN. This theme will reoccur again and again in his work and it makes a great framework to understand any system. Nature and gardening require sustainable systems and are based on solar energy. That made the U of M Landscape Arboretum all the more appropriate for a lecture venue today.

If you visit www.michaelpollan.com you will find his journalistic array covering gardening, botany, architecture (yes) and now the ethics and aesthetics of food and eating. Here's a scant fraction of what I jotted down in listening to him today although you will want to tune into MPR's Midday program with Gary Eichten in early May. It's a must-hear performance.

"WHAT'S FOR DINNER, THE ETHICS AND AESTHETICS OF EATING"

Michael Pollan began by saying that this topic didn't used to require a conference to figure it out.

This is what he has been involved with in the year that has passed since the publication of his book THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA, now one of the top 10 titles on the NY Times bestseller list and soon to be released in soft cover. He is also finishing up work on his new book, hopefully out this summer, wherein he will be returning to the concepts of the garden and sustainable agriculture.

We are seeing a NEW FOOD CHAIN forming, one that will hopefully take up some of the volume of the current "industrial food chain" we are now experiencing and living through.

To redefine a few key terms is a good way to start

SUSTAINABILITY
A system that primarily doesn't destroy the natural resources upon which it depends. If something is subtracted from it or diminished, it [the system] can't be sustainable. Agriculture must not be a zero-sum equation.

Humans are the only animals that can redefine our food chain (and everything is part of a food chain) "What we eat and what eats us" is how every species is actually defined.

INDUSTRIAL FOOD
Starts in a corn field in Iowa >>> Cargill and ADM and then to General Mills.

CORN is the keystone species of the Industrial Food Chain and 85% of all our calories come from 4 crops. So much for biodiversity.

"We've now stuffed ourselves with corn to the extent that we are now feeding it to our cars!" That's how crazy it's gotten.

WHY A SOCIETY BASED ON CORN IS NOT SUSTAINABLE

1) ENERGY
It now takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to create one calorie of food! In 1900 we got 2 calorie of food for 1 calorie of fossil fuel because we were still on a SOLAR BASED energy. Now it's artificial nitrogen, diesel and herbicies and pesticides. 40% of the fossil fuel is used just to move food around.
 - US chickens go to China to be cut up then go back to the US for consumption
 - Alaskan Salmon goes to China to be filleted and then back to the US
 - We both import and export sugar cookies to Denmark ("why don't we just exchange recipes?")

2) POLLUTION
Pests love monoculture, now we have 20 million more acres of corn going in.

3) HEALTH
  - Food is astonishingly cheap in the US, too cheap
  - Antibiotics in food
  - Overweight-Malnourished Kids everywhere that are missing micronutrients

4) FINANCIAL
Cheap food is very expensive —$25 billion/yr to subsidize.

5) FOOD SECURITY
Food is concentrated in a few hands. One sink in the Salinas Valley washes all the lettuce eaten in the US.

6) TRANSPARENCY
People wouldn't eat it if they knew what goes into production of some foods. Any system that depends on secrecy and public ignorance is doomed to fail.

SIGNS THE PUBLIC IS HUNGRY FOR FOOD ALTERNATIVES
1) Organic now a $15 billion industry per year with no help from government or institutions
2) Whole Foods now the fastest growing grocery chain.
3) Farmer's Markets have doubled twice in 10 years. Now numbering 5000+

BUT, organic supermarket food has more food miles than
conventional food
 - TRADER JOE'S = China organic
 - 4 lbs of carbon is created to deliver 1lb of organic asparagus.
 - This "diesel-soaked" food is not really organic.

JOEL SALATIN of POLYFACE FARM (see the book for vivid details)
Michael Pollan gave us another good review of why it's important to see this farm as a model. Not of perfection, but Joel Salatin throws the whole issue of sustainability into "high relief". He exemplifies BIODIVERSITY via GRASS FARMING and, at the end of the year has hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef, chicken, eggs, hogs, rabbits and other proteins, but also more biodiversity, more soil, more grass and more fertility. Every year it gets BETTER. In a nutshell, this is living proof that farming doesn't have to be the zero-sum extractive process we've been led to believe is the only alternative.

LOCAL FOOD ECONOMIES

We've been told it’s REACTIONARY and SENTIMENTAL to hold on to this belief (by industry and government critics). And, in a way it is — we like to have farmers around, we prefer farms to strip malls, highways and housing developments as neighbors. We like going back to the kitchen, we like food in season, and we like the social interaction in farmer's markets, the new "town square." It allows our kids to learn about real food.

BUT, the globalists are the real sentimentalists!
They are asking us to destroy our precious and beautiful "now" (small sustainable farms and markets) for the "future" where it will be more efficient. Russia tried this "centralized food" concept and it failed miserably. We don't really need to "break a bunch of eggs for an omelet, keep the eggs!"

CENTRALIZED AND GLOBALIZED INDUSTRIAL FOOD SYSTEMS
DEPEND ON
1) Cheap energy, peace and no terrorism
2) Other countries to give us our food
3) National Security: our food systems are already super-vulnerable to attack. Only 4 companies slaughter 80% of our beef. Either deliberate or accidental breaches could occur.
4) Public Health E. coli outbreaks now are huge! E. coli 0157 has been proven to have been created in feedlots Corn >>>acidosis>>>increased pathogens and sickness. Aunt Mabel's potato salad could kill 5-10 people now thousands can die from lettuce.

BUT the reaction from the government to this has been ALL WRONG.
They are responding by adding more inspectors, more tests, and basically more burdens on the producer. This regimentation is punishing and killing the small producer and putting them out of business.

THE NEW KIND OF CONSUMER Is a CREATOR. It's a combo hybrid of a CITIZEN + CONSUMER Not just exchanging money for food but much more. There are obligations to civic issues, the environment and ethics.

"PROBLEMS" WITH THE LOCAL/ORGANIC FOOD MODEL
1) Raises the ELITISM issue - Eating Local and Eating Organic costs more.
2) Takes more time
3) Nothing is microwavable at the farmer's market
4) Requires more cooking

WHAT YOU CAN DO
1) You don't have to do it all! If you spend just $10 more per week on local & organic food this will build something BIG
2) Where else do you get to vote 3X a day?
3) Where else do you have this much power to change things?

REGARDING "ELITISM" OF SUSTAINABLE EATING
1) Basically we need to spend more money on food!
2) 79-80% of the population could actually afford to spend more on food
3) Americans now spend 9.5% of their money on food LESS THAN ANYONE ELSE ON EARTH — LESS THAN ANY OTHER TIME IN HISTORY! In the 1960's even, we were spending 18% on food.
4) Where has that money gone?
5) Could we recapture any of it for agriculture?
6) Invisible costs now: in the 1960's we spent only 5% on health, now it's 16% and rising rapidly!
7) Food has been sold with retail ads about QUANTITY only, never QUALITY.
8) We naturally associate cost with quality with EVERYTHING ELSE! Ex. Cars.
9) It's about PRIORITIES. People buy new cars, cellphones, and 85% of America has cable TV!
10) Cheap food is all about FALSE SAVINGS

CHEFS today are no longer "elitist appendages of the wealthy." And they are now becoming teachers!

They are suddenly leaders of the reform movement.

Countries that have a high value for good food have a very low tolerance for lousy junk food!

For the 10-20% of the population that are food insecure we have food stamps and we could fund the WIK program that goes to farmer's market purchases.

PROBLEMS WITH INDUSTRIAL FOOD

The government subsidizes CHEAP FOOD that makes us SICK and FAT!
$1 will buy about 1200 cal of junk food but only 200 cal of real food.

Cheap food, unsatisfying and micronutrient deficient, underpins our DIABETES and OBESITY EPIDEMICS.

FOOD MARKETING is a $40 BILLION/YR business. (packaging, labels, ads, consumer research)

Corporate food products that can be safely cooked by an 8 year old child are irresponsible, as they:
1) Help destroy the family dinner time and concept
2) Give inappropriate power to children to determine what and when they eat
3) And are probably unhealthy to eat

The US government spends $10 million to promote the food pyramid and the 5 vegetable concept. When General Mills brings out a new cereal they spend $ 100 million in promotion. They will try a "natural" granola, throw a million dollars into promotion and then say "see, we tried natural products and they don't sell..."

Corporate Industrial food will not go away. This is a REFORMATION. Fossil Fuels at idiotically cheap prices gave us a brief window to create enormous quantities of cheap food. This time is coming to an end because it is not sustainable. We need to put food back on the SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEM. This is free energy from the sun. Every blade of grass is a tiny solar collector.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Take the time to find out which of your legislators is voting on the FARM BILL. THEN CALL THEM! The government subsidizes the CORN and SOYBEAN industry as well as the processors. Right now their VOTES ARE BOUGHT by Cargill and ADM. The rest of us aren't saying a word to them! Tell them we need to stop subsidizing the production of HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. We need to stop wasting fossil fuel energy. We need to get away from globalization and centralization of food and get back to supporting biodiversity, polycropping and local economies. We need to promote the CONSERVATION SECURITY PROGRAM (everyone from hunters, fishermen, environmentalists and nutritionists agree on this one!).

REMEMBER.......YOU VOTE WITH YOUR FORK!

Again, these are just a few tidbits from my notes of a really monumental speech. I'll let you know when it comes out on the radio!

—Will Winter