Michael Pollan: “Even if you don’t think agriculture is a high priority, given all the other problems we face, we’re not going to make progress on the issues Obama campaigned on — health care, climate change and energy independence — unless we reform agriculture.”

Michael Pollan is the Copernicus of food, seeing beyond the curtain of the glorious megafarm illusion (see http://themeatrix.com) to the real universe of the connection between our lives as energy/food consuming creatures, and our impact on the planet and the species we have turned into fodder for our endless appetites.

My concern is that humans, American humans, have utterly divorced the question of food from any awareness of our collective impact on our own home. While organic foods are still gaining in popularity (though more slowly today due to the economic crunch), it is largely not environmental concern which drives these choices, rather intense personal worry about the health impacts, particularly on the purchaser's children, of the products of industrial agriculture. While this is understandable, it does not address the problem. Organic agriculture can be as wasteful as industrial, regarding its energy inputs, the costs involved in transport, etc. Still on balance, an acre farmed organic is far less harmful to the air and water, and encourages a smaller scale more respectful use of our commons.

The largest abuses, however, by far are in industrial meat production. Water, oil, grain, antibiotics, all are lavished on the poor steer, hog, hen or lamb, crushed into a crate without an inch to stretch their hormone distorted legs. Huge blood-soaked factories grind these barely living pain-filled creatures into meat for the appetites of a population which simply doesn't want to know the costs of their hunger.

The costs are now becoming clear. The planet cannot afford a human culture addicted to cheap meat. While we may be aware of our personal "oil/energy" footprint, considering our driving habits, our thermostat, our extra sweater, we easily forget that 'agriculture' -- the production and the transport of food -- is the largest consumer of oil on the planet.

What food we choose for our tables concerns not only our own health (of which we remain also too often woefully, or rather defiantly, ignorant), but literally the health and survival of the ecological spheres which support life on our planet.

Kristof NYTimes article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/opinion/11kristof.html?em

(Peter Fraterdeus worked as a consulting web strategist for a major organic food cooperative from 2002-2007.)

Peter Fraterdeus Exquisite Letterpress http://slowprint.com

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