Sometime blogger here on the CW Robert Thorn is a friend of mine who goes running for the hills every time he reads another book about industrial farming or goes to the movies to see things like "FOOD, INC.". He's a very healthy guy in phenomenal shape, but methinks he doth protest too much about the manner in which the planet is feeding its 6 billion residents.
Here's a great thread. First read this one--it is a blogpost by a farmer who takes issue with a foodie/elitist/RobertThorn wannabe on an airplane. Follow it with a read of Ronald Bailey's praise on the Reason blog. After than, take a look at the namby-pamby criticism of 1) the farmer who wrote the first blog post 2) Ronald Bailey 3) Reason Magazine and 4) conservatives. Finally, take a look at Bailey's response.
Taken as a whole, you get a much more balanced sense of what it takes to feed this world, and the difficulties involved in going back to some romantic, antiquated view of farming that is inappropriate to a growing world. Don't get me wrong--Michael Pollan's look into the world of stockyards, etc. wasn't a great read before dinner (it is actually a superb book, one that has had a n influence on the way I'm eating now--not from a sense of the morality of food (a big thing for Pollan), but simply because of how unhealthy a lot of processed food is). But BobbyThorn and the foodie elitist world don't have a better plan to feed this country, let alone the world.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
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8 comments:
One vague recent comment and my lot has been thrown in (for me) with the foodie/elitists that old CW decries. I will take my nightly run [through] the hills to determine how I might respond to the false dichotomy, hasty generalization, and straw man that he used to malign me.
Before I get started, let's clarify the terms of reference here. 1)Foodie. As the great adventurer, Inigo Montoya said, "http://tinyurl.com/362vw5". The simplest definition of this slang term describes someone who is keenly interested in food, esp. in eating or cooking. Related terms are gourmet, epicure, etc. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I'm hardly any of those, not even close. Beyond that, it reminds me of plushie and then a disgusting analogy using foodie comes to mind. I digress.
If by elitist, our fine host means that I am some sort of food snob, he is patently wrong. If he means that I am willing to go against the conserva...err conventional wisdom, then I wear that epithet proudly.
I consider that industrial farming activities contributes significantly to feeding the world. Nonetheless, I worry about the downside and the long-term consequences. In my humble opinion, much of what we are doing is an experiment in action. We are making it up as we go along: more antibiotics here, a few patented seed crops there, a subsidy here, etc. There is enough doubt - backed up by science - out there to make me question the inexorable growth of these processes. There are enough examples of smart guys thinking they've got it all figured out and have all the risks covered ultimately being wrong (or worse, criminal), that it makes me worried about how we produce our food. I guess I could go blithely along and think that national debt...uh I mean factory farming and the like aren't a big deal until something unpredictable happens that catastrophically affects our agriculture, economy, health, way of life. If one can't imagine how this system of agriculture might lead to an organic instance of epidemic, one might more easily imagine the impact of a - don't laugh - agroterrorist attack on our concentrated agricultural practices. www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB7565/RB7565.pdf. Finally, if one thinks that these advanced techniques are nothing but good, please consider the following story: http://tinyurl.com/2lkudt and http://tinyurl.com/c4vm3d. Of course let's not succumb to the-sky-is-falling mentality. Also, let's not think that they system is perfect and squash dissent or resort to ad hominem attacks that marginalize anyone who questions the conventional wisdom. Maybe, just maybe, we can take the best ideas from both camps and come up with a better way.
And don't get me started on corn...
We won't get you started on corn, you've bored enough in your previous writings and posts.
Anon - Be nice. It takes some effort to write all that. You do know you are not required to read Robert's posts don't you? Hey, I dare you to try to get through this painfully long diatribe that follows (courtesy de moi):
Robert - Interesting debate now beginning in the Chesapeake Bay watershed between two factions of the "farmers-are-killing-the-bay" ilk. For years, the issue of sedimentary runoff from what is essentially the mid-Atlantic region of the US all the way to New York and just so happens to be the center of the largest population growth and associated development over the past half century has dominated most of the concerns about why the bay is dying. To be certain, sediment is indeed a massive problem. Thing is, it seems farmers are about the only ones paying attention and voluntarily doing something about it. Most all the farmers I know have turned to "no-till" farming to reduce that run off. They were not required to do so, but they did it because they thought it helped the Bay which, around here, they grew up loving. Big deal, right? Well, it turns out it is. No till farming requires the farmer to incur some significant costs. Instead of plowing the winter cover crop into the soil before planting (and essentially composting it). He then has a fairly "clean" field to give his seedlings a head start on the weeds that will follow. Once the crops get the head start, they can shade out most of the weeds and take over the field. But with no-till they don't get that head start (and the composting value doesn't replenish the soil nutrients as naturally. But to reduce the runoff, many farmers purchased or shared an expensive no-till seed drill, to plant the seeds into the untilled soil where weeds had a headstart. This seed drill minimally disturbed the soil, the roots of the already established prior season's crop stubble and weeds held the soil in place and there was a reduced amount of runoff to the bay. Woo hoo! End of Part 1.
Anon - If you made it this far, good on you. I double dare you to read Part 2.
Mudge Diatribe re Robert Thorn post, Part 2. Still with me, Anon?
Not so fast. To make no-till work, you also had to make up for the fact that your seedlings were behind the power curve in getting to the sunlight when weeds had a headstart. That means you need to spray more herbicide to kill all those weeds. Problem is, that herbicide, most notably the Monsanto-patented "Round Up", would also kill the emerging, tender seedlings. Hmmm. No problem (and, in fact, brilliant business strategy) Monsanto mad-scientist geneticists patented genetically-altered corn, soybean, and other seeds that were invulnerable to the mechanisms by which Round-Up killed other plants. So, as Round Up's patent rights for exclusivity expired (meaning others could produce generic round up), Monsanto had another exclusivity on the seeds. And, as expensive as Round Up was (due to demand for something that worked really well), these patented seeds are now making up for whatever Monsanto lost in their Round Up market share. Bottom line, no till farming is more expensive to the farmer. But they do it to reduce the sediment and topsoil run off.
Enter the other side of the "farmers-are-evil" bay huggers. Turns out, although the science is far from conclusive, or even supportive here, a group is now proposing strictly limiting herbicide application because of the "possible likelihood" that it is having a deleterious effect on the bay's biomass. Most of these folks, in the same breathless breath say that organic farming is the answer. AANNNGGGGHHH (buzzer sound for wrong answer).
I love the Bay. I love undeveloped rural areas (forests, marshes and farm land, and no highways). I also love eating good food and grow much of own in my personal, organic, garden. I don't like checking my crab pots and seeing deformed crabs or learning that I can't eat them because I would be safer drinking a mercury cocktail. I get irritated that the thousands of acres of tomato fields around here pick only the green tomatoes to ship to gassing houses so we can eat tasteless unripe tomatoes year round. And I get irritated that, in the event I temporarily lose my mind and feel I can't live without a flavorless fake-colored tomato in January, that tomato that was picked about 1 mile from my house, first got shipped 30 miles up the road to be gassed and packaged, then got shipped 700 miles to the grocery store's main distribution center, then got shipped all the way back to the grocery store at which I shop then I drive it all the way home, right past that sad little tomato wannabe's nascent field.
So, Robert, I'm with you on the industrial farming drawbacks. I think you distinguished yourself well in a balanced approach to the pros and cons of feeding the planet's people, while exploiting the people's planet. Consider me a conventi...er, conservative ally.
Anon - Still breathing?
I stand in awe of the debate here, carried on by intelligent men--and good friends.
We "no till farm" here for the reasons Mudge cited.
CW, do you who the Mad Scientist at Monsanto was that developed these seeds? My buddy, Pete Head of Cabbage.
Mudge, hung in there, read you word for word and enjoyed it. You are a writer that holds my interest even in a snooze fest of a topic.
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