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I was at a small gathering of food professionals a few days ago and asked how many had read Pollan’s article in The New York Times magazine the week before, a memo to Washington about what people and this country should do to halt our reliance on oil-based food production. Out of 50 only a few had. What’s worse, beyond his general premise—that we need to revert to sun-fed system from an oil-fed one—and the practical notion that we need to support small farmers and learn to grow our own food I couldn’t remember what practical advice he was suggesting.
So I went back for a second look: while some may argue that his suggestions are simplistic, that they may fail to acknowledge the huge global issue of population growth (the fact that in 40 years the earth will carry 10 billion people, 80% of whom will live in urban areas), and some are giddily futuristic (bar codes on food that allow us through our hand-helds to see how the food was produced, how the meat was slaughtered, etc), they’re all of them worth considering. Here’s a quick list for those who missed his excellent memo but are curious how Pollan, who has vigorously condemned our food production system, for the first time offers potential solutions:
—Train a new generation of farmers, spread them throughout the land, and make farming a revered profession.
—Preserve every acre of farmland we have and make it accessible to these farmers.
—Build an infrastructure for a regional food economy—one that can encourage and support the farms and distribute what they grow (rebuild or create regional distribution systems).
—Provide cities grants with which to build structures for year-round farmers markets.
—Ease federal production regulations, designed to control multi-national food companies but that hog tie small producers.
—Create local meat-inspection corps so that we can create more regional slaughter facilities, perhaps the biggest impediment to our being able to find local hand raised meat. (This is huge.)
—Establish a grain reserve to prevent huge swings in commodity markets.
—Require federal institutions that prepare food (school lunches, prisons, military bases, etc.) to buy a minimum percentage of that food locally.
—Create a Federal definition of food, to encourage people to think about what is food and what is not, stuff we consume that has no caloric value (“junk food” should not be considered food).
—Food stamp debit cards should double in value when swiped at a framers’ market; give farmers’ market vouchers to low-income women and children (why does he exclude men, I wonder; a different subject perhaps).
—Make changes in our daily lives: teach children how to cook; plant gardens in every primary school and equip them with kitchens; pay for culinary tuitions (or forgive loans) by requiring culinary graduates to give some service back to such undertakings such as teaching kids how to cook; increase school lunch spending by $1 a day; grow more of our own food and prepare and eat our food together at a table; accept the fact that food may be more expensive and eat less of it.
—Make our food production system as transparent as possible: have a second calorie listing how many fossil fuel calories went into its production so that consumers could discourage production of fuel expensive food by not buying it.
—Finally, there should be a White House vegetable garden and our President should set the first example. Our founding fathers were largely farmers. This would be a good symbolic return.
It’s one thing to rail against what is wrong; another to offer realistic solutions to the problems you decry. I’m grateful to Pollan for what he’s set out to do and hope that our legislators acknowledge the sad state of food in America, recognize that how we produce and consume our food may be the biggest determiner of the quality of life in America generally, and put it at the head of their agendas with whatever administration we elect next month.
Great post Michael. Thank you! There is a documentary that PBS aired a while back called “King Corn” which complements Michael Pollan’s writing. It addresses how Farmers are literally starving to death because they have to grow inedible corn (inedible for humans in the raw form) to make a living. They also give a challenge to try and live without this product for one week. I highly recommend this documentary although it is a bit slow going at first.
I am more familiar with the writing of Stephen Pollan, Michael’s father but intend to dive into Michael’s work as soon as I can. Damn, Ruhlman, you give a lot of homework. BTW–Your Pate rocks!
All the best,
Rhonda
Yeah, these are great ideas if you want to throw away the US Constitution and institute a dictatorship.
I guess the idea of personal property and liberty is meaningless to you folks.
I grew up in a farming community in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Farmers used to grow mostly food crops — sweet corn, beans, beets, carrots. It was all mostly canned. (My dad worked for the cannery.)
Now the cannery is closed, and mostly grass seed is grown instead. Farmers couldn’t make enough growing food crops. My dad always said people just aren’t willing to spend money on food. I’m not sure he was wrong.
I’m really skeptical of the economic viability of Pollan’s agricultural model. I sort of got the feeling that when discussing the economic and supply issues there was some magic wand waving going on (and we’ll…research…and this model will produce adequate food at reasonable costs!)
Every year at local farmer’s markets there are fewer and fewer food vendors and more and more flower vendors. More money can be made selling flowers than selling food.
As to his call for more farmers — good luck with that. People aren’t beating down the doors to enter an occupation that features long hours — especially during the summer — and iffy pay.
To respond to the assertion that it’s one thing to decry and another to provide solutions…
Pollan has solutions galore in his books, if you look for them. Chief among them? Learn to cook. Buy locally grown foods when and where you can. Take it as far as you like.
Not everyone needs to sign on for some 100 miles challenge, necessarily, or attempt to grow their own grub for a year, but… self-reliance is something we have completely lost culturally, because the Food Industry (ooh, that sounds big and evil doesn’t it) would really prefer that they we depend on them since it lines their pockets.
His list of solutions (‘for the first time’?) is common sense after that, really.
Cook your own food. Create demand for food that doesn’t have a heavy-ass carbon footprint, that isn’t a product of Monsanto or Cargill, that isn’t spliced with mouse DNA or whatevertheheck. Bring back home economics courses in schools so everyone learns how to cook, and learns at least a smattering of nutritional and cooking chemistry.
My grandparents would be rolling their eyes right now that this is even something that has to be brought in as a solution to a problem, to be honest. Actually, they’d be rolling their eyes that cooking needed to be taught in schools at all, because ideally everyone would be cooking their own meals.
(And having been a kid who was raised a couple years on foods care of WIC, it’s usually women who have to apply for this kind of assistance. I don’t think Pollan was being exclusionary in his language so much as making an observation on who utilizes food stamps and EBT with the most frequency.)
So glad you did this. There was a lot to digest (sorry) in the whole magazine and the Pollan article in particular. In fact I only finished reading all of it yesterday, and immediately wanted a “cliffs notes” version of his particular proposals, which really do merit further analysis.
Obviously some of his proposals would seem to be more controversial than others (for instance, the idea of adding a fossil fuel “calorie count” to labels seems impossible to administer given the difficulty in coming up with an agreed-upon methodology of doing so), and in today’s economic climate any realistic discussion of any of these ideas would have to focus on the prospective cost (something Pollan generally fails to address, though implicit is the assumption that long-term, reduction of dependence on fossil fuels in agricultural production will be a financial benefit).
But he’s clearly not lacking for concrete ideas, and some of them are breathtaking in their simplicity (i.e., a federal definition of “food” that excludes items that have no nutritional value).
Oh, and Pollan’s last task as this post writes on the White House… I am currently reading “The White House Chef by Scheib” who was the Chef in the Clinton era and he did institute for the White House a roof-top garden which is what Hilary Clinton wanted set up to also include fresh herbs – she was extaordinary in her demands for fresh and seasonal. And if I read it correctly; that roof-top garden had rules including visability and security; not just your regular roof-top garden complications
In Quebec when I entered High School it was grade 7. We entered CEGEP (pre-university) at 16/17 for two years, and then on to University for three years to gain a B.A., major?
I think the emphasis for what Mr. Pollan believes when he discusses teaching the children, begins in High School where Home Economics should be brought back into the school system as part of the social sciences. Food science needs the integration into a system where abc’s are no longer enough knowledge to bring our kids into the year 2015.
This teaching will ultimately lean our kids into farming and needing the knowledge for the kinds of food that they eat, where and how their beef and pork is grown and its relationship to the body.
Gym should no longer exist in a gymnasium or in a sports field setting, and MUST be a subject where mandatory matriculations or cetification diplomas are a pre-university necessity, as in other subjects.
Passing a certification program in personal training – (personal training certification is very rigid and includes not just knowing the physical body but nutrition, exercise, and how to maintain good standards in their being and by sheer cycle that knowledge has to include where and how foods are grown)..
should become mandatory for all high schools as being courses needed to graduate. Perhaps be included in the science program or physical sciences and lastly…
when I was in grade 10 there was a course called ‘typing’ that everyone took because it was an easy class to pass and included early easy credits for entrance to CEGEP but to matric in it you had to commit to this course grade 9 and 10 or 10 and 11…I, and practically everyone I was friends with took this ‘bobo’ class and to this day, I can type 55 words/minute on my computer where my kids touch type the letters, it was my saving grace for all of University and was really a requisite for the first and all jobs I have had since…(I type 55 words, because I am stale, and can only be type when I am looking at the paper I am transcribing or fixated on an object – I cannot type by looking at the keys as it throws me off the game:) I had no idea then the most valuable course I took was typing.
The year they stopped Home Ec was also the year they disbanded the school band.
To answer your question about making farmers’ market vouchers available to low-income women and children:
He was talking about the federal WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program — a government program that provides foods, health care referrals and nutrition education to low-income pregnant women and women with young children.
WIC already has a small program to provide farmers’ market vouchers for program participants; Pollan was suggesting that that program be expanded.
More info on the progrma here: http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/fmnp/FMNPfaqs.htm
As a knee-jerk liberal (some may be tempted to remove the “knee” part), my inclination is always to say that Education Is The Answer. It may be too late to expect huge changes from adults, but let’s build for the long-term.
Remember “Home Ec”? Or am I showing my age?
My junior high and high school had 2 classrooms equipped with full kitchens. By the time I was enrolled (think late ’70’s), there were even some boys in “Home Ec” and some girls in “Shop” (garage and woodworking). This was not a “trade school” area – something like 97% of the kids in my HS went on to post-secondary Ed, most of them to 4-year college and beyond. But there was still room in the curruculum, alongside AP Chemistry and Modern European Lit, for life skills, no matter how elevated you expected your station in life to become. Change a fan belt, boil water, feed yourself.
We learned to make budgets, read labels, compare prices, assemble a nutritionally-balanced, economical meal, and, in the process, some basic cooking techniques. On electric burners, okay – but still. Clean, chop, measure, mix, sautee, bake. It wasn’t culinary school, but you learned not to be afraid of ingredients.
These are all life skills people are losing – and think about how much more the curriculum could contain now! Issues like the ones you cite here. It could tie in to other subjects: Biology. “Food philosophy”. Ethics. Politics. Geography/Social Studies. One thing we all do is EAT, so it seems terribly remiss that the subject gets skipped in school.
I don’t know how to solve the bigger agricultural problems, but if people could learn to cook again, it might go a ways toward changing what consumers demand, as well as changing how and what we eat – for the better.
Pollan’s ideas are of critical importance at this time in human history. We are living with a global food crisis as petro-chemical based agriculture and food processing have stripped both land and food of their inherent goodness. The government has piled on in this situation by subsidizing the least nutritious (yet most commercially pliable, i.e. corn and soy) crops at the expense of small farms with crop diversity. The signs of failed policy are all around us; diabetes, obesity, cancer, and heart disease.
I’m a professional cook, and I obviously have strong feelings about food quality on that front; but more importantly, I am also the father of a 1 1/2 year old boy who I want to see grow up healthy. The need for more transparency in our food system and for the expansion of organic and biodynamic farming is essential for the health of future generations. I hope Pollan’s words don’t fall on deaf ears.
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These suggestions are a great reminder that we don’t need to shoot for the stars when the sun gives us all we need -
if we learn how to use it.
My next door neighbor for years growing up was a farmer, he also had a full time job in town. He wasn’t the only one living in town, in many cases the parent(s) are still on the farm and it is rent or live in a trailer.
I was on food stamps as a single father briefly in 77. The third week on unemplyment payments were enough to kick me out of the program for too high an income. I’ve always felt that too high a bar has been set here.
I was a single father and my not yet ex paid child support for a few months. Not court ordered, we had known I might have a shaky first year, as it was I was out of work 20 weeks.
On local food, the cost/mile of shipping needs to be taken into account. A railroad boxcar is almost certainly cheaper than a truck for this half the US and just as fast if we could get the rail system working again.
i can answer the food stamp question. traditionally food stamps and adfc (aid for dependent families and children) went hand in hand. you had to be a single woman with children to get any type of aid. i’m sure that has changed in most areas but the old system has been in place for so long, we still think that woman are the only ones who need aid.
i find it really strange in my college town that i have three farmers living in my neighborhood. even they don’t want to live on the land. they go to work in the morning and drive home at night, like any other job. in one farmers case it’s over 20 miles to his farm. it’s all very strange to me.