Tripe, Inc.
For some reason, Andrew Sullivan linked to this tripe from Blake Hurst about industrial farming without further comment. Hurst is a foe of agribusiness critics such as Michael Pollan
According to Farmer Blake, “Critics of the food industry are upset that we feed cows corn, by the way, convinced that it’s unnatural, and gives cows a bellyache. Cows, on the other hand, routinely break down fences to get at corn. Maybe if we would have screened ‘Food, Inc.’ in the pasture, the cows would have stayed where they belonged.” No mention there of the role of corn-fed cattle in the growth of e. coli cases. Paul Roberts wrote extensively in The End of Food
The more prominent critics of industrial agriculture tend to be journalists, not farmers (with the exceptions like Joel Salatin
The more prominent critics of industrial agriculture tend to be journalists, not farmers (with the exceptions like Joel Salatin).
Given that no critics of industrial agriculture are more prominent than farmers Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, that makes for some mighty definitive “exceptions”.
Agricultural runoff and soil erosion are two sides of the same coin, vastly reduced (as Hurst explains at length) by no-till farming.
Besides, farmers have every incentive to reduce runoff/erosion, because it costs them money. If we are upset about the way farming is done, we should advocate for the things farmers won’t already do themselves.
Hurst thinks the desire to ingest something is an indication of its healthiness? Apparently he’s unfamiliar with booze and premium ice cream.
“The more prominent critics of industrial agriculture tend to be journalists”
If by “more”, you count only those within your understanding and memory.
If by “prominent”, you mean only those with the biggest soap box and who are important to yourself.
Sadly missing is a historical prospective, and a knowledge of the subject, or any attempt to represent those who might be “prominent” by way of being successful players within the industry.
In middle school, in the late 50′s and early 60′s, we knew what “turgidity” and esters and olins and deoxyriboneuclecic acid were, and how they effected cosmetic presentation of food items, and how farmers struggled to balance these with nutritional content from soil forced to produce the same crop repeatedly, and how these effected the economics of production and delivery.
And our sport was driving a farm-tractor and trailer backward through a slalom of plactic cones at 10 mph.
You hear some kid “fresh out of college”, without history or current knowledge of the industry, armed only with literature from “critics”, and an ability to articulate and manipulate ideas written by others, and you get only a “surface” treatment of the subject.
“Michael Pollan and the film, Food, Inc”, is such a work. Distorted, and with a limited usefulness. While it fits his (preconceived?) political agenda perfectly, it is short of dealing with the true issues of food production and distribution.