The Omnivore's Dilemma Part II

Here is an actual conversation I had with my friend today.

Sam:  “So what’s the Omnivore’s Dilemma about?”

Me:  “Basically it’s how everything in the food industry is bad and we eat food grown from nitrate and all the farmers are going out of work but they can’t do anything about it and even if you know it’s bad you can’t do anything because that’s all that’s offered and even the organic stuff is not really organic and you can’t do anything because it’s food and it’s not like you can just stop eating, but everything we eat is bad for us and will probably kill you.”

            The opening to part two of the Omnivore’s Dilemma was a welcome surprise.  After over one hundred pages of Pollan describing how corn went from being “the greatest blessing God ever gave to man,” to a synthetically overgrown soon-to-be chemical that is in such excess that it is put into literally everything and made in such large quantities that Americans continue to eat it long after they’re full, the image of a pristine, natural farm, was a nice break.  The first few pages of this section give a small gleam of hope that perhaps we can change our ways before it’s too late. 

            Yet even the Polyface Farm caused me agitation.  As Pollan points out, nature has a system, and it works.  Joel Salatin does not need to spray his crops with harmful pesticides or fertilize his soil with chemicals made from companies that designed napalm and Agent Orange because his crop diversification and rotation does that for him.  And yet on the large scale, this system does not work.  Salatin wouldn’t even send Pollan a chicken from his farm because energy needed to ship it would go against his ideals of what it means to be organic.  And as Pollan writes later, between these small natural farms, and the large scale industrial organic ones, it is easier for stores like Whole Foods to do their business with the bigger farms that can produce more.  We have a solution, and yet it does not fit in with how our society runs.  

            So what am I as a consumer supposed to do?  The organic revolution has come a long way.  But the guidelines for what can be labeled “organic” are fuzzy.  Food can be called organic even when synthetic additives are permitted.  Animals, thought to be raised in open fields are still confined to tight quarters and unsanitary conditions.  The word "Organic" does not mean what we eat is coming from places like Polyface Farm.  

            And yet I for one am not ready to give up convenient and cheap food.  The way Americans eat now, farms like Polyface just can’t provide for all of us.  How can we eat healthy when everything around us is genetically altered and mad from chemicals?  How can we trust our supermarkets when organic does not mean what we think it does?  What can we do when the small farms who are doing it right are so stuck in their ways that they won’t even ship their items outside of their local market because it goes against their ideals?  Or when these former idealists like Kahn choose the side of industry because that’s where the money is?  What can I eat and more importantly, where do I get it?  Because Whole Foods doesn't seem too trustworthy anymore.  

            This book is important and informative, but after putting it down I’m just left with more questions.  I feel guilty about how much of a glutton I am every time I eat, and foolish for falling for the food industries tricks, and I feel hopeless because I have no idea how we can fix it.  I’m paying thousands of dollars to go to a private liberal arts school, and yet all I want to do now is start a farm with cows that can eat grass.