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New York Times Magazine Food Issue
This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine was “The Food Issue”, with a feature article by Michael Pollan that takes the form of an open letter to the next President of the United States: Farmer in Chief.
Pollan excels at explaining why our food system is in crisis and makes interesting recommendations for improvements. Here’s a few appetizers. First, on the links between our industrialized food systems and diet-related diseases:
It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount — from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent.
On the link between oil dependency and our current food systems:
But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.
On food as a national security issue:
We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America — not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.
That financial crisis that’s in the news? If you think that’s just about your investments, you’re in for a surprise. We’re living in a fossil fuel-based food system that has polluted our land and water…even our bodies. I’m certain that we’ll find that the mega food corporations have acted even more irresponsibly than the banking giants. The good news is that hard economic times may help turn us back to decentralized, healthier food systems. But that transition will likely be a difficult one.
Read Farmer in Chief by Michael Pollan.
View the entire NYT Magazine Food Issue.
