Reflection Part Two on The Omnivore's Dilemma

Good morning! Here is my reflection on the second section that I read of The Omnivore's Dilemma. In this part of the book Pollan goes to visit and work on Polyface Farms, an alternative farm located in Virginia. Here is a picture of Joel Salatin, the man who runs it.

Here is what I wrote up for class:

After spending almost 200 pages reading about the horrors of the industrial food system and the better-but-still-not-great industrial organic food system, it was a relief to start reading about Polyface Farms. I remember how moved I was by Joel Salatin’s farm the first time I read the book, and how cool I thought it would be to intern there. I never ended up doing it, for multiple reasons, but mostly because as much as I love food I am not cut out to be a farmer. At any rate, Pollan’s description of Salatin makes him out to be quite a character. I had completely forgotten about his use of the word holon, but I love it. In the book it’s described as “an entity that from one perspective appears a self-contained whole, and from another a dependent part” (215). It’s such a perfect word to describe the different parts of a farm.
Although I believe that what Polyface Farms is doing is on the whole a good thing, I have also come to believe that Joel Salatin may not be the alternative farming prophet that Pollan makes him out to be. What changed my mind? Reading Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The book contains an essay entitled “I Am the Last Poultry Farmer” by Frank Reese, a heritage turkey farmer. Reese says that he is the only poultry farmer left in America who is raising birds that haven’t been bred to live in factory farms. He says of Polyface Farms, “Joel Salatin is doing industrial birds… So he puts them on pasture. It makes no difference… Salatin’s organic free-range chicken is killed in forty-two days… It can’t be allowed to live any longer because its genetics are so screwed up” (Foer, 113). Reese definitely sounds frustrated in his essay, and it seems to me it has to do with the fact that Joel Salatin has gotten so much recognition after being featured so prominently in Pollan’s book.
I was curious to see what Pollan had to say specifically about Salatin’s chickens. He doesn’t say anything about them being industrial birds, however when he is describing how often the portable chicken pens that Salatin developed are moved he says they “had been calibrated to cover every square foot of this meadow in the course of the fifty-six days it takes a broiler to reach slaughter weight” (209). So the number of days is different between the two books, but even so, this means that Salatin’s chickens are living less than two months. Something seems off about that to me, although to be fair I don’t know how to raise chickens.
Regardless of what type of chickens Salatin is raising, I appreciate that he is able to slaughter them on site. I know that Temple Grandin has done a lot of work around improving the conditions of slaughterhouses for both the animals being killed and the humans doing the killing, but many of them are still run under very deplorable conditions. In describing what it was like to help slaughter the chickens Pollan says, “In a way, the most morally troubling thing about killing chickens is that after a while it is no longer morally troubling” (233).  This sentiment can be applied to meat-eating in general in America. While I don’t believe eating meat is morally wrong, I do think we would be better off if everyone ate meat consciously and appreciated that a living creature gave its life, as opposed to just eating a burger without thinking about where it came from.

Reflection Part One on The Omnivore's Dilemma

The first book we are reading in my Food Politics class is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

I have been meaning to get a copy of this book for years, so having it be required reading was the perfect reason to finally break down and buy it. I love owning books like this, because it means I can underline to my heart's content, without worrying about having to resell it. Anyway, our assignment for class is to write a reflection on each part of the book as we read it. Here is my first one:

I am going to start off by saying that I love this book. This is my second time reading it, the first time being about four and a half years ago, at the end of 2007. I know it sounds cliché, but this book really did change my life. It opened my eyes to the American food system and made me realize that I needed to change the way I was eating. This was significant for me, because up to that point I thought that I was doing fairly well in terms of eating healthily and being respectful to nature. I wasn’t. True, I didn’t eat fast food, and hardly ate any meat, but I wasn’t eating consciously. I didn’t have a connection to my food, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the labels. This book changed all that. I moved up to Seattle not long after I finished it, and I can honestly say that because of it I joined a co-op and started shopping at my local farmers market. I became aware of my food in ways that I hadn’t been before. This book was also a jumping off point for me in terms of reading other books on food – Food Rules by Marion Nestle, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and Slow Food Nation by Carlo Petrini are all books I recommend.
So here I am, almost five years later, re-reading this book as a completely changed eater. It’s been a good experience so far. One of the things that has struck me is that no matter how many times I read certain facts they still amaze me. For example, I have now read many books/articles dealing with factory farms. I know how awful they are, on multiple levels. Still, when I read that “[m]ost of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed” (p.78) I was struck dumb. I had completely forgotten this fact, and it took me a few minutes to fully process it. Honestly, I feel like just this one little fact has huge implications for Americans. And this book is chock full of facts like that. If someone like me, a fairly conscientious eater, doesn’t know how huge of a problem antibiotics in CAFOs are, what does that tell you about the average American who is just going to the store and buying packages of hamburgers?
It’s also been interesting to read this book through the lens of someone who is working on hunger issues. I am working part-time at a food bank, and one of the things I’ve realized is that the fact that hunger exists in the world today has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of food in the world. Early on in the book, when Pollan goes to see where corn is grown he meets a farmer named Billy, who has fallen under the spell of Big Agriculture. He is trying to produce more and more corn every year. Pollan states “Two hundred and twenty bushels of corn is an astounding accomplishment, yet it didn’t do Billy nearly as much good as it did those companies” (p.56). Reading this it struck me just how screwed up our food system is. Here is a man who is producing massive amounts of food, but he’s going broke doing it.  In addition, there are still tons of hungry people in America (not to mention the rest of the world). So obviously it’s not that there isn’t enough food being grown/produced in the world, it’s what is being done with it that’s the problem. We, as Americans, need a different way of thinking about food, and this book does just that. I’m excited to keep reading.

Happy Earth Day!

Hello there. I'm Ursula, and this is my brand-new little blog that could. The title comes from the fact that while I love food (especially fresh, local, sustainably grown, ethically raised food) I am doing the proverbial "broke college student" thing at the moment, and therefore don't have a lot of money to spend on said food. However, I am determined to make it work! I figure Earth Day is an appropriate day (well, night at this point) to post my first blog, since I am mainly going to be focusing on food, and obviously all of our food (in one way or another) comes from Mother Nature.

I set this blog up per an assignment in a class I am taking this quarter entitled Food Politics. I am hoping that I will keep blogging after the quarter is over, but we'll see what happens. (The road to hell is paved with good intentions, best laid plans, etc.) At any rate, most of what I will be posting for the next month and a half will be homework assignments, but I'll try and make them interesting.

Anyway, since today was Earth Day, and also a beautiful sunny Sunday, I thought I would share some pictures I took at the Broadway Farmers Market. (Before you say anything - yes, I took these with Instagram. I am one of the millions of Android users who rushed to download the app as soon as I found out it was available. Move over iPhone users, we're here to stay.) Today was the opening day of the market, and it really could not have been more perfect.

 

I have lived on Capitol Hill for several years now, and I make an effort to go to the market every week. It doesn't always happen, but obviously I go often enough that today some of the vendors recognized me and welcomed me back to another season. Awwww. Seriously though, I feel so lucky that I can live in a very urban environment, and yet still know who's growing my veggies and making my cheese. That is the beauty of farmers markets.

Well, that and these gorgeous flowers. I didn't end up buying any, but just seeing them makes me smile.

The pic below is what I ended up bring home from the market. Not a lot, but it's all really good quality. In case you're wondering what I bought (I don't think you are, but I'll tell you anyway) this is it:
-Eggs from Millingwood Organics.
-Camp Fire Smoked Washington Jack cheese from Mt. Townsend Creamery (I almost always buy cheese from them because it's just so freaking good. Seriously. All of it.)
-Sunny Citrus yoghurt cheese from Willapa Hills Cheese. I've never bought their stuff before today, but it was on sale, and oh my god is it delicious. Creamy, with just a little tartness to it. I may be addicted.
-Salad greens from Willie Greens Organic Farms.
-Smoked salmon from Loki Fish. Incidentally, this company is run by the professor who is teaching Food Politics. (Hi Pete!) I love being able to buy delicious wild fish from your professor :)

Alright, I think that about does it for now. Here's to happy eating.