Item: a couple weeks ago I read an article about one gene variant that makes it easy for people to eat and is associated with increased risk of obesity. A recent study shows that among the Amish, people with this gene variant are able to stave off obesity simply by being active 3.5 hours / day.
Item: a few months ago a friend quit her desk job in a dysfuntional (bio tech research) org and got a job at a greenhouse. She is on her feet all day. She is around plants and learning stuff she is passionate about. She has lost about 30 pounds and no longer needs blood pressure and cholesterol meds she started when she got insurance through dysfunctional desk job.
Item: never mind our economic policies. A Martian looking at the US would be forgiven for being highly amused that people get in their cars to go to the gym to burn off excess calories caused by preternatually cheap food. Or the really workaholic ones spend $6000 on a treadmill desk to burn off excess calories while engaged in that prestigious brain work. Or our schools struggle to pour required knowledge into the brains of children while depriving them of the process learning of agriculture, food prep, and other human-scale activities.
Yeah, sure, Pollan ignores migrant labor. Does he mean that local-centric agrculture in the migrants' country of origin will stabilize their economies and make it easier for people to earn a living in their countries of origin? Does he mean this will put a big crimp in the style of many multinational agribusiness conglomerates? Possibly just as well for his argument that he does not say much on these questions but an interesting exercise to think about.
Unfortunately, Pollan is also glib about the increased labor inputs of the methods he proposes. It's certainly true that this work can be more proudly valued. It is also true that greater physical labor and constrained access to calories can actually be associated with great increases in health. There is even plenty of evidence, not just the US victory gardens, but also the private plots under communism in the USSR, that small-scale agriculture can make very significant contributions to agricultural output.
The problem is that labor-intensive agriculture is physically exhausting and a VERY tough sell on that ground alone. Even people who love home-canned food and have decades of experience to share with younger workers are going to get out of the business or do it only intermittently when arthritis gets overpowering.
DC (grandchild of farmer, none of whose cousins do more than garden casually)
On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 2:14 PM, Andy <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 10 Oct 2008, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> >
> >> I'd prefer to just re-do the food system in sensible ways, without all
> the
> >> hot air.
> >
> > Chacun sa gout. But it's hard to persuade people without rhetoric. And
> > powerful rhetoric, the kind people can remember and internalize and
> > reproduce on their own spontaneously -- the kind of the Repugs have
> flooded
> > this country with -- depends on having a few simple images in the middle
> of
> > it that you connect everything too.
> >
> > It is true he's pitched this article in terms of nature and rurual life.
> [....]
>
> On a hunch, I grepped the article for the words "nature" and
> "natural", the latter appears only ahead of the word "gas" and the
> former not at all. "Rural" appears only in terms of where the farms
> are, not as any sort of lifestyle beyond farming as a profession.
> I'll bet that all is deliberate. Pollan is careful to avoid using
> romantic arguments, or at least telegraph it when he does, and he has
> to be aware that people are ready to shoot holes in his work if he
> tries to sneak in any nostalgia. In _In Defence of Food_ (I agree
> that the book is uneven, the essay it is based on is better) he
> clearly warns up front that his thesis is "totally unscientific".
>
> So he has to call his program something, and "natural" is right out.
> "Sun food agenda" may be an unfortunate hook, but I agree: you do need
> a hook.
>
> > This is very nasty I think completely unjustified. Do you really think
> > Pollan is unaware of the role migrant laborers play in farming? His home
> > state of observation is California. I think he probably has the
> statistics
> > on that subject readier to hand than you or I.
>
> Regarding this and some of shag's remarks, I don't know about his
> opinions about farm labor in general (I recall him saying something
> about the effect of pesticides, but I might be mistaken), but then I
> wouldn't presume that he necessarily has anything insightful to say.
> It would be a plus if he did, but he already writes very well about
> food, nutrition, agriculture and the policies and science around them.
> The conceit of a "Letter to the President," with appeals to be a good
> example, suggest at least an average niavite. To expect him to be an
> effective labor reporter and visionary on top of all that is like
> expecting me to say something intelligent about the credit crisis.
>
> --
> Andy
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