I'm not sure I follow your objection here. I don't think Pollan claims anywhere that you can only get nitrogen fertilizer from natural gas. The claim is rather that this kind of fertilizer replaced manure because it was cheaper than manure. And when energy ceases to be cheap, that will no longer be true. Pointing out that you can make it with alternative energy doesn't undercut that argument since alternative energy is more expensive, not less expensive.
So the economic argument would still hold. For greenhouse purposes, clearly either one would do. But given a choice, you'd choose the cheaper. And the argument about manure being pollution when it's not used as fertilizer would still hold. So this objection doesn't seem to affect the argument at all. Perhaps I'm missing something?
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The key questions to ask are: why are the alternatives more expensive and what can be done about it?
If we scaled up the non-carbon emitting portion of our grid's inputs, wouldn't the price of 'alternative' energy production (which, in time, would lose the fancy label and become plain old power plants) eventually fall? If we replaced our early 20th century style grid with a networked 'smart grid' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid>), wouldn't this serve as a means of increasing the total amount of energy available -- a good slice of which could be used for electrically powered fertilizer production?
Of course, none of this could be done overnight. It would take quite a few years to make the required changes. In the mean time, what would prevent us from lobbying hard for the halt of, say, new aircraft carrier, nuclear sub and super fighter jet construction (not to mention the various wars) and use of the cash savings to subsidize a growing electricity-based fertilizer production industry (and the cost of buying the fertilizer)? Many farmers already receive subsidies for other, sometimes not very helpful things. This would be a stopgap that allowed them to continue enjoying the benefits of synthetics (or, more likely, a mixed farming regimen) without breaking the bank.
If the price of low or no carbon emitting power generation fell to competitive levels, subsidies could be removed and farmers would continue to use fertilizer (which would once again be competitively priced). I get the impression however from reading Pollan's books, essays and blog posts that he sees the End of Cheap Oil (and yes Andy, I get what the peakists mean when they talk about this - I just don't accept their arguments. See: <http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2008/08_09_13.mp3>) -- as an opportunity to 're-naturalize' the farm process by removing artificial fertilizers from the mix.
That is, the *desire* to see the synthetics gone *precedes* the details of the argument about the End of Cheapness.
Which gets to the heart of my real objection: this isn't simply a rhetorical choice (that is, a friendly way of selling a good idea) but an ideological position which should be questioned.
More on that in a few.
Michael Pollak wrote:
It is true he's pitched this article in terms of nature and rurual life. But it could just as easily be pitched in the terms of alternative science and technology and human inventiveness in which you are more at home. If you liked the plan, that would be your job, to put in terms that would persuade people like you. You could call it the polyculture system rather than the sun system, and emphasize all the scientific experimentation that the successful implementation of such a system would require. For it to work, we would have to learn things we don't yet know how to do. And I think Pollan is unusually clear about that. He's not a prelapsarian. And there's nothing inherently anti-technologhttp://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2008/08_09_13.mp3y about the phrase solar power.
If you don't like the plan, then the stylistic clash between the rhetoric he's using and the kind you prefer seems is kind of besides the point and obvious. Nobody who knew you even virtually would ever think of you as a nature boy.
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I don't accuse Pollan of being 'anti-technology'.
No one is anti-tech. Even people who think they're anti-tech really aren't, they're just anti one type of tech and pro another. As I started to say above, I don't think this essay reflects a mere style of presentation choice that could be tailored to different audiences (rustic loveliness for the birkenstockers and new tech for the cyborgs). It's crafted to take the reader in one direction. Pollan sits at the sensible and talented end of a spectrum of thought which shares a single, unifying idea: we have drifted from a close relationship with nature and must right ourselves; get back in touch with The Natural World.
I no longer accept this idea. In fact, I think this idea is counterintuitively part of our problem.
Faced with an ecological crisis, we desperately look for answers. Believing alienation from nature to be the root cause of the problem we conclude that removing the distance thought to cause this alienation will, along with deploying the practical changes necessary, provide the missing *spiritual* component which will reverse our current mindlessness and prevent us from causing future harm (assuming we learn our lesson and survive).
But there is another way to think about this. The ecological crisis has already occurred, we are living through it and this is what it looks like. There is no 'Nature' -- separate from ourselves, whose gentle lessons we must heed -- for us to return to. We never left Nature, how could we? We've simply neglected to take our inputs and outputs into account as we've utilized the world to suit our needs and desires (and of course, capitalism hasn't helped; at all).
The recent discovery that the Yucatan jungles -- long thought to be unspoiled and wild -- are actually feral Mayan gardens might give you an idea of what I'm talking about (<http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/yucatan-jungles.html>). The Mayans, whose technology seems low impact, even 'sustainable' by our standards, reshaped vast areas of land to fit their purposes, deeply changing it in the process. Moderns touring the jungle who think they're experiencing raw natural-ness are looking at the remnants of a vast horticultural engineering project. The 'Nature' that some people ache for us to fall in love with (so that we may redeem ourselves) does not exist.
But what does this have to do with Pollan?
As you noted, Pollan presents his 'solar farming' concept using images of natural food and lifestyles. The key concept is that artificial fertilizer use has made industrial farming possible, alienating us from natural methods and leading to bad food (or, to follow Pollan's thinking, non-food, such as synthetic snack cakes, masquerading as food). My counter-argument has nothing to do with the fitness of the 'solar farming' plan, which I never objected to (the more methods the merrier) and everything to do with the ideological framework shaping its presentation.
I think that we must travel in the opposite direction: away from the romantic ideal of 'Nature' and towards unashamed acceptance of our role as planet shapers. This doesn't mean that we pollute with impunity - quite the contrary. It means that, at long last, we start thinking seriously about what we're doing and devise ways to stop fouling our nest. Not by attempting to become 'more natural' (we're already natural enough -- this is who and what we are and what we do - hornets build giant-ass nests in trees and bushes, we build satellites -- all a part of nature) but by becoming more fully aware of ourselves.
This is discussed in detail in Timothy Morton's 'Ecology Without Nature':
<http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MORECO.html>
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The ideal of the 'solar farm' (as opposed to the down-to-earth reality of a working farm using the principles Pollan outlines) is that it will be part of a spiritual restoration project. This is what I object to. I object because I believe this sort of thinking leads to the wrong conclusions as we try to address our planetary emergency.
Michael Pollak wrote:
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.
It's true he doesn't talk about it in this already very long piece. And when he says his proposal will require increasing the number of "farmers" from the present 2 million to millions more, he's talking about what the BLS calls "farm managers." Migrant workers, who were here in in large numbers back in the days of grass fed beef, and are here in large numbers now, are kind of a wheel that doens't turn the mechanism in this particular argument. I personally am not sure whether their relative manhours per acre have gone up, down or stayed the same over the last 60 years. But no matter which it is, it wouldn't change the argument about farm managers. It would require millions more of those.
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I'm sorry but I disagree.
I don't think it's nasty at all, but a reflection of what I've found in Pollan's work. I've read his books, essays and blog posts; I've listened to him interviewed. Migrant workers -- who, as we all know, are a huge part of the farm sector -- are only (briefly) mentioned as either a regrettable result of industrial farming or a surprising find on a large-scale organic farm. I don't expect Pollan to offer a Marxist critique of migrant labor but if you're going to talk about reforming farming it seems odd to overlook such a significant part of the current story. After all, if you need millions of new 'farm managers' you'll also need many millions more farm workers. I'm saying that it's strange he seems to pay so little attention to the topic in his text (and his text is the only way to judge how much he knows -- not just by assuming that as a Californian he's fully aware).
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Listen, I know that you and Andy respect the guy and got hot under the collar because I'm tossing flashbang grenades. I agree that Pollan's smart and his work is valuable but it suffers, in my view, from some serious limitations which are typical of the way ecology and energy related issues are presently discussed.
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Jesus Christ, that was a lot of writing!
.d.