This was such an interesting read, I may have to grab the book after this semester, when I'll have an extra minute or two to read it. I really enjoyed the way Pollan described the fields in Iowa, and the way he went off on tangents during his story - like when he wrote about the history of Fritz Haber - I had no idea! It reminded me of Einstein, and his feelings towards being a part of creating the atomic bomb. The implications of Haber's work in fixing nitrogen are astounding - it is as though one man has changed the world, literally. Amazing to think that without his work, I may not be here typing about it. On a side note, does that balance out the atrocities of his other work? Wow, the philosophical ramifications are numerous and far too complicated for me to write about in this blog, as I haven't really ingested all of it, yet. I imagine it is a good thing, because I'm supposed to be blogging about food, but I could not help but mention it, because his work was profound.
So, first I have to say that I would have loved to meet George Naylor; he was so direct and honest in his comments about the government and the corn industry - or as he would say it, the "welfare queen." I am happy to see yet another look at how the government has mismanaged and destroyed an industry. Stories like this should be in every newspaper, magazine, and classroom. My classmates may not realize, but I am inherently skeptical of the government, and I have an extreme dislike towards government policies that control my every day activities, right down to the food on my table (thought I'd mention my bias, just in case people weren't aware, I've been so subtle about it in previous blogs). I feel vindicated for my beliefs with each new article we read about food. I am also amazed at how much I've learned, and how much more destructive the government has been with policy than I ever imagined.
To briefly summarize, Pollan wrote that agriculture changed after WWII, when the government had an oversupply of ammonium nitrate from munitions supplies. Originally, the plan was to spread the nitrate in forests; however, the Department of Agriculture thought it would be put to better use on farmland. This supplied farms with an abundance of nitrogen, they no longer needed to rotate crops, and they could grow far more corn than ever before. Farms began clearing fields for corn, they stopped growing other crops, got rid of the farm animals used to farm and fertilize, and farming became a monoculture: one crop - corn. Farmers grew more and more corn. The problem with this is that there was more corn grown than what the market could bear. Enter the federal government to "save the day," and an ensuing disaster awaits. Through one bad policy after another, corn farmers have found that there is no bottom to the price of corn - and the cost it grow it is more than they get for selling it. In order to make more money, they plant more corn, an act which causes the price to decline further. Corn farmers are stuck in a vicious cycle. They can't grow enough corn to survive: the more they grow, the less they get per bushel. And here is where my mind goes; enter Al Gore and the looney warming scheme he's devised - and now they want to use corn for ethanol. It seems the world will turn to corn: it's in most of our food; the cattle, pigs, chickens, and now fish are fed corn; and it is in countless pre-packaged products and additives. Now, they want to put it in our gas tanks. CORN! When will it end? I don't even LIKE corn!!
In my opinion, the best way to combat the issues with food is to get involved with government - you know, that black hole down in Washington, DC, that is eating up all of our resources to feed itself. What I see, in the issues with the food industry, and many other industries, is a government out to control and enslave us. POWER is the name of the game: the lobbyist have it, the people who are "serving" us have it, and big business/big pharma/big agriculture. WE have lost the power - the power to choose what is right for our dinner plates. The farmer's have lost the power - the power to grow multiple crops - Naylor has no purchaser for anything but corn and soybean in his town. And worse yet, the farmers are stuck in a perpetual downward spiral - due to government "assistance" with corn prices - when the government necessarily insured there would be no bottom to the price of corn through policy changes during the Nixon administration.
Information is key to combating these issues, and it is abundant, should anyone care to look. We can't change anything without acting.