[wordup] Following the Food Chain with Michael Pollan

[Adam Shand]

Haven't had a chance to read properly, but it seems interesting.  While 
it's in the "read later" queue I thought I'd share. :-)

Adam.

Via: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/02/michael_pollan.php
From: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2173

Following the Food Chain with Michael Pollan

What follows represents a modest break from the Tomdispatch norm -- an 
interview done by an editor at California Monthly magazine with Michael 
Pollan, a man who tends his garden, teaches at the University of 
California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism (where, every 
spring, I become an "editor" to a group of young journalists), and 
manages regularly in writings that mix the personal, cultural, and 
ecological to flip our world upside down. In this skillfully done 
interview, Pollan is drawn out on a number of topics that happen to 
fascinate me -- from the way journalism in the U.S. is "licensed by 
politicians" to his use of himself as a character in his writings. He 
also offers a preview of his (continuing) work on America's 
corn-growing (agri)culture and the "dead zone the size of New Jersey" 
it has created in the Gulf of Mexico.

If you want to sample Pollan's writing, try his remarkable piece on 
American beef, written for the New York Times Magazine section back in 
2002. To research it, he even bought his own cow. In the process you 
can learn why "corn-fed" isn't exactly the compliment we imagine it to 
be and how many gallons of oil it takes to create your inexpensive 
supermarket hamburger patty or steak -- in the case of his cow, an 
estimated 284 gallons. Then, if you're in the mood, move on to his 
book, The Botany of Desire, where he turns our concept of 
"domesticated" plants and animals (which implies human domination) on 
its head by wondering whether plants like the apple or the tulip 
haven't actually domesticated us. (Special thanks to California Monthly 
magazine, where this piece first ran, for allowing me to post it.)

Tom

Michael Pollan on Food Chains, Dead Zones, and Licensed Journalism
Interview by Russell Schoch

"The first time I opened Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, I was dining 
alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium rare." 
The Palm is a restaurant known for its beef, the sentence is the 
opening of an article in the New York Times Magazine, and the author, 
Michael Pollan, is now a professor of journalism at Berkeley. The 
sentence shows how Pollan works as a writer. He doesn't lecture or 
assume a superior position; instead, with a comic juxtaposition, he 
places himself (and, by extension, the reader) directly inside a 
cognitive dilemma, setting up a tension for the article to resolve. 
Pollan finished the steak, and continues to eat meat, although his 
prime choice is grass-fed beef rather than animals that have been 
stuffed with corn, antibiotics, and hormones.

Pollan writes what he calls "food detective stories," but the way he 
stalks his prey sets him apart from others who write about our palate 
and plate. For an article about genetically modified food, for 
instance, his first step was to plant Monsanto's genetically modified 
NewLeaf potato in his garden. He then went to St. Louis to interview 
the folks at Monsanto, and to Idaho to talk to potato farmers. He 
called the FDA and the EPA, and interviewed people like Richard 
Lewontin, the Harvard critic of biotechnology. He read and admired 
scholarly articles, including "The Potato in the Materialist 
Imagination" (by Berkeley English professor Catherine Gallagher). He 
then mixed all of this, and much more, into a wonderful narrative stew, 
all the while continuing to tend his patch of potatoes, both old and 
NewLeaf. At the end, he had to decide whether or not to eat the 
Monsanto potato. The article's last sentence: "I choose not."

Pollan has chosen to wander between his study and the garden and into 
the world beyond in numerous articles and three books: Second Nature: A 
Gardener's Education (1991), A Place of My Own: The Education of an 
Amateur Builder (1997), and The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of 
the World (2001). A former editor at Harper's magazine, and since 1995 
a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, he was named 
Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley in 2003.

While Pollan likes to get involved in what he writes about, he's never 
far from the library. He took up gardening and building in part because 
of the delicious reading that both activities would bring into his 
hands. His library research produces fascinating facts. The broomstick 
that witches are said to ride, he tells us in The Botany of Desire, was 
actually a dildo used to insert intoxicants from the witches' brew, 
which very likely made them "fly." "That's why I don't write fiction," 
Pollan says. "You can't invent things like that."

As readers of Second Nature know, Pollan grew up on Long Island, the 
oldest of four children (he has three sisters). His mother, Corky, 
spent 17 years editing Best Bets at New York magazine and now serves as 
style editor of Gourmet magazine. Michael describes his father, 
Stephen, as "one of the world's great indoorsmen." Stephen is also a 
best-selling writer, co-author of such books as Die Broke and How to 
Fire Your Boss, which come off the presses at the rate of one a year. 
Asked if he and his father ever discuss their craft, Michael says: 
"Yes. My father asks: ‘Why do you take so long to write your books?' I 
answer: ‘Because I write them myself!'"

Pollan earned his B.A. in English at Bennington College in Vermont, 
spent a year studying literature at Oxford, and received a master's 
degree in English literature at Columbia University in 1981. He then 
took what he calls "a major personal gamble"--betting that he could 
write meaningfully about American culture, and in particular our 
relation to nature, as a journalist rather than as an English 
professor. After working on several start-up magazines, in 1983 he was 
hired by Harper's editor Lewis Lapham to help overhaul the publication. 
Pollan started out as senior editor responsible for Harper's Index and 
the magazine's Readings section. The magazine won six National Magazine 
Awards during his tenure, which included ten years as executive editor.

In The Botany of Desire -- a literary, philosophical, and social 
history of the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the genetically 
modified potato -- Pollan describes John Chapman ("Johnny Appleseed") 
as an American Dionysus, "innocent and mild," but with more than a hint 
of eccentricity: He had "the thick bark of queerness on him," as a 
biographer cited by Pollan notes. These all could be descriptions of 
Pollan's own sensibility. His writing displays an innocence tempered 
with knowledge of the world, and a mildness that has been forged out of 
various kinds of wildness. Streaks of eccentricity and extravagance 
(which etymologically means "to wander off a path or cross a line," 
Pollan reminds us) lace his paragraphs. Last month, Michael Pollan sat 
down--playing with his son's tiny toy pig ("I love pigs!") and sipping 
tea in the kitchen of his south Berkeley home -- to talk about writing 
and journalism.

What are you working on now?

I'm writing a book about the three principal food chains: the 
industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. We're all part of the 
first; I'm part of the second, since I garden organically; and, for the 
third, I'm going to learn to hunt.

You're going to take up arms?

Yes, but first I have to take a 14-hour course on gun safety at the 
Chabot gun club. Then I'm going out with a couple of chefs to hunt boar 
in the vineyards of Sonoma, where boars are a problem.

This sounds like some of the things you've done for your other books 
and articles.

Yes, I very much like to have a personal stake in what I'm writing 
about. One of the most influential books I read growing up was George 
Plimpton's Paper Lion, where he describes his experience playing 
football with the Detroit Lions. Most journalists are in the stands, or 
in the press box. Plimpton inserted himself onto the field of play.

I got my training as a journalist, in large part, at Harper's magazine. 
The editor, Lewis Lapham, insisted that the writers of our big pieces 
put in a paragraph somewhere that sort of declares where they're coming 
from -- why they cared about a subject, and where they were standing.

Why?

Because he thought that writers hid behind the convention of the 
third-person omniscient objective journalist, which allowed them to 
write a very slanted article, all the while pretending that they were 
absolutely disinterested. He felt that writing, finally, is an 
individual talking; we shouldn't forget that there is a man or woman 
behind these sentences, and we should know where he or she is coming 
from. I find a lot of truth in that, even though I find myself in a 
school where students are taught to do precisely the opposite.

Shouldn't journalists be taught to be objective?

I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, 
is not. Fairness forces you--even when you're writing a piece highly 
critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done--to make 
sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as 
you possibly can.

Anyway, in my writing I've always been interested in finding places to 
stand, and I've found it very useful to have a direct experience of 
what I'm writing about. For example, when I bought a steer as part of 
writing about the cattle industry, the fact that I owned a steer forced 
me to give more credence to and to be more fair to points of view I 
disagreed with. I was able to understand the logic of why you would 
give a hormone implant to a steer: There is essentially no way you 
could make money in the system if you didn't do that.

Any other virtues in taking a first-person stance?

Yes. It gives you enormous comic possibilities. You can write about 
yourself as a naïf, as the man from Mars, or a babe in the woods. For 
me, that's a very comfortable stance to write from -- as someone who is 
learning, who is a rank amateur, kind of clawing his way to some 
knowledge and success at something. That way, you never write down to 
your readers. Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more 
than finding a funny way to phrase something.

Your first person seems fairly ego-less.

My writing is remarkably non-confessional; you actually learn very 
little about me. There's an assumption that if someone writes in the 
first person it's self-indulgent and self-regarding. I just look at it 
as a tool to understand the world and my experience in it. It's not a 
tool to understand myself.

Was there a favorite writer you edited at Harper's?

Yes: Walter Karp, who wrote extensively for the magazine before his 
death in 1989. He was a terrific political writer--he wrote things that 
sort of sizzled in your hand--and he set the political tone for the 
magazine. One of his chief virtues was his understanding that you have 
to look at what politicians do rather than at what they say. We don't 
tend to do that. Journalists go to politicians and ask them what their 
actions mean. That's kind of weird. As a result, in the mainstream 
press what is regarded as important is what politicians tell us is 
important, and what things mean is what those same politicians tell us 
they mean.

But Walter Karp always kept his eyes on the political actor's deeds, 
not on his words. He understood that journalism, in this country, is 
largely licensed by politicians, by the leadership of the two political 
parties.

What do you mean by "licensed"?

Sanctioned. I mean that if points of view are not represented in the 
circle of mainstream Congressional opinion, they do not have a voice.

Can you give an example?

Look at an issue I know something about, genetic engineering. Why was 
its introduction into our food supply not a contested fight in America?

Over labeling that would say that the food was genetically engineered?

About labeling, but also, before that, about whether we should even 
approve this technology. The reason there was not a fight is because 
both political parties were on board for it. The Republicans were 
predictably pro-business and anti-regulation. And the Democrats had 
allied themselves with the biotechnology industry, had picked it as one 
of the growth industries in the early 1990s. Also, the biotech 
industry, in the person of Robert Shapiro, the president of Monsanto, 
was very close to Clinton and his administration.

The key moment, when the rules and regulations were being decided for 
the industry, came at the end of the first Bush administration and the 
beginning of the first Clinton administration. Both parties agreed that 
the industry should proceed with as little regulation as possible. The 
result was that biotech was introduced with no political debate and 
remarkably little journalistic attention.

The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot 
talk about things that the two parties agree on; this is the black hole 
of American politics. Genetically modified crops were in the black hole 
until the Europeans reacted so strongly against them; then we began to 
have a little bit of politics around the issue, but still not very 
much. The things journalists should pay attention to are the issues the 
political leadership agrees on, rather than to their supposed 
antagonisms.

War, for one?

War, definitely. Globalization is another example. There's a bit of a 
split now in the Democratic Party over free trade. But, essentially, 
both parties agreed to sign on to GATT and the WTO and those kinds of 
agreements. And you scarcely read a critical word about free trade in 
the New York Times during that period of complete collusion.

The Times has a lot of power to shape debate.

The Times has much less power than you think. I believe we attribute 
power to the media generally that it simply doesn't have. It's very 
convenient to blame the media, the same way we blame television for 
everything that's going wrong in society. Again, the mainstream press 
cannot take political positions that aren't well represented in the 
leadership of Congress. The Congressional leaders set the agenda for 
journalism; it's not the other way around.

Watch what happens in the year going forward, after the re-election of 
the President. If the Democrats in power decide they want to take on 
the role of a loyal opposition, the Times will have the cover it needs 
to be an opposition force. If the mood in Congress becomes, "Let's 
cooperate, let's move to the right," so, I would wager, will the Times. 
And when I say "the Times," I'm speaking of the mainstream press in 
general.

And it's always been this way?

For the past century; but it might be about to change. There appears to 
be money to be made now by selling partisan information in a way that 
hasn't been done since the 19th century. Fox News is obviously changing 
the rules of the game a bit. People may be ready for a more partisan 
kind of journalism.

Consider the fact that some of the best journalism in the last year has 
come from comedians. I'm thinking of Jon Stewart, who has done some 
excellent journalism on the Daily Show. He looks at what powerful 
people say and then juxtaposes it to their previous statements. When 
Dick Cheney says something like, "I never claimed that Hussein was 
directly behind 9/11," the mainstream press lets that stand.

Jon Stewart finds the videotape that contradicts the statement and 
juxtaposes it with the denial, exposing Cheney as having lied. That's 
powerful and objective journalism. I've asked network TV producers, 
"Why don't you do that sort of thing?" and they say: "We can't. It's 
considered too political." But why is it regarded as political to 
simply put one fact next to another fact?

One thing we're trying to do over at North Gate Hall [home of the 
Graduate School of Journalism] is to sensitize the students to these 
issues and to give them a more critical perspective on the press.

Let's talk about science journalism.

Science journalism is more dependent on official sanction than any 
other kind. This has to do with the question of authority. In general, 
science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a 
handful of peer-reviewed journals -- Nature, Cell, The New England 
Journal of Medicine -- which set the agenda. This is fine when you're 
covering scientific developments and new discoveries, but what happens 
when science itself is the story? We're letting scientists set the 
agenda in much the way that we let politicians set the agenda.

Another problem is: How do you deal with dissident scientists? With, to 
take an example on this campus, [biotech critic] Ignacio Chapela. As a 
science journalist, I don't know exactly where one stands to write the 
defense of Chapela in a mainstream newspaper after Nature and the 
scientific establishment have spoken against him. The journalist can't 
do the experiments that would prove or disprove the contested science 
in this case. All we can do is quote other authoritative scientists; 
and the people who have the loudest voices tend to be the Nobel 
laureates and all those others who benefit most from the scientific 
consensus around biotechnology.

That's the power, in this case?

That's the power, exactly. The big journals and Nobel laureates are the 
equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journalism. And that is 
pretty much where political journalism was before Watergate made 
journalists a bit more skeptical of official political opinion. I 
believe we should be taking a more critical approach to science, and 
I'm encouraging science journalism students to do that.

You've taken a critical look at what you've called "the cornification 
of America." What do you mean?

It appears I have a kind of corn obsession. I'm like that character in 
Middlemarch, Professor Causabon, who thought he had the key to the 
universe, the key to all mythologies. In corn, I think I've found the 
key to the American food chain.

How so?

If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the 
carbon in it -- and what we eat is mostly carbon -- comes from corn. A 
Chicken McNugget is corn upon corn upon corn, beginning with corn-fed 
chicken all the way through the obscure food additives and the corn 
starch that holds it together. All the meat at McDonald's is really 
corn. Chickens have become machines for converting two pounds of corn 
into one pound of chicken. The beef, too, is from cattle fed corn on 
feedlots. The main ingredient in the soda is corn -- high-fructose corn 
syrup. Go down the list. Even the dressing on the new salads at 
McDonald's is full of corn.

I recently spent some time on an Iowa corn farm. These cornfields are 
basically providing the building blocks for the fast-food nation. In my 
new book, I want to show people how this process works, and how this 
monoculture in the field leads to a different kind of monoculture on 
the plate.

What does this do to the land?

Corn is a greedy crop, as farmers will tell you. When you're growing 
corn in that kind of intensive monoculture, it requires more pesticide 
and more fertilizer than any other crop. It's very hard on the land. 
You need to put down immense amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, the 
run-off of which is a pollutant. The farmers I was visiting were 
putting down 200 pounds per acre, in the full knowledge that corn could 
only use maybe 100 or 125 pounds per acre; they considered it crop 
insurance to put on an extra 75 to 100 pounds.

Where does that extra nitrogen go?

It goes into the roadside ditches and, in the case of the farms I 
visited, drains into the Raccoon River, which empties into the Des 
Moines River. The city of Des Moines has a big problem with nitrogen 
pollution. In the spring, the city issues "blue baby alerts," telling 
mothers not to let their children use the tap water because of the 
nitrates in it. The Des Moines River eventually finds its way to the 
Gulf of Mexico, where the excess nitrogen has created a dead zone the 
size of New Jersey.

What is a dead zone?

It's a place where the nitrogen has stimulated such growth of algae and 
phytoplankton that it starves that area of oxygen, and fish cannot live 
in it. The dead zone hasn't gotten much attention, compared to carbon 
pollution; but, in terms of the sheer scale of human interference in 
one of the crucial natural cycles, it's arguably even more dramatic. 
Fully half of the terrestrial nitrogen in the world today is manmade, 
from fertilizers.

Our dependence on corn for a "cheap meal" is a fundamental absurdity. 
Seventy percent of the grain we grow in this country goes to feed 
livestock. Most of this livestock is cattle, which are uniquely suited 
to eating grass, not corn. To help them tolerate corn, we have to pump 
antibiotics into the cattle; and because the corn diet leads to 
pathogens, we then need to irradiate their meat to make it safe to eat. 
Feeding so much corn to cattle thus creates new and entirely 
preventable public health problems.

In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and 
the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel--it takes a 
half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn. What that means 
is that one of the things we're defending in the Persian Gulf is the 
cornfields and the Big Mac. Another cost is the subsidies: For corn 
alone, it's four or five billion dollars a year in public money to 
support the corn farmers that make possible our cheap hamburger. Then 
you've got the problem of obesity because these cheap calories happen 
to be some of the most fattening.

We're paying for a 99-cent burger in our health-care bills, in our 
environmental cleanup bills, in our military budget, and in the 
disappearance of the family farm. So it really isn't cheap at all.

Does this leave you pessimistic?

No. I can't write an article about industrial beef without pointing to 
an alternative, which is grass-fed beef; or about the industrialization 
of organic food without pointing to the reappearance of local food 
chains. Most of my articles offer some modicum of hope at the end.

Many people get upset when they look at these things.

Yes, but despair is not very useful. Anger, perhaps, but not despair. 
Jefferson said somewhere that no matter how bad things get, it's just 
not acceptable to despair for the republic. You just can't do that. And 
I believe the same is true for our food system.

This article first appeared in the December 2004 issue of California 
Monthly, Berkeley's alumni magazine.