OldDog/NewTricks
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From:
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 4:30 PM
To: Reynnells, Richard
Subject: Pollan's Letter to the President Elect
Letter to Obama from Michael Pollan on U.S. food policy (NYT Magazine)
Michael Pollan, a journalism professor at UC Berkeley and author of the excellent Omnivore's Dilemma, has written a 9-page letter to President Elect Obama on the need for new and improved food policy.
Read it at www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
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Pollan views our "cheap" food policy as long-term expensive since it's based on oil and monocultures of crops and animals (versus polyculture farming). Pollan advises: "we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine."
He quotes Wendell Berry: "to take animals off farms and put them on feedlots is to take an elegant solution — animals replenishing the fertility that crops deplete — and neatly divide it into two problems: a fertility problem on the farm and a pollution problem on the feedlot. The former problem is remedied with fossil-fuel fertilizer; the latter is remedied not at all."
On page 7 of this 9 page letter, Pollan tackles the loss of slaughterhouse facilities which forces livestock owners to ship their animals long distances to meet their maker. He argues for more local solutions and mobile facilities.
On page 9, he comments on the ultimate in free range", hunting, and advises Obama, "You should support hunting as a particularly sustainable way to eat meat — meat grown without any fossil fuels whatsoever." (For those of you who did not read the Omnivove's Dilemma, there is a chapter on the challenge of preparing a meal from hunted and gathered ingredients that is worth the cost of the book alone.)
For those interested in this debate, Pollan hosted a presentation by Joel Salatin of PolyFace Farms, a leader in polyculture farming and community-supported agriculture. Carve out some time to watch this video at http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?ID=164
While Pollan does not mention the word "fiber" anywhere in his letter to the President Elect, we recognize that food and fiber production are linked. By the 1990s, oil-based synthetics controlled over 70% of the US fiber market. www.fibersource.com/f-tutor/history.htm and www.furcommission.com/resource/perspect999ce.htm
For more on Pollan, visit www.michaelpollan.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 4:30 PM
To: Reynnells, Richard
Subject: Pollan's Letter to the President Elect
Letter to Obama from Michael Pollan on U.S. food policy (NYT Magazine)
Michael Pollan, a journalism professor at UC Berkeley and author of the excellent Omnivore's Dilemma, has written a 9-page letter to President Elect Obama on the need for new and improved food policy.
Read it at www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
'
Pollan views our "cheap" food policy as long-term expensive since it's based on oil and monocultures of crops and animals (versus polyculture farming). Pollan advises: "we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine."
He quotes Wendell Berry: "to take animals off farms and put them on feedlots is to take an elegant solution — animals replenishing the fertility that crops deplete — and neatly divide it into two problems: a fertility problem on the farm and a pollution problem on the feedlot. The former problem is remedied with fossil-fuel fertilizer; the latter is remedied not at all."
On page 7 of this 9 page letter, Pollan tackles the loss of slaughterhouse facilities which forces livestock owners to ship their animals long distances to meet their maker. He argues for more local solutions and mobile facilities.
On page 9, he comments on the ultimate in free range", hunting, and advises Obama, "You should support hunting as a particularly sustainable way to eat meat — meat grown without any fossil fuels whatsoever." (For those of you who did not read the Omnivove's Dilemma, there is a chapter on the challenge of preparing a meal from hunted and gathered ingredients that is worth the cost of the book alone.)
For those interested in this debate, Pollan hosted a presentation by Joel Salatin of PolyFace Farms, a leader in polyculture farming and community-supported agriculture. Carve out some time to watch this video at http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?ID=164
While Pollan does not mention the word "fiber" anywhere in his letter to the President Elect, we recognize that food and fiber production are linked. By the 1990s, oil-based synthetics controlled over 70% of the US fiber market. www.fibersource.com/f-tutor/history.htm and www.furcommission.com/resource/perspect999ce.htm
For more on Pollan, visit www.michaelpollan.com
