Farmer in Chief: A Letter to the Next President

[Guest guest]

[vitalchoice.com]

 

Farmer in Chief: A Letter to the Next President

 

Acclaimed journalist Michael Pollan penned a detailed prescription for

setting American agriculture on a path to sustainability and quality

 

by Craig Weatherby and Randy Hartnell

 

-------------

Yesterday's edition of the The New York Times Magazine featured an

engaging essay by Michael Pollan, the UC Berkeley journalism professor

and bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma

 

http://www.imakenews.com/eletra/go.cfm?z=vitalchoiceseafood%2C306206%2Cb1kJkvww%\

2C2708588%2CbdvgnGd

 

, and In Defense of Food

 

http://newsletter.vitalchoice.com/e_article000985497.cfm?x=b7dqKWJ,b1pTrCB7,w

 

which explored the ways in which Americans eat and raise food.

 

His essay was in the form of a letter to the next President of the

United States, whoever it might be.

 

Pollan contrasts the open and hidden costs of " fossil foods " - today's

monoculture system, dependent on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and

pesticides - with the comparable costs but far greater rewards of " sun

foods " ... a term by which he means foods grown with largely natural,

fully sustainable methods.

 

We encourage you to peruse Michael Pollan's essay, titled " Farmer in

Chief [

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html ] " .

 

This enlightening excursion into farm policy and future possibilities

offers a wealth of ideas and inspiration.

 

The following excerpts - re-printed here with Mr Pollan's permission -

will give you a taste.

 

Excerpts from Michael Pollan's new essay

His essay begins with the salutation, Dear Mr. President-Elect:

 

" Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much

thought [to]... But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise,

the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close ...

you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself

confronting the fact ... that the health of a nation's food system is a

critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your

attention. "

 

" After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector

of the economy - 19 percent ... the way we feed ourselves contributes

more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do - as

much as 37 percent ... when we eat from the industrial-food system, we

are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. "

 

" Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in

1960 to 16 percent today ... Four of the top 10 killers in America today

are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2

diabetes and cancer. "

 

" In drafting these proposals, I've adhered to a few simple principles of

what a 21st-century food system needs to do.

 

- First, your administration's food policy must strive to provide a

healthful diet for all our people; this means focusing on the quality

and diversity (and not merely the quantity) of the calories that

American agriculture produces and American eaters consume.

 

- Second, your policies should aim to improve the resilience, safety and

security of our food supply. Among other things, this means promoting

regional food economies both in America and around the world.

 

- And lastly, your policies need to

reconceive agriculture as part of the solution to environmental problems

like climate change. "

 

Pollan's daring ... and ultimately practical proposal

 

Michael Pollan's proposal to the next President focuses on getting away

from land-damaging agriculture that's dependent on costly, polluting

fossil fuels, and back to farming systems that rely on free, renewable

solar energy.

 

" ... 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

.... If any part of the modern economy can be freed from its dependence

on oil and successfully resolarized, surely it is food ... every calorie

we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis - a process based on

making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that

simple fact. "

And he has answers for those who dismiss the ability of sustainable,

organic-style approaches to do the job of producing good food that's

cheap enough to be affordable to almost all Americans ...with or without

food stamps:

 

" ... the average yield of world agriculture today is substantially lower

than that of modern sustainable farming. According to a recent

University of Michigan study, merely bringing international yields up to

today's organic levels could increase the world's food supply by 50

percent. "

 

" The power of cleverly designed polycultures to produce large amounts of

food from little more than soil, water and sunlight has been proved ...

by ... giant-scale operations (up to 15,000 acres) in places like

Argentina. "

 

" There, in a geography roughly comparable to that of the American farm

belt, farmers have traditionally employed an ingenious eight-year

rotation of perennial pasture and annual crops: after five years grazing

cattle on pasture (and producing the world's best beef), farmers can

then grow three years of grain without applying any fossil-fuel

fertilizer. Or, for that matter, many pesticides: the weeds that afflict

pasture can't survive the years of tillage, and the weeds of row crops

don't survive the years of grazing, making herbicides all but

unnecessary. "

 

" There is no reason - save current policy and custom - that American

farmers couldn't grow both high-quality grain and grass-fed beef under

such a regime through much of the Midwest. "

 

" Federal policies could do much to encourage this sort of diversified

sun farming. Begin with the subsidies: payment levels should reflect the

number of different crops farmers grow or the number of days of the year

their fields are green - that is, taking advantage of photosynthesis,

whether to grow food, replenish the soil or control erosion.

 

" If Midwestern farmers simply planted a cover crop after the fall

harvest, they would significantly reduce their need for fertilizer,

while cutting down on soil erosion. Why don't farmers do this routinely?

Because in recent years fossil-fuel-based fertility has been so much

cheaper and easier to use than sun-based fertility. "

 

Subsidies hide cost of unhealthful, unsustainable food Pollan's parting

shot makes a critical point ... that when you include direct subsidies,

and the hidden costs of poor nutrition and environmental damage, today's

cheap, industrial food is costlier than the sustainable, solar-powered

alternative:

 

" Yes, sun food costs more, but the reasons why it does only undercut the

charge of elitism: cheap food is only cheap because of government

handouts and regulatory indulgence (both of which we will end), not to

mention the exploitation of workers, animals and the environment on

which its putative 'economies' depend. Cheap food is food dishonestly

priced - it is in fact unconscionably expensive. "

 

There's much more to be gleaned from Michael Pollan's excellent essay

.... we hope the next President reads it and takes it to heart.

 

Source

 

Pollan M. Farmer in Chief. The New York Times Magazine. October 12,

2008.

 

Accessed online October 12, 2008 at

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html