Peace, Love & Blog

Pollan Nation?
BY JENNIFER MAYER
PHOTO COURTESY OF LUCID NUTRITION
activist michael pollan spreads sustainability gospel as president obama
grapples with food policy

Barack Obama may have raised a hand and
lifted a nation, but is his food policy something
you can believe in? A small but clamorous group
of food activists—led by revolutionary author Michael
Pollan—are calling not just for sustainability,
but for a complete shift in the food paradigm.

Food policy is not a new concept. It first became
a political issue in 1906 after the publication
of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, an exposé on the
corruption of the meat industry. The ramifications
of the book were so powerful that President
Theodore Roosevelt ordered an investigation of
the meat industry that resulted in the establishment
of the Food and Drug Administration. In the
1970s, organic farming began as a small, radical
movement after agricultural experts realized that
chemicals used in the treatment and production of
food products negatively affected both the environment
and people’s health.
Now, once again, food has become a hot issue.
Organic food is the fastest growing sector of the
American food marketplace, with sales growing
17 to 20 percent a year for the past few years. But
even as people are making a conscious effort to
eat in a more sustainable way, the term “organic”
has become so open-ended, according to federal
definition, that the “organic” food sold in supermarkets
is not very different from the corporate
farms the label began as a protest against. Because
of this, many sustainability activists are calling
for President Obama and his administration to
take a tougher stance on changing the way food is
produced in the United States.

A central issue has been Obama’s new secretary
of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, who hails from
Iowa and has been endorsed by agricultural groups
like the National Farmers Union and the Environmental
Defense Fund. Vilsack’s platform includes
the expansion of biofuels, especially the cornbased
ethanol— the majority of which is produced
in Iowa. He’s also interested in reducing the
United States’ carbon emissions and dependence
on foreign energy, which would further boost
Iowa’s economy. Another issue on Vilsack’s plate
is the renewal of the United States Department of
Agriculture’s child nutrition programs and putting
healthier food in children’s lunches.
His nomination met strong criticism from the
Organic Consumers Association, though, who
launched a campaign to prevent his confirmation.
They attacked Vilsack’s support for genetic
engineering of pharmaceutical crops and his role
in creating the Iowa Values Fund—an economic
development program that gave a multi-million
dollar grant to Trans Ova Genetics and their pursuit
of cloning dairy cows.
Columbians are taking a stand on the nomination
as well. Among them is Becky Davies, CC’10
and president of the Columbia University Food Sustainability
Project, who says, “While Tom Vilsack
doesn’t fit the ideal model for secretary of agriculture—
his and Obama’s support for ethanol as
the biofuel of choice is unnerving—his support for
reducing subsidies to large farms is encouraging.”
One of the sustainability movement’s most
well-known advocates, writer Michael Pollan,
has continuously urged the new administration
to change the Department of Agriculture to the
Department of Food. Pollan, a New York Times
Magazine contributor and author of In Defense of
Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, wrote his open letter
to the next “Farmer in Chief” in October.
One of Pollan’s primary concerns, as outlined
in his letter, is the low nutritional value of food
that is also low in cost. Although one can buy a
cheeseburger, fries, and large soda for less than
the national minimum hourly wage, he argues that
it is more important for food to be healthy than
to be cheap. He attacks the Special Supplemental
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children
(WIC) and school lunch programs for helping
to “feed chicken nuggets and Tater Tots to overweight
and diabetic children.”
While his suggestions for overhauling federal
food policy include such innovative ideas
as polyculture systems, which entails growing
multiple crops in the same space, and regionalizing
the food system, it is clear to readers that
some of Pollan’s ideas are implausible, to say the
least. He recommends, in all seriousness, that
the government put “a second bar code on all
food products that … brings up on a screen the
whole story and pictures of how that product
was produced … as well as live video feeds of the
CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations]
where they live and yes, the slaughterhouse
where they die.”
Despite all the hubbub about food, it’s unclear
how soon—and if any—changes will take
place. During the campaign, while opponent John
McCain ignored sustainable agriculture entirely,
Obama touched on the need to expand organic
farming and draw young people into agriculture.
Obama also pledged to defend small- and midsized
farmers against the large players in the meat
industry. Faced with issues including a crumbling
economy and retreat from Iraq, though, it is unclear
when Obama will be able to tackle the issues
surrounding food supply.
While Pollan and others concerned with President
Obama’s food policy raise valid and worthwhile
points, it is clear that the administration
cannot focus all of its attention on these matters.
With a suffering economy and two overseas battlefronts,
food policy must integrate itself into other
issues or simply wait its turn. Pollan argues that
changing food policy can be a way to cut down on
health care spending and the use of fossil fuels—
perhaps linking food policy to an area of greater
concern is the best hope for a food activist’s calls
for changes.