Revolution from the Heart of Nature

by Michael Pollan
Local food economies are our best hope for checking the drift toward the
total global economy. A revolt is underway across this country-a revolt
of small producers and consumers. Some of the most important politics
today are happening at the farmer's market.

We're told that it's very sentimental to go back to a local food
economy. And surely there are reasons for buying local that might strike
the unsentimental as a little softheaded. We like the idea of keeping
farmers and their wisdom in our communities. We like eating food in
season picked at the peak of its taste and nutritional value. You find
no processed food or high fructose corn syrup at the farmer's market. We
like the idea of keeping land near us in production for food rather than
houses and strip malls.

We like what happens socially at the farmer's market, which is quickly
emerging as the new public square in this country. If you compare what
happens in the aisles at the grocery store with the farmer's market,
think about what a world of difference that is. At the farmer's market
country meets city. Children are introduced to where their food comes
from. People politic. They have petitions. They schmooze. It's an
incredibly vibrant space.

I'm fully prepared to defend local food economies on those so-called
sentimental grounds, but let me suggest that there's nothing more
hardheaded or realistic than building and defending local food
economies. Indeed, to do so is a matter not of sentiment, but of
critical importance to national security and public health. Here are a
few reasons:

Energy. The total economy depends on cheap energy, not to mention peace
and no threat from terrorism, in order to move goods from point of
cheapest production to point of highest purchase. We will not reduce our
dependence on foreign sources of energy or confront the issue of climate
change without dealing with the industrial food system, which consumes
17 percent of our fossil fuel.

Sovereignty. Do we really want to go down the path we have gone down
with our energy with food? Do we want to find ourselves in a position
where all our grain is coming from South America, our produce from
Mexico? The projections right now are that in California at the end of
this century there will be no more food production in the Central
Valley. It will be houses and highways wall-to-wall, mountain to
mountain. Do we want to give away our food independence?

National security. Our government knows the risk of a highly centralized
food system. When Tommy Thompson left the Department of Homeland
Security, he said something very interesting in his last press
conference: "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists
have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." When
all your hamburgers are being ground in the same factory and all your
salad is being washed in the same sink, it is a very precarious way to eat.

Public Health. Our highly centralized food system is very vulnerable to
contamination-both deliberate and accidental. We just had a horrifying
illustration of the dangers of centralized food when two hundred
Americans were seriously sickened and three Americans were killed by
eating spinach contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7.

That bug was the result of our industrial system for two reasons. First,
E. coli 0157:H7 is a mutation of industrial feedlot agriculture; you do
not have it in grass-fed cattle. Second, it was able to be spread far
and wide because spinach from many farms was washed in a single sink in
San Juan Bautista, California, and then sent all over the country. This
is not to say you couldn't get sick from eating spinach at your farmer's
market. But if you did, it would be contained in the food chain. You'd
know who was responsible.

Instead of seizing on these threats as a reason to decentralize our food
supply, the government is bringing in more regulation and technology.
Progressive senators are proposing that we begin to regulate farms the
way we regulate meat plants. That will put small farms out of business.
So you see what happens as industrial agriculture fails and sickens us.
The solutions promote more industrialization of agriculture. And that's
what we need to resist. I say we put our faith not in technology or
regulation but in relationships, relationships with small farms.

We have to act as consumer-citizens who are co-creators, builders of
food chains. We are building a local food economy simply by getting out
of the supermarket, by growing our own food, by joining the CSA and by
shopping at farmers markets. We are voting with our forks and it is a
very important vote.

We also need to vote with our votes because not all the changes we need
can be driven by consumers. Some of them will have to come from government.

The most boring topic in American politics but possibly the most
important is the Farm Bill, which is up for reauthorization this year.
It is the reason we are in this fast food nation, because the Farm Bill
decides that we're going to grow cheap corn and soybeans, which are not
foods but which are raw materials for industrial food. The Farm Bill
determines whether local or national foods will predominate.

So I leave you with this totally unglamorous message: Let your senators
and representatives know you're paying attention and you care. Let them
know that you understand that the Farm Bill is really a food bill. It is
our fight. Unless we take it to them, they're going to do the same thing
again and we're going to have more corn, and more soybeans, more
Smithfields and Cargills and fewer farmers markets. So please follow
this fight and help to wage it.

Excerpted from a plenary talk by Michael Pollan at the Bioneers 2006
Conference. Pollan is the director of the Knight Program in Science and
Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley and author most recently of The
Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. He is contributing
writer to The New York Times Magazine. Visit the Bioneers Store to
purchase a CD or DVD of Pollan's presentation, "Beyond the Bar Code: The
Local Food Revolution ."

Organic food helps revive fortunes of Europe's farmers

Published: 14 June 2007
The organic revolution is sweeping across Europe, with the area of land dedicated to environmentally-friendly, pesticide-free food production more than doubling in the last decade.
Organic farming now accounts for more than 4 per cent of agricultural land in the EU, more than double its 1998 share, according to a new report from its official statistics agency, Eurostat.
And organic land is likely to make greater inroads, as the consumer appetite shows no sign of slowing.
"Organic almost certainly will continue to grow and we think it's a good thing," Michael Mann, an EU agriculture spokesman said.
The growth is partly being driven by Europe's farmers, who are being undercut by produce imported from countries such as Brazil. For many farmers, organic foods are becoming a key way to reinvent their failing farms.
"Farmers are coming under growing pressure from low-cost producers abroad," Mr Mann said. "They have to be smart and think of increasing profit margins and organic is one way of doing that."
Conscious of this ballooning market, agriculture ministers from the 27 member states agreed this week on a compulsory logo, to be introduced from 2009, designed to reassure consumers that they are getting the genuine article.
The logo guarantees that at least 95 per cent of ingredients are completely free of chemicals - and imports will be subject to the same rule. But it also permits up to 0.9 per cent from genetically-modified organisms, a level that has angered green campaigners.
"It is a total cop-out by the European Union - setting a level of 0.9 per cent could result in the creeping GM contamination of organic food," said Ben Ayliffe, of Greenpeace. "It should be 0.1 per cent."
"Go into any supermarket and they are bursting with organic food, while GM foods are conspicuous by their absence. That's because consumers don't want them!" he added.
In recent years, European consumers have shown themselves willing to pay more for organic produce, reflecting an aversion to chemicals and a growing preference for natural farming techniques over the high-intensity production that has been blamed for crises such as BSE and foot-and-mouth disease.
Recognising this fact, Brussels will now provide higher levels of subsidy for organic farming, than that given to non organic fruit and vegetables.
The UK has been a leader in organic farming. In 2005, more than 600,000 hectares of the country's farmland were cultivated organically, putting it ahead of France, a country more than twice its size. Yet only 3.8 per cent of UK farmland was devoted to organic production, compared with 11 per cent in Austria. The Alpine nation has a reputation as a strong opponent of intensive and biotech farming, recently refusing to follow an EU ruling allowing a type of genetically-modified maize made by Monsanto.
While the Eurostat report primarily compared the 15 nations that joined the EU before 2004, it also pointed out that some of the biggest organic farms now are to be found in newcomers Slovakia and Czech Republic.