

The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals - JacobAldridge
http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals

======
justin_vanw
Lets design a system for creating dangerous diseases. We'll take millions of
some species we know tend to pass viruses to and from people, say poultry and
pigs. Now, lets pack as many together as we possibly can, to the point that
they are incredibly stressed, and bonus points if they are physically rubbing
against each other all the time, and exposed to each others feces. Now, we
need to keep the sick ones alive as long as possible. Let's pump them full of
antibiotics, steroids, or whatever else might keep them ambulatory. It's
important that any sick animals stay with the rest, so that any disease
microbe with a mutation that makes the disease more easily spread are captured
in the population, and not left to die in some barn where the animal is
quarantined, say. Now, make sure that you keep animals in each location at all
times, any gaps where there are no animals in a facility (or merely too few to
act as a reservoir) would destroy any mutations unique to that population.
Finally, have lots of discrete locations with just a little transfer between
them. This way, a successful new disease will have to be virulent enough to
invade other locations. This means it will have to either spread to wild birds
or other animals, or humans. Finally it also means that it will have the
chance to evolve in an environment where the hosts have minimal natural
immunity to it. Now you just have to sit back and wait, sooner or later
something truly deadly will pop out.

To address the article directly: only factory farming has animals penned so
tightly they can't even stand up. Only factory farming makes the air so foul
that you still can't breath on the next farm over. Only factory farming
requires the air in the barns to be completely turned over every 20 minutes to
prevent the animals inside from suffocating on fumes from decomposing feces.

~~~
Quarrelsome
Wait... so creating scenarios where the chances of getting diseases is bad? So
cities are bad? Hospitals? MRSA was produced in hospitals, are all these ideas
bad?

I believe these ideas need work. The human race tends to blindly run in a
direction until it hits a wall, so our current wall is bird flu and swine flu.
Sure, we need to improve our course of direction or find ways to mitigate
against these diseases but I don't think it helps trying to paint this
"running" as being more "immoral", "wrong" or "greedy" than it would otherwise
be.

~~~
calambrac
Really? You think cities are the equivalent of industrial farms? That the
human experience is exactly like cows huddled in their own shit with no room
to turn around? Like pigs forced into quarters where they go crazy and eat the
tails of the pigs in front of them? Really?

~~~
Quarrelsome
No. Cities are more likely to breed human disease than lots of small hamlets.
That's all.

The argument being put forward is that anything that creates disease is bad.
My argument is that a lot of what we already have is built with that trade-off
against us.

~~~
calambrac
That wasn't the argument at all, that was your absurdist disingenuous
interpretation of the argument. _Anything_ that creates disease is a pretty
wide net. He was specifically talking about industrial farms, because they
seem to have _particularly_ dangerous conditions in this regard.

------
karzeem
There are a couple different things going on here.

First, the author makes some good points that without modern tools, some of
the things we ask of modern farms would be impossible. There's a limit to the
natural productivity of an acre of land.

Second, though, he doesn't address a) whether we're asking too much of one
acre of land, or b) whether the things that farmers have to do in order to be
productive enough to survive are things that are good to be doing to land,
long-term.

The author is essentially saying, "If this is what you ask of me, don't
complain about the things I _have_ to do to deliver." And that's a fair point.
But let's think more about what we should and shouldn't be asking of him and
his land.

Additionally, the author makes a well-argued takedown of some of Michael
Pollan's points from _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ , but Joel Salatin — the man
whose farming methods are the centerpiece of the book — is conspicuously
absent from the critique. Salatin's farm is extremely productive, and
sustainably so. That's accomplished by embracing technology (like electric
fences that take ten minutes to set up), not by throwing it out and reverting
to Depression-era methods.

Salatin's work is more hands-on than that of most farmers, and that's
necessary for the type of farm he runs. But it's a model that we'd do well to
see spread. (Again, though, it cannot spread widely without some significant
changes in what farmers are and are not incentivized to do.)

~~~
Quarrelsome
"10 minutes to setup". Is that like creating a stackoverflow clone in a
weekend?

~~~
karzeem
It's something out of _The Omnivore's Dilemma_. Joel Salatin pens his cows
with a mobile electric fence that's basically a wire, a bunch of stakes, and a
car battery. Michael Pollan notes that it took him and Salatin ten minutes to
set it up or tear it down.

------
willchang
These counterpoints to avant-garde farming sensibilities bear repeating: no-
till requires herbicides, but is potentially better for the environment than
organic; there is not enough animal waste in all the land to fertilize all the
crops in the land; monoculture is efficient; etc. Indeed it would be
intellectual complacency to demand organic food without acknowledging these
things.

On the other hand, there are hints of complacency in the author's arguments as
well. To say that gestation crates protect piglets does not end the argument
-- it should cause us to ask whether pigs should be bred that are capable of
destroying their own young. To say that fossil fuels cause farmland to be more
productive does not end the argument either -- it should cause us to ask
whether food is too cheap, which is to say, whether all the external costs of
food have been adequately priced in. This is not precious high-mindedness, but
sober reasoning in light of the fact that catastrophic environmental damage
may result from burning fossil fuels, or that serious infectious diseases may
result from intensive animal husbandry.

As for farmers being portrayed as helpless, I would say that they largely are.
A farmer can hardly avoid the worst practices of the trade if he is to be
competitive; which is why it is only reasonable for the worst practices to be
prohibited by law, or driven to extinction by public opinion. Certainly law
and public opinion can be incredibly ham-fisted, which is why, I suppose,
there's value in articles like this.

~~~
jrockway
_it should cause us to ask whether food is too cheap, which is to say, whether
all the external costs of food have been adequately priced in_

This is spot on. Our economy does not price externalities well.

~~~
jimmybot
I get what you mean, but if they were priced correctly, they'd just be
internalities. Internalities?

------
jrockway
Exactly the expected response. Industrial food is cheap if you don't think
damaging the earth has a cost. Poor people _need_ their high-fructose corn
syrup! (And of course, it's OK for the government to heavily subsidize corn
production, but when they try to buy poor people whole meals then we hear the
conservatives whine about a "nanny state" and how irresponsible people are.
"What a waste of tax dollars!")

He also seems to have missed the part of the book where they compare
Earthbound Farms(an organic industrial farm) to conventional farms. Same
processes, same labor, same yields. Higher profit margin. The difference is in
a few details.

(He also specifically mentions the costs of tilling the field before planting,
to kill the weeds. "Omnivore's Dilemma" agrees that this is a bad thing. But
it's likely that this has less environmental impact than dumping your
herbicides in the river. Industrial organic farming is very far from perfect.
But conventional industrial farming is farther.)

Finally, what we see here is another example of the tragedy of the commons in
action. Is it okay for one farmer to use lots of chemicals on his crops? Sure,
they get diluted heavily by the time they run off into the nearby river. No
big deal. But when everyone for thousands of miles around does it, then you
have a problem. It's not one person's fault, it's the collective's fault. I
don't think the author quite grasps this point.

------
xexers
Disclaimer: I grew up on a farm. I have personally slaughtered many animals
including pigs, chickens, ducks, and fish. I am now a vegetarian.

This article is 90% correct. I agree on most topics. A main thread here is
sustainable farming. However 2 key points are intentionally confusing.

1\. "Paul Johnson is forecasting a move toward vegetarianism. But if we
assume, at least for the present, that most of us will continue to eat meat,
let me dive in where most fear to tread."

2\. "the amount of nitrogen available naturally would only support a worldwide
population of 4 billion souls or so."

Point #1, he quickly skips over possibly the most important way out of this
mess. If people were to eat less meat this entire article would be useless.
From another article: "According to the journal Soil and Water, one acre of
land could produce 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 40,000 pounds of potatoes,
30,000 pounds of carrots or just 250 pounds of beef."

Point #2, when he says we can only feed 4 billion, he is talking about on a
typical meat centered western diet. On a vegetarian diet, this world could
feed well 10s of billions.

~~~
codyrobbins
_Point #1, he quickly skips over possibly the most important way out of this
mess. If people were to eat less meat this entire article would be useless.
From another article: "According to the journal Soil and Water, one acre of
land could produce 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 40,000 pounds of potatoes,
30,000 pounds of carrots or just 250 pounds of beef."_

I often see vegetarians make the argument that one acre of land can grow far
more vegetables, but you're completely ignoring the fact that the calorie
content of beef is far higher than the calorie content of vegetables. I work
out and pay a lot of attention to my diet and calorie intake, and a large
portion of my diet consists of vegetables and beans. One of the first things
you realize on a diet like this is that you have to eat a _serious_ amount of
vegetables to take in the same amount of calories as you get from beef or
chicken — like, an entire dinner-plateful with each meal.

100 grams of beef has approximately 330 calories, while the same amount of
tomatoes has approximately 18 calories. That works out to about 20 times more
calories in beef. So, 250 pounds of beef is actually equivalent to 4,500
pounds of tomatoes. It's still an order of magnitude off, but it's certainly
not two orders of magnitude as it would at first seem. (All numbers are
approximate as a result of some quick Googling.)

Furthermore, the fact that other useful products are produced from cattle is
ignored: leather, gelatin, glue, tallow, bone meal for fertilizer, etc.
Literally every part of the cow is used.

~~~
xexers
Its convenient that you picked tomatoes, try potatoes:

colories per gram pototatoes = 0.7866

colories per gram ground beef = 2.59

therefore colories per acre:

potatoes = 31,466

beef = 647.5

There we go, back to 2 orders of magnitude.

~~~
codyrobbins
Sure — does that mean then that you're in favor of halting production of
tomatoes? Potatoes are a more efficient use of the land, after all.

~~~
xexers
Nope... if we all give up meat, there will be so much land, we wont even know
what to do with it all:

From this aritcle:

[http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/vegetarian-diet-
coul...](http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/vegetarian-diet-could-cut-
climate-change-mitigation-costs-by-70-percent.php)

"An area the size of Russia and Canada combined could be freed from use as
pasture or cropland used to grow animal feed, if people switched from current
levels of meat consumption common in Europe and the United States to a diet
based on plant-based protein."

~~~
codyrobbins
OK, then why are you drawing the line arbitrarily between cattle and tomatoes,
when both are less efficient than potatoes? I posed that as question, but I
don't think there's an answer, because, indeed, I think precisely the problem
is that you're making an arbitrary distinction.

My entire point is that, sure, it's less efficient, but that doesn't mean
there's not reasons for raising cattle.

~~~
xexers
I think that's a great point.

The world as it is now is tight for resources. We are tight for land, oil,
energy, and water. Globally we are trying to use less of all 4 to move towards
a sustainable future. Farming uses up quite a large part of all 4 of those
(meat farming creates some nasty byproducts along the way as well like water
polution, air polution, steroids in our food, etc). We need to make some cut
backs right now. Because meat is 10 (sometimes 50) times less effeceint, it's
a good candidate for cutbacks. Maybe we can bring it back when we learn how to
manage our resources better, but for now, I think it needs to be scaled way
back.

You can bet your ass that if producing some vegetable like rice used as many
resources as beef did, it would be gone in a heartbeat!

I suppose in the very distant future there could be a day where we have to
choose between potatoes and tomatoes... I hope that day never comes.

~~~
easp
Among nasty byproducts of high density meat production: Multi drug resistant
bacteria. New strains of the flu.

I love meat. I'm not giving it up, but I moderate my consumption due, in part,
to stuff like this.

------
wglb
As the son of a dryland wheat farmer, I have been concerned about the amount
of fertilizer and pesticides put into the soil.

The author has a very good basic point. Farmers and the agribusiness industry
do what they do not because they are evil but because customers want what they
produce. This is often overlooked by those of us who criticize the current
system of production. So we need to keep in mind that it is a system, and we
all consume what this vast system produces, and we don't show any slackening
of demand in the stuff we buy, particularly in the corn economy.

But the author's self interest gets a little heated, and he misses many of the
points made in Omnivore's Dilemma (note the second word of the title and who
it belongs to). There is a lot of exposition about the current financial
structure of the industry with subsidies going to the small and huge family
farms that actually provide significant benefit to the agribusiness and
reduces the flexibility that the farmer might otherwise have regarding what to
grow.

It is not useful, in my mind, to demonize the critics of our current way of
business, nor is it useful to demonize the industry. This is a pretty complex
problem.

As a former farmboy and current tech guy I found Omnivore's Dilemma to be
quite evenhanded. This article is not. Both have good points worth
contemplation.

Food is a huge ethical dilemma, and things are more interrelated than one
might first think.

~~~
bmj
_As a former farmboy and current tech guy I found Omnivore's Dilemma to be
quite evenhanded. This article is not. Both have good points worth
contemplation._

This often gets lost in the shuffle. Pollan investigated four different modes
of food production, and followed the trail from farm to table for each.
Certainly, he made some judgments about what he saw (and what he saw affected
how he eats), but he gave each mode its due.

------
pyre
I call BS on this guy. Maybe he should contact Snopes about his 'turkeys
drowning in the rain' bit:

    
    
       http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/turkey.asp
    

I was ready to accept what this guy was saying until I got to that point. Then
I stopped reading. I now view this entire article as a rebellion of
agribusiness to the fact that people are starting to become more interested in
_how_ their food gets to the table and don't like what they see.

{edit} Even if that story is true, it's a poor justification for caging all
animals. "All animals need to be bred in cages and indoors because one
particular animal can't survive outdoors." <sarcasm> Seems like sound enough
logic to me </sarcasm> {/edit}

~~~
jrockway
Thanks for this. I have been trying to say this:

 _I now view this entire article as a rebellion of agribusiness to the fact
that people are starting to become more interested in how their food gets to
the table and don't like what they see._

in all my comments below, but I couldn't quite put it this eloquently.

I think you are exactly right; he is arguing that his way is best for his
fields, his profit margin, and for getting low prices at the store. "The
Omnivore's Dilemma" takes a more holistic approach and argues how this
approach is worse for the planet as a whole (and how it's just plain
wasteful). It's good to hear both sides of the story, but I can't help but
feel that the "organic" way is closer to what's best for everyone.

------
hooande
I think the author's point here is that most people just don't want to let go
of the _idea_ of the american farmer. Culturally, we want a farmer to be a guy
riding a tractor or milking a cow, not some guy who puts animals into boxes
and then churns them out factory style. The image of a farm that contains
happy animals in a field has been put into all of our heads at a very young
age (remember "Old McDonald"?). The practice of industrial farming isn't only
distasteful to think about, but it goes against some of our strongest cultural
archetypes.

I think that's why the author used so many examples of unpleasant things that
he saw as a farmer growing up. He was trying to say that no matter how it's
done, farming is a dirty and bloody business. It's nice to picture farming
like it was in re-runs of Lassie, but that doesn't mean we should expect him
to run his business based on outdated ideas.

I think that this is a case of technology progressing faster than society is
comfortable with. Whatever problems are created by industrial farming
(environmental damage or harm to the animals) will be corrected by some
ambitious startup founders who come up with clever solutions. The idea of
industrial farming is relatively new, especially when compared to the
thousands of years put into mastering regular farming. I don't think it's wise
to stand in the way of progress just because we find certain elements of it to
be distasteful (but not harmful).

~~~
bmj
_I think that this is a case of technology progressing faster than society is
comfortable with. Whatever problems are created by industrial farming
(environmental damage or harm to the animals) will be corrected by some
ambitious startup founders who come up with clever solutions._

I find this attitude to be a bit dangerous. Sitting around waiting for some
entrepreneur to save the world doesn't strike me as the best solution.

Regarding the bloodiness of farming, Pollan, in _The Omnivore's Dilemma_,
doesn't shield the reader from this. In fact, you get a very detailed view of
what chicken farming and processing looks like on a sustainable farm. What's
most interesting about it is how human Salatin and his family are about it--
they understand they are killing things, and that if they don't give
themselves some respite from it, they will change for the worse.

The biggest issue I have with technology and farming (particularly the use of
chemicals and hormones, not as much with machinery) is that we don't
understand the ramifications of what we are doing yet. Consider that at one
point in time, we thought it was smart to spray ourselves with DDT. We may not
learn what the various herbicides and antibiotics and hormones are doing to us
for years to come. One of Pollan's primary points in his writing is that food
is too important for us to hand over to technocrats and big business.

------
thesubjective
Never trust a publisher who is willing to offer direct attack on an authors
assertions, but refuses to offer the ability for readers to leave comments on
said attack.

The lack of (and then rapid increase in cost of) water will end up pushing
this farmer out.

Bottom line, his way of life, like most of America's is becoming increasingly
hard to sustain. Attacking deep ecology and the Organic movement is the wrong
tack.

~~~
jrockway
I think you can write a letter to the editor.

The article has a conservative slant, anyway, which likely means that they
don't want to let facts get in the way of their beliefs. I wish it was not
this simple, but it seems to be...

------
chez17
This is a typical analysis of our food system. This would be like if we had a
discussion on American energy usage and talked all about how coal verse solar
or about unplugging unused devices and nobody said a single thing about oil
consumption the entire time. We can dance around with the little stuff all we
want but the real issue is meat consumption. Organic farming is plenty
sustainable if we all stopped eating meat so much. It uses more land, more
food, and is far worse for the environment. If American's stopped eating meat
3 times a day and started eating it once or twice a week, it would solve a lot
of problems. I just can't take articles like this seriously because he does
nothing to address how poorly the status quo is and the real reasons behind
it. You can scream about organic or conventional until you're blue in the face
but it won't mean anything if you don't address the _real_ problem.

------
psranga
I wish the article had more facts and was more scientific. Blanket assertions
like "we'll need 5 billion more cows" do not convince me.

Anybody read about John Jeavon's work? I just bought his book (How to Grow
More Vegetables) a couple of days ago. He claims that we have the technology
to create self-sustaining farms which can feed a person on about 4000 sqft.
Present day agriculture requires between 9000 and 30,000 sqft per person.

So it's entirely unclear to me that industrial agriculture is the only way to
feed the planet.

Certainly his method is human-intensive (by design), so you can't have
situations like a family of 2 adults farming 1000 acres of corn. So it's
unlikely to be adopted in the US.

Web sites: www.growbiointensive.org

And they have a store in Palo Alto: www.bountifulgardens.org

------
dan_the_welder
Go see Food Inc.

<http://www.foodincmovie.com/>

Unsettling.

------
dimitar
Why do we see IT people telling farmers how to farm, and not for example
farmers teaching programmers to program?

~~~
jrockway
Because programming best practices don't really affect farmers, but not having
food or a planet to live on does affect programmers.

~~~
pragmatic
What about GPS and other devices used directly by farmers. Do you have any
idea how much hardware/software goes into modern ag equipment?

