Pollan, Bittman, et. al Play Fast and Loose

Michael Pollan dusts off his 2008 appeal to President Obama and updates it with help from Mark Bittman and others, calling for a "national food policy".  Along the way he touches on his lame history (Nixon did not change food policy in the 70's) and makes projections which are dubious (to me).

An example of their playing fast and loose with facts:

"Today’s children are expected to live shorter lives than their parents."

What does the link tie to?  An academic article which pushes the importance of obesity and challenges SSA's projections of steadily increasing lifespan.  But it says, in the last paragraph:

"Unless effective population-level interventions to reduce obesity are developed, the steady rise in life expectancy observed in the modern era may soon come to an end and the youth of today may, on average, live less healthy and possibly even shorter lives than their parents."

Emphasis added--there's no way a college professor like Pollan should create a flat statement from such a carefully hedged sentence.
 
They come up with a $243 billion cost of diabetes in a context which implies out-of-pocket costs, but don't mention that a quarter of that is not healthcare costs, but estimates of loss of productivity. 

While they concede that Congress is responsible for agricultural policy, they ask for an administration food policy, unsupported by Congress, without any discussion of how their proposal would change the position of Congress or last beyond this administration.

Note: Although I'm crediting Pollan with the piece, it's possible one of the others is responsible for the problem.

Pollan Revisited

Forbes runs a rather harsh attack on Michael Pollan, saying he's not a journalist interested in truth but pushes an anti-GMO agenda.

Farmers Didn't Improve Their Fields Until the 20th Century?

One meme of a few in the food movement, Prof. Pollan I'm looking at you, is farmers began industrial agriculture in the 20th century, specifically when nitrates left over from the military started to be used on our fields.  (That's my memory of Omnivore's Dilemma.)

Low-Tech Magazine has a long post on lime kilns  (all that rain in the British Isles tended to acidify the fields, thus creating a demand for lime to counter it).   Wikipedia cites usage of lime for agricultural purposes in the 13th century.  It's easy to underestimate the brains of our ancestors.

I've memories of our whitewashing the stable walls, and using lime on the concrete behind the cows to keep it dry and prevent the cows from slipping.

It's All Power--per Pollan

From the NY Times Magazine, Prof. Pollan writes on the referendum in California to require the labeling of food with genetically modified organisms as ingredients.

This paragraph I found astonishing, but remember that the good professor is not one of my favorite people (for some reason he and Ralph Reed get up my nose, as the Brits would say);

Americans have been eating genetically engineered food for 18 years, and as supporters of the technology are quick to point out, we don’t seem to be dropping like flies. But they miss the point. The fight over labeling G.M. food is not foremost about food safety or environmental harm, legitimate though these questions are. The fight is about the power of Big Food. Monsanto has become the symbol of everything people dislike about industrial agriculture: corporate control of the regulatory process; lack of transparency (for consumers) and lack of choice (for farmers); an intensifying rain of pesticides on ever-expanding monocultures; and the monopolization of seeds, which is to say, of the genetic resources on which all of humanity depends.

Am I being unfair to summarize it as saying: "it's not a health issue, it's power"--even though there's no food safety issue, we, the food movement, need to show our power?  Would the professor like to see other movements use the same logic; don't argue the merits, just show you're more powerful than your opponent?

Simplicity and Organics

Michael Pollan's favorite organic farmer, Joel Salatin, has a new book, with an excerpt here.  Basically he's noting the misalignment between an organic operation and modern methods of marketing, particularly fast food chains and Whole Foods.  He discusses his dealings with Chipotle, where he's succeeded in selling parts of pigs (shoulders and hams) to them, but that leaves him with the problem of selling the rest of the pig.  All in all, it's a complex job of negotiation and management, a far cry from the simplicity some associate with organics.

As I've noted before, what's true for the livestock and poultry farmer like Salatin is also true for the organic field crop farmer.  To make organics work, to make the land produce as much as conventional agriculture, you need to rotate your crops.  That permits Rodale to claim their organic corn production is equal in yield to conventional, but it's also a sleight of hand because the organic corn producer has lots of alfalfa she needs to market.

As an aside, Dr. Pollan appears to be recycling his books as a good organic person should: he's got illustrated versions out now, but it's been a few years since he had a new one.

Whoops, A Pollan Reversal?

Prof. Pollan has been quiet in recent months, really since he gave advice to Obama back after the election, so I've not mentioned him.  But via Grist, here's a post on his position on high fructose corn syrup--it's more the quantity than the contets of HFCS.

Pollan and Fossil Fuels

Pollan claims, according to Tom Philpott's summary on an interview, that we won't have the fossil fuels to keep our current "industrialized agriculture"  going in 30 years or so.  I'm not clear what he means.  If he's assuming "peak oil" so the price of diesel and inputs to fertilizer plants go up, that's likely. My impression, though, is that large diesels are at least as efficient as small diesels, so unless Pollan sees a reversion from tractors to horses/mules/oxen I don't see the problem.  To the extent we replace fossil fuels in our transport, we'll also be able to replace them in agriculture for motive power.  If we go to electric vehicles with the electricity supplied by nuclear, by sunlight, by wind power, by fuel cells, by whatever, we can go to electric tractors. (I'm not sure whether electric motors or diesels generate more torque.) 

Yes, the phasing out of oil might raise the prices for fuel on the farm and possibly the cost of fuel, but I fail to understand how it would force a change in the mode of agriculture.

The Fat Chinese and Not a Corn Subsidy in Sight

Prof. Pollan blames federal farm program subsidies of corn and soybeans for our obesity, at least in part.

The Newshour had a piece last week on the growing obesity problem in China, which doesn't have the same sort of subsidies.  The reasons include the one-child policy (lots of adults to spoil the kids), lots of cars and less exercise, urbanization, fast food.  To the best of my knowledge the Chinese don't subsidize corn production.

Pollan in the NY Review of Books

Michael Pollan has a review article in the NY Review of Books.  Briefly he sees a "food movement"

Among the many threads of advocacy that can be lumped together under that rubric we can include school lunch reform; the campaign for animal rights and welfare; the campaign against genetically modified crops; the rise of organic and locally produced food; efforts to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes; “food sovereignty” (the principle that nations should be allowed to decide their agricultural policies rather than submit to free trade regimes); farm bill reform; food safety regulation; farmland preservation; student organizing around food issues on campus; efforts to promote urban agriculture and ensure that communities have access to healthy food; initiatives to create gardens and cooking classes in schools; farm worker rights; nutrition labeling; feedlot pollution; and the various efforts to regulate food ingredients and marketing, especially to kids. 

He has problems with his facts and history in three cases

The dream that the age-old “food problem” had been largely solved for most Americans was sustained by the tremendous postwar increases in the productivity of American farmers, made possible by cheap fossil fuel (the key ingredient in both chemical fertilizers and pesticides) and changes in agricultural policies. Asked by President Nixon to try to drive down the cost of food after it had spiked in the early 1970s, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz shifted the historical focus of federal farm policy from supporting prices for farmers to boosting yields of a small handful of commodity crops (corn and soy especially) at any cost.

This is a repeat of an error from The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is wrong.  Butz didn't have this power, the legislation passed by Congress was a change, but in the long view not that big of a change, and the decisions Butz made to lower loan rates were reversed by his successor after he was fired and during President Ford's reelection campaign.

Again:

Beginning in 2001 with the publication of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, a surprise best-seller, and, the following year, Marion Nestle’s Food Politics, the food journalism of the last decade has succeeded in making clear and telling connections between the methods of industrial food production, agricultural policy, food-borne illness, childhood obesity, the decline of the family meal as an institution, and, notably, the decline of family income beginning in the 1970s.

Did household income decline since 1970?  No. See this wikipedia article   Or see this for a quick view. Note he doesn't cite women's lib, which some of his readers might be supportive of.

And finally he twice refers to the White House "organic garden".  Wrong--Michelle's garden is not organic, though it leans that way. See Obamafoodorama.

Mongolian Locavores

David Lawrence has an interesting post on Mongolian diets (so heavy on the meat his family almost starved its hired help) at PSD--World Bank.

I wonder how obese Mongolians are, but at least they're following Michael Pollan's rules about what a good diet is: something your grandmother would prepare.

He's Back

The bogeyman to scare all industrial farmers, Michael Pollan, has another book out: "Food Rules."  The one-star review at Amazon says it disappoints, in that it's a boiled down version of "In Defense of Food". There are 5 star reviews.  And it costs $5.50

Agriculture Used To Be Important

From the 1930 blog:

Decline in steel production blamed on drought; with extent of crop damage still uncertain, industries dependent on farm purchasing [emphasis added] are curtailing steel buying. These include low cost autos, farm machinery, can companies. Structural steel remains strong. Some price declines seen in steel and iron products; steel down to lowest price since 1922.

Synthetic nitrate producers reach agreement; German industry expects it's first step to forming cartel to bring production in line with consumption, but initial agreement considered unsatisfactory due to short duration and lack of commitments to reduce production.

The first bit shows the importance of farming back in the 1930's. And steel was one of the basic industries then (coal and autos being others).

The second supports my doubts over Prof. Pollan's (and others) narrative of the adoption of nitrogen fertilizer (post WWII war surplus nitrates from explosives).

I Like Michael Pollan's Article!

Meryl Streep's new movie continues to get ink, as Michael Pollan uses it to set up an article on cooking in the NYTimes Mag, which is summarized as: "How American cooking became a spectator sport, and what we lost along the way."

I like it, amazingly enough. This quote:

Not that I didn’t also owe Swanson, because we also ate TV dinners, and those were pretty good, too. [Admitting to owing Julia Child for teaching his mother to cook better.]

And most of all, this quote, which should replace Pollan's famous seven word message from "in Defense of Food" with the three word motto:

“Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

For some reason, it rings a bell with John Phipps post on music, the virtures of creating it. For both food and music, we find the things we can buy superior to those we can make.

The Anti-Pollan

Via Chris Clayton at DTN, here's an article by a Missouri, who takes on Michael Pollan and others. He makes a number of good points, ranging from the corporate ownership of organic outfits versus the family ownership of many "industrial" farms, the use of manure, the problems with cover crops and composting, etc.

What most bothers Blake Hurst is the contrast drawn between the organic farmer, wise in the ways of the soil, and the commercial farmer, a dupe of industry and a pawn of Cargill. He writes defending the sense and the sensibility of the modern, non-organic farmer.

Merging with the Money Economy

We watched The Cave of the Yellow Dog last night. It's by the director of the Tale of the Weeping Camel. The subject is a family of Mongolian sheep/goat herders, living in a yurt. It's sort of filmed anthropology, with a wisp of a story (eldest daughter of the family wants a dog she found in a cave, father fears it's too feral and will lead wolves to the flock).

A couple things struck me:

• one of the issues in American history is the emergence of the market economy, when and how did it emerge? Here the family is mostly self-sufficient, but the father takes the hides of a couple sheep killed by wolves off to the city to sell, using an old motorcycle for transport, and bringing back a new plastic ladle. They also have a portable windmill/generator to provide juice for the electric light.
• Michael Pollan famously says we mostly eat corn in one form or another--these people eat milk in one form or another. (Nomads don't have gardens.)
  
• the family is torn between continuing its nomadic ways and perhaps moving to the city.
  

This links to an article on the future of the way of life.

Prof. Pollan Again

Here's a YouTube interview with Prof. Pollan--where he pushes his views, with his usual mixture of skill and misinformation, helped along by his interviewer.

Dr. Shiva Is Wrong

At Blog for Rural America, Steph Larson reports on the organic farming conference. Including this nugget:

To a packed audience, Dr. Shiva remembered the roots of industrial agriculture, which was born out of a need to find different uses for the chemicals of war [emphasis added]. Now seeds are patented and controlled by only a few multi-national corporations, while producers are driven further into debt and suffer from hunger. As agriculture becomes more consolidated and fewer people control our food supply, Dr. Shiva asserted that the very health of our democracy is at risk.

The bolded phrase is ridiculous nonsense, though a meme popular among the left food community. (Dr. Pollan repeated a version of it in "Omnivore...". )

The reference presumably is to the Haber-Bosch process, which was developed before WWI in order to avoid the need to import nitrates from Chile. The nitrates were particularly important in European agriculture. Now gunpowder originally was made of sulphur, charcoal, and saltpeter (or "nitre" or potassium nitrate). And Germany's access to Chilean nitrate during WWI was cut off by the British blockade, so the Haber-Bosch process was used to make nitrate for explosives. "The Alchemy of Air" is a fast-moving narrative of the developments in this area.

George Will Channels Michael Pollan

In his Sunday Post column. The "comments" are interesting, since Will ends up on the left, surprising many. As I've said before, I find Prof. Pollan to be a fine writer who's unforgivably careless with the facts. And Will's second paragraph is so sloppy as to be almost senseless. So, as usual, I find myself disagreeing with Mr. Will

An "Exclusive" House Ag Committee

Prof. Pollan has suggested making the House Ag committee "exclusive" (i.e., so important a member can only be on one).

Here's a piece which explains what's involved and why it may not work.

Another of his suggestions is separating nutrition (i.e., food stamps) and agriculture in the appropriations process, in order to facilitate cutting costly farm programs. He argues food stamps are safe in a Democratic Congress. Given his premises, I still think he's wrong--the food stamp/farm program linkage has, over the years, benefited both sides. Rural blue-dog Dems and Republicans, who once were deficit conscious and will return to that state at noon on Jan. 20, always oppose food stamps.

I too well remember my feelings in 1965, when it seemed liberals were destined to dominate forever. That dream quickly ended. Even though it's hard for young whippersnapper Dems to realize now, their dominance now will surely end, sooner or later. So I'd advise Pollan not to advocate structural changes now based on the assumption of a Democratic Congress.

Unrealistic Expectations--Pollan

A delayed reaction to Professor Pollan, who opined at Grist:

The challenge is to align the goals of federal agricultural policy with the goals of public health, energy, and environmental policy (for the first time), and no one cabinet department has an interest in making those connections. The USDA is largely a captive of the farm lobby and can't be counted on to protect the public health when formulating farm policy; responsibility for food safety is, absurdly and fatally, divided between different agencies (with USDA charged with protecting meat; the FDA fruits and vegetables); jurisdiction over the environmental regulation of agriculture is similarly divided among the USDA, EPA and FDA. This balkanized approach suits the food industry, naturally, but it jeopardizes food security while making real reform impossible. Only when we have in place a White House adviser with the power to coordinate policies across the various relevant agencies and Cabinet departments will the government truly begin to represent the interests of America's eaters in its policies.

My opinion: For the first three sentences, Pollan is operating in the real world, although I'd quibble with some of his assertions. (For example, the "farm lobby" is splintered into many pieces, each trying to capture its own agency, but yes, it mostly represents the interests of producers, not of consumers.) The last sentence is where he gets unreal. USDA and FDA operate within their legislative authorities, as pushed by the various interest groups--i.e., the organic people push their legislation, etc. Because there's no legislative basis for his adviser and no support for establishing one there's no prospect this will work. The best an adviser could do is coordinate legislative and budget proposals, which is already the job of OMB.