Michael Pollan
"Oil and Agriculture: The High Cost of Cheap Food"
Thursday, May 11, 2006, 12:30 PM
Michael Pollan, contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and
author, has done a range of work in journalism, environmentalism, and
architecture. Pollan, originally from Long Island, earned his college
degrees at Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia
University, where he received a masters in English in 1981. He served
for many years as executive editor for Harper’s Magazine and writes a
column on architecture for House & Garden.Pollan’s books, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (1991), and The Botany of Desire (2001), are among his many works that examine the intersections between science and culture. His new book The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals explores the implications of modern society's cornucopia of food choices on our health and the health of the planet. Shorter works by Pollan have been anthologized in collections such as Best American Essays and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. Pollan has given numerous lectures on environmentalism, gardening, and nature.
Pollan received the Borders Original Voice Award for the best non-fiction work of 2001. Other writing awards earned by Michael Pollan include the John Burroughs prize for the best natural history essay in 1997, the QPB New Vision Award for Second Nature and the 2000 Reuters-World Conservation Union Global Award for Environmental Journalism for reporting on genetic engineering.
Lecture Summary
As Michael Pollan unpacked a couple of bags of groceries in front of a packed First Congregational Church on Thursday 11 May, he claimed he was not a food expert, just a consumer who had talked with a lot of experts.
His question to them was, “What to eat?”
It took him 460 pages to answer this question, as he looked into three food chains: industrial, organic and Neolithic. He spent much of his on Thursday night describing the food chain that feeds most Americans, the industrial, mass market, fast food, huge supermarket chain.
And he kept finding himself back in the same place. In the middle of a cornfield. Nearly every product he pulled out of his grocery bag was corn based. Nearly every offering from a McDonalds, Burger King or KFC is corn-based. In fact the word corn came up so often, Pollan’s talk began to sound like the Monty Python “spam song”, sung to the tune of corn.
How ironic that the crop of a native North Americans, conquered five hundred years ago, has in turn conquered the conquerors. Not only has it taken over our diet and therefore our bodies it has its own state, it’s own university, it’s own government agency and now we’re planning on feeding it to our cars.
Why does this large tropical grass dominate our food chain? Several reasons. It’s incredibly productive, not picky about the carbon it snags from the air, it’s genetically variable (making it easy to produce different varieties) it promiscuous (easy to breed) and it’s versatile after you harvest it (you can eat it, store it, or make it into any number of things). It’s also easily controlled; you have to get new seed every year from a breeder.
Finally, it has responded incredibly well to oil. Fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers have raised the yield of corn from 20 bushels 100 years ago, to 200 bushels an acre today. This increase in productivity is seen throughout the US agricultural system. The average farmer used to feed 12 people, now it’s 129. No wonder we have so few farmers.
This incredible increase has allowed us to “feed the world.” Although sometime this has meant, “flood the world” with cheap corn-based products.” For example the flood of U.S. hyper corn into Mexico has doubled the price of a tortilla, forced 1.5 million farmers off their land, and resulted in a wave of ex-migration to greener pastures in the U.S.
What has cheap corn done for us? Bottom line, it’s given us, on average, about 200 extra calories a day, which results in the obesity epidemic. Those 200 calories aren’t randomly distributed. They’re concentrated in cheap food and large meals. The meals that Ray Crock, founder of MacDonald’s, was reluctant to serve until an ex-movie theatre concessions salesman convinced him that selling large portions was just the same as selling more servings. Hence, the Big Mac.
Over the years we got so good at producing too much food that the government had to create artificial demand to keep farmers in business: subsidies. A quarter of those subsidies go to corn farmers.
Cheap corn creates cheap junk food, which makes obesity a class problem. A dollar will buy you 1200 calories of junk food, and only 250 calories of produce. The rational thing to do, if you’re on a tight budget, is to buy the most energy for the buck.
But a nation-wide obesity epidemic is not enough to consume all the corn we grow, so now we’re going feed it to our cars. Problem is, it takes two gallons of oil to produce three gallons of corn-based ethanol, at best. For every barrel of oil saved through corn-based ethanol, the taxpayer cost is $120. Makes $70-per-barrel oil look like a bargain.
But the bulk of corn goes to feeding animals. Pollan describes this process by purchasing "steer 534" in Nebraska, and following his little bovine's fate from pasture to feedlot to slaughterhouse to table. Well almost to table. After telling this little cow’s story in the New York Times Magazine, Pollan wasn’t exactly welcome at the slaughterhouse, and he couldn’t get a burger ground from 534, because they mix up the meat with cows from all over the world. Mmmm…make it a cheeeeese burger.
Let’s look at the inputs and outputs from steer 534, other than just sunlight, CO2 and t-bone. Steer 534 really started in the Persian Gulf, Venezuela or offshore Louisiana. It takes 100 gallons of gas, and a fistful of our tax dollars to produce the typical steer. The principle outputs: an obesity epidemic, unwanted antibiotic in our food, tons of CO2 in the air, and a New Jersey-sized dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. Oh yes, and a Happy Meal.
Pollan went on to briefly describe the other two meals. The Neolithic meal is not likely to make a big comeback. We don’t hunt and gather much any more, and six billion hunter-gathers is probably not a realistic world food policy. More relevant is the emerging contest between “big organic” and “local.” It’s being played out all over the country, and right here in Portland. Where do you shop? Wal-Mart? Fred Meyer? Whole Foods? New Seasons? Your local farmer’s market? Wherever it is, you’ll determine the future of our food system. Pollan’s talk on Thursday night, and his new book, just encourages us to make that choice consciously.
