True, and we haven’t even touched on the exploitation of migrant labor!

At this point it feels like a catch-22, since the destruction of our environment is also seriously harming the poorest of the poor, and will most likely continue to do so.

I too am heartened by churches growing food and placing it under the control of the poor, that sort of thing is something of a dream of mine.

Thanks!

But I think the conversation has to be more nuanced than Pollan makes it. I’ve yet to hear him address issues of poverty and food costs. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve dropped $100 on a week’s groceries at the farmers market and then felt guilty passing the homeless guy on the street begging for change. “Nope, sorry. I just bought $7/pint strawberries.” Would that money be better spent elsewhere? I don’t know, but I do know that right now the majority of organic food and marketing, including Pollan’s work, seems directed at the wealthy.

I think the issues of food and food security needs to be included in this conversation. An impoverished family, with our industrialized agriculture, can generally eat on the cheap, and eat healthy if they choose, comparatively speaking. That is important and has a social justice component as well.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m hesitant to demonize industrial ag and deify organic food. I think there has to be a mixture of both. The farmer’s market movement and the organic/local food movement pitches a solution too close to a kind of neo-medievalism which like its predecessor tends to favor the rich and wealthy.

I have this debate with my wife all the time. She usually wins.

100% ethical