honestly, ignorance is bliss
Jan. 16th, 2008 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittenscribbleApparently, I just cannot shut up about Michael Pollan.
The chapter on potatoes is not just another riff on "we think we control the agriculture, but really the agriculture is manipulating us for its own benefit," which basically defined the last three chapters (there's a really fascinating Johnny Appleseed bit in the apple chapter). In contrast, the potato chapter can be summed up as "we control the agriculture, sort of, but we don't really know what we're doing."
Our society (Pollan says) revolves around monoculture: the planting of a single crop, a single species. Monoculture doomed the Irish during the potato famine; entire levels of society depended on a single species of potato and when it proved vulnerable to a certain type of blight, the Irish were decimated. (There were also socioeconomic and political factors involved, but the monoculture was the trigger.)
These days, potato farmers are encouraged to grow a certain type of potato, one whose shape and flesh can be easily transformed into the long golden french fries that fountain out of the red McDonald's cardboard containers. (Fast food french fries are a particular weakness of mine, so I really identified with this chapter.) McDonald's customers prize consistency; we order french fries in Tokyo and expect them to be indistinguishable from fries in New York. McDonald's cannot afford to dabble in the boutique potato department. Same goes for Frito-Lay, etc.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the Irish, monoculture is fragile. Monoculture is also not nature's preferred way of doing things. A farmer who grows an entire field of McDonald's potatoes has to cover them with pesticides, in order to counter the beetles that like to eat them. The farmer can't do what an organic farmer would do (i.e., plant other crops nearby that are known to drive away the beetles, plant nearby crops that act as bait for said beetles, or just not plant that particular potato at all), because planting other crops will cut into his (already slim) profit margin. Instead, he inundates the field with pesticides so strong that he'll refuse to enter the area for days afterwards, even to fix a broken irrigation system that could potentially doom the whole field.
Enter the bioengineers, who have managed to splice a beetle-killing gene into the potato's genetic makeup. Beetles eat the leaves of this potato and die. Farmers don't have to spray poisonous pesticides. Yay? Except this gene is now also in the potato flesh, which, y'know, we eat.
Surely, Pollan thinks, the FDA must have fed these potatoes to millions of rats or something, before approving the modification. But the FDA disclaims responsibility; the potato, they say, contains a pesticide, and pesticides are controlled by the EPA. Pollan contacts the EPA and basically learns that no testing was done; the beetle-killing gene is a "safe" pesticide; the potato is a "safe" food. Safe + safe = safe, no testing needed.
Honestly, my eyes bugged out at that point. I've always thought that objections to genetic engineering were silly; I'm no technophobe and if we can make a more blight-resistant potato, why fuss? But I had this fuzzy image of potatoes with bug-attracting chemicals removed, or maybe tweaked to produce a bug-repelling scent. I didn't know that the stuff they were splicing into the potato was poison, albeit only (I hope) to bugs.
(Disclaimer: McD's doesn't use these particular potatoes any more, due to customer outcry over genetically engineered foods. They're now back to the good old spray-on pesticides, I assume.)
Lesson: our desire for mass-produced consistency can result in our making really weird compromises with nature. This may or may not be good for us in the long run; whichever way, we're stuck with it. Really, I already learned this from Omnivore's Dilemma during the segments about corn and cows (and those poor, poor pigs). Now I can worry about potatoes too.
The chapter on potatoes is not just another riff on "we think we control the agriculture, but really the agriculture is manipulating us for its own benefit," which basically defined the last three chapters (there's a really fascinating Johnny Appleseed bit in the apple chapter). In contrast, the potato chapter can be summed up as "we control the agriculture, sort of, but we don't really know what we're doing."
Our society (Pollan says) revolves around monoculture: the planting of a single crop, a single species. Monoculture doomed the Irish during the potato famine; entire levels of society depended on a single species of potato and when it proved vulnerable to a certain type of blight, the Irish were decimated. (There were also socioeconomic and political factors involved, but the monoculture was the trigger.)
These days, potato farmers are encouraged to grow a certain type of potato, one whose shape and flesh can be easily transformed into the long golden french fries that fountain out of the red McDonald's cardboard containers. (Fast food french fries are a particular weakness of mine, so I really identified with this chapter.) McDonald's customers prize consistency; we order french fries in Tokyo and expect them to be indistinguishable from fries in New York. McDonald's cannot afford to dabble in the boutique potato department. Same goes for Frito-Lay, etc.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the Irish, monoculture is fragile. Monoculture is also not nature's preferred way of doing things. A farmer who grows an entire field of McDonald's potatoes has to cover them with pesticides, in order to counter the beetles that like to eat them. The farmer can't do what an organic farmer would do (i.e., plant other crops nearby that are known to drive away the beetles, plant nearby crops that act as bait for said beetles, or just not plant that particular potato at all), because planting other crops will cut into his (already slim) profit margin. Instead, he inundates the field with pesticides so strong that he'll refuse to enter the area for days afterwards, even to fix a broken irrigation system that could potentially doom the whole field.
Enter the bioengineers, who have managed to splice a beetle-killing gene into the potato's genetic makeup. Beetles eat the leaves of this potato and die. Farmers don't have to spray poisonous pesticides. Yay? Except this gene is now also in the potato flesh, which, y'know, we eat.
Surely, Pollan thinks, the FDA must have fed these potatoes to millions of rats or something, before approving the modification. But the FDA disclaims responsibility; the potato, they say, contains a pesticide, and pesticides are controlled by the EPA. Pollan contacts the EPA and basically learns that no testing was done; the beetle-killing gene is a "safe" pesticide; the potato is a "safe" food. Safe + safe = safe, no testing needed.
Honestly, my eyes bugged out at that point. I've always thought that objections to genetic engineering were silly; I'm no technophobe and if we can make a more blight-resistant potato, why fuss? But I had this fuzzy image of potatoes with bug-attracting chemicals removed, or maybe tweaked to produce a bug-repelling scent. I didn't know that the stuff they were splicing into the potato was poison, albeit only (I hope) to bugs.
(Disclaimer: McD's doesn't use these particular potatoes any more, due to customer outcry over genetically engineered foods. They're now back to the good old spray-on pesticides, I assume.)
Lesson: our desire for mass-produced consistency can result in our making really weird compromises with nature. This may or may not be good for us in the long run; whichever way, we're stuck with it. Really, I already learned this from Omnivore's Dilemma during the segments about corn and cows (and those poor, poor pigs). Now I can worry about potatoes too.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 04:59 pm (UTC)So i take it you're reading his book that recently came out whose name escapes me? You should read the The $64 Tomato. I dont recall the author's name, but Ari and I have it. You'd enjoy it.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 05:50 pm (UTC)I started looking at ingredient labels too; that darn high fructose corn syrup is everywhere. And apparently Cleo's food is mostly corn -- who knew? (I got her a bag of organic meat-based cat food, but she turned her nose up at it, so we went back to corn.) I also recommend Pollan's NYT article about what to eat (or, more precisely, what not to eat), if you haven't seen it already.
But yeah, I'd definitely cut down on gluten if Atkins made your allergies go away. See what happens.