TIME is running a fun article titled Ten Questions for Michael Pollan.In it, are questions like:
If you could change only one thing about our agricultural system, what would it be?
What can be done to end subsidies for agribusiness?
What do you think about the adage “It’s not the food we eat; it’s our eating habits”?
Always good to get the Food Jedi Master’s attention, so I’d like to play, too.
In a recent interview on NPR’s On Point, you said, “Wal-mart is selling organic food and local food, and they’re having very good success at it, and once Wal-mart gets in they will teach Americans and expose Americans to a whole lot of choices they haven’t had so far.” Do you really think Wal-mart buy local will do anything except pressure prices downward and, as a result, wreck rural economies?
And question #12:
Wal-mart? Really? Are you freaking nuts??
(H/t to @follownathan on Twitter for the link.)
UPDATE: By the way, Michael, the other danger of turning Wal-mart into a local foods movement ally is that big chains are notorious for breaking contracts with farmers. And the smaller the farm, the more reliant they become on the Wal-mart crack — and the harder the fall will be when Wal-mart finally ditches them. Case in point this article from Pennsylvania, Local Dairy Companies Fear Walmart Is Taking Their Milk Off The Shelf:
Somerset County Farmer Harold Shaulis said, “Walmart espouses supporting the local community but by failing to buy milk locally or using our local processors whoever they might be. They are affecting local economy.”
In Walmart’s statement they repeatedly mentioned having the lowest prices, and said, “We know our customers need our unbeatable prices more now than they ever had.”
Why do people think Michael Pollan is a food expert? He is a journalist not an animal science expert, nor is he a nutritionist or economist.
Zweber Farms (and yes, we are organic)
As a journalist, Pollan has an informed consumer’s opinion, and that’s worth a great deal, especially in food production, where so few consumers know what’s actually happening. I don’t know if you’ve read his books or articles, but he’s an excellent researcher. Sure, like any journalist he makes mistakes and has his biases, but he gets far more right than he gets wrong. And he makes all that research readable and compelling (for me, anyway).
I think where Pollan stumbles worst is in the economics of grocery/food shopping. He supports Whole Foods, and, apparently, Wal-Mart on one end of the spectrum, and farmers markets and direct marketing from farmers on the other. But there’s a lot that he ignores: Natural foods co-ops helped build the market about which he writes and they’re even a $1 billion per year industry now. They have the very kind of long term relationships with farmers that Pollan dotes on in Omnivore’s Dilemma; they have warehouses in the midwest, southwest, and northeast; and provide markets for smaller farms that Wal-mart and Whole Foods are too big to handle. Smaller regional chains do the same thing, serve the same kind of smaller niches nationwide. Yet no love from Pollan.
I think that’s part of why I found his comment about Wal-mart so amazing. There’s a ton of infrastructure that Pollan ignores because it’s apparently not popular enough or not “Chez Panisse enough” for his attention as a journalist.