The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellect

[Guest SUNTZU]

Snatched from the interwebz because I thought it good for TGO'ers to hear...

With movies like "Food, Inc" and books like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan there has been a large shift in popular consensus away from any acceptance of "industrial" farming and toward the belief that "organic" is the only acceptable method of creating food.

This article was written by a farmer who begs to differ with Mr. Pollan and others like him. Click through and read the whole thing, I found it very interesting and really well written.

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals

By Blake Hurst Thursday, July 30, 2009

I’m dozing, as I often do on airplanes, but the guy behind me has been broadcasting nonstop for nearly three hours. I finally admit defeat and start some serious eavesdropping. He’s talking about food, damning farming, particularly livestock farming, compensating for his lack of knowledge with volume.

I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.

But now we have to listen to self-appointed experts on airplanes frightening their seatmates about the profession I have practiced for more than 30 years. I’d had enough. I turned around and politely told the lecturer that he ought not believe everything he reads. He quieted and asked me what kind of farming I do. I told him, and when he asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand.

I particularly like this paragraph about raising livestock:

We raised the hogs in a shed, or farrowing (birthing) house. On one side were eight crates of the kind that the good citizens of California have outlawed. On the other were the kind of wooden pens that our critics would have us use, where the sow could turn around, lie down, and presumably act in a natural way. Which included lying down on my 4-H project, killing several piglets, and forcing me to clean up the mess when I did my chores before school. The crates protect the piglets from their mothers. Farmers do not cage their hogs because of sadism, but because dead pigs are a drag on the profit margin, and because being crushed by your mother really is an awful way to go. As is being eaten by your mother, which I've seen sows do to newborn pigs as well.