In a recent edition of Mother Jones magazine, Wes Enzinna describes how the American beef industry has identified Michael Pollan as enemy number one. They've been so threatened by his criticisms of industrial agriculture found in books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma that they've created a marketing program specifically to combat them. The industry-sponsored Master's in Beef Advocacyprogram councils participants to fight the "anti-animal agriculture activist community."
Large beef producers have been busy arranging protests at places where Pollan has been invited to speak and have fought the use of his books on college campuses and elsewhere.
I attended one of these lectures, held at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in September 2009. The original plan was simply for Pollan to speak. This was a problem for some wealthy donors however - the owners of Harris Ranch in particular, who threatened to withhold a large gift to the school. Eventually the school bowed to the pressure and the talk was converted to a panel discussion. On the panel with Pollan were a representative of the beef industry along with an owner of Earthbound Farms, whom Pollan also criticised in his book.
The discussion was interesting and everyone that I spoke with who attended felt that Pollan had the better of the debate. The primary reason for this is that Pollan is not who the beef industry tries to portray him as.
Folks like Harris Ranch and their ilk want to paint Pollan as some anti-farmer crazy environmentalist vegetarian that wants to end all meat production in the country. They attempt to lump him in with PETA and other groups that the public sees as out of the mainstream.
But the fact is that Pollan is neither vegetarian nor is he against raising animals for food. The hero in The Omnivore's Dilemma if there is one, is a self-described Christian Conservative who raises meat for a living. Pollan is not anti-farmer. He is not anti-meat. On the contrary, he is aggressively pro-farmer. His criticisms are leveled at industrial agriculture. This is a very different argument.
The irony is that Pollan wants farmers, including those that raise beef cattle, to succeed. He has often said that farmers hold the keys to solving some of the most serious challenges facing us today including climate change and the obesity epidemic. He is a vocal critic of U.S. farm policy and often argues that we need to spend more of our income on food to insure that farmers are paid fairly for the product.
In the Mother Jones' article, one of the young graduates of "Beef Advocacy" program admits that Pollan is impressive, but that "ultimately, his message is that we're unsustainable." She's right - industrial agriculture as it's currently practiced is unsustainable. It's also damaging to both our health and ultimately our nation.
But that doesn't mean that farmers aren't needed. They're needed more than ever.
