Time to move forward

I have always been fairly conscious of the ills in the way we as Americans eat, we have almost fully succumbed to the agriculture-industrial complex. What we eat is now grown and/or produced by a handful of multi-national corporations with serious environmental and economic impacts on the world.

For our food writing class we have read the locavore’s bible “Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan — nothing new but he has become the preeminent voice on food in this country. We have also watched “The Future of Food” and “Food Inc.” — seemingly identical documentaries that try and make you give up Doritos and Oreos. Both of the documentaries were well made, but neither really told me much that I didn’t already know. It did however instill a bit more passion in changing the way I eat: more farmer’s market produce, less meat, etc.

My biggest issue with changing the food system in this country is how to make it affordable. Food Inc. was the only of the three to detail how hard it is for poor families to eat healthy yet they weren’t able to offer up many solutions. Its easy to spend $20 at the farmer’s market and only come out with produce for three or so meals. Changing the food culture in this country is going to require keeping the food cheap while raising quality, there’s no way around that.

The U.S. will never return to the days of the yeoman farmer. We will never shop for all our meals at a Parisian style open-air market. We have to look forward and try to create a new system for food production, distribution, and consumption. I think the local movement is holding on to an ideal from the past, this will only stunt progress. If we have the technology to have created mega crops and ways of super-sizing livestock I am confident that we will be able to discover a way to sustainably grow healthy food without costing the consumer too much. Who knows, maybe science will create plants that can thrive on low-nutrient, urban plots, providing food for the neighborhood. Maybe I should have gone into biology.