In the 1970s the Nixon administration rolled back the Agricultural Adjustment Act which ensured that farmers were given a living wage for their goods while preventing overproduction and environmental harm. The repercussions of these rollbacks dramatically transformed the landscape of the American food supply chain, both literally and figuratively. “President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, led the charge for completely dismantling the parity agriculture system in favor of one that prioritized profit over everything else.” (Perkins) telling farmers to “‘get big or get out’ thus creating the concept of Big Ag.” (Perkins) Since then we have seen corporations and supermarkets, operated by huge conglomerates, take majority market share from what was once a vast network of small local farmers, grocers and butchers.
It begs the question: What have we given up for increased efficiency and decreased spoilage in our modern food supply? There may be negative consequences in the decision to place the security of our individual food needs into the hands of others. Large farms and distribution centers have largely displaced the small local farmer and the backyard garden. This has decreased the burden of acquiring food for the average consumer, but has created many degrees of separation from big agricultural globo-corp farm to table. Perhaps the abandonment of the long traditional and sacred consideration of food as medicine, and transitively its careful production and sourcing has been a critical oversight on behalf of lawmakers and the American people. After all if the food we consume is the foundation of our health, then it is also the backbone of our nation’s resiliency.
In The sickness in Our Food Supply by Michael Pollan, Pollan argues that the ongoing pandemic has exposed certain weaknesses in our modern food supply chain. According to Pollan, the American food chain as it exists today injures the human population physiologically in the context of a pandemic. He also suggests that the efficacy of the food chain itself, because it is more heavily consolidated (in the hands of a few corporations) than it has ever been before, has been adversely affected by the Covid crisis.
Pollan explains that these issues have come to the surface because of the way the food economy is structured for “brutal efficiency” rather than for nutrition, quality, or logistical resilience. He bemoans the fact that this structure and its resulting deficits have not only promulgated an unhealthy diet, “the western diet”, and an upsurge in inflammatory and chronic metabolic diseases, but have in doing so also made the populous more vulnerable to the pandemic, not only economically, but physiologically.
On top of this, Pollan points out the irony in the fact that some of our most vital workers in the supply chain are at great risk in a pandemic. Those laborers who are responsible for American meat arriving to grocery stores properly butchered and sealed, are members of a demographic least protected from illness, and often without health insurance. He writes that farmworkers often “live and work in close proximity, many of them undocumented immigrants crammed into temporary quarters on farms. Lacking benefits like sick pay, not to mention health insurance, they often have no choice but to work even when infected. “ He suggests that we need to take better care of the workers involved in the supply chain to mitigate problems in emergencies like a viral outbreak.
But it isn’t all doom and gloom. Pollan points out several possible solutions to mitigate these problems; solutions which, personally I have long desired to see implemented. Chief among Pollan’s suggestions are to strengthen the local food supply. He writes that “The advantages of local food systems have never been more obvious, and their rapid growth during the past two decades has at least partly insulated many communities from the shocks to the broader food economy.” Not only this, but local food is usually healthier too as our current “industrial food system built upon a foundation of commodity crops like corn and soybeans leads to a diet dominated by meat and highly processed food.” And so local food not only improves the diets and health of its consumers, but also diversifies the sources of quality nutrition, thus making it less likely that an outbreak at one source will have a great effect on the supply chain.
Having worked in an industry that puts me into close proximity with the chronically ill, I have long questioned the ill-effects of an ultra-processed modern diet consisting primarily of GMO corn and Soy. An industry that is primarily profit driven, and which is not connected to the land and community in the way a local farm can be has little incentive to provide foods which nourish rather than simply feed. Not only are these foods fundamentally disruptive to the human physiology in the quantities we consume them, but they are also laden with agrochemicals like atrazine and glyphosate (Roundup). Both of these are permitted into our food system by the EPA and FDA despite being known health hazards. In fact “the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, announced that glyphosate could “probably” cause cancer.” (Cohen)
Furthermore the distance these foods must travel to reach our plates is an environmental hazard in itself. The environmental impact of the transportation of these mass produced, overly processed foods to centralized distribution centers is far greater than that incurred by the local farm, and the local market. It is no wonder then that one chink in the chain caused by Covid, or whatever other ugly disaster which might rear its head, can devastate the US food economy. When we start to pull on strings in the complex web of sustainable agriculture, cutting corners by replacing traditional and time-tested practices with chemical shortcuts, and adopting far and wide distribution from distant centralized sources rather than sourcing from nearby and varied sources, we are begging nature to drive us to correction. Pollan illustrates how Covid has been a prime example of such correction, and perhaps there is more to come if the American people do not wisen up to the importance of food quality and security.
Pollan’s rhetoric is convincing and impassioned. His reputation as a local food advocate aside, his appeals to logos to criticize the existing system are biting. Opening the piece with a metaphor which compares the American consumer and those responsible for his food as “caught swimming naked when the tide goes out”, is perfectly apt, and humorous. His barraging of the reader with facts and evidence by listing them rapid fire, serves to form a forceful and formidable tone which contributes to a powerful argument. And in his concluding paragraph, his characterization of the food system as a political choice, opens the readers mind to the possibility of reform. Ultimately the argument that our food system is weak and Covid has brought this to light, is effectively made. I agree with everything Pollan wrote in the piece, and am not surprised to learn that an industry that cares nothing for the health of its customers does not care for that of its employees’. His solutions, while idealistic, are logical too; we need greater reform; “For even when our food system is functioning ‘normally,’” Says Pollan, “reliably supplying the supermarket shelves and drive-thrus with cheap and abundant calories, it is killing us—slowly in normal times, swiftly in times like these.”
Sources
Perkins, Keisha. “Get Big or Get out Archives.” Iowa CCI, 2016, iowacci.org/tag/get-big-or-get-out/.
Cohen, Patricia. “Roundup Maker to Pay $10 Billion to Settle Cancer Suits.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 June 2020,www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/business/roundup- settlement-lawsuits.html.