'TIME' for Change

Sustainable ag meets the MSM—and wins! 14

TIME magazine food coverTIME Magazine‘s current cover story wants you to know that our fossil-fueled, chemically intensive industrial food system is destined to fail. Granted, the second part of that sentence isn’t news to Grist readers. But the first part of that sentence is news. Personally, I wouldn’t have expected to read the following positively Philpottian (if not Pollan-esque) prose in a national newsweekly cover story:

With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil — which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills — our industrial style of food production will end sooner or later. As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don’t take care of your land, it can’t take care of you.

TIME Magazine talking about exhausted soil? Whooda thunkit? The importance of Bryan Walsh’s piece, of course, isn’t in the particulars of its insights or its prescriptions. The importance (aside from its very existence as a cover story) is in its declarative nature.  For openers, Walsh offers a whirlwind tour of industrial ag practices which covers swine tail docking, sub-therapeutic antibiotic use, manure lagoons, ag subsidies, nitrogen fertilizer run-off and the Gulf of Mexico deadzone—all in the first paragraph. And better yet, Walsh doesn’t fall back on that tired journalistic trope of the “third party fact.” “Experts” don’t “claim” nor do “critics” “observe” nor even does “Michael Pollan” “relate” this or that fact of industrial ag’s excesses: they are instead plainly stated as established, if awful, truth. How refreshing.

Indeed, in these two paragraphs Walsh brings into stark relief the very issues over which Big Ag willfully and relentlessly refuses to engage. One of the more surprising aspects of the article is a total lack of any boilerplate denials from Big Ag of all responsibility for the ills of industrial food that typically get some play whenever the topic of food production gets attention from the MSM. I don’t think it’s an oversight that we didn’t hear from the National Corn Growers Association or the American Farm Bureau or Monsanto or Smithfield or any other Big Ag mouthpiece in this article—it’s likely that nothing they said was worth repeating.

Honestly, the best you can expect to hear from them is some paean to American agricultural ingenuity and productivity such as in soy farmer and AFM official Blake Hurst’s Omnivore’s Delusion (though after you read it, be sure to rinse your brain with Tom Philpott’s able riposte). Hurst, as it happens, manages to ignore or elide just about every damaging issue regarding industrial agriculture that TIME Magazine has so pointedly raised. And it’s no coincidence—the fact is that Big Ag doesn’t have the answers to sustainability. What they do know about is succeeding in a status quo of abundant oil, chemicals and subsidies. Change the rules of the game—spiking fuel prices, fertilizer shortages, superweeds, superbugs, etc.—and they no longer know how to play.

If I have a regret about this piece, it’s in the conclusion. Walsh invokes the concepts of “conscious” eating on the one hand, versus “selective forgetting” of the consequences of our food choices on the other. Consumers must be open to change, he declares, if we’re to move toward a more sustainable system. This is no doubt true. But I would have liked a final invocation as well of industrial agriculture’s “ticking clock.” Right now, consumer choice is surely a crucial factor. But if, for example, worldwide demand for meat is in fact set to rise 25% by 2015, it seems to me that we’ll be having unpleasant “choices” thrust upon us much sooner than we may expect. And after 2015 things are only going to get worse (Peak Oil, anyone?) America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix It may have been one of the most thorough and alarmist articles on the industrial food system ever to appear in a major magazine. Sadly, it may not have been nearly alarmist enough.

Tom is a media and technology professional who thinks that wrecking the planet is a bad idea. He twitters madly and blogs here and at Beyond Green about food policy, alternative energy, climate science and politics as well as the multiple and various effects of living on a warming planet.

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  1. Ann_Monroe Posted 10:35 am
    21 Aug 2009

    Yes, while it's wonderful to have Time finally tell us what we all know, it would be more wonderful if they would talk about how to get from here to where we should be, which is a complex issue that even Pollan doesn't tackle all that effectively.  Getting out of the industrial ag system is every bit as complicated as getting out of the industrial energy system.  Both need to be done.....but how?

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    1. Farm Bill Girl Posted 12:34 pm
      21 Aug 2009

      There are two structural solutions that need to be done in order to address sustainable agriculture, and which are often overlooked by food justice advocates who focus on buying local, organic and cooing over Joel Salatin. The first HUGE opportunity we have to finally address how independent livestock farmers and ranchers can sustain themselves and we can put a dent in Smithfield/Tyson's market power and love of factory farms, is that USDA and the DOJ for the first time have announced workshops to address competition issues in agriculture. The corporatization of agriculture has sucked the liveblood out of rural America and given us all the ills of our current industrial food system. NPR did a great story on this issue and the upcoming hearings.
      http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112035045&ps=cprs
      Also, USDA will also be issuing regulations that will restore some fairness to the livestock markets.We need all consumers and concerned eaters to be commenting on these when they come out. This is very unprecedented for the Obama Administration to be tackling FINALLY the issue of corporate control of our meat industry.
      From his rural plan:Prevent Anticompetitive Behavior Against Family Farms: In an era of market consolidation, Barack Obama will fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices. Obama is a strong supporter of Senator Tom Harkin's (DIA) legislation that protects independent producers by banning the ownership of livestock by meat packers, and he will fight for passage of the law as president. Today meatpackers produce more than 20 percent of the nation's hogs, and their share is growing. When meatpackers own livestock, they bid less aggressively for the hogs and cattle produced by independent farmers. When supplies are short and prices are rising, they are able to stop buying livestock, which disrupts the market.The 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act prohibits price discrimination by meatpackers against small and midsize farmers, but the law has not been enforced. Obama will issue regulations for what constitutes undue price discrimination and his administration will enforce the law. He will also strengthen anti-monopoly laws; change federal agriculture policy to strengthen producer protection from fraud, abuse, and market manipulation; and make sure that farm programs are helping family farmers, as opposed to large, vertically integrated corporate agribusiness.And Part two, we need to reform our trade agreements. NAFTA/WTO are intended to allow agribusiness to export our GMO-industrial-factory farm model to the rest of the world. The swine flu link in Mexico shows the fallacy of this ideology. SMithfield is now in Romania/Poland and looking to China for growth. Meanwhile, apples, garlic, honey is being dumped here from China, undercutting US farmers. Milk protein concentrates come in from Russia and New Zealand to be used as garbage in Cheez Whiz and other Nestle/Kraft krap products. Reforming our trade policy needs to be central to rebuilding local food systems towards food sovereignty. 

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      1. auntiegrav Posted 10:50 am
        29 Aug 2009

        The only structural change that will make headway is for many people to die from industrial agriculture. As long as the government has systems in place to protect the dirty food concentrators (recalls, inspectors, liability protection from accusations), then centralized food will grow to be an even worse disaster than it is now.The government needs to stop 'helping' farmers by instituting systems that are designed to protect large operations. They also need to pass a 'right to food' law that gives anyone the right to grow and sell food without interference as long as it is direct to the consumer. Food safety begins with the consumer, and land husbandry takes people, not machinery.Additionally, the price of fuel must go up in order to reverse the last 100 years of replacing people with petroleum on farms.Government involvement in education needs to change, also. There is too much emphasis on the college education and the urban lifestyle in all public schools. There needs to be more emphasis on learning useful skills and working at productive labors and cooperating with nature, rather than all of the Systems of conquest which use Progress as a religion.Communities need to learn again about how to be communities and how to do things for themselves without being homogenized into a petroleum/transportation-based lifestyle. Farms 'get big or get out' because there is no value taught about being small and local. 

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  2. Vines_&_Cattle's avatar

    Vines_&_Cattle Posted 10:12 am
    22 Aug 2009

    You want more diversified, non industrial agriculture?Then stop shackling small producers with all sorts of well meaning government schemes like NAIS, COOL, various new food safety legislation bills, etc.
    Until you get the bureacrats out of the way, you can talk all day about "remaking the food system" and it won't do you a damn bit of good.  This is the big problem I have with Pollan.  He is excellent at documenting the history of how our food system has been shaped, but his default liberalism seems to blind him to what Washington is doing right under out nose.Vines & Cattle  

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    1. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

      Kurt Michael Friese Posted 12:13 pm
      22 Aug 2009

      Not sure if it's what you intended here, but you seem to be calling those 3 gov't programs Liberal.  Some do have backing or even sponsorship from Liberal rep's & sen's, but they are far from Liberal in their scope - they are bought and paid for by Tyson, ConAgra, Monsanto and Smithfield, hardly a group of lefty wingnuts.

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      1. Vines_&_Cattle's avatar

        Vines_&_Cattle Posted 12:41 pm
        22 Aug 2009

        Exactly.  But do you see liberals, conservatives, or anyone raising much of a fuss over them?  What I meant was Pollan's odd silence on such issues, as if to say that his default faith in government overrides his knowledge of the damage such laws can cause.  You don't want people to grow Monsanto beans?  Then realize that with all the hurdles put in place by new laws, no matter how well intentioned, it's much easier to just shrug, grow some corn, and take your payment.
        I could be wrong, but I've yet to see our greatest farmer/foodie champion use his bully pulpit to point out the real threats to alternative ag, new laws written by those companies you mentioned, yet wrapped in a cellophane, vacuum sealed package by Congress.What do I care that Obama has a new garden when I'm suddenly forced to document and report every cow, pig, goat and chicken I have? 

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      2. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

        Kurt Michael Friese Posted 12:54 pm
        22 Aug 2009

        Actually, yes I do see it, in my own magazine in fact.  Sadly I do not yet have Mr. Pollan's audience.
        But Slow Food is wading into Food Politics right now, and organizations like Roots of Change and the American (not National"!) Corn Growers are also doing great work.  

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  3. katesisco Posted 11:10 am
    23 Aug 2009

    Grrrrrr!!!! More of the PBR stuff, Call in, caller; tell us what you think!! What I think is that we are the most passive bunch of cows ever.  Everything we do is after the fact!!  Complain about the war, sure.  Complain about -------(fill in the blank)!!!And now our media plays as well.  All that means is that there is no longer any reason to uphold the status quo, all is used up.  

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    1. auntiegrav Posted 10:32 am
      29 Aug 2009

      Yes. After the choice, we come up with excuses.People ARE cows. They need instant feedback when making decisions at the cash register or the shelf. That means prices. That means we need to get rid of the income tax and put all government costs and the cost of wars and food subsidies and everything else into a sales tax to be seen at the store.The world is the way it is because processed food is too cheap and people don't see the actual costs when they buy things. There is a bill already written to do so, it just needs to be negotiated for the amount. Right now (It's called "The Fair Tax"), it is favored mostly by republican sponsors because it is written to be revenue neutral and just replace the income tax. That puts it at around 23% with a prebate for poverty-level spending. It needs to be doubled (at least) to reflect the costs of our debts that have been placed on future generations through environmental damage and health destruction.When the cost of things gets high enough, people will stop buying and start growing their own.With a world where the elite/management/manufacturing/wage slave model is failing, this should have been done 15 years ago when the Fair Tax was first proposed. Now it's too late to 'save' any of the luxurious life we had and think in terms of knocking down all of the marketing castles in the sky.What are people for? THAT's the question. As far as the planet is concerned, they should be providing some usefulness, but instead we are only thinking in terms of consuming. Everyone talks about feeding the world's people, but what the hell for if they are only going to destroy their own world?Stop it. Stop the marketing and the lies and the myths of a 'free' market and do it by showing how much it really costs WHEN PURCHASES ARE MADE.People do stuff. They make up reasons for doing stuff. In that order. Everything they do is in response to hormonal wants. Sometimes we can build fences to keep the cows in and sometimes they have to be painful fences.

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  4. Surfing Nutritionist Posted 4:36 pm
    23 Aug 2009

    It's great to see such passion on this topic (along with the MSM cover story). We may get somewhere with this passion if we keep the debate going.Big Ag is motivated solely by money so the more swiftly we can cost them some of what makes them tick, they will have no choice but to respond.  There's no one solution to this problem, it's systemic. We need a combination of changing our own consumer behaviors as well as tough policy change (and enforcement).  Meaningful action in those two areas will create a loss of "heavy users" for Big Ag and increase competition, both of which will eat into their revenue and profits. And that they won't be able to stomach.  

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  5. NicolasNaranja Posted 11:04 pm
    23 Aug 2009

    As a recently minted Agronomy MS, I can say that this whole idea of the upcoming food calamity was much discussed by people who will eventually become the leaders of large Agribussiness.  The main issue in becoming more sustainable and use less fuel are convenience.  And this idea of convenience is on both sides of vendor and consumer.  Buyers want to buy everything they need from one source, it is so much easier to call Tyson and order chicken then it is to call 25 local farmers to source enough chickens for all the grocery stores in a given region.  Furthermore, consumers don't really want to go to a produce market, a butcher, and then somewhere else to get cereal and milk.  Of course, 60 years ago my grandfather was out delivering milk to people from his dairy.  I think people liked that.  Any revolution in the way we deal with food has to be market driven and for this to happen I think there needs to be a little bit of government sponsored prodding.  If you could band together smaller producers to form a brokerage, then you could actually see local produce in the grocery store.  A five acre mixed vegetable producer has little sway with anyone and has a limited market.  However if he bands together with 20-25 farmers, suddenly you have a fairly large producer that can supply large amounts conveniently to a vendor.  This does in fact occur in the produce industry to some extent.  It would be nice to see it in the meat and dairy industry as well.  Right now if I want a local chicken I have to go out and kill it myself(Local chickens are abundant in rural South Florida) If I were going to go on a rant against anyone though it is grocery stores.  Yeah, who wants to go after such friendly names as Publix, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, QFC etc...  They are the real profit takers in the food game.  The average grocery store makes 35% profit on produce items...the are the profit KINGS in the food chain and all they do is display it.  And they fight hard on prices.  Here is my take home message from the industry I know so well.  Currently, a sweet corn picker is paid a measly $0.10 per crate and on a good day they can make $100.  If they got an extra cent per ear that they picked they would see a giant pay raise and make $660 per day.  How many people would be lined up to make that much money?

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  6. foodprovider's avatar

    foodprovider Posted 9:14 pm
    24 Aug 2009

    As a food producer i take exception to the article.  A lot of the statements and allegations just are not true.  It appears that Time magazine was just after sensationalism and did not fully investigate the facts before printing them.  How can they say that the soil is being depleted?  Or that there is excessive runoff of nutrients caused by modern agriculture?  Fact is that our soils are becoming more and more productive and nutrient runoff caused by agriculture has dramatically decreased because of the conservation practices utilized by the growers.  I am a grower i know what has taken place over the years.  The streams running through my farm are cleaner now than they where 20 years ago.  The sediment from field runoff has all but disappeared.  The quantity of crops produced has almost doubled in the 20 years i have been producing and yet with no more nutrients added to the soil and in some cases even reduced nutrients.  I consider my operation a sustainable operation.  I utilize the tools afforded me to reduce the volumes of pesticides needed to protect the crop.  I am not alone!  The American farmer not only feeds America, but also feeds a large portion of the world.  Other world gov'ts look to the American farmer to feed their people.  The American farmer brings jobs to America, they provide security, they provide nutrition, they provide clothing, they provide fuels.  They provide economic stability.  It is ashamed that too many Americans do not even realize where the food in their grocery stores comes from.  I challenge each and everyone of you to visit with a farmer, whether it is a vegetable, grain, dairy or meat producer.  What would happen if the cost of your food would double or triple, or even worse yet would not be available? 

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  7. foodprovider's avatar

    foodprovider Posted 2:36 pm
    31 Aug 2009

    Time's writer Brian Walsh admits to writing this article as an opinion and not based on facts.  IF Time Magazine is considered a news magazine, wouldn't you expect the articles to be thoroughly researched?  Looks like Time Magazine has stooped to the levels of the National Enquirer.  It is down right scary what power "big media" has over the un-informed public.  Next time Mr. Walsh, I suggest that if you either do your due diligence and research your topic or just submit it to the National Enquirer.  As a matter of fact, the editorial staff at Time should also be ashamed.  Again, I am appalled at what BIG MEDIA thinks it can do to push their agenda on us.

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