Author Michael Pollan is no stranger to controversy. He has broadened the discussion of what we eat, where and how it is grown, big vs. small, organic farming vs. conventional. When he speaks some in the audience will love him, some will not.
Advocates of large scale agriculture see Pollan as the enemy, they believe he stands against everything they see as the future of agriculture. Pollan however is not an absolutist, his basic premise is that people need to think more about their food; where it was grown, how it was grown, was the farmer paid fairly, is it good for you?
Pollan wants people to think about cooking, about food freshness and flavor, about the dinner table as more than a “filling station.”
Knowing your food is not a radical concept, and it should not be a frightening concept. Knowledge is power, the more we know, the better choices we can make.
Farmers should have nothing to hide, and those most upset with Pollan’s theories on eating, tout their large scale farming methods as being models of efficiency, environmental protection, animal welfare, and safe food.
Still, they fear his thoughts being mainstream. Granted, Pollan is not a farmer, and does not know all the intricacies of farming; he does not claim to. However, those who denounce him do not know the intricacies of the local, regional and organic farming he advocates.
So, why are they afraid of what he has to say? Pollan admits there is no one right way to farm, there is no one system that will work for all farmers. He maintains that all farmers need to make a living yet be mindful of how they farm, how they raise their animals and how they maintain the environment. If Pollan has an argument with agriculture, it is not with farmers, it is with agribusiness.
Author Wendell Berry notes that “Agribusiness is immensely more profitable than agriculture.” Any farmer knows that the corporate owners of seed, chemicals, fertilizer and the buyers of grain, livestock and milk always seem to make a profit; farmers do not.
Over the past 60 years farmers have seen competition in the market place steadily disappear as corporate mergers concentrated all aspects of agriculture into the hands of a few multinational corporations.
Their profit comes at the expense of the farmer, the farm worker, consumer safety, and the environment.
While farmers defend themselves against what they see as an attack by Pollan, they are really defending agribusiness. When they say they love their Roundup Ready corn, the hormones and the chemicals they are promoting the corporations that always make a profit whether the farmers win or lose.
When farmers disparage small-scale ecological agriculture because it “will never feed the world” they conveniently forget that conventional agriculture has not fed the world either, despite 60 years of promises to do so. They also ignore the findings of IAASTD that indicate the old paradigm of industrial agriculture is a thing of the past.
The industrial model sources food from the world, pits farmer against farmer in a race to the bottom. Globalized commodities converted into processed nutritionally empty foods, make corporations rich, Americans obese, and developing countries destitute.
Pollan just wants farmers and consumers to think. Agribusiness is rich and persuasive, they own both ends of the market place and they want to keep it that way. When people think about what they eat and what they grow, chances are, eventually, they will make the right choice.
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Comments
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sammy Posted 6:49 pm
01 Oct 2009
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lilness Posted 12:50 pm
02 Oct 2009
It makes me very nervous that a few companies own 90% of the avenues in which we get our food, making us more susceptible to price shocks if inclement weather hits, terrorism attacks, and the list goes on. In my opinion, Michael Pollan has only raised awareness of the plight of the American farmer and how important it is to support them. Great article.
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foodprovider Posted 3:38 pm
02 Oct 2009
Jim Goodman mentions Roundup Ready in his article. It has been a technology that has diven much contraversy around the world as far to it's need of the technology and it's safety. As far as it's safety, we can argue all day and into the night on that. Many many dollars have been spent researching that. As far as it's need, I look at it as another tool for the grower to use to produce a crop the least cost way. That is what all producers look to do...produce a product at the least cost so they can sell it at, hopefully, the highest profit possible. The growers that come through my doors ask if not demand that the seed they buy contains the RR trait. No one held a gun to their head and forced them to buy it. Were they coherced? Depends on how you look at it. I do know that the adoption of RR trait has greatly reduced the amount of residual herbicides sprayed onto the fields. Less residual products means less pesticide contamination in our water tables and streams. The negative to the RR trait is that it has made many growers lazy in their weed control measures. Relying too much on a single product will eventually spell doom for that product. More and more weeds become restistant, which will increase the need to look for other control measures. You can blame the big ag chemical companies all you want. They are just taking what the market is giving them. They are no different than any other industry. You want to see change in the pecking order of agricultural incomes, you have to put the farmer back incharge.
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ilayaraja Posted 12:12 am
06 Oct 2009
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gristle Posted 4:15 pm
03 Oct 2009
Not only has industrial agriculture not fed the world it's making it more difficult as it destroys land for future growing and hastens desertification, all while poisoning and polluting our waters of every imaginable kind killing much more in that way.
Roundup ready crops have not lowered herbicide use. They've increased it (while also breeding resistant superweeds). Part of the patent on the seed is the farmer has to buy the brand name of Round-up rather than the generic version.
Choice? Not with the way subsidies work (carefully crafted with the help of the revolving office doors at Monsanto, the USDA, FDA, EPA and various lobbying groups hired by Monsanto and friends — essentially using subsidy money provided by taxpayers to lobby for more subsidy monies). Lands are locked into growing only subsidy crops by governmental fiat. Banks won't loan unless certain crops are grown and that includes government crop insurance for only brand-name patented seed.
Not blame the companies? Pfft! They aren't just in it because they are market driven. They drive the market. They also abuse the courts to force and bankrupt people who resist. They want nothing less than total control over the us. As Kissinger famously said, "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11853
The chains of hunger...
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foodprovider Posted 6:00 pm
03 Oct 2009
It may be true that "indutrial ag" hasn't completely fed the world, But I fail to see where an organic or as some call it sustainable can come close. As far as RR crops go, the only time that i have seen that the brand name Roundup is required, is if the grower wants to have complete backing of the seed company and the chemical company if something would happen such as lack of weed control or plant injury. I haven't sold a grower brand name Roundup for their RR crop in years. And yes, the use of pesticides per acre has declined becuase of transgenic crops. Coiuld you please tell me where organic producers have a disadvantage when it comes to Gov't subsities? If you think that Monsanto is so terrible, then educate the growers to not buy products pruduced by Monsanto. That will be the most effective way to topple their hold on agriculture. Monsanto is successful because people continue to buy their products. Once they stop buying their products, they won't survive. It is simple economics.
Organic is a choice.
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cyberfarer Posted 8:45 pm
03 Oct 2009
You argue Monsanto is successful because farmers want their products. I say you are wrong. Monsanto benefits directly from agricultural subsidies in corn, soy, and other grains. Monsanto has never had to stand on its own in a free market without benefit, directly or indirectly, of US farm subsidies. Monsanto users, they aren't farmers, only grow for yield so long as their crops are subsidized. In the real market, where there are not subsidies, such as India, Monsanto users are committing suicide. Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av6dx9yNiCA
Why don't we read about that in Monsanto's literature?
The most effective way to topple Monsanto is to end the subsidies.
Organic is a choice because chemical companies control the food of those uneducated and unaware about what they put in their mouths.
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foodprovider Posted 5:09 pm
04 Oct 2009
I couldn't care less if Monsanto survives or not, but their exhistence still is based on economics. People still buy their products becuase they feel their products make them money.
Bottom line, we need good agriculture to continue to produce food. Their is no way to produce enough food if we return to the "romantic view" of agriculture. The way we farmed in the 50's, 60's and 70's is not gowing to feed the world. The acre base we have to grow food decreases every year, alot of it to urban sprawl. We need to produce as effiecient of a product as possible to survive.
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cyberfarer Posted 11:45 pm
04 Oct 2009
Bottom Line: Industrial agriculture fails to feed many Americans never mind the world. Of those it does feed, it's making a great many of them sick while it depletes top soils, poison the ecosystem, and sucks back fossil fuels.
Incredibly, agriculture consumes 100 calories of energy for every calorie it produces. Now you'll have to excuse me if I have to describe that as entirely unsustainable and utterly stupid.
This time you argue that Monsanto's existence is based on economics. That is true of any business but there are good economics and bad economics. Bad economics is subsidizing farmers to grow crops for which the inputs are worth more than the outputs. Again, that is either sheer stupidity or corrupt politics. Without the subsidies Momsanto would have a failed business model as no business can survive for long if their users are going broke and/or committing suicide.
Industrial agriculture is not about producing food but about producing profits. It is based on monocultures or intensive agricultural methods and values none of the fundamental aspects of nature that sustain agriculture but only yield, commodities markets, and the bottom line.
Only local agriculture is sustainable and can feed the world. For NYC, in the next decades will develop roof top gardens, they will cultivate every square inch of vacant land, and they will turn whatever yards exist into plots for food or they will go hungry.
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foodprovider Posted 8:11 am
05 Oct 2009
I wish I could get somebody to please define Industrial Ag. I may have it all wrong. Also please educate me as to how organic production does not deplete the top soils, poison the ecosystem, and sucks back fossil fuels.
An average organic farmer that I work with has to make approximatly 9 trips acrossed his field to produce a crop (assuming corn or soybeans), while my methods of farming only has 4 trips. Organic almost always requires tillage of the fields. Tillage exposes the top soil to tremendous soil loss potential. Not to mention that each trip is made with a tractor that consumes fossil fuels (some of us even use biodiesel to reduce emmissions and fossil fuel consumption). Let's see if a tractor burns 5 gallons of fuel per hour and can cover 5 acres per hr at 9 trips that is 1 gallon of fuel per acre per trip, or 9 gallons per acre per yr. verses 4 gallons per acre per yr the way I farm. Lets take it one more step. Take corn production. Organic corn yields in my area are around 120 bu/acre. 9 gal to produce 120 bu is 13 bu of corn for every gallon consumed. my average yields on corn are 180 bu. 4 gal to produce 180 bu is 45 bu for evey gal consumed. Add in the top soil effect. My average top soil loss per yr is less than 1 ton/ acre using notil methods. If I were to go back to full tillage (which is needed in organic production) my average annual soil loss jumps to over 4 tons per acre. All the residue is left in my fields as mulch for the next crop. That adds organic material. My earthworm numbers increase every year. Since 1996 I have not increased the amount of fertilizer applied but yet have increased my average yield 50%. The use of herbicides has actually decreased, and the use of insecticides has all but eliminated.
Soil loss has been reduced 37% since 1987.
Energy consumption per acre of corn produced in the us has decreased 30% since 1987!
I fail to see validation in your statement. Organic practices are not without their faults. It is very labor intensive, phyto-santitary conditions of organic production are more challenging, and it is not top soil friendly at all.
We will need to feed over 9 billion poeple by the yr 2050! All tools will need to be used to accomplish this. Organic is a tool, so are other forms of agriculture. I doubt that if you take every roof top that is suitable for a garden or back yards that it will be enough to feed the people in NYC. Furthermore, how many people will actually want to grow their own food. I'd like to see the permit process to have a cow or a goat on those roof tops so they can have milk or aven a nice steak.
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foodprovider Posted 11:42 am
05 Oct 2009
http://ncga.com/sustainability
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cyberfarer Posted 12:15 pm
05 Oct 2009
I have defined industrial agriculture. You chose to ignore it as you do the total unsustainability of an industry totally dependent on welfare and fossil fuels. Here it is for you again: "Industrial agriculture is not about producing food but about producing profits. It is based on monocultures or intensive agricultural methods and values none of the fundamental aspects of nature that sustain agriculture but only yield, commodities markets, and the bottom line."
I never argued organic agriculture is sustainable. It is you who created that dichotomy probably because you recognize that even if organic agriculture is not sustainable, at least it is less harmful and less stupid than industrial conventional agriculture.
No till farming does reduce soil lost. It doesn't prevent soil loss - there is still a net soil loss. However, it demands for pesticide use as weeds grow in the stubble and that is the other factor of industrial conventional agriculture. The soil is dead. You can't grow anything in it without the toxic WMDs originally designed to kill humans in warfare.
If we do achieve a population of 9 billion, industrial agriculture will not feed them just as it doesn't feed the current 6 billion and didn't feed 4 billion. Industrial agriculture only feeds the profit margins of a handful of global corporations.
Energy scarcity, water scarcity, and climate change will combine to end industrial agriculture. And when people try to grow food on soils rendered dead by the short-sighted, profit driven stupidity of industrial agriculture, they will face starvation. Your grandchildren can thank you and your kind for a future that will be brutal.
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foodprovider Posted 12:44 pm
05 Oct 2009
If industrial ag is defined as "Industrial agriculture is not about producing food but about producing profits". Show me a business that is not about producing profits. Even you rbeloved organic enterprises are all about profits. We have one of the largest if not the largets organic co-operative here in western wisc, and yet they have been called out on the carpet for buying products NOT produced organically. They have milk that had to be dumped because it contained antibiotics. Why would they have that problem? It's becuase it's ALL about profit.
Tell me how organic IS NOT dependent on subsities and fossil fuels? Organic producers have told me that they get all the same subsities that any other producer does. They even clain that with out them they couldn't survive. Again, profits.
You say the soil is dead and that it needs toxic WMD's. If it is so dead, then explain to me how production keeps increasing without adding, and in many cases reducing, synthetic plant nutrients and pest controls? If the soil is dead, how can it even support any life, whether it is plant life, microbial life, or insect life? Last time I looked, my organic neighbor has more weeds than a crop. It takes more of our precious acres to support his family that it would otherwise. "In 1800, one family could only supply food for one other family on average" (Conklin, P (2008) 'A Revolution Down on the Farm'" "In the US today, with it's highly effiecient agriculture, farmers make up only 2% of our population, and each farmer can feed, on average, 125 other people." (DEiamond, J. (2005) 'Collape'".
Majority of the starvation is not from lack of food, but from the lack of infrustructure and co-operating gov'ts to get the food to the people.
I guess I am an "industrial Ag" farmer. I do this to make a profit. If not, who would grow the food you eat? If you don't like the way we farm...it is your choice to buy the food you want. It does not give you the right to force your views upon those that disagree with you. Last time I looked, this still was a free country. Feel free to not support agriculture, feel free to grow your own food, fibers and fuels. Even better, feel free to impose your views on the some 900 million people - including the 178 million children under the age of 5 - are suffering from malnutrition. Impose your views on the UN estimated 50,000 that starve to death each and every day. Tell them how your view on agriculture, which produces, in some cased, only 1/2 of the food per growing unit, will feed the world.
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cyberfarer Posted 2:25 pm
05 Oct 2009
Production on "dead" soils is made possible only through chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Remove the chemicals and you can't grow. Period. Want to bet your yield on it? Untruths and repeating propaganda does not assist your case.
You don't even understand your own industry. Not surprising. Many users, who refer to themselves as farmers, only know what the pushers tell them. They know how much chemical to put in the syringe and when to push the plunger. They know nothing at all about the chemical itself or how interacts with other chemicals or even in their own bodies.
The reason there is so much hunger is because of a lack of dollars to purchase food. That is why. Not because of any nonsense about infrastructure or government policy. But because they simply can't afford it.
The chemical, industrial agricultural system you defend pours billions of tons of food into the fast food market of Western nations where grossly obese and sick people belly up to buffets to gurgle down tons of greasy bits while other people starve. Why? Because people in Western consumer nations have the money and chemical industrial agriculture, one more time, only exists to grow profits, not food. The result is food wasted gets wasted in dumpsters while humans go hungry.
Your profit is only possible through subsidies and that means welfare. Remove them, and you no longer can support your family. Do you support public health care, by-the-by? Just wondering.
Farmers grow food and ought to make a profit, and would make a profit, if they were paid fairly for what they grew and if the middle-men, the few global corporations that control almost everything we eat, were eliminated. Those corporations exist to keep both farmers and consumers under control as dollar making machines.
Your last paragraph is quite ironic. It is the industry you defend that ensures hunger and the death of all those children under 5, and it is the industry you defend that demands legislation and regulation to enforce conformity and submission to the chemical industrial model. I have never paid off politicians nor lobbied against food labeling to hide from people what they are eating. I have never worked for laws that make criticism of the food industry illegal and nor I have I ever lobbied for patent laws, or laws against seed saving. I've never developed and attempted to market terminator seeds. Your industry has done all of the above to limit the political, social, and consumer choices of both farmers and consumers.
The hungry child, type-2 diabetes as lifestyle, the algae blooms, and the encroaching police state is the product of your choices, not mine.
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foodprovider Posted 2:58 pm
05 Oct 2009
Take resposiblity for you own actions, stop blaming others on your misfortunes or the misfortunes of others. The American Farmer produces the safest products to the best of his ability. No true farmer would knowingly deplete the soil that gives life, that provides for his family. If I had to guess, the only ideas you have on true agriculture is what you may have seen in media or what your parents told you. But how dare that I guess. I know, I am getting confrontational and I apologize. I challenge you and anyone else that only reads or watches agriculture on tv to get out and get to know a farmer. Get to know many farmers of all disciplines. You will find that the majority of them have the best intrest of their land and their products in mind.
You can defend anything you want, but organic agriculture has the same industrialization that any other form of agriculture would have.
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cyberfarer Posted 3:42 pm
05 Oct 2009
If you take away the synthetic inputs, the chemicals and the pesticides, you will grow little if anything as you soil is dead. It has no nutrients. Your soil without living organisms will blow away with the wind. That is why you use notil, remember?
There is a food shortage in the United States. That is why there are food banks, and soup kitchens. But it is exactly the type of food shortage I have already told you about. Because they don't have money (unlike the banksters, Cargill, and ADM, for whom there is always money) they can't afford food. It is unfortunate if you take pleasure in that.
There is plenty of animal waste in the US. It is just all in the wrong place, due to industrial agriculture, and it is unfit to use on fields thanks to industrial agriculture's generous use of pharmaceuticals and hormones. Has it not occurred to you that US family farmer fed the world during the Second World War without industrial agriculture and without any chemicals? And now you argue to feed the world the small family farmer must be sacrificed and we can't grow without the use of deadly chemicals, fuel based fertilizers, and genetically engineered crops which have only been in use for the past 50 years? You've drunk the kool-aid.
I will confess I am not at all surprised that a user whose entire means of income is based on subsidies, from the billions of dollars that go to corn and soy, and fossil fuels, and, now, even exempted from aspects of the clean energy bill, would oppose public health care. My experience is those who are most opposed to government dollars being used for the public good are those with the greasiest palms.
If you don't want subsidies as you say, give them back.
But you do support redistribution of wealth. You support redistributing the wealth of farmers to Cargill, Monsanto, and ADM. You support the redistributing of the meagre wealth of the sick to giant insurance corporations. You support redistributing the wealth of all Americans to the corporate oligopoly that rules the nation. As long as you can be convinced that a closed corporate market is a free market, you support all of those things.
I agree with you that no true farmer would knowingly deplete the soil and the biosystem that makes farming possible. The true farmers don't.
I also agree with you on the industrial nature of organic agriculture.
For the record, we grow our own food. We trade or buy from local farmers who have what we don't. My choice of food is 1) local organic and 2) local. I don't buy from grocery stores and I would encourage others not to as well. I accept the advice of Joel Salutin: don't buy it if it has a bar code. Have a visit: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Despite our differences, I think you're probably a decent person. So I will ask you, for a moment, to forget about our conversation and accept some free and unsolicited advice. In the next 10 to 20 years oil and natural gas will become scarce. There will be more wars fought and there will be terrible disruption in North America. The current methods of agriculture will become impossible as the costs of fertilizer and pesticides will increase greatly. If food crops are diverted to fuel tanks, there will be violence. For you and your family, learn to grow without fuels now and teach your children. It will be the difference between living well and living very poorly.
Don't take my word for it as I'm just some guy on the Internet. The writing is on the wall and has been for quite some time for anyone who chooses to see it. All empires fall and all civilizations crumble and we our on the precipice of momentous change.
Good luck.
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foodprovider Posted 5:11 pm
05 Oct 2009
I may not have been that clear in my last tyrade. I do not support the redistribution of wealth. As I said that is stealing from the peopl ethat earned the money and giving it to the ones who did not. I do not oppose health care, I oppose a gov't run option. Just look at all the monetary discretion crogress has now. You want congress to dictate to you your health care? They have social security as a reference. Family farmers can and have produced food for this country and then some. Don't take away the tools they used to get there. I comend you for buying local. And yes I agree that we need better, cleaner renewable sources of enegry. I wll gladly return any subsity that was paid me just as soon as every other grower does the same. Why should I place myself at a disadvantage to my competitor. I can survive without them. But where we will differ is on the use of tecnology given to us to do an even better, more efficience and safer way to produce food. You have your Kool aid and I have mine. The common intrest here is that there is enough food produced to feed a hungry world. Right? I have seen both sides. And even some in the middle. I would rather not pay the Cargills, Bunges', ADMS or the Monsatos of the world, but to sell my product to the consumer. I have. Economics dictates what I grow, where I grow it, and how/whom I market it too. And no..there is not enough animals in this country to supply all the ag land with nutrients to sustain their growth. If we are not careful, groups like PETA and HSUS will make the population of animals even less.
BTW..back during the WWII era, we had more land base for growing crops, less people living off the farms, and more farmers.
Today we have decreasing land base, more people living off the farm (upto 3 generations removed), and less than 2% of the population directly involved in production ag.
I also bet some are sick of our agueing.
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cyberfarer Posted 5:41 pm
05 Oct 2009
Technology is like a gun: dangerous in the wrong hands. And I would suggest in the hands of corporations with a vested interest in gaining control of and manipulating the food system, and motivated by pure profit without regard for sustainability, human health, or future generations, it is the most dangerous and lethal gun ever deployed into the most insane hands that could ever wield it.
Economics is the trading of goods and services. Patents, regulations enforcing monopolies and/or oligopolies, and enforced control of food production and distribution is social engineering.
Finally, the loss of the family farm, the loss of fertile lands, and the loss of farm incomes and jobs correlates directly with the rise of industrial agriculture.
I saw a mobster film once where the bad guys forced a man to dig his own grave before shooting him. It strikes me as the perfect metaphor for corporate agriculture and the American farmer.
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ilayaraja Posted 12:13 am
06 Oct 2009
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grygy Posted 1:26 pm
06 Oct 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 1:38 pm
06 Oct 2009
You can think whatever you want about me, but the essentials of what I argued here are factual. Furthermore, change is effected by individual and societal actions. I have taken individual actions and I support societal actions. Change has never been effected by defending and perpetuating the status quo. So why are you here other than to be both angry and offensive?
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veeramani Posted 4:11 am
08 Oct 2009
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lilness Posted 2:34 pm
06 Oct 2009
I'm not trying to discount or offend Foodprovider, as I'm sure he or she believes what they are doing is right and for the good of our nation, but I have to ask. Foodprovider, you complain that the number of farmers have dwindled significantly since WWII and I ask why do you think that is? I don't know for sure and maybe someone who is more educated than me can enlighten me, but I'm thinking it has a little something to do with the industrialization of agriculture, use of chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers, not to mention the subsidies and benefits given to larger farmers that lobby the government, that has made it impossible for the small family farmer to compete. I think it is ridiculous.
And please correct me if I'm wrong, but if there aren't subsidies for corn and soy, would american farmers even be able to compete with growers in other nations such as Mexico?
All I know is that concentrating the places in which are food is being grown seems dangerous for our environment and our welfare, making us more susceptible to market shocks if droughts hit, etc.
I believe in supporting my local farmers and try to use my food dollars to purchase food that is grown locally, sustainably and with out the use of chemical pesticides. I wish more people would realize that buying a tomato just picked from a local farm an hour ago is just a better choice because it tastes better, is more nutrient rich, and supports their local economy. Everyone has a choice and can vote with their purchases. Buy locally grown food and increase its demand. The higher the demand for locally grown organic and sustainable produce, the more local farmers there will be.
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foodprovider Posted 3:32 pm
06 Oct 2009
Yes you do have a choice. I have choice, and so does everyone else. You can choose organic. I will choose to grow the food that makes me the most profit.
BTW...how do you propose that organic will meet the demands of a 70% growth in demand? How will this be accomplished with ever decreasing suitable land to grow food? Are you willing to bet the nutritional needs of your children and their children on a practice that is rooted in 1950's or 1960's technology? What will you tell them when they have to pay 50% of their income (i'm guessing on this, so don't jump down my throat on this figure), will go to just buying food? What will you tell them when they have to go to bed hungry because they couldn't afford to buy food? Modern organic production uses more fossil fuels, releases more GHG's does nothing to curb dieases that can and has killed people, and has not been proven to produce enough food per arce or animal unit to sustain the needs of nutrition that will be required. Organic is your choice, not a demand.
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veeramani Posted 4:13 am
08 Oct 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 12:05 pm
02 Nov 2009
Not true. The industrial revolution got underway two centuries ago and really picked up steam (no pun intended) in the late 1800s. Yet the demise of the family farm didn't begin until after WWII and really picked up steam in the 80s, in the declining years of the industrial age.
The same forces that are destroying the Earth are destroying farming. It will soon be time to choose a side and the side of industry is death.
Oh, and by the way, economics 101, choice is demand.
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