The Omnivore's Delusion

[Chris Amirault]

To say the least, I'm not a regular reader of the American Enterprise Institute's journal, The American, but my Twitter account has been red hot with talk about an article appearing there with the provocative title, "The Omnivore's Delusion." Written by Missouri farmer Blake Hurst, it's a pretty devastating critique of what he considers the sweeping and ill-informed generalizations that can be found in Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma.

I have to admit that I found the piece quite gripping. Hurst starts with an all-too-familiar anecdote, in which he sits in front of a "self-appointed expert" holding court on CAFOs and artificial fertilizers during a long airplane ride (boy, have I been in that seat). He then proceeds to lay out a compelling argument -- at least for this inadequately informed reader who's neither farmer nor agriculture journalist.

Rapping on Pollan's knuckles is, of course, a means into a larger argument, which Hurst lays out with quasi-folksy, quasi-Tarantino-y tales about sows eating their piglets and weasels "exsanguinating" turkeys. But amid the "farming is dirty and bloody" corn-pone are many tough assertions that he claims Pollan et al get wrong or leave out. Meanwhile, he's busy dishing out classic market pragmatism about costs, production levels, and the global food supply, as well as smacking down wrong-headed assertions involving black dirt, animal-waste fertilizer, and -- this one's a howler -- using home compost in agri-business.

I read and truly enjoyed Omnivore's Dilemma, and like a good food-focused, Whole Foods shopper I've talked a lot about the book with friends, trying to figure out whether it should have any impact on me as a consumer and eater. (Whatever I thought then -- full disclosure -- the answer is no impact at all.) However, many of the questions that nagged me while reading it were questions about the impact on farmers: how are production levels affected by these proposals? where do market forces fit in here? what happens when you bring things to scale? Maybe I've not read material that addresses these questions, but I was very interested to read Hurst's answers.

What I'd really like to see now are responses to the piece that take on the specific claims Hurst is making. So far, in my readings, his opponents are swinging wildly and striking out. This piece by Tom Philpott leads with a cringeworthy, hyperbolic photo illustration comparing corn farming protests to the Tiananmen Square uprising -- ouch. Philpott then (1) declares his happiness that the debate is taking place, (2) states, "I don’t have the time or energy right now to take it on point by point," and (3) trots out three items he claims Hurst left out (petroleum scarcity, subsidies, and ecological blowback -- the latter of which Hurst does bring up, btw).

Meanwhile, in a piece called "Agri-Intellectual Reason" (click it -- I didn't make that title up), Christopher Bedford quotes Christopher Cook (of Diet for a Dead Planet fame), who states that "Hurst conflates and confuses the personal with the systemic" and references corporate disinformation campaigns. Bedford then suggests some old strategies (stand with small farmers, vote at Walmart with your wallet) without addressing Hurst's points at all.

I have no horse in this race, but as someone who cares about food I find it depressing that no one seems to be taking on Hurst's arguments without relying on every logical fallacy in the book: guilt by association, red herrings, personal attacks. (If you really want to see it play out, read the NY Times comment area about the piece.) If these issues are, truly, are the forefront of the global agricultural movement, then an actual debate about the points Hurst raises seems in order.

Any takers? Any other resources out there that take this piece on head first?

[KD1191]

I got really tired of the article about midway through and commenced skimming rather than continuing to outline my point by point refutation. From what I can tell, he does a lot of tilting at windmills and dodging many of the salient points of Pollan's (and other's) arguments. For one thing, he doesn't discuss CAFOs at all. He seems to think that because his neighbors distribute manure amongst their farms that this solves the problems detailed in the various literature of feed lots and toxic runoff. This is exactly what I take Mr. Bedford to be saying when he states that, "Hurst conflates and confuses the personal with the systemic." Below are my thoughts as I read through...mostly stream of consciousness, but hopefully it gets the conversation started.

The article starts with a lot of 'you don't know my business, so mind your business' rhetoric, and implications that organic farming is obsolete, dark ages methodology that produces quantifiabley inferior results. This is purely false. There are legitimate technological advancements and improvements to methodology that make organic farming a far more palatable endeavour today than at any previous point in history, and quantity vs. quality is a debate that I think most organic proponents would welcome. Hurst goes on to dismiss organic methods because they are used by some giant industrial farms as well. I haven't read Omnivore's Dilemma in quite some time, but I do recall Pollan skewering Whole Foods and the lettuce growers in California over just this point. The movement does not believe that organic inherently means good, and inorganic inherently means bad, at least that's not my understanding. You can have an organic sweatshop or a perfectly run sustainable farm that doesn't pursue organic certification for myriad reasons. I think Mr. Hurst fails to understand that.

Mr. Hurst finds it 'deliciously ironic' that many of the industrial aspects of farming are, in fact, family owned and operated, as if this somehow proves a point. The majority of his arguments here are red herring. He talks about corn, without clashing with Pollan on any of his various points (such as HFCS), as far as I can tell. Mentioning that family corn growers would love some new biotech advancement that would allow them to increase production, because it would make them wealthy I guess, he doesn't seem to understand that this influx in supply would kill prices (or wants us to believe that the growers don't). Corn growers would have to be as stupid as Hurst wants us to think Pollan makes them out to be not to understand that.

Waxing poetically about the benefits of GMO foodstuffs and herbicides, Hurst fails to understand that most of the reasonable opposition to the former is related to the potential for unknown long-term health and sustainability risks (in addition to some pretty intense intellectual property type issues raised by a concerned but passionate few). As for the latter, trading toxic herbicide run-off for decreased tillage and erosion is not inherently a net gain. He claims he's reduced his pollution of the river, and hopefully he's right, but that doesn't necessarily extrapolate to the farming community writ large.

That consumers benefit from cheap food is a point where I'd be happy to take Hurst head-on in debate. HFCS doesn't enter into his discussion, nor does the disadvantages of hormone-addled meats. He props up his arguments with Malthusian scare tactics, without adknowledging that much of the developed world spends a paltry percentage of their income on food. Personally, I would not mind more expensive food as long as quality increased at the same rate. I know some would disagree, but I also am not pushing for mandating organic farming methods and pasture fed beef, simply singing it's praises where applicable.

The final sections of Hurst's essay that I payed much attention to were about stupid turkeys, porcine infanticide and the manure collection/sharing agreement of his neighbors. In each case, he extrapolates from a single data point to a conclusion that there is no problem. And, as I mentioned above, doesn't once mention CAFOs. It's further proof that he doesn't care/understand that people in the slow/organic/local food movements don't think all farmers are bad, just bad farmers. Perhaps an essay with more nuance wouldn't have been as interesting or claimed as many page views.

The above is just the opinions of the son of a farmer, frequent Whole Foods shopper and registered Republican who votes Libertarian.