Organicism

Too. Much. Organic. Food.

   There has been so much slaughtering of animals in this class so far! I can't say I dislike it though, its such a fresh view point on the way our food is prepared. That distance from what we eat and how it's rendered edible that Pollan talks about seems like the core of the current state of America's industrial food system. A big thing that this chapter stressed was that even though the "organic" label seems like an antidote to this distance, it may not be. We may assume that anything labeled "organic" has been grown or raised on a small family farm in non-industrial fields, but Pollan's research and narrative seems to say otherwise. Apparently, organic farming has been industrialized to large extent, at least in the specific couple of farm that Pollan visited. I found myself asking the same question that Pollan was: are industrial and organic mutually exclusive?
   To me, there seems to be so much ideology and non-traditional business logic involved in organic farming. The reduction of farming to a simple input-output system masks the true depth of farming and ecological creation. The focused awareness on the beauty and bounty of nature seems to run contrary to industrialization. Or at least to what Pollan described at the farms he visited. Those farms were simply industrial farms with little organic variables and additions tacked on; free range areas, organic feed. To me, the real beauty and benefit of organic farming comes from trying to understand the cycles in nature and working with them to create healthier and more delicious food and not from shoving parts of those cycles into out in/out factory system.
   I guess the question that arises from that is how effective are the small organic farms like Joel Salatin's at actually changing the current situation. I think that I agree with Pollan's statement that every organic-industrial farm is better than a simply industrial farm. His logic works in terms of an in/out kind of mindset but these farms still seem like they're selling out. I see a core of respect and admiration for nature at the core of farms like Salatin's. The industrial-organic farms seem to be simply missing this. Even though their methods are organic and more sustainable than the purely industrial alternative, I still see them as buying into that industrial and dehumanizing mindset of the larger industrial farms. Ideally there would be only small independent farms like Salatin's, or some sort of larger conglomerate that still operates like Salatin's in terms of its understanding and emulation of nature. I don't know if that's even possible though. Is there a way of feeding America without a huge centralized food distribution system? I have no idea.