The Omnivore’s Dilemma: pt. 2 in How I Became the Hog Farmer’s Wife
To give some context--I graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a Bachelor of Arts in December, 2004. I started my MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan's Creative Writing program in the fall of 2005, and having been awarded a fellowship was able to take some time off of working at Zanzibar while I studied before graduating in April of 2007.
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, was written in April of 2006. It is hard to overstate the effect that this book has had on my life, to say nothing of the effect that it has had on the rest of the American food landscape. If you haven't read this book, or haven't read it in awhile, I would recommend picking it up again. For me, it was perhaps akin to my parents' experiences of reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
From the publisher
As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what's at stake becomes not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth. Pollan follows each of the food chains--industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves--from the source to the final meal, always emphasizing our coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us.
One begins to get a feel for the scope of the book in the Table of Contents, the chapters presented with their own kind of prosody.
Our national eating disorder -- I. Industrial: corn. The plant: corn's conquest -- The farm -- The elevator -- The feedlot: making meat -- The processing plant : making complex foods -- The consumer: a republic of fat -- The meal: fast food -- II. Pastoral: grass. All flesh is grass -- Big organic -- Grass: thirteen ways of looking at a pasture -- The animals: practicing complexity -- Slaughter: in a glass abattoir -- The market: Greetings from the non-barcode people -- The meal: grass-fed -- III. Personal: the forest. The forager -- The omnivore's dilemma -- The ethics of eating animals -- Hunting: the meat -- Gathering: the fungi -- The perfect meal.
One could say many things about the subjects covered in this book that have a high importance to our national food conversation--our dependence on fossil fuels in modern farming; the health implications for a nation of people whose diets consist heavily of corn; environmental implications of the modern factory farm...just to name a few.
In recently re-reading the book, I think that I would summarize its making of the Hog Farmer's Wife by introducing a well-known children's book, Big Red Barn, by Margaret Wise Brown (sound familiar? She also wrote Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, among others). In Big Red Barn, Brown tells the story of a family of diverse farm animals (everything from two different types of cows and cats, to hens both regular size and bantam, goats, pigs, horses, sheep) who "all live together in the big red bar," and spend their days around the farm doing such rare things as playing in the grassy fields all day that surround the farm, living on pasture, unconfined, doing what animals do in all their animal-ness (Pigness of Pigs, anyone?). They're doing what farm animals do--or at least used to do. The problem is that the reality of the modern "Farm" that most people support at the grocery store looks more like animals living in huge, factory-like places, where they don't see grass, are packed too many to an area, are fed things that their bodies weren't designed to eat and thus have to be medicated so they don't get diseases or illness from their poor diets, and often act out aggressively towards other animals or die from poor nutrition or abysmal living conditions.
But there is another way. In his chapter "Grass: Thirteen Way of Looking at a Pasture," Pollan writes about his visit to Polyface Farms in Virginia--the farm of Joel Salatin and family. Salatin labels himself "Beyond Organic" and represents a different, alternative way of farming that relies on pastures of grass, which are fed by the sun and manure from the animals who live off of them. Salatin has worked for a long time to establish a different way of farming that is beholden to and held accountable by the consumer through its connections and roots in the local community; through its transparency in its practices of slaughter and caring for animals (one can visit his farm and see their chickens slaughtered); through its relevance to its patrons and supporters who have decided to put their dollars towards something that is "Beyond Organic", created by a farmer who thinks about how to best steward God's creation while harnessing the power of the sun, to paraphrase Pollan.
The Hog Farmer would come to the realization a bit later, via Salatin's YouTube videos on farming and his aforementioned book; but having read The Omnivore's Dilemma (and later this book), the answer was clear as day to me: There was a better way of farming animals--one that I could support with my food dollars. But I was no farmer.
Originally posted 1/12/2021
