August 9, 2007:
The
End of Food begins with an indestructible tomato,
a tomato that cannot be smashed when thrown against a wall,
ripened when set on a windowsill, or eaten in any form with
any pleasure. This is a tomato as hard as a tennis ball—the
perfect symbol of everything wrong with today’s industrial
food system. These are tomatoes that are no longer real, but
merely “shelf stable” products.
Real tomatoes, like most real foods, are succulent, juicy,
nutrient-dense and splash open when bitten. The
End of Food is like a real tomato, so take care when
indulging. While you might get squirted with a bit of colorful
language and rhetoric, you will enjoy the experience. If you
are a foodie, farmer, agriculture writer or organizer, you
will find tantalizing bytes of “food for thought.”
If you are new to food-systems analysis, there is plenty here
to persuade you of the evils of the industrial food system
without leaving you completely hopeless.
Tom Pawlick is an agriculture journalist and journalism professor,
original editor of Harrowsmith magazine, and present-day
organic farmer in Ontario. He has the bona fides, but if you
prefer that your reading material be dry and linear, you may
find him a little rich and meandering. Pawlick writes with
the swagger of a self-styled anarchist. He loves to tell tangential
stories, and seems to relish the swipes he takes at the corporate
agenda.
Underneath the bellicosity, though, he does his research,
arming the reader with citations and resources. (He says Rodale
Institute publications are excellent.) Pawlick relies heavily
on studies done in Canada and the United Kingdom that are
relevant to American readers and trends because, according
to the cover notes, “food production lobbyists [in the
United States] have fought hard against this kind of research.”
There is no index, a major weakness which should be easily
remedied in further print editions.
How bad can food get?
The first three chapters are devoted to the two main premises
of his End of Food thesis—that nutritional content of
food is declining and toxicity in food is increasing. In Chapter
4, “The X files,” Pawlick states his thesis outright:
“It would be daunting… to try to plot the hundreds
of foods… and nutrients in them, mathematically on
one graph. If we could, these trends—declining nutrition
and increasing toxicity—would form an X and the point
where the two trend lines intersect, the crux of that X
would be a point of no return, the point where food has
minimal nutritional value and serves chiefly as a toxic
poison, the point, literally, of the End of Food. We are
fast approaching such an intersection.” (p.79)
If you think this picture is too bleak, don't throw the book—like
a bad tomato—against the wall just yet. Read on. In
the same chapter, Pawlick provides a quick synopsis of the
rise of industrial agriculture based on “efficiency,”
and the concomitant decline of the family farm while delving
briefly into the positive impact of organic farming practices.
Variables involved in food production that can affect nutritional
content are given emphasis, such as variety, when to plant,
how to harvest, how to process, and storage methods. (p.96)
Tomatoes fit for machines
Using the tomato as both example and narrative object, Pawlick
takes us on an audit trail from seed to sale and explores
the role of industrialization in the diminution of food choices.
He links the dwindling number of tomato varieties grown to
corporate labor practices post-World War II. Large growers
in California relied on a pool of cheap immigrant labor and
grew varieties that responded well to being handpicked. In
the 1960s, United Farm Workers of America organized farm workers
to demand fair wages. The grower companies responded by researching
and developing a mechanized harvester.
With mechanized harvesting, ripening must occur uniformly.
Plant breeders researched tougher, harder varieties (p.99)
that were easier to harvest mechanically without damage and
traveled well during shipping. These new varieties are picked
at the “mature green or breaker” phase—just
when the red is starting to show and artificially ripened
in ethylene-producing “ripening rooms.” All of
these variables result in fewer overall varieties of tomatoes,
more of them tasteless and less nutrient-dense.
Pick a food, any food, Pawlick argues, and you will find
trends of industrialization that lead to decreased nutritional
content and increased toxicity. There are many factors that
lead to increased toxicity in industrialized foods, but pesticides,
herbicides and fungicides, play a major role. He quotes Cynthia
Barstow, author of The Eco-Foods Guide (p.107):
“..the use of conventional farm pesticides…
increased from about 400 million pounds in the mid-1960s
to nearly 850 million pounds around 1980, primarily because
of widespread adoption of herbicides in crop production.
Since that time usage has decreased somewhat, ranging from
a low of 658 million pounds in 1987 to 806 million pounds
in 1996.”
So I am half-way through the book and my palate is hungering
for something more positive and tasty—when am I going
to hear the good news? Not yet, it seems. In Chapter 5, “Collateral
Damage,” I read about more undesirable impacts of industrial
farming:
“…pollution, soil degradation, wildlife habitat
destruction, waste of fresh water resources, loss of biodiversity
and threats posed by introduced or “exotic”
species including those produced via... gene manipulation.”
(p.124)
And in Chapter 6, he jumps to Stalin’s collectivization
of the rural farming class. Pawlick alleges that thousands
of farmers were shot or arrested as enemies of the Bolshevik
revolution’s objective to organize society on a mass
production basis. He parallels Stalin’s purges with
the similar – albeit less brutal – fate of North
America’s family farms, subsumed by the industrial model.
In sum, vertical integration, international trade agreements
and lack of market choices have resulted in ”Dark Satanic
Barns.”
Okay, enough of “How industry is destroying our food
supply.” I fear that more delicate readers may despair
before arriving at the chapter on solutions to the world of
bad food Pawlick has described so well. The first and simplest
“act of subversion,” I am happy to report, is
to “Plant a garden.” (p.185). Save seed, make
your own preserves, grind your own flour, dry and store herbs.
If you can, branch out to community gardens, and if you can't
grow enough of your own food yourself, then buy at CSAs and
farmers markets.
Tilting at windmills?
But can home gardening and local buying alone overthrow the
evil empire? Pawlick says that by its very nature, the industrial
food system cannot be reformed to produce healthy food. Short-term
maximum profits supersede food quality.
Pawlick believes that grassroots campaigns—against
GMOs for example, and the incredible success of food communities
like Slow Food—have influence on the local, national
and international level.
Pawlick ends where he begins: with the tomato and with the
Slow Food movement, launched in Italy, “home of the
world’s best pasta, tomatoes and red wines…Food
is international, universal, but at the same time ought to
be intensely local and individual, like the human beings who
produce it.” (p. 219-220)
With all the build-up about the destruction of food, I expected
more dramatic solutions. The solutions section is disappointing
and a bit of a damp squib. “How tos” and organizing
tips would be most welcome, such as how to organize local
groups or single-issue campaigns, set short-term and long-term
strategic goals, or how to advocate effectively.
If The
End of Food was really half about seeking solutions,
half of it—not a slim quarter—should have been
devoted to building a better food system. Even if he is short
on answers, Pawlick sounds the call to action well when he
says: “We need to take back control of our own food
supply, our own meals, and our own humanity.” (p221)
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