Beyond the Bar Code.

Beyond the Bar Code: The Local Food Revolution
by Michael Pollan

Local food economies are our best hope for checking the drift toward the total global economy. A revolt is underway across this country—a revolt of small producers and consumers. Some of the most important politics today are happening at the farmer’s market.

We’re told that it’s very sentimental to go back to a local food economy. And surely there are reasons for buying local that might strike the unsentimental as a little softheaded. We like the idea of keeping farmers and their wisdom in our communities. We like eating food in season picked at the peak of its taste and nutritional value. You find no processed food or high fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market. We like the idea of keeping land near us in production for food rather than houses and strip malls.

We like what happens socially at the farmer’s market, which is quickly emerging as the new public square in this country. If you compare what happens in the aisles at the grocery store with the farmer’s market, think about what a world of difference that is. At the farmer’s market country meets city. Children are introduced to where their food comes from. People politic. They have petitions. They schmooze. It’s an incredibly vibrant space.

I’m fully prepared to defend local food economies on those so-called sentimental grounds, but let me suggest that there’s nothing more hardheaded or realistic than building and defending local food economies. Indeed, to do so is a matter not of sentiment, but of critical importance to national security and public health. Here are a few reasons:

Energy. The total economy depends on cheap energy, not to mention peace and no threat from terrorism, in order to move goods from point of cheapest production to point of highest purchase. We will not reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy or confront the issue of climate change without dealing with the industrial food system, which consumes 17 percent of our fossil fuel.

Sovereignty. Do we really want to go down the path we have gone down with our energy with food? Do we want to find ourselves in a position where all our grain is coming from South America, our produce from Mexico? The projections right now are that in California at the end of this century there will be no more food production in the Central Valley. It will be houses and highways wall-to-wall, mountain to mountain. Do we want to give away our food independence?

National security. Our government knows the risk of a highly centralized food system. When Tommy Thompson left the Department of Homeland Security, he said something very interesting in his last press conference: “I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.” When all your hamburgers are being ground in the same factory and all your salad is being washed in the same sink, it is a very precarious way to eat.

Public Health. Our highly centralized food system is very vulnerable to contamination—both deliberate and accidental. We just had a horrifying illustration of the dangers of centralized food when two hundred Americans were seriously sickened and three Americans were killed by eating spinach contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7.

That bug was the result of our industrial system for two reasons. First, E. coli 0157:H7 is a mutation of industrial feedlot agriculture; you do not have it in grass-fed cattle. Second, it was able to be spread far and wide because spinach from many farms was washed in a single sink in San Juan Bautista, California, and then sent all over the country. This is not to say you couldn’t get sick from eating spinach at your farmer’s market. But if you did, it would be contained in the food chain. You’d know who was responsible.

Instead of seizing on these threats as a reason to decentralize our food supply, the government is bringing in more regulation and technology. Progressive senators are proposing that we begin to regulate farms the way we regulate meat plants. That will put small farms out of business. So you see what happens as industrial agriculture fails and sickens us. The solutions promote more industrialization of agriculture. And that’s what we need to resist. I say we put our faith not in technology or regulation but in relationships, relationships with small farms.

We have to act as consumer-citizens who are co-creators, builders of food chains. We are building a local food economy simply by getting out of the supermarket, by growing our own food, by joining the CSA and by shopping at farmers markets. We are voting with our forks and it is a very important vote.

We also need to vote with our votes because not all the changes we need can be driven by consumers. Some of them will have to come from government.

The most boring topic in American politics but possibly the most important is the Farm Bill, which is up for reauthorization this year. It is the reason we are in this fast food nation, because the Farm Bill decides that we’re going to grow cheap corn and soybeans, which are not foods but which are raw materials for industrial food. The Farm Bill determines whether local or national foods will predominate.

So I leave you with this totally unglamorous message: Let your senators and representatives know you’re paying attention and you care. Let them know that you understand that the Farm Bill is really a food bill. It is our fight. Unless we take it to them, they’re going to do the same thing again and we’re going to have more corn, and more soybeans, more Smithfields and Cargills and fewer farmers markets. So please follow this fight and help to wage it.

Excerpted from a plenary talk by Michael Pollan at the Bioneers 2006 Conference. Pollan is the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley and author most recently of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. He is contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.