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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Moyers interviews Michael Pollan
  • Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:03:21 -0700


Moyers interviews Michael Pollan
November 28, 2008
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/transcript5.html
Jump to Part II

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL. I'm grateful to Deborah Amos for sitting
in while I was away these past two weeks - it's good to be back.

This is an odd Thanksgiving weekend, shrouded by ambivalence. We always have
much to be thankful for as Americans: the right to vote, the Constitution, no
dictatorship or caste system, the freedom to thank our God or no God at all.
But the contradictions of our society are starkly self-evident this weekend.
Not since the Great Depression have so many people been so haunted by
insecurity.

Look at these long lines of people at a food bank in San Francisco. Some 32
million Americans - at least one in nine households - had trouble at some
time in the last year putting enough food on the table. And that was long
before the current meltdown. As the economy sours food banks across the
country have seen a 25% increase in demand, with middle class families
accounting for most of the growth.

At the same time many families are having trouble finding enough to eat, many
of our biggest farmers have never had it so good.

The Government Accountability Office - our government's top watchdog - is out
this week with a new report on how the agricultural department is managing
farm subsidies. Not well, it seems, not well.

BARACK OBAMA:There's a report today that from 2003 to 2006, millionaire
farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning
more than the $2.5 million cutoff for such subsidies. If this is true, and
this was just a report this morning, but if it's true, it is a prime example
of the kind of waste that I intend to end as president.

BILL MOYERS: President-elect Obama has been busy putting his team together.
His choice for Secretary of Agriculture could be perhaps the most important
clue as to whether Obama really intends to bring change to Washington as he
promised. If so, he'll have to take on one of the most powerful lobbies in
the country, the people who turned agriculture into agribusiness. As "Time"
magazine recently put: farm policy is "a welfare program for the megafarms
that use the most fuel, water and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases;
grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals; and depopulate rural
America."

For a brief moment during the campaign, reformers thought Barack Obama might
include agriculture in the "agenda of change" he would take to Washington. He
told TIME magazine that the way we produce our food "is partly contributing
to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that
are driving our huge explosion in health care costs." The farm lobby roared
in protest. Obama buckled, took it back, and said he was "simply paraphrasing
an article he read."

Ah, yes - but what an article! Here it is: nine pages in the NEW YORK TIMES
MAGAZINE on October 12. An open letter to the future "Farmer in Chief" - from
one of the country's leading experts on food - Michael Pollan. Significant
progress on health care, energy independence, and climate change, Pollan told
the candidates, depends on something you haven't talked about at all - food.

That article triggered such a response that an online movement has sprung up
calling on President-elect Obama to name Michael Pollan Secretary of
Agriculture.

Pollan's popular books include: THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA: A NATURAL HISTORY OF
FOUR MEALS, and this most recent work, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD: AN EATER'S
MANIFESTO.

What you won't find in his writings is a Shermanesque-like statement saying
that if nominated he will not serve. But let's watch my guest Michael Pollan
turn pale as I ask him suppose Obama did yield to legions of admirers and
name you Secretary of Agriculture instead of yet one more advocate of
industrial farming? Where would you start?

MICHAEL POLLAN: I'm ready for the Shermanesque statement.

BILL MOYERS: Make it. We'll make some news on this.

MICHAEL POLLAN: It's not from me. It's - this is - I would be so bad at this
job.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

MICHAEL POLLAN: I have an understanding of my strengths and limitations.
Well, you have to understand that that department of the government, the $90
billion a year behemoth is captive of agri-business. It is owned by
agri-business. They're in the room making policy there. When you have a food
safety recall over meat, sitting there with the Secretary of Agriculture and
her chief of staff or his chief of staff is the head of the National
Cattlemen's Beef Association.

It's all worked out together. So, I don't know I mean, I think that the
department, in a way, is part of the problem. And they're also very dependent
on the legislation that the House and Senate Agricultural Committees cobble
together. And so I think you'd get swallowed up there very easily. I think
that and I don't want this job either. What Obama needs to do, if he indeed
wants to make change in this area and that isn't clear yet that he does at
least in his first term I think we need a food policy czar in the White House
because the challenge is not just what we do with agriculture, it's
connecting the dots between agriculture and public health, between
agriculture and energy and climate change, agriculture and education.

So you need someone who can take a kind of more you know, global view of the
problem and realize that it's an interdisciplinary problem, if you will. And
if you do hope to make progress in all these other areas, you have to make
sure that if the Surgeon General is, you know, going on about the epidemic of
type 2 diabetes, you don't want to be signing farm bills that subsidize high
fructose corn syrup at the same time. So you have to kind of align

BILL MOYERS: Because? Because?

MICHAEL POLLAN: High fructose corn syrup contributes mightily, as do all
sugars, to type 2 diabetes. And we are subsidizing cheap sweeteners in our
farm bill by subsidizing corn. And so you, you see, you have a war going on
between the public health goals of the government and the agricultural
policies. And only someone in the White House can force that realignment of
those goals.

BILL MOYERS: But suppose you are sitting across from the new president and he
says, 'Secretary Pollan, what's the core idea here? What are we after?'

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, what we're after is looking at these commodity programs
for a start that-

BILL MOYERS: Commodity programs being-

MICHAEL POLLAN: Commodity programs essentially the four crops, five crops we
subsidize are corn, wheat, soy, rice, and cotton. We'll leave cotton out
because we don't eat too much of it, although we eat some cotton oil. And
that our farm policy for many years has been designed to increase production
of those crops and keep the prices low.

BILL MOYERS: And we have we have cheaper prices and plenty-

MICHAEL POLLAN: We do.

BILL MOYERS: -of food today.

MICHAEL POLLAN: And, you know, the fact that you can walk into a fast-food
outlet and get, you know, a bacon double cheeseburger, french fries, soda for
less than the what you would get paid at the minimum wage, in the long sweep
of human history, that's an amazing achievement. The problem is, though,
we've learned that overabundant, too cheap food can be as much a problem as
too little food.

BILL MOYERS: In what way?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Look at the healthcare crisis. We're all eating 300 more
calories than we were. We all weigh an average-

BILL MOYERS: A day?

MICHAEL POLLAN: A day. A day. We've gone from 2,000 or 2,300 to 2,600,
something like that. We all weigh on average ten pounds more. And lo and
behold, we have a serious epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart
disease, diet-related cancers. All these chronic diseases which is now what
kills us basically pretty reliably in America are adding more than $250
billion a year to healthcare costs. They are the reason that this generation
just being born now is expected to have a shorter lifespan than their
parents, that one in three Americans born in the year 2000, according to the
Centers for Disease Control, will have type 2 diabetes, which is a really
serious sentence. It takes several years off your life. It gives you an 80
percent chance of heart disease. It means you are going to be spending
$14,000 a year in added health costs. So this is about how we're eating.

BILL MOYERS: But can you put this on our food? I mean, are you saying, this
is primarily the result of what we eat? That we are sick today because of
what we eat?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Not well.

MICHAEL POLLAN: There are other factors obviously. A sedentary lifestyle. You
know, cane workers in Cuba can eat 6,000 calories of sugar cane a day and
they don't get diabetes because they burn it off. We don't burn it off. So
exercise is an issue, although exercise hasn't changed dramatically in this
period that our public health has declined so much. No, this, you know, when
you have monocultures of corn and soy in the fields, which is what we have
because they're our farm policy, you end up with a fast-food diet because
growing all that corn and soy, those are those are the building blocks of
fast food. We turn the corn into high fructose corn syrup to sweeten the
sodas. We also turn the corn into cheap feed lot meat. The soy we turn into
also cheap feed lot meat and hydrogenated soy oil, which is what all our fast
food is fried in. It has trans fats know as lethal. So we are basically, you
know, subsidizing fast food.

BILL MOYERS: You said in that article of October 12th and I laughed out loud
when I read it. When we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating
oil and spewing greenhouse gases. Now, Michael, I don't ever remember sitting
down to a meal of yummy petroleum.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, we are eating oil and we don't see it obviously.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, how do you grow those giant monocultures of corn and
soy? As soon as you plant a monoculture, which is all that is lots of the
same thing year after year. You risk depleting the fertility of the soil. So
how do you replenish the fertility? Fertilizer. How do you make fertilizer?
It's made with natural gas, diesel, oil. So we actually have to spread huge
quantities of oil or fossil fuels on our fields to keep the food coming.

When you grow a monoculture, you also get lots of pests. They love
monocultures. You build up the population of the pests by giving them a vast
buffet of exactly what they're they evolved to eat. So how do you protect
them? Well, you use pesticides made from fossil fuels. When you grow corn and
soy, which are not exactly foods, they can't eat any of this stuff. It's raw
material for processed food. You then have to process it. And so it takes ten
calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food at the end of
that, you know, to make a Twinkie or something like that. It's a very fuel
intensive process, with the result that all our food together, if you think
of what's in the supermarket, is taking more than ten calories of fossil
fuel, one calorie of food.

Look, nobody wants to see food prices go up. Nobody wants to see oil prices
go up. But we understand that we are not going to change our energy economy
unless we start paying a higher price for oil. We are not going to improve
our health around food unless we pay the real cost of food.

Cheap food is actually incredibly expensive. If you look at the all the
costs, you are talking about the farm subsidies. That's $25 billion a year to
make that food cheap. You look at the pollution effects. The quality of the
water all through the farm belt, nitrates in the water, moms who can't use
tap water because it, you know, blue baby syndrome from nitrogen in the
water. You look at the public health costs. You look at the cost to the
atmosphere. Agriculture is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases.

BILL MOYERS: You said in that article that we use more fossil fuel in
producing food than we do in any other of our activities including driving to
work.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, some of the transportation is in that number because
when you look at the food economy's use of fossil fuel, which is about 19
percent, you've got a lot of diesel transportation. But it's more than
personal transportation, absolutely. And, you know, we don't see that when we
look at our food system.

BILL MOYERS: But how do we do this when, as you said that food connects not
only to healthcare, and you told us about that, but to energy independence,
to climate change to national security.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: These are the dots. How do they all connect-

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: -from what you just said?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, when you have a big globalized food system based on a
very small number of crops, you're first, you're moving food everywhere. I
mean, the supply chains of food are just absurd. You know, we're catching
so-called sustainable salmon in Alaska. We ship it to China to get filleted
and then we bring it back here. We're shipping-

BILL MOYERS: It's still cheaper than if we-

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah. That's how cheap Chinese labor is. We're not going to
be able to do that much longer. We're selling sugar cookies to the country of
Denmark, and we're buying sugar cookies from the country of Denmark. And
Herman Daily the economist, said, 'Wouldn't it be more efficient to swap
recipes?' I mean, these absurdities can't continue. So energy is deeply
implicated in the system. Any system that uses a lot of energy is going to
produce a lot of greenhouse gas. Plus livestock also produce huge amounts of
greenhouse gas. National security, well, there's a there's a tremendous
danger when you centralize your food supply.

BILL MOYERS: What's insecure about our food process?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, having a highly centralized food system such as we have
where one hamburger plant might be grinding 40 or 50 million burgers in a
week, where one pre-bagged salad plant is washing 26 million servings of
salad in a week, that's very efficient, but it's also very brittle or very
precarious. Because if a microbe is introduced into that one plant, by a
terrorist or by accidental contamination, millions of people will get sick.
You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to your food
safety. You want to decentralize. And Tommy Thompson, when he was departing
as Secretary of Health and Human Services said, you know, one of the big
surprises of his time in Washington was that no one had attacked, no
terrorist had attacked the food supply because, and this is a quote, 'it
would be so easy to do.'

BILL MOYERS: If I'm the president, I'm saying to Secretary Pollan, look,
you've come over to talk to me about food and look what's happening on Wall
Street. Look what's happening to people's 401s. Look what's happening to
people's security, their real physical security is in great jeopardy. This is
what they're worried about. This is what they're scared about. And you're
asking me to talk about food.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah. Well, I think if you if you really care about dealing
with climate change, which you did talk about during the campaign; if you
really care about dealing with the healthcare crisis, which is going to mean
getting healthcare costs down; if you really care about feeding the rest of
the world, because we haven't talked about how our agricultural policies are
taking food out of the mouths of people in Africa and throughout Asia, our
ethanol policies in particular, you can't escape food.

Food is the shadow issue over all those other issues. And so, you know,
you're only going to get so far with healthcare costs unless you look at the
diet. Let's look at the school lunch program. This is where we're feeding a
big part of our population. We are essentially feeding them fast food and
teaching them how to eat it quickly. Well, let's look at school lunch. If we
could spend a dollar or more per day per child and work on the nutritional
quality of that food. And let's require that a certain percentage of that
school lunch fund in every school district has to be spent within 100 miles
to revive local agriculture, to create more jobs on farms, to, you know,
rural redevelopment. You will achieve a great many goals through doing that.
You will have a healthier population of kids who will perform better in the
afternoon after that lunch. You will have, you know, the shot in the arm to
local economies through helping local agriculture. And you will, you know,
teach this generation habits that will last a lifetime about eating.

BILL MOYERS: But how do we do this when, as you said at the beginning of our
conversation, the Agricultural Department is in the lock?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, the school lunch program probably has to get out of
agriculture. Let's move it over to education. Lunch should be, lunch should
be educational. Right now the school lunch program is a disposal scheme for
surplus agricultural commodities. When they have too much meat, when they
have too much cheese, they send it to the schools, and they dispose it
through our kids' digestive systems. Let's look at it in a different way.
This should be about improving the health of our children. So maybe it
belongs in Health and Human Services. Maybe it belongs in Education. Don't,
you know, get the Department of Agriculture's hands off of it.

BILL MOYERS: Who's most likely to be my best agent in changing things here if
I buy your argument?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, here's - if you wanted to drive change, I think you've
got to talk to Nancy Pelosi.

BILL MOYERS: Speaker of the House?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Speaker of the House. I think you have to look at the
Constitution of the House Agriculture Committee. I think that is where much
that is wrong with this Farm Bill comes out of Collin Peterson's Agriculture
Committee. I think you have to-

BILL MOYERS: He's the chairman?

MICHAEL POLLAN: He's the chairman. He's from Minnesota. He's being considered
for Secretary of Agriculture, I'm told which is, you know, alarming. He's-

BILL MOYERS: Because?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Because he was not willing to touch commodities subsidies at
all, not willing to put a serious cap on them, and, in fact, extended them.
Like a lot in politics, the initial conditions or rules determine the
outcome. If you fill your Agriculture Committee with representatives of
commodity farmers and you don't have urbanites, you don't represent eaters,
okay? You don't have people from New York City on these committees, you are
going to end up with the kind of farm bills we have, a piece of special
interest legislation. It shouldn't even be called the Farm Bill. It should be
called the Food Bill. It's about us. It's not just about them.

BILL MOYERS: That sounds so, you know, it sounds so reasonable. But once
again politics and human nature intervene. What are the political obstacles
to making that happen?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, the commodity groups, as Harry Reid has said, are the,
you know, one of the two most well-organized lobbies on the Hill. And the
Farm Bureau which is, you know, purports to represent farmers, actually
represents agri-business one of the most important lobbies. So I'm not saying
it's going to be easy. But, I also feel I know that there is a political
movement rising. It's very young, this movement. I mean, if anyone's talking
about me for Agriculture Secretary, that is a measure for how young it is.
But it's rising. There are you know, millions of mothers concerned about
food, about the school lunch program, about the - what's on sale in the
supermarket. There's enormous concern about food safety. Our food safety
system is breaking down. There is the security issue. There is there are many
facets to this movement. It's still inchoate. And politicians have not
recognized the power that is there. And that's going to happen first.

BILL MOYERS: I will make a confession that will show you how hard this is
because there is so much human nature at play here. I mean, I like to take my
grandkids to McDonald's because it enables me to cheat a little, right. So
how do you convince us that we're contributing to climate change, we're
contributing to a precarious national security, we're contributing to bad
health? What do you say to us that moves us?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, the first thing I would say is, I'm not a, you know,
I'm not a Puritan about food. And I'm not a zealot about it. And there is
something called special occasion food that we have in our house. And it's
kind of understood that sometimes you go, you enjoy your fast food. You have
your Twinkie, whatever it is. People have done this for thousands of years.
There's nothing wrong with doing it. Our problem is we've made special
occasion food everyday food and that one in three American children are at a
fast-food outlet every single day. And that's where you get into trouble. I,
look, I grew up eating fast food and drinking soda and I don't have type 2
diabetes and, you know, knock on wood, I don't have heart disease. But so I
think it really is our, you know, how do we handle our food lives every day.

BILL MOYERS: How did you get to from being editor of "Harper's" magazine to a
man with dirt between his toes?

MICHAEL POLLAN: My path, I was executive editor of "Harper's." I wasn't the
editor. Lewis Lapham was the editor. My path was through the garden. I was a
gardener. And I loved gardening from a very young age. And I grew - I like
growing food for myself. And that's where I learned about, you know, these
kind of things. And from there it was a kind of easy step to kind of - I had
an epiphany on a feed lot and on a potato field when I was doing a piece of
journalism.

And I was driving up Route 5 in California, which links San Francisco to L.A.
And you're driving - I was driving south. And it was a beautiful golden fall
day in California. And suddenly this stench came up. And I couldn't believe
the smell. And I didn't know what it was because everything around me looked
exactly the same. And I drove a little longer. And the landscape, which had
been gold, turned black. And it was a feed lot that's right on the highway,
on both sides of the highway.

And suddenly I was in this nightmare landscape where there was mountains of
manure the size of pyramids, and mountains of corn the size of pyramids, and
cows, black cows as far as you could see. And I was, like, wow, this is where
my meat comes from? I had no idea. And that was when I decided, you know, I
need to, I owe it to myself, I owe it to my readers, my family, to figure out
where does my food come from.

BILL MOYERS: Michael Pollan, let's take a break and then we'll be back to
continue this conversation.

We'll be back with Michael Pollan in a bit, and we'll talk about what we can
do about the food we eat. But first, this is when we remind you that you are
the "public" in Public Broadcasting. This is your station, and it needs your
support, call now.

[DUE TO PBS PLEDGE NOT ALL VIEWERS WILL SEE THIS SECTION OF THE PROGRAM]

BILL MOYERS: We enjoy receiving your feedback here at the Journal. Here are a
few of your comments that have helped us to pause and reflect. Last month, we
turned to economist James K. Galbraith to make sense of the bailout on Wall
Street.

JAMES GALBRAITH: We have a government which is capable of acting as the
lender of last resort, which can borrow and spend as needed to deal with this
crisis. So here in the United States the capacity to handle the crisis
exists. What we need is a government that's willing to use that capacity that
believes in it.

BILL MOYERS: Here's what you had to say.

MARY J. BEDARD: I believe that we need to set and enforce regulations which
will protect "the people" from those whose whole purpose seems to be to get
rich at the expense of others. We need to have all loopholes closed. The
"rascals" responsible for this economic fiasco belong in jail.

GREG:It is amazing to hear Galbraith argue against freedom and the free
market. Rather he should argue for more freedom in the market ... Fix that
problem . and our economic woes will be solved.

JOHN GRAVES:No economist seems to understand . that the foundation of
economic growth is not good credit but good jobs and good wages. Our
excessive military power is what keeps the dollar too high, which has sucked
good jobs out of the US for decades....a slow and deadly attrition.

BILL MOYERS: And our discussion with writer Roberto Lovato and political
analyst Linda Chavez sparked a heated response to the topic of immigration.

LINDA CHAVEZ: I think the whole debate on illegal immigration was largely
manufactured. I mean, I wrote columns about this. I think talk radio had a
lot to do with it; cable news had a lot to do with it.

ROBERTO LOVATO: I would agree. I think that it is manufactured. But I think
it's manufactured in a way to disguise the real problems in our life right
now. Who better to blame than a border crossing, illegal alien?

S.H.:Immigration is a complicated issue but many of the reasons people cite
in opposition to immigration are based on misinformation.. Too often we only
get one side of the issue.

LUCIUS:What jobs will go to illegal immigrants in a Depression when we bona
fide citizens will be out of work? .When it gets to the point that we
Americans will take ANY job that pays a real wage, then the "problem" of
illegal immigration will take care of itself. because this will no longer be
"the land of opportunity."

BILL MOYERS: And finally, we talked with filmmaker Mark Johnson who
co-directed and produced, "Playing for Change", a documentary about the
simple but transformative power of music:

MARK JOHNSON:Well I think music is the one thing that opens the door to
bringing people to a place where they are all connected. It is easy to
connect to the world through music, you know. Religion, politics, a lot of
those things they seem to divide everybody.

MIDGE BIHR: I have been deeply troubled by the bleak state of our economy and
the effect it's having on my family. I haven't felt much joy lately. Tonight,
. for the first time in a very long time, my heart felt something other than
pain and fear. I am uplifted.

ERAN FRAENKEL: I agree wholeheartedly that music inspires positive emotions.
But unless those positive emotions then are transformed into positive action,
lives unfortunately remain unchanged.. I wish that music could change the
world. So far, it hasn't.

CRAIG SPAULDING:We can only begin to solve our collective problems when we
make a soul connection which transcends and appreciates difference. Music and
art are the seeds for this connection and transformation.

BILL MOYERS: Keep telling us what you think of our broadcast-by mail, email,
or on the blog at PBS.org and we'll keep reading.

[SPECIAL CONTENT ENDS]

BILL MOYERS: I'm back now with Michael Pollan, author IN DEFENSE OF FOOD, and
THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA. We're talking about what President-elect Obama, and
we, can do to improve the nation's food system. Let me ask you, you said in
your letter to the president-elect, that the first family should eat locally.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, look, the president's bully pulpit is a very important
thing. And, you know, I think the first family could set an example with who
they appoint White House chef. Is it someone who's really associated with
this, you know, local food movement? Who would not only cook wonderful,
healthy food for them, but who, at state dinners, would kind of shine a light
some of the best farmers in this country and elevate the prestige of farming.
I also think that we need, in addition to a White House Chef; we need a White
House Farmer.

BILL MOYERS: Are you suggesting that the president should rip up the South
Lawn?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Not all of it. Not all of it.

BILL MOYERS: All right, say five acres.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Five acres. They've got 17 acres to play with. I don't know
exactly how much. But I'm saying five acres. Put in a garden, organic garden.
Hire a good farmer to grow food there. I think that that would send a
powerful message. You know, this has happened before. Eleanor Roosevelt put a
victory garden in, in the White House in 1942.

BILL MOYERS: ...during second world war

MICHAEL POLLAN: It was over the objections of the Department of Agriculture,
who thought it was going to hurt the food industry if people started growing
food at home. You know, God forbid.

BILL MOYERS: Some things never change

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah, I know. So they were on the wrong side of that issue,
too. But she persisted. And she said, "This is really important for the war
effort. I want to encourage people to grow food." And she put in this garden.
And by the end of the war, there were 20 million victory gardens in America.

People were ripping up their lawns, planting vegetables, raising chickens,
and by the end of the war, they were producing 40 percent of the fresh
produce in America was being produced in home gardens. So it's not trivial,
it could make a tremendous contribution, especially in hard times.

BILL MOYERS: We have some people right here in urban New York who,
themselves, are growing gardens. And I want to show you a short film we
produced in honor of your presence here today.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Excellent.

BILL MOYERS: The East New York section of Brooklyn is a cornucopia of fast
and cheap food - healthy options are hard to find. There are restaurants,
easy on the palate but hard on the arteries. There are corner delis, they
offer some basics, but it's processed food that fills the shelves. And the
grocery stores here come and go, taking their produce with them. Residents
must travel miles to reach the nearest supermarket.

WOMAN: The market is open!

BILL MOYERS: But each Saturday, the East New York farmers market offers some
much needed relief.

VENDOR: That's very good. Right?

BILL MOYERS: The market's appetizing array of food comes from just outside
the city and just around corner. From sweet to savory, land to sea.

DENNIS DAVE CARGILL: This is a baby blue fish. This tastes excellent.

BILL MOYERS: People say it's worth the wait.

CLAUDINA WILLIAMS: It's a different taste. When it's fresh from the tree on
the table, it's delicious!

SARITA DAFTARY: We have a great market, and you know, I think when people
come and visit us, they're surprised that it's here. They're surprised that
it's in East New York.

BILL MOYERS: Sarita Daftary heads up the market, started ten years ago by the
non-profit United Community Centers. It's been a welcome source of pride -
and nutrients - in a tough neighborhood better known for its crime stats than
its crop yields.

SARITA DAFTARY: Food that comes from the ground that is in its most whole
form is much better for you than food that's processed, or packaged. And food
that's grown by small scale farmers, and especially organic farmers, tends to
be more nutritious.

BILL MOYERS: Some of the freshest vegetables here were picked just hours ago
from land a few short blocks away. Jeanette Ware has been gardening here for
the past two years.

JEANETTE WARE: We're going to be harvesting some herbs, some oregano, some
collard greens. Some string beans and some beets.

BILL MOYERS: Jeanette and her husband James start each day in the dirt.

JEANETTE WARE: It's fun. It's hard, but it's fun. It gets your back hurting,
but it's good for your heart and it's a good feeling. You are digging in the
natural earth and you are producing something for everybody to enjoy and be
healthy.

BILL MOYERS: Gardening satisfies James' itch to return to his South Carolina
roots.

JAMES WARE: I was sitting up there listening to the birds one morning, and
then it just got back in my blood, farming, from when I was a kid.

BILL MOYERS: Before this land was an urban oasis it was an urban dump.
Farmers market organizers reclaimed the space and cleaned it up. It's now
known as the Hands and Heart community garden. Anyone can rent plots here for
a small fee.

JEANETTE WARE: These are hot, you want some? These are twelve for a dollar.

BILL MOYERS: For the Wares, what started as hobby has quickly turned into a
small business. From their stand, they help fuel their community with
home-grown vitamins, minerals and good cheer.

JEANETTE WARE: Hello, I like that hat.

BILL MOYERS: Hazel Smalls is on the hunt for organic produce.

HAZEL SMALLS: We are pretty healthy eaters, so we are into a lot of fruits
and vegetables. I usually get the frozen because they last longer, but once I
found out about the market here I said, let me check it out. I can always
take the collared greens, clean them, cut them up and freeze them.

BILL MOYERS: Hazel keeps an eye on what her daughter eats. Fortunately,
Cheyenne prefers pears to junk food.

CHEYENNE SMALLS: My mother lets me eat candy only like Saturday, or just
Saturday, because she doesn't want me to get diabetes, because it's very
painful so I know that I don't want to eat too much candy.

BILL MOYERS: Many of the chronic diseases that plague the country today -
like diabetes - are linked to diet. Unfortunately, East New Yorkers know this
all too well. Starting with the Wares themselves - both Jeanette and James
are diabetic, and so are many of their customers.

WOMAN 1: I'm anemic, diabetic, my cholesterol is high.

WOMAN 2: I watch sugar and salt and fat. That's the three main things because
of cholesterol. I'm diabetic.

BILL MOYERS: There's a health crisis in East New York. One in six adults here
suffers from diabetes - that's nearly twice the New York City average. Nearly
one out of three is obese. The primary cause of premature death here is heart
disease. Over the past ten years, hospitalization for the condition has
increased by 35 percent. So food here can be a simple matter of life and
death, and people like Claudina Williams need the market for food that won't
make them sick.

CLAUDINA WILLIAMS: You have to find it, it doesn't matter how much it costs
because that's your health.

BILL MOYERS: Claudina uses coupons to help ease the expense of eating right.
A number of states, including New York, encourage low-income people to shop
at farmers markets by accepting food stamps and distributing free food
vouchers to senior citizens and moms.

SARITA DAFTARY: People in low-income communities, people everywhere deserve
the same quality of life, a great quality of life

BILL MOYERS: Back at the Hands and Heart community garden, James and Jeanette
Ware bring this year's growing season to a close.

JEANETTE WARE: I have customers that come every week without fail to get
fresh food, so I'm going to really, really miss them. And they ask me,
"You're not going to keep growing stuff in the hot house or something for the
winter we can come to the garden and buy?" They're going to really miss them,
and I'm going to miss them too.

BILL MOYERS: Next year, the Wares hope to build a children's garden and
they'll grow even more of the produce their customers crave in a new hot
house. It's all part of their master plan.

JAMES WARE: My dream is to sell to stores, delis, that will in turn feed the
community. And many, multiplied by others that are doing the same thing, we
can eventually feed the community fresh grown produce.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think?

MICHAEL POLLAN: It's a kind of thrilling program. You know, a lot of people
talk about the elitism of the food movement. And they think about Whole Foods
and people shopping at, you know, upscale farmers markets. But there is
another face to this food movement. And that's what you see in that film. And
that, there is a real crisis in the inner city with access to fresh produce.
And we know, distance from a source of fresh produce is a predictor of health.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean, crisis?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Crisis because, in West Oakland, a neighborhood sort of like
this, or where I live. I live in Berkeley. West Oakland is an area that has
about 26 convenience stores, liquor stores, that sell processed food, and not
a single supermarket. No source of fresh produce. You might get some onions
and potatoes in that convenience store, but that it is. Yet, it's full of
fast food outlets. So you have, a fresh food desert, in effect. And that is
one of the reasons that people in the inner city have such higher rates of
diabetes. There is a demand for fresh and healthier food that's not being
served.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you heard just how serious a problem diabetes is out in
East New York.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah, one in six. One in six, type 2 diabetes.

BILL MOYERS: And traces to the food?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Right. Largely exercise and food. But in that case you know,
food is really what you've got to look at, and what you can fix. And we have
to understand that that's not the free market at work. The fact that you see
all that fast food and you don't see any supermarkets. You know, oddly
enough, government policy helped get the fast food outlets into the city.
Very well-intentioned small business administration loans to encourage
minority business ownership. The easiest business to get into is opening a
fast-food franchise in the inner city.

So, our government helped that happen. Again, for good reasons. We need
similar programs to encourage the supermarkets to come in, so there is a
source of fresh produce. Or, draw in the farmers markets. And that's why
those vouchers. I mean, we're going to need to supplement food stamps, I'm
sure, in the next few months. Why not offer every food stamps recipient, a
voucher redeemable at a farmers market for fresh, wholesome food? That would,
at a stroke, draw farmers markets, farmers into the inner city, and improve
the diet. Not just the number of calories people are getting, but the quality
of those calories.

BILL MOYERS: But with urban sprawl, and with so many acres of farmland being
turned over to development. Most of us live a long way from a farmers market.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah. I agree. I think one of the problems, since the 50s has
been, a lot of the local farms have been paved over with houses. And we need,
but not all of them. And we need to protect that land. Because we're going to
need it. When the oil runs out, we're going to need to be able to feed
ourselves from within 100, 200, 300 miles. I mean, look. We're shipping - one
of the more significant things that happened when we had this oil price spike
last summer, is the price of moving a box of broccoli from the Salinas Valley
in California, where most of it is grown, to the Hunts Point Market here in
New York, went from $3 to $10.

BILL MOYERS: Whoa.

MICHAEL POLLAN: When that happened, two or three of the big growers in
California started buying farmland in New England. See, they get it. They get
that in the future, we're going to need to grow food closer to where people
live. And broccoli goes really well any where in this country. So we need to
look at high-quality farmland, close to cities like New York and realize,
that it as precious as, say, a wetland, which we wouldn't let you develop
unless you could really prove the need to develop a wetland. We need to
protect farmland.

BILL MOYERS: Here in New York, vacant lots, such as the old dump that became
that garden are being taken over for high-rise development. I mean, that's, a
long-range.

MICHAEL POLLAN: That's going to slow down, there will be less of that.
There'll be more vacant lots.

BILL MOYERS: But how practical, truly practical, is it to think that what we
just saw, a garden in East New York could be replicated across the country in
urban areas?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, it is being replicated. There is a community food
security movement in cities all across the country that are bringing, you
know, starting the farm on vacant lots. Building farmers markets. Bringing
farmers in. It's happening, with very little support. Imagine if it got some
support. Imagine if the farm bill were really encouraging this movement.

Building four season farmers markets, so it's not just in the good weather. I
think it's very realistic. It's not an all or nothing proposition. It's not
like we're going to flip the switch, and we're going to have this localized
agriculture, you know, overnight. We're going to need different solutions in
different parts of the country.

What the people in Iowa, I think, need to be doing, we need to recognize what
they're really growing there is cattle feed. I mean, it looks like corn and
beans, but 40 to 50 percent of that grain is going to feed cattle and hogs.
So what if we cut out all the transportation, the middle man, and actually
put animals back on those farms? Let them grow really high quality grass-fed
beef. You know, that is some of the best agricultural land in the world. And
so we grow meat, back on the land, sustainably. And meat, you can move some
distance to a market. So I think we have to figure out different solutions in
different places, and it's not all or nothing. We need to let a thousand
flowers bloom. We need to try many things in many places, and figure out what
works

BILL MOYERS: Other than write President-elect Obama and support your
nomination for Secretary of the Agriculture, what can people do, ordinary
people, who are not farmers. You've described a very stubborn political
process. You've described a Washington controlled and dominated by the big
industrial farms. There is a sense that people could be demoralized by
listening to you.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Actually, not at all. I mean, the great thing about this
issue, and it's very different than a lot of other issues. It's very
different than climate change, energy and so many different issues we're
grappling with is you don't have to wait for Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama or
Collin Peterson to get their act together on this issue. You can act now.
There are alternatives. You can vote with your fork.

You don't, you know, it's important to vote with your vote as well, for
better agricultural policies. But what's happening around this country is
we're building an alternative food economy. It's being done without virtually
any support from the government. And it's burgeoning. Now, yeah, sometimes it
costs more. Not always. There is a moment in the farmers market where the
tomatoes are really cheap. The potatoes, the apples are really cheap, and you
buy them then, and you know, it's a really good deal. So I dispute that it's
always more expensive. I think that you have to shop strategically and be
prepared to cook. And then you can eat in a budget-conscious way.

So that's one thing. Think of the dollars you spend on food in a different
way. You're not just a consumer. You're a producer too. And you can produce
another kind of agriculture depending on where you choose to spend your
money. So that's point one.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Look at the rise of organic agriculture in this country. It's
now, what, $20 billion business, okay? It grew without any help from the
government until very recently. It grew essentially, consumers talking to
farmers, farmers talking to consumers. They developed this market. Everyone
who is willing to spend that extra money on organic was helping to create a
new kind of farm, a new kind of agriculture.

BILL MOYERS: What else? Give me a list, quickly, of what we can do to make a
difference in this reforming the food system.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, plant a garden. If you've got space, and if you don't,
look into a community garden where you might rent a little bit of space, like
we saw in East New York.

Cook. Simply by starting to cook again, you declare your independence from
the culture of fast food. As soon as you cook, you start thinking about
ingredients. You start thinking about plants and animals, and not the
microwave. And you will find that your diet, just by that one simple act,
that is greatly improved. You will find that you are supporting local
agriculture, because you'll care about the quality of ingredients. And you
know, whether you're cooking or not is one of the best predictors for a
healthy diet. It's more important than the class predictor. People with more
money generally have healthier diets, but affluent people who don't cook are
not as healthy in their eating as poor people who still cook. So, very, very
important. If you don't have pots and pans, get them.

Now people say they don't have time, and that's an issue. And I am saying
that we do need to invest more time in food. Food is just too important to
relegate to these 10-minute corners of our lives. And you know, even if you
would just take, you know, we watch cooking shows like crazy on television.
We've turned cooking into a spectator sport. If you would merely invest the
time you spend watching cooking shows in actually cooking, you would find
you've got plenty of time to put a meal on the table.

BILL MOYERS: Are you suggesting that we're going to have to learn to shoot
our own pigs because if we do, I don't have a fridge large enough for a whole
hog.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, I actually think buying a freezer, Bill, is a really
good investment. Because that's how you can take advantage of the deals, when
there are deals at the farmer's market. I did - I learned how to hunt, when I
was writing "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I haven't hunted since. I actually
think hunting is a very sustainable form of meat production in a lot of
places, where we have way too many whitetail deer. I know that this will
offend some people. So, you know, but producing some of your own food too.
Make yourself a real producer. Put in a garden. I mean, that is not a trivial
thing. You know, it sounds kind of sweet and old lady-like. But gardens are
very powerful things.

BILL MOYERS: How so? What do you mean? Powerful things.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Not only will you discover that a very small plot of land, my
garden now is only 10 foot by 20 foot, produces so much produce, I need to
give it away. I have to spend time figuring out how to get rid of it. So you
will actually get some of the healthiest, freshest food you can possibly get.
It is the shortest food chain of all. But it teaches certain habits of mind
that I think are really, really important. You know, Wendell Berry had a
phrase. He talked about our kind of predicament with regard to energy. He
said-

BILL MOYERS: -farmer, philosopher in Kentucky, right?

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah. And he said, "You know, we're afflicted by this cheap
energy mind," that we, because cheap energy has allowed us to outsource so
much of our lives. You know, we do one thing, right? We do our job, and
everything else, we have a specialist who provides. They entertain us. They
feed us. They clothe us. We don't do anything for ourselves anymore. It's one
of the reasons that when we look at climate change, we feel so helpless,
because we can't imagine doing any more for ourselves.

Well, as soon as you start gardening, it is a cure for the cheap energy mind.
You're suddenly realizing that hey, I can use my body in support of my body.
I have other skills. I can, you know, I can feed myself, if I needed to. And
that is kind of a preparation, I think, for the world we may find ourselves
in. But it's very empowering to realize that you're not at the mercy of the
supermarket.

BILL MOYERS: We have 6.7 billion people on this earth, wanting to be fed. Do
you think that we have a system that it will produce enough food, if we put
into effect what you're talking about?

MICHAEL POLLAN: As long as the sun still shines. There is the energy to
produce the food. The thing we need to remember, when people ask, "Can we
feed the world sustainably?" is that about 40 percent of all the grain we're
growing in the world, which is most of what we grow, we are feeding to
animals. So there's an awful lot of slack there, if we're not eating nine
ounces of meat a day. We're wasting 25 percent of what we're growing. I mean,
there is, you know, there is plenty of food, if we organize our agriculture
in a proper way.

The 'can we feed the world' argument has been used for 50 years to drive the
industrialization of agriculture. It is agri-business propaganda, people who
are not interested in feeding the world. They're interesting in driving up
productivity, on American farms. Yes, some want to export it. ADM and Cargill
want to ship it out to other places, but basically they want their raw
materials as cheap as possible. I'm talking about Coca-Cola. I'm talking
about McDonald's. And the way you keep you need overproduction to do that.
You want your raw materials, if you're producing that McDonald's hamburger,
or Coca-Cola, you're dependent on that corn and soy, and the cheaper that is,
the more profit you're going to make.

BILL MOYERS: I'm sorry that I can't persuade you or convince you to take the
job. You would be a provocative Secretary of Agriculture.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, that's probably a good word for it.

BILL MOYERS: Michael Pollan, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you
for being on the JOURNAL.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Thank you, Bill. Thank you very much.

BILL MOYERS: We were abroad these past two weeks trying to cleanse our
journalistic pipes, so to speak. We thought we could put American politics
out of sight and out of mind for a spell. We were wrong.

Everywhere we went people wanted to talk about America. The Greeks,
Sicilians, Sardinians, Tunisians, Algerians, and Spaniards we met, were
euphoric - cab drivers, guides, waiters, hotel clerks, bank tellers. They
expect miracles from America. Their own economies are imploding: layoffs,
budget shortfalls, failing banks, fear spreading among the populace. They
want to believe that somehow the long arm of America will pull them back. I
tried but I didn't have the heart to tell them just how much trouble their
rich Uncle Sam is in.

Maybe I was wrong not to dispel their illusions about America; after all,
they live on top of the ruins of long-gone empires, whose rise and fall is a
far more familiar and consistent theme of history than democracy's success. I
did my best, to say that America is trying very hard right now to put our own
house in order.

That self-correcting faculty, even in the darkest hours, is the best thing we
have going for us. That and the knowledge that nothing we face in the months
ahead is more than was asked of our parents and grand parents in war and
depression.

This giant of a country is bleeding badly from savage self inflicted wounds,
but what happens next is still our story to write. We can be thankful for
that.

That's it for the JOURNAL. See you next week, I'm Bill Moyers.




  • [Livingontheland] Moyers interviews Michael Pollan, Tradingpost, 11/29/2008

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