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  • From: Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
  • Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 00:40:54 -0700 (PDT)

His notion of whether food is due for a reformation probably says more about his celebrity and finding his niche culturally. I think a reformation is something people choose , whats going to happen with food will happen out of necessity at some point. Sooner should people decide survival is more interesting than convenience.

I also read Berry differently. For me Berry appears less focused with how one consumes, and more on how one produces both farming and non farming related. Its hard not to keep remembering quotes about people who in any given day 'no longer touch anything they've made with their own hands'. I think that's harder so see in a place like Berkeley which like every other city is consumed with too much noise and pulled in too many different directions ( I lived there for around 10 years a long time ago) to know itself at all.

 No shortage of folks who think a city is this (politically) or that (socially), but these hairs are something urban culture can split which I've never had the senses to comprehend. To me cities are just airports without runways, and Berkeley really wasn't an exception beyond having a transition element named after it.  Probably not many berkeley locals realize that before Alice and Micheal made their mark, there were plenty of cambodian and vietnamese truck patch farmers 'organically' farming 1rst street just east of the racetrack and the old garbage dump (still there in the early 80's) with bok-choy by the barrel full, until they were displaced by upscale restaraunts and breweries which probably bear the 'organic' seal somewhere. Had they written books and had Presidents eaten at their stands Berkeley might have been a different type of city. Berkeley farms is still a supermarket label, trouble is in spite of mike and alice's celebrity, no one can seem to tell me where the berkeley farms even were....

Hope its not too far off topic.


--- On Sun, 7/5/09, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 8:27 AM


   "Actually I met Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and at some point, apropos
of nothing, he went into this incredibly eloquent riff about farmers'
markets. He just loves farmers' markets. He said, 'You know, this isn't
about food, this is about community. People are starved for community.' And
he's absolutely right. And I'm amazed that the U.S. Secretary of
Agriculture has that insight. ... At my farmer's market, people go whether
they are going to be cooking or not. They go to hang out. They go because
they're going to see their friends. They go because there's politicking and
music and massages and all these other things happening. And it's just as
important."


Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
By David Beers, The Tyee July 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141072/

Michael Pollan's famous motto for a smart, healthy diet is "Eat food. 
Not too much. Mostly plants." Add to that: "And when you happen to be 
on your publisher's expense account, splurge." The night we met up to 
chat at a place of his choosing, he tucked into a roasted slab of 
B.C. wild Chinook salmon, a tangle of salad greens and several 
glasses of good Okanagan Pinot Gris in the swank environs of the Blue 
Water Café in Vancouver's Yaletown neighbourhood.

Pollan, who lives in Berkeley, California, has championed the cause 
of stronger local food networks with his bestsellers The Omnivore's 
Dilemma and In Defense of Food. He was in town to sign books and 
headline a sold-out picnic fundraiser to preserve the University of 
British Columbia's urban farm as a working laboratory for sustainable 
agriculture. His rousing talk drew a standing ovation, and even a few 
tears.

As a dinner companion, Pollan is loose, friendly, and, as you might 
expect, intellectually omnivorous, peppering his interviewer with 
more questions than he was asked.

Along the way, he sketched the current state of food politics inside 
the White House and within his own home. He was surprised to learn 
the 100-Mile Diet was launched in British Columbia (on The Tyee) and 
said meeting 100-Mile Diet creators Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon 
is on his list of things to do (message delivered, Alisa and James). 
He compared today's food movement to Martin Luther's reform of the 
Church and he predicted certain breakdown for a North American food 
system far too dependent on cheap energy and big corporations. 
Between bites, here's what else Pollan shared …





  • Re: [Livingontheland] Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System, Pete Vukovich, 07/06/2009

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