Market vs. Nature
Posted by Jay on Wednesday, 13 June 2007
For me — given the nominally market-based enterprise on which I spend all my time — the most striking moment of Michael’s Pollan’s presentation tonight was when Pollan described the conflict that Joel Salatin faces between the ecosystem at Polyface Farms and the market for Polyface Farms products.
Salatin’s farm, as Pollan explained, is a balanced ecosystem, where each group of plants or animals performs a service to the system as a whole. The end result is that, from just the energy of the sun and some chicken feed, food is created and the soil is enriched. (I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a handful of farms in this vein, and it’s a treat to see.) Meanwhile, the dominant market for his products is for his chicken eggs and meat.
The conflict is this: for the farm to be more financially successful, it would increase the amount of chickens it raises. But an increase in the number of chickens, without corresponding increases in the number of other animals and acres of land, would throw the entire ecosystem out of balance, and would then require more inputs (probably fossil fuels in the form of fertilizer and pesticides) to continue. In other words, to meet the demand and increase profitability, the farm would have to stop doing its job of creating something from nothing. It would become a factory farm.
I have thought of this a lot in the other direction — coming from the end user, particularly a restaurant diner. When we crave a steak or a pork chop, and go into a restaurant with that in mind, we create a world in which it’s economically sensible for restaurants to always have steaks and pork chops on hand.
And there’s a lot of people, and a lot of restaurants, and only a little bit of steak or chop on each animal…so farmers end up looking for ways to grow as many animals as possible, in CAFOs and confinement houses, just to supply the demand for steaks and pork loins. The rest of all those animals gets practically thrown away, or maybe made into cheap burgers.
The same process happens when we want a tomato-based pico de gallo in March, or whatever. Our desire for unavailable food creates a system of growing lots of tomatoes and shipping them all over the world.
In the free market, once we eaters have even a fleeting notion that we should be able to eat what we want when we want, a whole apparatus springs up to fulfill that. Our desires to eat out of season, to eat only tiny select parts of big animals, to eat animals not likely to live near our community — this, as much as anything — is what has created factory farming.
This picture of one person’s pork chop jones creating a confinement building for pigs is, to me, what Wendell Berry evokes with his now-famous (partially due to Mr. Pollan) statement that “eating is an agricultural act.”
In my opinion, the single biggest step toward sustainability that could be made by communities of restuarants and diners, would be for the restaurants to purchase and use whole animals rather than prime cuts. With the same resources it takes to grow a couple loins to feed a small group of people, you can grow a whole pig to feed a large group of people.
However, in a world where our neighborhood restaurants buy whole animals and prepare each part for dinner, sometimes the pork chops will sell out before the ham does, and the folks who come in wanting a chop will have to settle for ham, or pulled pork, or sausage. Or goat. I spend a lot of time on both ends of that transaction, and I know that this will not be an easy adjustment for many of us to make
In our economy of plenty, near-immediate gratification of our cravings has been an integral part of our whole lives. It doesn’t make emotional sense to give up that quick satisfaction of this food chain custom built for our desires. On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense to continue farming the way we mostly do. Nor does it make sense to live on the products of the industrial food chain.
If that’s the case, than a return to these older ways of eating are hopefully in the cards. The good news is, all those other parts of the animal taste great too.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
[…] Give this man a Food Network show, STAT!: Jay of The Linkery restaurant ruminates on Michael Pollan’s recent lecture and how “when we crave a steak or a pork chop, and go into a restaurant with that in mind, we create a world in which it’s economically sensible for restaurants to always have steaks and pork chops on hand” — and why the whole-animal alternative is better. We wish Jay had a bigger megaphone, because the country needs a chef like him talking about these issues. Even if he doesn’t like us calling him a chef. (Casing the Joint) […]
June 13th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
How about not eating animals at all and thus avoiding the problem? You could avoid both taxing the environment and our healthcare system by choosing a plant based diet of mostly locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Sean has some good points, but I’d find it easier to lead a vegetarian lifestyle if animals weren’t so damn tasty.
June 14th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Until such time as the 290+ million Americans who currently eat meat change their ways, Jay’s suggestion is very relevant. (number from http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/sis8739)
June 14th, 2007 at 8:55 am
For what it’s worth, I would be more than happy to patronize a restaurant that operated in this fashion. Consumers have been trained to want steaks and pork loins, but in the hands of someone who understands, any piece of meat can be delicious (okay, maybe not ANY - but you can make stock with the scary bits ;). I think it would take a movement of chefs and ethically-minded foodies together, but over time, I think consumers can be retrained to appreciate the whole hog, as it were.
June 14th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
“Whole hog”. Now there’s an idea for a themed Tuesday meal. I’d love a quick lesson in butchery as we eat different parts of the animal.
I’ve never killed a mammal, and I’ve never prepared a carcass for the dining table, so I’ve always felt somewhat disconnected from the meat I consume.
(Side comment: Maybe we’d have more vegetarians if we were expected to kill the animals we eat.)
June 15th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Sean, Blasto, Joe — Thanks for commenting. Natch there’s a lot of positive aspects to vegetarianism. On the other hand, as a species we’ve been eating meat for quite a while and IMO it doesn’t have to be destructive if we go back to how we’ve traditionally done it. Plus, the point is well taken: they’re damn tasty. At least the happy ones are.
Courtney, we hope to give you that chance. We’ve structured our menu so that we can order, break down and sell whole animals. Now we’re trying to wrestle the distribution system — which is set up to distribute center cuts — so that we can in fact buy whole animals, raised sustainably, outdoors, by independent farmers. We actually managed it, arranging to buy three 100% Berkshire pigs from John Metzger’s farm in Kansas that were to arrive here (piggybacking - no pun intended - on a shipment from another company) on Monday. Then, in a reminder of the importance of buying locally, the truck broke down in San Jose. As far as I can find out, the trucking company intends to just let the pork sit there in the (refrigerated) trailer even if it takes another week to fix the rig and it spoils. Because, in the world of modern commerce and industrial food, pork is nearly worthless. The idea that these pigs were hand raised and gave their lives for something meaningful is not accommodated by the system. It just kills me.
Doug, we intended to have just such a dinner, but — see above — we may not be able to for a while. We expect to get pastured goat and sheep from Central California next week, though, so perhaps we can do a whole goat or whole lamb dinner. I went to a whole goat dinner last summer in San Francisco which was fantastic (thanks, Ben and Marina).
June 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Update: Happily, the pork did not sit on the truck until it spoiled…the truck was fixed and arrived in San Diego with the meat still in good condition.