Rebecca Brito
Pete Knutson, PhD
Anthro 201, Wednesday
April 11, 2012
Response Paper 1: Omnivores Dilemma
This
is my second time reading Omnivore’s Dilemma. This book impacted my thoughts
about food so deeply, that there is a nostalgic apprehension in revisiting the
text. Michael Pollan’s brief discussion of Frits Haber and the roots of
fertilizers and pesticides lingered with me long after reading the book. In
reviewing the book a second time, the description of corn processing in the
wetmill stood out to me. Putting these two sections together with the past year
of learning through the SAGe program, and experiences in my own garden really
affirms for me that I am on the right track. Here I am, two years later,
hearing the call to action, again.
It
is fitting that Frits Haber was introduced through the revelation that ammonium
nitrate, originally used in World War II in explosives, was now being used as a
fertilizer. His professional and personal life seems to be a huge life of
contradictions. As a cultural Jew, I was deeply saddened to learn that this
great Jewish brain contributed to the Holocaust. He was fixing nitrogen in
1909, creating poisonous gasses by 1915 and helping with Hitler’s war on Jews
and other non-Aryan groups. And yet, in 1920, he received a Nobel Prize for
nitrogen fixation and the possibility to feed humanity, while he was in the
thick of creating tools for the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of
people, of his own people. Of course I have abstained from inorganic
fertilizers ever since reading this passage as much for personal health and
environmental reasons as moral and political.
There
is an appearance of efficiency in industrialization, both in the isolation of
nitrogen and its fixation, as well as in the use every piece method of corn
processing. Pollan does an excellent job introducing the concept in the amount
of energy going in to these and other industrial food processes. We know that
isolating nitrogen takes a lot of energy, as does running the factories that
process corn, transportation of the food and food products.
Pollan mentioned
that Naylor’s farm had probably lost half of its topsoil, going down to about 2
feet of topsoil in an area that originally probably had about four feet. The
description of crop rotation in the section was brief, but we can infer that if
corn was only grown twice every five years on the same plot of land, there were
more than corn and soybeans in rotation prior to the late 1940’s when
fertilizers where introduced to the farmer. In those days, farmers used
well-documented crop rotations of both species and varieties to create
genetically diverse farms with periods of fallow, covers cropping, and manure
fertilization that allow nutrients to be kept in the ecosystem they originated
in. The introduction of man-made fertilizers on the farm was most detrimental
because it defrauded the farmer of the knowledge of soil science, a diversified
business model, and separated the animal from the land in a joint effort with
the tractor and mechanized farming. Going back to the farm, we see how much
energy is wasted in the industrial food system that robs the soil of what it
needs to support a healthy farm.
Wetmill corn
processing has me grieving for the corn and food generally. We are so removed
from the intention of food, nourishment and temptation to the senses, that we
created a mess of compounds and slurries that leave us unsatisfied, and craving
more. It is on that note that I decided to break away from industrial food and
grow my own. The journey away from industrial food is complicated. I have felt
like it is elitist, as being both a time and money poor individual, I have
found myself back and forth across the spectrum of industrial fast food to slow
organic. I think that the biggest challenge for me has been in filling my
knowledge base to live the seed to table vision. I grew up on kid cuisines
frozen dinners, burnt steak and boiled to mush veggies. Now starting my third
year in my garden, I have been challenged with frosts, fertility, pests and diseases.
It’s been pretty frustrating, really. Learning can be that way. Hopefully the
raccoons will leave the chickens alone, fungus won’t attack my squash, and I
have invested enough energy behind compost and chicken manure to have a
fruitful harvest. This year, I am growing for fresh salads and veggies,
stocking up on broccoli, peas and beans, and preparing pasta sauce and salsa.
Wish me luck.
