Nature's Logic

By Jim Slama, Conscious Choice. Posted July 11, 2002.

It all began with a watermelon. Four-year-old Michael Pollan was hanging out between the hedges at his family home on Long Island when he planted a few seeds from the fruit he had just consumed. Three months later the boy discovered a full-grown melon, an event that permanently imprinted Pollan with a powerful realization: Human behavior is intrinsically linked with changes in the natural world. The fruit itself ended up like "Humpty Dumpty" smashed against the back steps after the child tripped in his excitement to show mom his creation. Yet the event fired an ongoing passion within him to understand nature and its interconnected relationship with humans.

Gardening has been Pollan's path of professional development. His chosen career as a writer gave him plenty of time to contemplate and write about the natural world. His first book, "Second Nature," chronicled Pollan's education as a gardener. "The vegetable garden in summer made an enchanted landscape, mined with hidden surprises, dabs of unexpected color and unlikely forms that my grandfather had taught me to regard as treasures," he wrote.

Such prolific prose combined with a nose for unique stories helped Pollan quickly rise to the A list of American authors. When "Second Nature" was published, he was already the executive editor of Harper's Magazine. Since then he has published two other award-winning books: "A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder," and "The Botany of Desire." "Michael Pollan's writing is so powerful in part due to his mastery of storytelling," says Utne Reader editor, Jay Walljasper. "He gently weaves his personal insights into a story, while maintaining a journalist's perspective. It creates thoroughly enjoyable and informative reading that also inspires a reader to want to do something."

"Second Nature" provided Pollan with an opportunity to portray the human experience with nature through the eyes of a man working the land to produce food. A highlight of the book focused on his war with a woodchuck that was devastating his garden. The experience had a tremendous impact on his worldview, and helped shape the sensibility of much of his future writing.

"It became my personal Vietnam, with these escalating series of measures I was willing to take to eradicate the woodchuck. I was, of course, in the role of General Westmoreland, fully prepared to destroy the garden in order to save the garden," he said. The climax of the woodchuck war had Pollan pouring a gallon of gasoline down its burrow with full expectations of burning the creature to a crisp. Instead, the flames shot out the hole, singed him, and nearly set his entire garden ablaze. "It made me realize that I was behaving badly. But I was behaving a lot like our species does when confronted with the intransigence of other species."

As a result of dealing with the woodchuck, Pollan experienced the rage that nature provokes when its power leaves humans out of control. Thus, he realized the imperative for the industrial agricultural system that now grows most of the food consumed on the planet. It became easier to understand why humans would splice fish genes into strawberries, spray multiple carcinogens on food, and feed livestock hormones and antibiotics in order to manipulate the natural world. "The experience helped me identify with people who use these type of methods to try to control nature," he said. "Humans have a strong sense of entitlement and have figured out ingenious ways to exert their power to deal with nature's intrusions. However, it has produced a system with many failings. Last year alone there were 75 million cases of food poisoning in America."

Ultimately Pollan protected his garden from woodchucks, deer, rabbits, and moles by a five foot fence (a foot of which was buried to deter certain burrowing nuisances.) He considered it an appropriate intervention to keep nature's pests from destroying his treasured work. In this case by utilizing a fence, he chose not to turn his garden "into a toxic waste site" by using poisons and other methods of controls for pest protection. Instead he uses organic methods. "I think there are better ways to approach farming and food production.' he said. "The garden has taught me great lessons about the logic of nature. Solutions are available to create a far more sustainable food system that would also have the capacity to feed the world's growing population. We just have to find and apply them."

Thus his experience inspired him to continue his exploration by examining the ongoing human struggle with nature. The results were a series of cover stories in the New York Times Magazine using modern food production as a case study. Each article has inspired significant public debate and motivated people or corporations to change in some significant way. The first of these compelling features had its roots in an appropriate place: Michael Pollan's garden.

Monsanto, McDonald's, Pollan and Potatoes

Is it a potato or pesticide? That was the question many people were asking after reading the first of Pollan's cover stories that took an inside look into the world of genetically engineered food and its applications in large scale farming. In the article, "Playing God in the Garden," (Oct. 25, 1998) his investigative journalism led him to raise a crop of Monsanto's genetically engineered New Leaf potatoes of his own.

The New Leaf was part of a trend in agribusiness to breed plants that kill pests with built-in toxins. Using a process known as transgenic genetic engineering, scientists take genetic material from one species and combine it with another. In the article, Pollan described how Monsanto combined genetic material from a common soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiesis, (Bt) with a Russet Burbank potato. Bt is a proven natural insecticide that is used by organic and non-organic farmers to kill pests that feed on crops. The natural form of Bt when used by organic growers dissipates within a week. The genetically engineered toxin on the other hand can stay in the soil for a year or more.

By splicing its active ingredient into the New Leaf, Monsanto created a potato that contains insecticide "in every cell of every leaf, stem, flower, root, and -- this is the unsettling part -- every spud," he wrote. To Pollan's dismay, "my potato plants were themselves registered as a pesticide with the Environmental Protection Administration (U.S. EPA Reg. No. 524-474)."

The article depicted the vigor of his New Leafs and how well they performed in his garden. Pollan went beyond the potato patch to explore the efficacy of the New Leafs by visiting a number of people who could bring different perspectives to his quest. Monsanto's corporate headquarters in St. Louis was one stop. It was followed by visits to a few farms in Idaho, two that used New Leafs and an organic farm that was dead set against them. The inquisition also led him to McDonald's, where he purchased some French fries that may have been made with genetically engineered Russet Burbank potatoes. McDonald's preferred the Russet Burbank because its size and shape create the long, lean, perfectly contoured fry that consumers have come to love.

The result was a highly praised story portraying the ongoing battle between humans and nature in agriculture. "With genetic engineering, human control of nature is taking a giant step forward," Pollan wrote. Yet he firmly asserted his belief that humans didn't yet have the ability to build in safeguards for protection against such vast power. "As soon as you start looking into the subject, you find that there are many questions about genetically modified plants that, fifty million acres later, remain unanswered, and more remarkable still, unasked -- enough to make me think mine might not be the only experiment going on."

The questions included relevant issues like the death of Monarch butterflies that consume pollen from genetically engineered Bt corn; the impact of biological pollution from genetically engineered plants on ecosystems; the risk of transferring genes across species lines; and the fact that genetic engineering perpetuates a monoculture system of agriculture which is still dependent on an array of toxic herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, plus large amounts of fossil fuel. As a result, he wrote: "This expensive set of 'inputs' as they're called, saddles the farmers with debt, jeopardizes his health, erodes his soil and ruins its fertility, pollutes the groundwater, and compromises the safety of the food we eat."

The turning point of the article eventually centered on a more basic question. Would he or wouldn't he eat the New Leafs harvested from his garden? Admittedly, he had "eaten plenty of New Leafs already, at McDonald's or in a bag of Frito Lay chips," yet the big bag of potatoes sitting on the back of his porch provided a more delicate dilemma.

In the end, they remained on his porch. When asked about this decision he was blunt. "I wasn't interested in eating them or feeding them to my family. There were better potatoes available," he said. He wouldn't feed them to his neighbors either for that matter. After volunteering to make potato salad for a neighborhood party, he realized that he couldn't serve these potatoes without telling people. "[W]ho, given the choice, was ever going to opt for the one [potato salad] with the biotech spuds," he wrote. The experience filled him with a deeper knowledge about U.S. food policy. "I suddenly understood with perfect clarity why Monsanto doesn't want to label its genetically modified food."

An unpredictable chain of events tied the experience into the next phase of Pollan's work, in which "Playing God in the Garden" was incorporated into his book, The Botany of Desire. The book was an exploration of the notion of co-evolution, the symbiotic relationship between two species in nature that depend on each other for key services. For example, in the dance between bees and flowers on an apple tree, "the two parties act on each other to advance their individual interests, but end up trading favors: food for the bee, transportation for the apple genes," Pollan wrote.

The book makes a compelling argument that the plants actually evolved to fulfill the desires of humans, the dominant evolutionary force on earth. Thus by offering the humans compelling benefits, the plants actually manipulated our species into spreading their genes and taking on the role of a bumblebee. Johnny Appleseed performed this role perfectly as he planted orchards throughout the Ohio Valley to satisfy settlers' appetite for apples -- not to mention their desire for the euphoria of hard cider.

In the case of the genetically modified potato the traits that led to its ascendance as a dominant species in the potato plant world was human, or even more likely corporate, desire for uniformity and control. Genetically engineered New Leafs gave companies like McDonald's another tool in their effort to sell the perfect French fry anywhere in the world. Describing the process, Pollan wrote, "...McDonald's has seen to it that millions of acres of Russet Burbanks are planted all over the world. The global desire can't be gratified without the global monoculture, and that global monoculture now depends on technologies like genetic engineering."

"Playing God in the Garden" made it quite clear that the world's largest fast food chain was an early supporter of genetically engineered potatoes, and that the vaunted McDonald's French fry was often made with New Leafs. "It was an interesting lesson in food politics," Pollan told me. "As a result of this article and others, McDonald's started getting calls from consumers, forcing them to do a cost-benefit analysis on the value of using genetically engineered potatoes in their flagship product. I think what they realized was that they weren't getting much benefit -- things weren't any cheaper and they didn't taste any better."

Within a year of Pollan's article, McDonald's notified its suppliers that it no longer would purchase genetically engineered potatoes for its French fries. Soon thereafter other large fast food chains followed suit. In the end, the market for New Leafs withered on the vine, so to speak, and Monsanto withdrew the product from the market. "'Playing God in the Garden' was probably the single most influential article written so far on genetically engineered food," claimed Andy Kimbrell, president of the Center for Food Safety. "It had an incredible impact on the general public, policy makers, and corporations and appeared to bring about the demise of genetically engineered potatoes."

The co-evolutionary process added a new twist to Pollan's theory, and Pollan himself became the primary force impacting the ultimate downfall of the New Leafs. For when McDonald's realized that consumers had concerns about the genetically modified Russet Burbanks, it became clear to the corporation that they no longer were in control. It's easy to imagine their fear: How about a boycott of their flagship French fries stemming from the fact that the potatoes making them were classified by the EPA as a pesticide? Talk about catastrophic damage to the wholesome McDonald's brand!

Ultimately, New Leafs suffered the same fate as the Lumper, the dominant potato in Ireland during the famine in which a million people died of starvation due to a blight which destroyed most of the country's potato crops in a successive period of years. To combat the disease, potato growers across the globe turned to different varieties with a natural resistance to the scourge. As a result, wrote Pollan, "Today, its genes are as hard to find as the dodo's."

The same may be said sometime soon for the genes of the New Leaf.

Industrial Strength Beef

Michael Pollan's latest endeavor appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in March. It featured a stark photograph of his cow with the following headline: "This Steer's Life, The highly unnatural journey of No. 534 from calf to steak." The article "Power Steer" shared Pollan's perspective as the owner of 534, which he bought to both fulfill his journalistic curiosity as well as to become a more responsible carnivore.

"Meat-eating has always been a messy business, shadowed by the shame of killing and, since Upton Sinclair's writing of "The Jungle," by questions about what we're really eating when we eat meat. Forgetting or willed ignorance, is the preferred strategy of many beef eaters, a strategy abetted by the industry," he wrote. "Yet I recently began to feel that ignorance was no longer tenable. If I was going to continue to eat red meat, then I owed it to myself, as well as to the animals, to take more responsibility for the invisible but crucial transactions between ourselves and the animals we eat. I'd try to own it, in other words."

By tracking the life of 534, Pollan observed a living, breathing example of the absurdity of industrial beef production. "Power Steer" describes a system that is inherently reliant on human intervention to rapidly grow a steer to maturity and slaughter -- a process that used to take up to five years now can be completed in as little as fourteen months.

The rapid growth required in such a system has spawned the use of techniques that take animal husbandry to an extreme. In this system, the use of growth hormones has become a necessity, even though the practice has been banned in the European Union. The raw economics of the process became evident once 534 was moved from the ranch to the local feedlot (population 37,000 cows) and Pollan was given a choice to purchase a slow release synthetic estrogen hormone for the calf. With it, he probably would make money, without it he probably would lose money.

"Power Steer" described the problems with such a practice: "American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to human health has been proved, even though measurable hormone residues do turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls. Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones in feedlot waters; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics."

According to Pollan, the transition from a system in which steers were primarily grass-fed to a system in which they primarily are fed corn mixed with "protein supplements" is at odds with nature's intention. It's a matter of evolution. Cows developed in a way that made grass the perfect food. Their digestive system easily converts the variety of native prairie plants and grasses consumed on the range into all the protein they need.

Corn is a lot cheaper and easier than hay and other grass. So most feedlots use it as the primary component of the diet of their cattle, despite the fact that it is very hard on the cow digestive system. The corn causes bloating and acid buildup, and also creates huge amounts of infectious bacteria such as E. coli 0157, which can be fatal to humans. "Power Steer" describes these things in detail as well as the fact that once cows are removed from pasture at the tender age of six months, they are fed antibiotics each and every day to combat such ailments. This is despite the fact that many scientists blame excess use of antibiotics in animal production for causing antibiotic resistance in humans. As a result, many of the top infection-killing drugs have become useless.

As was the case with the New Leaf potatoes, the corn and the cows are part of a monoculture system that puts the profits and convenience of agribusiness ahead of the needs of consumers' health and safety. "534 started life as part of a food chain that derived all of its energy from the sun; now that corn constitutes such an important link in his food chain, he is the product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel," wrote Pollan. Using the research of Cornell scientist David Pimental, he went on to estimate that the corn in 534's diet will need approximately 284 gallons of oil to be grown. "We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine."

Shedding Light on the Food Chain

"Power Steer" inspired an intense response from readers. Hundreds of letters and e-mails poured into the Times, some proposing to rescue 534. "I've received over a dozen offers to buy the steer, including one from a radio station in New Jersey that wanted to hold a telethon to raise money for it," said Pollan. He was concerned, however, that by not following through he would defeat his purpose. "As part of this exercise I made a set of commitments to myself and those I contracted with to buy 534. To stop the process might compromise the ability of myself or others to do it in the future." At press time 534 was expected to make the final journey to the slaughterhouse in late June.

In Pollan's opinion, one less steer going through the industrial system would not make a difference. "I want to shed light on the food chain -- all aspects of it," he said. "My goal is to help people see the connections between what is happening on their plate and what is happening on the farm. Then they will start asking more questions when they get to the supermarket and hopefully apply what they have learned from it to their food choices."

He used McDonald's as an example of the impact that consumers can have. When customers complained about genetically modified potatoes the chain dumped them. Similarly, when McDonald's was pressured to reform slaughterhouse practices that were literally skinning some animals alive, the corporation responded by changing their system to achieve a more humane (yet far from perfect) system of killing and processing animals. This in turn forced many U.S. slaughterhouses to implement the new system.

A transition to a more sustainable food production system, based on the logic of nature and its applications in organic farming is an appealing future for Pollan. "It is a joy for me to grow my own food by using nature as a model. And large and small organic farms are applying some of the same lessons that organic farmers and other sustainable producers have used for a long time," he said. "As a result of the lessons learned, my family eats a lot differently. If you look in our refrigerator you will find a freezer full of stuff from local farmers -- including grass-fed beef."

From a long-term perspective, Pollan saw great potential with a transition to a grass- fed system. "Think what would happen if we restored a portion of the Corn Belt to the tall grass prairie it once was. No more petrochemical fertilizer, no more herbicide, no more nitrogen runoff. Yes, beef would probably be more expensive than it is now, but would that necessarily be a bad thing?" he wrote. "And how cheap, really is cheap feedlot beef ? Not cheap at all, when you add in the invisible costs of antibiotic resistance, environmental degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil and so on."

In the end, Pollan makes a convincing case that eating grass-fed beef is "something I'm happy to do and defend." Based on his impact with New Leaf potatoes, it might be a good time to start a small family farm producing organic, free-range cattle.

Jim Slama is the president of Sustain and was the founding publisher and editor of Conscious Choice.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »