{"id":79062,"date":"2009-12-12T23:52:14","date_gmt":"2009-12-13T04:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/?p=135694"},"modified":"2009-12-12T23:52:14","modified_gmt":"2009-12-13T04:52:14","slug":"author-michael-pollan-on-organic-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/79062","title":{"rendered":"Author Michael Pollan on Organic Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The November\/December\/January 2009-2010 issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.organicgardening.com\/\">Organic Gardening<\/a> magazine is running a special feature with award-winning author <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelpollan.com\/\">Michael Pollan<\/a>. In the special exclusive interview, Pollan speaks candidly about what\u2019s truly organic, First Lady Michelle Obama, what he sees for the future beyond organic, what\u2019s missing from our food chain, and discusses the question, \u201c<em>Can organic feed the world?.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-135723\" src=\"http:\/\/images1.blisstree.com\/files\/2009\/12\/872959_wild.jpg\" alt=\"organic food \" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t checked out the issue yet here are some cool select quotes from Michael Pollan\u2019s interview. with Organic Gardening:<\/p>\n<p><em>Pollan on what\u2019s truly organic\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cOrganic is in danger of being co-opted.  I\u2019ve been on organic factory farms, and if most organic consumers went to those places, they would feel they were getting ripped off.  I think organic risks a real crisis of perception if the values that they\u2019re selling don\u2019t accurately reflect the practices they\u2019re engaging in.  They\u2019re organic by the letter, not organic in spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Pollan on First Lady Michelle Obama\u2026<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe future is [people] really making the connections between food and energy and climate change, and food and health care.  Watch what Michelle Obama is doing.  That\u2019s really important stuff: her emphasis on fresh food.  She talks about organic, but she [also] talks about fresh.  Basically, getting away from processed food is key.  And if you\u2019re eating produce, and it\u2019s not organic, it\u2019s a big step up from eating processed food.  All these partial steps are very important.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Pollan on the question: Can organic feed the world?<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c\u2026Even if you can\u2019t feed the world organically, and I don\u2019t know that you can\u2019t\u2014there are very good arguments that you can\u2014even if you just feed half the world organically, you\u2019d be doing so much for the land, so much for our health, so much for the atmosphere, that it\u2019s well worth doing.  So the fact that you might not be able to get all the way does not damn the effort to try.  And so I don\u2019t think people should be discouraged by that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut \u2018can organic feed the world?\u2019 is a question really up for grabs.  The honest answer is, we don\u2019t know.  I\u2019ve seen research that suggests with really smart rotations and cover cropping there is enough nitrogen to do it.  I also think that if we changed our relationship to meat, we probably could.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Pollan on if he prefers local foods to organic foods\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cNo, I don\u2019t.  I support local, because in my experience here in California, local is organic\u2026But if I were a supermarket shopper I would, because you can\u2019t meet farmers face to face and you don\u2019t really know what they\u2019re doing, so to the extent people depend on the supermarket and are not interested in the farmers\u2019 market, we need organic.  If people are willing to put in more time and like the farmers\u2019 market experience\u2014because it is more than food that\u2019s on offer there\u2014[then] local, definitely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The whole &#8220;<em>Can organic feed the world question<\/em>&#8221; is a big deal right now with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ecohuddle.com\/forum\/thread\/2166\/are-organic-foods-categorically-worse-for-the-planet\">recent slams on organic<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/wait-organic-food-is-more-healthy\/\">the media<\/a> and Michael Mack, chief executive of <a href=\"http:\/\/syngenta.com\/en\/index.html\">Syngenta<\/a>, a Swiss agribusiness giant that makes pesticides and seeds. Mack noted, \u201c<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ecohuddle.com\/wiki\/the-dirty-dozen-must-have-organic-fruits-and-veggies\" >Organic food<\/a> is not only not better for the planet\u2026 it is categorically worse.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 The piece on Mack was run in the <a href=\"http:\/\/greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/25\/agribusiness-chief-slams-organics\/\">New York Times<\/a> and one of his issues was that organic can&#8217;t feed the world, which may have some truth to it, but is not 100% by any means and the theory hasn&#8217;t been tested. I like Pollan&#8217;s take on that &#8211; the whole we haven&#8217;t tried, and if we did it would so much better in the long run for the planet and our health and so on. Very cool.<\/p>\n<p>Find the full article &#8220;<em>A Conversation with Michael Pollen<\/em>&#8221; in the November-January 2010 issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.organicgardening.com\/\">Organic Gardening Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>[image via stock.xchng]<\/p>\n<p>Post from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\">Blisstree<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blisstree.com\/articles\/author-michael-pollan-on-organic-food\/\">Author Michael Pollan on Organic Food<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The November\/December\/January 2009-2010 issue of Organic Gardening magazine is running a special feature with award-winning author Michael Pollan. In the special exclusive interview, Pollan speaks candidly about what\u2019s truly organic, First Lady Michelle Obama, what he sees for the future beyond organic, what\u2019s missing from our food chain, and discusses the question, \u201cCan organic feed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}