Omnivore's Dilemma: Organic Industry

The need and demand for "organic" food, whatever that even means anymore, is a big topic in Michael Pollan's book. Pollan proceeds to attempt to explain the industrial organic complex: which can be described as the large-scale farms and good processing areas that supply the ever growing demand for organic food. Pollan uses Whole Foods as an example to try and explain that even though food is labeled organic, consumers may not be buying wholly organic food, as he later explains is nearly impossible and not at all sustainable, and instead buying into the idea and lifestyle of eating organic thanks to creative and deceiving marketing.

To exemplify his point, as described above, Pollan spends some time with Joel Salatin, a truly organic farmer - not to mention very eccentric individual - who runs a successful farm in Virginia. Salatin's small farm insists on selling locally and relying on himself, the various animals on his farm, as well as mother nature to provide 100% organic food since nothing has been imported/exported and everything is grown using resources and techniques provided by nature. After spending time with Salatin, Pollan realizes the extreme difficulties of actually providing authentically grown and organic food and why there aren't too many farmers that are willing to go 100% organically when the challenge is so great. Salatin describes his work as being fused together mentally and physically and that he sincerely believes in an organic lifestyle. Instead, most farmers take the easy way out and industrialize the job, keeping things "mostly" organic.

After this, in the final section of the book, Pollan attempts to prepare a meal using only ingredients that he has hunted, gathered, or grown himself. He hunts boars, gathers wild mushrooms, and uses greens from his own garden among other things. What he concludes is that the meal him and his family ate from McDonalds and the meal he prepared himself are, "equally unreal and equally unsustainable" (Pollan).

While this statement made by Pollan is a little unsettling he does have a point. If the farm that Salatin works on and sustains is the standard for producing organic food, it just is not a realistic expectation of food production for how many people live in the world today and the different locales people inhabit. However, creating false ideals and using deceptive advertising on organic products like the industrial organic complex does is not ideal either. This being said, Pollan has a point that most farmers are not willing to go as far as Salatin does, and thus we get a mix of food that we don't really know whether it is organic or not. The bottom line is, there may not be a real solution to our food system or the way we produce food anytime in the near feature. I think Pollan's desire and job was to merely inform people to become aware of these issues and realize the danger of the industrial food complex so that we may enact change and pay more attention to what we are eating.