by John
Via Clark Stooksbury comes wind of this terrific piece by Caleb Stegall, which reviews the most recent books by Michael Pollan, and begins with a terrific story about Kansan farmer secessionists.
The locals probably couldn’t tell you the first thing about the politics of secession, but the Spirit of ’76 showed up in force. Damned were the federal busy-bodies who tell local farmers what they can and can’t sell; condemned were the centralized agents of agri-business who want ID chips implanted in livestock; mocked were the credentialed witch-doctors from the department of agriculture who own the brand “organic.”
I reviewed Pollan's In Defense of Food for a forthcoming issue of Touchstone, and I also talk about it in my soon-to-hit-the-newsstands AmCon cover piece on "culinary conservatism" (an issue which will also feature an interview with Pollan conducted by Rod Dreher), and so I can vouch for the excellence of the books that Stegall is reviewing. One thing that Pollan very often misses, though, but which the farmers Stegall is talking about see quite clearly, is that the right response to many of the problems with our food system would really involve quite a lot more capitalism and freeing of our markets, rather than less of it. If small farmers and other would-be entrepreneurs could be freed from the burdensome regulations that make it so insanely difficult for them to (1) get started and (2) keep their businesses running without constantly looking over their shoulders at the gummint, they'd be in a much better position to compete with the Walmarts of the world than they presently are. (Consider this a small part of my long-overdue response to Russell Arben Fox.) In this vein, Joel Salatin's Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal (the very awesome title essay can be found here), which I'm right now in the process of reviewing, is a must-read - that both Pollan and Dreher, who spent considerable amounts of time talking with Salatin in researching their own books, tend to downplay this side of the story seems to me to be deeply unfortunate. (Note that it now seems that way to Rod, too.) Read Stegall, though, for a terrific summary of what's wrong with our food system, and a hopeful vision of why it's small-scale capitalism that's going to be the primary engine moving us into a newer, better future.
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