Jolley: “Fadism” Strikes Jonathon Foer & Other Anti-Ag Writers
11/09/2009 07:20AM
There is a serious case of ‘fadism’ attacking the brain cells of too many writers who presume to know something about our food supply and how it gets to market. They’re quick to pick up on the tired attacks mounted by the likes of Michael Pollan and, without doing the necessary research to validate those thoughts, quickly reword ‘boilerplate’ phrases without truly understanding the facts behind the food business.
The list of sinners is long, undistinguished and disingenuous. There is a chattering cabal of rarely-been-west-of-the-Hudson River or east-of-the-Cal-Berkeley-campus pseudo-experts who travel on the same midnight train to an eco-purgatory where all food is suspect, meat and poultry is particularly deadly, and the evils of factory farming will force us into an unsustainable, doomed lifestyle that will eventually kill our planet.
Jonathon Safran Foer is the latest to join the Pollan school of ill-literary research. He is the Brooklyn born vegetarian who first popped up on the Larry King show about ground beef. Supposedly a critically acclaimed author of several books of fiction, he’s been beating the P.R. drums to promote his new book, “Eating Animals,” which will be poorly placed in the non-fiction department of your local Barnes & Nobel.
If you see the book in the non-fiction section, please feel free to move it over to the fiction side of the aisle, no need to ask permission from the B&N clerks. Read More
I’ve talked about Foer in previous entries on this blog. He insists on repeatedly using indefinable terms that conjure up negative images to describe family farms and ranches. As easy as it would be to write this guy off since he has no real grasp of food production in this country, we still must work on teaching people that his version isn’t accurate. I’ve already had people using him as a source while discussing issues with me. He isn’t a source about food production. Farmers and ranchers are the real source. Why ask a reporter about farming when you can ask farmer? That is the message we need to be sharing with our consumers. ~TH
2 comments:
That's easy - because the farmers are trying to sell their product at the least cost of production, often sacrificing the integrity of the animals and land they are working with. Farmers are therefore less likely to tell the truth about what they are doing than a reporter who is researching the repurcussions of mechanized agriculture.
Thanks for the opportunity to educate you about farming and ranching. First off, the cost of production and selling price have nothing to do with each other. So your first sentence doesn't really make any sense.
Next, when dealing with livestock, any shortcuts you take that don't benefit the animal will automatically decrease the ability of that animal to grow and live. So sacrificing integrity would hurt a family's chances of staying involved in agriculture. Along with that, if you don't manage your land properly, you won't be in business very long either. That's just common sense.
Mechanized agriculture dates back for centuries. Various versions of the plow have been around for thousands of years. I would hate to see the repercussions of going back to before we had tools to use in agriculture.
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