Analysis Of The Omnivore 's Dilemma, By Michael Pollan

The impact of NAFTA on Mexico and its farmers is undeniable. In the year 2000, the United States government subsidies to the corn sector totaled an estimated $10 billion. These subsidies have led to

Agricultural subsidies is a very complex and controversial economic topic today. It will continue to be a hot topic as government continues it. It is largely debated in the United States as well as in other countries. The reason it is so largely debated is because it literally have an effect on the entire world market. Not to mention that the farm has been booming the last 5 to 10 years. This topic also tends to draw strong opinions in our area in particular due to the large agricultural community in our region. However, even within different states there are many supporters as well as opponents to these government subsidies.

One does not necessarily expect books about food also to be about bigger ideas like oppression, spirituality, and freedom, yet Pollan defies expectations. Pollan begins with an exploration of the food-production system from which the vast majority of American meals are derived. This industrial food chain is mainly based on corn, whether it is eaten directly, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose and ethanol. Pollan discusses how the humble corn plant came to dominate the American diet through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors. The role of petroleum in the cultivation and transportation the American food supply is also discussed. A fast-food meal is used to illustrate the end result of the

What am I exactly eating? Where does our food come from? Why should I care? “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” may forever change the way you think about food. I enjoyed Mr. Pollan’s book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and learned a great deal of information. Pollan’s book is a plea for us to stop and think for a moment about our whole process of eating. Pollan sets out to corn fields and natural farms, goes hunting and foraging, all in the name of coming to terms with where food really comes from in modern America and what the ramifications are for the eaters, the eaten, the economy and the environment. The results are far more than I expected them to be.

Corn is not the ideal nutritious food. It wreaks havoc on the animal;s' digestive system and gets turned into sweeteners that makes people obese, aside from giving us an unhealthy diet. In other words, the industrial food chain that American man is sustained on is largely based on corn, whether in its direct form, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose, and the cheapest forms of these are high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol. The former, particularly, through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors, appears in the cheapest and most common of foods that constitute the American diet. It is the ingredient that results in obesity, and, since it appears in the cheapest products, the ingredients that more poor, than wealthier individuals, consume.

Pollan’s style of writing has often left me in confusion from some of the details he provides. In chapter 3 of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” it’s clear to me how and why farmers previously used burlap sacks for their corn and that in 1850’s they had to transition to the system of commodity corn due to the invention of the grain elevator in the 1850’s. However, what I don’t understand is the technical issue between the burlap bag and the grain elevator that caused the inevitable scheme of commodity corn. Why couldn’t the elevator store the burlap sacks? Furthermore, if the elevator couldn’t accommodate for the sacks, then why was it invented that way?

Michael Pollan explains in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, that the Industrial food chain has taken over America. With most of our products made of corn and processed beyond imagination, the industrial food chain is a cheap and convenient way to make food. Because it is so cheap to make, it is also very cheap to buy. Fast food restaurants such as McDonald's and Burger King use highly processed food, too. But, the Industrial food chain is the most unhealthy food chain and has been a large benefactor to the growing amount of heart attacks in the United States. The CDC states,“In 2013, a total of 2,596,993 resident deaths(from heart attacks) were registered in the United States—53,714 more deaths than in 2012. The crude death rate for 2013

In the book Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, he talks about our national eating disorders started and the impact it has on the world. Pollan argues with the nature of its supermarket and how it is linked to our food production. In saying this where do these foods come from? What are they made of? And who produces it? His self-discoveries covers the ins and out of our food systems through industrials corn, pastoral grass (organic food), and the forest (hunting-gathering). In the Chapter “Our National Eating Disorder”, Pollan points out how we Americans supermarket seems to be artificial and does not progress towards nature; plants and animals. Pollan gives the surprising fact that most of the world eats a fifth of its meals in the car, that fact is absolutely amazing (Pollan 11). The astonishing fact shows that America’s food industry has indeed changed. The debate is whether the change is good or bad. The book entails that the food industry that we currently have tries to keep up with the vastly growing population of the United States. The population of the United States has grown significantly since the 1970s. The industrial food production is designed for all Americans to view our food system as the best food system, but an average consumers lack knowledge of the food they eat which is genetically modified that been taken from nature and created by mankind.

Michael Pollan in 2006, published a work that has to some degree changed the way that people eat, or at the very least attempted to change the way that we think about the food we eat. (Shea 54) Pollan demonstrates through fundamentally modern rhetoric the relationship that people, and more specifically American’s have with food and how very distant we are from it. ("History, Old Favorites in" B08) To some degree Pollan, others like him and internationally challenging food shortages and even worse food born illnesses and scares are changing the way that food is understood with regard to an international and national food traceability and accountability movement. (Popper 365) Pollan challenges the “industrial food chain” looking at

This article is completely relevant to our current geography, living in Midwest means we are surrounded by flat land, perfect for farming. Many people that live in Illinois often make fun of the fact that farmland is all we have around us; no mountains, no volcanos, just corn. This article made me realize how truly important the conservation of the Midwest is for the production of the abundance of food we consume as Americans. Almost every food we consume can be traced back to the production of a single plant, corn. Many years ago farmers were producing an abundant amount causing the price of corn to plummet. This soon changed after farmers began processing. If human interaction causes corn to be scarce then it will have an unraveling effect

In a world where close to one out of every nine people are starving, having food prices rise due to corn being wasted on ethanol, is detrimental to the poverty stricken of this world and makes their lives even harder because they cannot afford basic food (Hunger Map 2015). The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) created a mandate for Ethanol production in the united states that increases every year till 2022, in 2022 the mandate will be thirty-six billion gallons of ethanol produced in the United States (Stop Fueling Par 4). This mandate creates extremely high demand for ethanol production, which uses ample amounts of corn to produce ethanol, because of this, demand for corn increased dramatically causing prices to rise. Once corn prices began to rise, farmers started to grow more corn because they could sell it at a higher price, also they switched from growing other crops to growing corn so they

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Secretary of agriculture Henry Wallace introduced farm subsidies as a “temporary solution to deal with an emergency.” That emergency was a collapse of farm incomes with 25 percent of the population depending on agricultural earnings (Riedl, 2007). But today farmers make up just 1 percent of the population and farm incomes are well above the national average, making the original purpose of subsidies irrelevant (Kelley, 2016). On average, the United State’s Department of Agriculture spends $25 billion on farm subsidies every year with the majority being handed out to large farms and corporations. Through these subsidies, the government has created an exceptionally large welfare system for farmers (Edwards,

Mat Habrock spoke today about one of tne of the biggest challenges that agriculture has ever seen is knocking at the door. Food shortages are a daunting reality if our agriculture industry is unable to supply the resources needed for the estimated nine billion people who are expected to inhabit the earth by the year of 2050. Producers are asked to make a collective 70% increase in food production to diminish these grim possibilities. Increasing food production is not enough though, consumers will also want diversity and choice. Mat believes that Nebraska will be on the forefront to increasing the production of resources to supply the ever growing demand. Many opportunities will become available and it is our generation’s duty to get involved.

Beginning in the 1930s, agricultural subsidy programs were established in the United States to address the issues of inelastic supply and demand of the agriculture market along with the nature of the industry that faces uncertain performance in terms of production and demand, which can vary greatly from year to year (Urry, 2015). Through several reiterations of government policy surrounding these subsidy payments, the majority of direct payments are now being received by large, for-profit farming companies (Urry, 2015), further incentivizing them to mass produce crops easily grown and

The United States’ immigration policies and United States ownership of Mexican land is hindering the economic property of Mexican farmers. Ever since the Trump administration and the hard crackdown on immigration laws, farms in the U.S. are suffering because of the lose of a majority of their workers. With an estimated 50-70 percent of these farm workers being illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, most aren’t wanting to attend work out of fear of deportation. This is creating major problems for the United States’ agricultural industry, and is also causing perfectly good crops to be left to rot in fields because there is no one picking them, thus contributing more to the United States’ food waste. Some farmers have decided to do something about this and come up with a better solution that would benefit both the farms and the immigrant workers.