Neoliberalism in the food industry

2800 miles in a 2002 Subaru Forester makes for a long, albeit, fast drive. However, speeding along at the upper double digits through the vast emptiness of Utah while listening to “An Omnivours Dilemma,” reduced hours to short periods of intellectual discovery. The best part? That I have the opportunity to use the digested anecdotes from Pollan’s book as anecdotes of my own in this blog.

What allows humanity to persist? Besides our intellect, we have a growing resource of monoculture crops to support our ever-expanding cities, and waste lines. As Pollan notes, corn is found in not only corn, the vegetable, but also corn the animal feed, corn the sugar, corn the building material, and corn the ethyl alcohol. Corn is one of the constructs that defines today’s human culture. We are the children of the corn.

It’s not just that corn is grown large scale; corn is grown on an agro-industrial scale. Truthfully, there isn’t anything wrong with corn. The problem lies in the neoliberalist manifestation that is the corn industry.

Pollan points to the fact that animals raised on corn are less nutritional to eat than animals raised on grass, or their historic (natural) diet. This is seen in Omega-3 and Omega-6 levels­­­ - both of which are needed in an ideal ratio in humans, a balance that is not found in corn-fed livestock. Processed corn, in the form of cereal or otherwise, is also less nutritious for humans. The latter is due to the way the corn is grown at an industrial level – details that I would have to cite to use in this blog, and given that my copy of “An Omnivores Dilemma,” is in an audio format, is tricky to do.

So, what does the corn industry do to counteract the reduced nutritional benefits of their product? They rebrand. They augment their corn flakes with the would-be naturally occurring vitamins. They call their cereal (or beef) healthy, and they charge an extra dollar for it.

What am I getting at? The corn industry does everything it can to get an extra dollar from us. However, we can only eat so much… So they rebrand their food, they add vitamins, they sell seeds that cannot reproduce and force growers to only use their brand… all of this with the support of the federal government to supplement costs of corn to be used in ethanol in our gas, and the fact that low-grade corn is used in just about everything.

I agree that there is an inherent dilemma in the Anthropocene: we use, without accounting for the associated environmental costs; a cost that, if accounted for, would leave no industry profitable. However, we, as in the average citizen, have no real say in whether or not the industry is held accountable for their environmental impact, as we are the buyer. We don’t want costs ‘added,’ nor do we want to have to plant a tree for every 1000 miles (or however much) we drive our cars. If we were to say that we wanted change, and that we wanted to account for the environment, we simply would not be able to sustain or afford our lifestyles. Thus the neoliberal machine drives on, sowing the seeds of the Anthropocene as it

Comments

[Jennifer Shriver]

Sam, great points. The externalized costs, if accounted for, would put so many industries out of business.
Would that be a good thing?
Maybe only the businesses that are using "seventh generation" philosophy would survive.
Those businesses that think about the all their choices and impacts, and how those will affect people, ecosystems, animals, the environment for seven generations!
That's your grandchildren's grandchildren's kids. A hard thing to even hold in mind.
And the seven generation philosophy can include considering the lives of our great-great-great-grandparents (if I'm counting right).

That philosophy, like the Long Now project, seems so missing. Externalized costs -- the people who will be affected through generations and years of time out in the misty future.

If we're not thinking about it, it will be always misty.

[Cody Janousek]

Golden Hoof farms is a great example of corn growing at its finest. Not only do they use hierloom seeds that are less intensive upon the environment, they don't use monocrops as you mentioned. Having grown up in Kansas, I can tell you a bit about corn fields. They're creepy. Not a single insect is in sight most of the time and towards the end of the summer the stalks grow upward of 7 or 8 feet. We should think of the systems that are reinforcing the planting of corn for a second, though.

Livestock use a tremendous amount of corn, however, an increasing amount of corn goes to the production of corn ethanol. Certain legislation promoting the use of ethanol as a "cleaner fuel source" has enabled the corn ethanol lobby to form a coalition that has a great deal to lose from corn not being easily produced. Meanwhile, for every gallon of ethanol produced from corn there are several hundreds of gallons of water needed to grow the corn for that ethanol. The trade-offs here don't consider the environment.