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Spring 2012 Food Politics, Eleventh Pbworks Upload

Page history last edited by Brandon_Vaccaro@student.uml.edu 11 years, 11 months ago

Upload Guidelines

 Use the table below to upload your link/title, name, and a short paragraph explaining why you chose the article/video you selected, and how it relates to the class reading or discussion.

 

To sign in, register your email (if I haven't already done so) and wait for a response, then go from "view" to "edit" above and fill in the relevant info in the boxes below. If you are going to require more than a few minutes to upload your comments, please draft your comments in a word processing program and paste them here, as only one person at a time can be editing a page. Also be sure to click on the "add link" button (above right) to hotlink your selected url. Once you are done, click on the "Save" button on the bottom left. Be sure to save your work when you are done, otherwise you will stay logged in and someone else will probably steal your lock. I will go over the mechanics for doing this in class -- if you are having difficulty uploading anything, just send me your link and comments, and I'll do it for you (but I would prefer that you figure it out eventually...).

 

I also would strongly prefer that you get your uploads in by the evening (i.e., not the middle of the night) before they are due, so I can have a chance to read them and integrate them into our discussion the next day.

 

 

 

 

Link and Title
Student Comment
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxTfQpv8xGA

Polyface Farm


Kayla Walkling   

I read chapter 8 of Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, titled “All Flesh is Grass”. In this chapter, Pollan describes his experiences with Joel Salatin at the Polyface Farm, where a variety of crops and animals are raised on a large area of pasture land. In one season, Salatin expects to produce 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork, 10,000 broilers, 1,200 turkeys, 1,000 rabbits, and 35,000 eggs, along with crops. Salatin does not use chemical fertilizers or pesticides, however he is not certified organic and does not support the organic label because it has been transformed into another large industrial system. This video shows the process behind the Polyface Farm, featuring Salatin and others who discuss their reasoning for beginning the farm. While this system seems very appealing in that it is cyclical and involved a variety of species each contributing to the overall production of healthy grass on the farm, I think it’s important to recognize that this system is not the ideal for a world population this large. Salatin believes the industrial system to be unnatural and unsuccessful, however his approach isn’t necessarily practical for producing the needed amount of food. I think it’s very admirable that Salatin has such a passion for a simple, pastoral system, and he has clearly developed an effective way of farming that is much more profitable for himself and less harmful for the environment (compared to corn and soybean farmers that are mentioned earlier in Pollan’s book). 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/dining/05glute.html?pagewanted=all  Mary-Kate Hazel  I decided to focus on Pollan's chapter entitled "The Processing Plant: Making Complex Foods." Food processing is something that really interests (and scares me). The fact that so many of our food products come from corn is astonishing. I thought MSG only came from seaweed, but it actually can be derived from corn, too. So, I decided to read up on it a little more. I found this NY Times article from a few years back which talks about all the places MSG crops up in our foods that we may not expect, and while MSG may have been a little over- villainized in the past, I think that it is still important to be vigilant about the use of it so abundantly in processed food. In general, Pollan's chapter brings up a lot of good points about corn-based additives. If nature provides us with foods that are already whole and nutritious, why do we feel the need to manufacture foods the way we do -- that is, taking out the good stuff, adding in some fake stuff, and then fortifying it with some supposedly better stuff. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, this just seems messed up to me. It makes no sense. Our bodies don't know how to process the chemicals in an apple-flavored fruit snack, but they do know exactly what to do with an apple. It's just common sense to me. 
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/235045/  Derek Keenan   

I read the first chapter in Omnivore's Dilemma on Corn. Basically, it goes more in depth into a subject we are vaguely familiar with, that corn is pretty much in everything that exists everywhere. Corn is in most processed foods and drinks, in the wax coating vegetables and the outside of cardboard boxes, and is even used in the construction of buildings. Why is this? Pollan and others would argue that this has to do with the prevalence of corn in American society. This article that I linked sums it up pretty well, "Out of the $260 billion taxpayers spent on agricultural subsidies between 1995 and 2010, $16.9 billion went toward four common food additives: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy oils, according to the "Apples to Twinkies" report by U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy group." So corn is in everything and some farmers definitely have an incentive to grow it. Would you say this is a good thing or a bad thing?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200759,00.html  Sal Schiano 

In this chapter Grass “Thirteen ways of looking at a pasture” Pollan discusses the different ways we see grass and can utilize it. He describes how grass fed beef got its name. The science behind how cattle grazes the pasture and the right way to approach this. The meat system could be a lot different and produce a lot less pollution if we allowed cattle to graze, eat and defecate in a natural manner allowing the system to operate. We do not need to be growing corn, mass producing it, packing it with additives, shipping it across the country and feeding it to our cattle. The entire process can happen as naturally as possible through the techniques Pollan explores. We can allow the sun to feed the grass and photosynthesis to take place and create food for the grass, then the cattle eats the only organism that can produce food from light (a plant i.e. grass.) Next the cattle processes the food and defecate onto the same pasture it eats from, this helps the grass grow, and the cycle repeats. Another thing Pollan talked about was how the “grass farmer” (because they grow grass to feed the cattle…they don’t grow cattle) uses different kinds of grass so there is never a gap between seasons. Also, the cattle actually has a choice from the (salad bar) different kinds of grass they want to eat. 

 
 http://www.economist.com/node/7887994 Steven Kakuba  In Chapter 2 – The Farm, Pollan spends time with George Naylor, a corn farmer.  There are many issues raised in the chapter about farms: how farms today yield much more corn, but it now takes more than a calorie of fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy whereas prior to chemical fertilizer, two calories of food could be produced on just one calorie of fuel energy.  While the changes in farming techniques and productivity changed the landscape to monoculture and the counties to have less diversity of and fewer people, animals and crops, the biggest glaring issue is why so many farmers plant corn even though corn prices are so low.  Pollan explains briefly the subsidies provided by the government and how the political process affects our nutrition and our environment. 

The article I have posted here from the Economist, explains more in depth the issues with the farm subsidies and how corn in particular is singled out and affects the whole world when it comes to commodity/food prices.  In fact, what the US does in subsidizing corn and other crops is against World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. 

While I do not want farmers to go bankrupt, we must adjust the system to have a market for other crops and they must adjust to grow things other than these subsidized crops which will improve the American diet, environment and global price discrepancies.

 Why Choose Organic? — With Myra Goodman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InTmTPxm4NE

 

Michael Pollan Talks Organic Food – Is it a good investment?:

http://simpledailyrecipes.com/10282/michael-pollan-talks-organic-food-is-it-a-good-investment/

Alicia Robillon 

I wanted to focus on chapter nine, Big Organic, because I have been purchasing more products that are organic lately and wanted to hear some of the criticisms of it. I knew before reading the chapter that there are some shady things happening with the organic market (as with any other), but it is still rather discouraging to read. It seems as though no matter where a person turns in our society there is a large corporation influencing their lives. Everything is becoming corporatized—food, schools, hospitals… which, as the financial crisis of 2008 has shown, is not benefitting the large majority of society. It is sad to hear of all the hopes and dreams of the organic famers becoming compromised in the name of the bottom line, rather than the common good. The first video that I posted is a PR clip for Myra Goodman, the “tanned, leggy, and loquacious forty-two-year-old,” co-founder of Earthbound Farms, “a company that arguably represents industrial organic farming at its best.” I’m sort of ambivalent about the whole industrial organic situation, as I’d definitely prefer it over the conventional methods but still do not completely agree with it. At least it is not all bad news. As Pollan states, “The Goodmans estimate that taking all that land out of conventional production has eliminated some, 270,000 pounds of pesticide and 8 million pounds of petrochemical fertilizer,” from being applied. The second is a brief and compressed overview of the chapter’s main points in interview form with Michael Pollan.

 

Article on corn subsidies.

http://st4tic.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/corn-subsidies-how-congress-is-shortchanging-our-health-and-sweetening-things-for-the-food-industry/

Article: Too Corny

http://scienceguy288.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/a-strange-system-food-too-corny/

Video: Did you know it was all about the corn? with Michael Pollan & others

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xThSnJb8miQ&feature=related

 

Amanda Parhiala

I chose to read ch. 2 "The Farm".  In this chapter Michael Pollan visits an Iowa farmer George Naylor.  During his visit Pollan spoke with Naylor about the history of his farm and the founding of it by his father and his recent return to the family farm in the 70's.  Naylor like most farmers are struggling to make ends meet in most cases making enough to feed their own families.  This chapter was informative but after reading it I extended my search to the internet. 

The first article roughly explained the subsidies and the cause and effect they have on the farmers. It creates the need and mentality for the farmers to create a surplus of corn to be able to gain enough profit to live, keep there farms and keep there businesses.  The environmental cons of this is the use now of super seeds and fertilization that creates resistant strains of such things as E.coli among others.  Also all three posts and Pollan make reference to erosion of nutrient rich soils, feedlot concerns, and pollution into the waterways travels into the Mississippi and into the Gulf where it is affecting that ecosystem. 

From these 3 resources and the chapter in Pollan's book it seems pretty clear to me the government is and has created/ing a very large problem for the dying breed of American farmers.  The ones that profit greatly are those corporations who depend heavily on cheap corn and corn byproducts to sell their own products.  Not to mention the government regulations on ethanol and the requirements to have it in the gasoline.  The government is now responsible for rendering or assisting to render this problem.  Farmers are going broke and out of business right now regardless of the demand and production needs being high. So some solutions to limit production, tax the corporations and sustainable farming efforts may be a turning point. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH-Qv3f73x4&feature=related
James T. Murphy

The chapter that I chose to focus on for this weeks’ class was entitled The Consumer: A Republic of Fat.  The basic summary of the chapter was that we, as Americans, are consuming more calories a day that we ever have before.  Not only are we consuming the highest amount of calories per day but they are cheaper than they have ever been.  To understand why the chapter talks about how the U.S. government subsidies corn, which in turn is how it becomes so cheap and as economics stands to reason, manufacturers will use the cheapest readily available resource to sweeten their products, which in this case is corn and all of its derivatives.  This short video that I found on YouTube is a condensed version of the chapter that I had to read, and just summarized up above.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tert-Butylhydroquinone

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/031318_TBHQ_food_preservatives.html

 

http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/perfect-mcdonald-8217-style-french-fries-home-192700419.html

Fahmina Zaman

When I was reading the Fast Food, I came upon a shocking paragraph about TBHQ, which according to Michael Pollan and A Consumer's Guide to Food Additives, is a form of butane and is allowed sparingly in our food. Only .02 percent of it is in a Chicken McNugget. However, it can cause nausea, dilirium, suffocation, collapse and death! So it isn't enough the McDonald's and the fast food industry as a whole is causing obesity but hey, "...five grams of TBHQ can kill". According to its Wikipedia page TBHQ is also added to frozen fish and fish products, lacquers, resins and varnishes.

Also, reading along about Pollan's "Mickey D's" adventure, I coincidentally found this article to make homemade McDonald's fries!

http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/04/our-corn-driven-agriculture-vulnerable-climate-change  Josh Capiga 

The Chapter I read in Omnivores Dilemna had to deal with corn. More specifically how  becomes processed, either through processing plants or wet mills. Each use a decent amount of fossil fuels.  Through processing, corn can become a myriad things. more often though it is turned into high fructose corn syrup which is in everything we eat and drink from soda to cool whip.  the waste of this process can even be use to make feed for farm animals.

This article discusses the ever growing climate change problem and how that will reflect the U.S corn market. corn is usually grown in the mid-west, but if the temps keep rising soon the best place to grow corn will actually be in Canada...Maybe Cargill will move its operation north, but what about the old farm land? this article suggests using the land, to graze beef cattle. an interesting suggestion, but i believe if we lose our corn fields we are going to have to deal with bigger economic and social ramifications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/to-new-england-fishermen-another-bothersome-barrier.html?_r=2&hp  Josh Capiga  Also, another interesting article on sea food.. 
 http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/29/grass.grain.beef.cookinglight/index.html Brandon Vaccaro  The chapter that I choose to read in the Omnivores Dilemma's dealt with the system in which our beef is being fed and raised. Over the past 50 years modern cattle production has been getting quicker and quicker, in the early days it took a cow 4 to 5 years to reach maturity, now it takes 14 to 16 months. Also the chapter talked about how the diet we are feeding cows today is the cause of most of the sickness found in cows today and is also a contributing factor as to why beef is bad for you. This ties into the article that I posted as it deals with the costant debate between grass and corn fed beef. The author was able to eliminate most of the higher costs of grass fed beef if it was bought in bulk and it could be a viable option for a large portion of america. 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 

 

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