The End of Food

Going along with all my other food inspired reading, I picked this one up after hearing Paul Roberts speaking on NPR. This is like Michael Pollan somewhat, except on a global scale. So, instead of talking about Joel Salatin in Virginia and the intricate system that he utilizes to strategically use grass and cow and chicken manure, and pigs, chickens, and cows' natural behaviors to produce an amazing amount of eggs and meat on a relatively small parcel of land, Roberts describes a Japanese farmer who uses ducks in rice paddies. He looks at the global food market and the way the agribusiness and food companies have tried to convert food into any other commodity. Unfortunately, Roberts doesn't have any kind of narrative hook like Pollan (tracing four meals from the field to the dinner table) and the book bogged down quite a bit for me.

But, it reinforced some of the other things I've been reading and thinking about. Especially with regards to meat. It turns out that raising beef is particularly resource intensive--7 pounds of corn to get 1 pound of beef. Chicken is more efficient, requiring more like 2.5 pounds of corn to get 1 pound. But, as developing countries increase their meat consumption to approach per-capita Western consumption, more and more corn will be required; if everybody consumed at Western levels, it is nearly impossible to produce the amount of corn that would be needed.

Combine this idea with the CAFOs that Pollan describes, and I'm thinking that we should eat less meat overall. I don't think we need to become vegetarian, but maybe trending toward flexitarian.