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Published on Visualizing Ecology (http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecowinter)

shaun libman

“…what the Treasury is really subsidizing are the buyers of all that cheap corn. “Agriculture’s always going to be organized by the government; the question is, organized for whose benefit? Now it’s for Cargill and Coca-Cola. It’s certainly not for the farmer.”   -Michael Pollan

I find what Pollen focuses on in The Omnivore’s Dilemma is the psychology, the human dilemma, trying to distinguish what is right and what is wrong. I find this to be the most engaging place to discuss our food industry from. When looking at why farmers are producing crops that loose them money it is pertinent that one looks at it sensitively from a variety of perspectives. To say that it’s plainly the government manipulating the farmers is narrow-minded. It is the product its self, the corn in this case and it’s the farmers and there needs. The farmers are people who brag about getting the biggest yield of corn and this as important to the story as anything ells.

 

            When looking at dilemmas that are in some way largely affected by government and big corporation’s we loose understanding of what part everyone has in the issue. Pollan fallows the process as best as he can. Now I can see more clearly the relationship between the farmer and the government and companies like coca-cola and it is truly sad that these people are getting suckered into growing this highly engineered corn. As I read I realize more and more the absurdity and the magnitude of corn’s effect on us. Often Pollan endows corn with human like traits and though this is in its self strange, I think it has it reasons. He wants us to understand everyone and everything that is part of this system that makes our food.

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Source URL:
http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecowinter/visecowinter/shaun-libman-2