"Wait a second," says Kenner. "I thought if you had something you think is good, you let them know and they can choose? Isn't that what the free market is? Not letting us have this information goes beyond food — it's very un-American."
Paying the real price
One of Food, Inc.'s most frustrating scenes follows a family of four to the produce section of the supermarket. Says the mother: "Sometimes you look at a vegetable and say, 'Okay, well, we can get two hamburgers for the same amount of price.' "
As Pollan points out in the film, that's no accident. "Bad calories" are cheaper because "those are the ones we're heavily subsidizing" via farm policies that favor crops like corn and soy. It's no accident either that the biggest predictor of obesity is income level. Or that diabetes is an epidemic.
"You're not seeing the real price tag when you go to the supermarket," says Kenner, who points out that an uninsured person with diabetes "could be paying $1000 a month for medicine. Is that 'cheaper' food? You can't have health-care [reform] in this country without changing the food system."
But how, exactly? The population of America in 1959 was about 180 million. Today, it's just under 310 million. It's inarguable that feeding that many people requires more than just a sun-dappled patchwork of rolling green fields, like the one on the cover of The Food of a Younger Land.
Clearly, corporations will have to continue to play huge roles in food production. But if there's no going back to the simple agrarian existence depicted in Kurlansky's book, that doesn't mean there can't be serious reform.
It won't be easy. Food, Inc. shows how agencies like the USDA and FDA — under both Democratic and Republican administrations — are oftentimes rife with alumni of the very corporations they're supposed to regulate.
Meanwhile, it introduces us to Barbara Kowalcyk, whose toddler, Kevin, died in agony after contracting E. coli from tainted meat. And we're told that the FDA's food-safety inspections dropped precipitously in the past three decades.
"With all the scientific advancement, the irony is that food hasn't gotten safer," says Kenner. "There's always been food-borne illness, but we're probably more vulnerable to it now than we've ever been." (Lest we forget, the genetic ancestor of H1N1 swine flu was bred and spread on a factory farm.)
Kenner sees parallels between agribusiness and another industry that was forced to change its ways. The tobacco companies, too, "had incredible wealth," he argues. "Incredible power. Totally connected to government. And they put out misleading information about the health effects of their product. But we beat tobacco."
Beyond ceasing subsidies for unhealthy foods, the goal could be to increase subsidies for locally grown produce, say, and grass-grazed meat. Sadly — not least for the members of the "Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture" Facebook group — that seems unlikely, at least in the near term. After all, new AgSec Tom Vilsack comes from Iowa ("the Tall Corn State"), and his appointment won cheers from the Corn Refiners Association and jeers from the Organic Consumers Association.
But sooner or later, we'll need to better subsidize our small, sustainable farms. "For small-scale farmers to earn a living, they have to charge a lot for their food," says Kurlansky. "That's how all this bad food happened."
"We have to figure out how to support small farmers," agrees Kenner. "And ultimately, we really need to figure out how to support local so we can create communities that we want."
Michelle Obama's White House garden is a nice gesture. And the revived popularity of farmer's markets, of buying and eating local, is a healthy sign. Kristi Ceccarossi, co-founder of Boston Localvores, says the Hub, in particular, is "in a really amazing position. There's a farmer's market almost every day of the week somewhere in or around the city." Add in several community-supported agriculture programs (CSAs) and even a community-supported fishery, such as the new Cape Ann Fresh Catch, and it's clear that we're better off than most. "The challenge," she concedes, remains "reaching people outside the Cambridge/Whole Foods audience."
Nonetheless, the explosive popularity of Whole Foods — and the fact that organic food is the fastest growing sector of the American food industry — is a positive step. Even if these days the word "organic" has become all but meaningless, with dozens of previously independent producers now bought up by conglomerates like Kraft and ConAgra.
Then again, maybe that marriage between corporate lucre and high ideals is just the solution we need to fix things. "Organic doesn't necessarily mean you're getting healthy food to eat," says Kenner. "As Michael Pollan said, is an organic Twinkie better for you? But then, on one level, it absolutely is. We're not poisoning the land."
There's no going back to the happy, wholesome harvests that get the mouth watering in The Food of a Younger Land. Corporations and big-time agribusiness are here to stay. But they can feed us better, in a healthier and more sustainable way. We, as voters and consumers, are the ones empowered to make sure that they do.
In the meantime, it's clear that like "the financial crisis, this system can't continue," says Kenner. "At some point, it comes due. But we're going to hopefully find alternatives really quickly. I think there's a real hunger for this."
Mike Miliard can be reached at mmiliard[a]phx.com.
