Michael Pollan: “The White House is afraid of BigAg”
– “The question of whether you can feed the world sustainably needs to be flipped around,” Pollan replies. “The real question is whether you can feed it industrially. What we’re learning about climate change is raising real questions about how long that agricultural model can survive.” He continues, “The power of industrial agriculture comes from this paradigm: you start with a very productive seed that under ideal circumstances can produce higher yields than those species ever could before. It’s really impressive. But for those seeds to do their thing and realize their full potential they need lots of water. They need lots of fertilizer. And they need to be defended against pests really vigilantly. Another way of saying that is: you need to protect the environment in which they grow, which farmers have been able to do. But that system depends on consistency. If all we can count on now is that the climate will be variable, that system becomes very brittle.”