The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [67]
The salty quotes I got. Speaking in a rapid-fire delivery that sounded like a cross between Bill Clinton and a hopped-up TV evangelist, Salatin delivered a scathing indictment of the “organic empire.” I struggled to keep up with a spirited diatribe that bounced from the “Western conquistador mentality” and the “clash of paradigms” to the “innate distinctive desires of a chicken” and the impossibility of taking a “decidedly Eastern, connected, holistic product, and selling it through a decidedly Western, disconnected, reductionist Wall Streetified marketing system.”
“You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? Make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer’s bookshelf. Because what you’re feeding your emotions and thoughts is what this is really all about. The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview. You can learn more about that by seeing what’s sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms.”
I asked him what was on his bookshelf. J. I. Rodale. Sir Albert Howard. Aldo Leopold. Wes Jackson. Wendell Berry. Louis Bromfield. The classic texts of organic agriculture and American agrarianism.
“We never called ourselves organic—we call ourselves ‘beyond organic.’ Why dumb down to a lesser level than we are? If I said I was organic, people would fuss at me for getting feed corn from a neighbor who might be using atrazine. Well, I would much rather use my money to keep my neighborhood productive and healthy than export my dollars five hundred miles away to get ‘pure product’ that’s really coated in diesel fuel. There are a whole lot more variables in making the right decision than does the chicken feed have chemicals or not. Like what sort of habitat is going to allow that chicken to express its physiological distinctiveness? A ten-thousand-bird shed that stinks to high heaven or a new paddock of fresh green grass every day? Now which chicken shall we call ‘organic’? I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the government, because now they own the word.
“Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians—we just want to opt out. That’s all the Indians ever wanted—to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn’t care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can’t bear an opt-out option. We’re going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, bar-coded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.”
Whew…
As I indicated earlier, I got my quotes, but in the end I didn’t get my food. Before we got off the phone, I asked Salatin if he could ship me one of his chickens and maybe a steak, too. He said that he couldn’t do that. I figured he meant he wasn’t set up for shipping, so offered him my FedEx account number.
“No, I don’t think you understand. I don’t believe it’s sustainable—or ‘organic,’ if you will—to FedEx meat all around the country. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”
This man was serious.
“Just because we can ship organic lettuce from the Salinas Valley, or organic cut flowers from Peru, doesn’t mean we should do it, not if we’re really serious about energy and seasonality and bioregionalism. I’m afraid if you want to try one of our chickens, you’re going to have to drive down here to Swoope to pick it up.”
Which is eventually what I did. But before I traveled to Virginia for my week on the farm (“your Paris Hilton adventure,” as my wife called it), I spent several weeks touring the organic empire to see if Salatin’s criticisms, which had taken me