Self-Appointed Experts

There are numerous persons generous with their views on what is wrong with the world’s food production. Michael Pollan is probably the most vocal and therefore well known of all the food movement’s self appointed experts. Next in line would probably be Dr. Marion Nestle, who this past weekend joined the “Occupy Wall Street” group with her own agenda, “Occupy Against Big Food”. Both Pollan and Nestle are quick to point the finger of gloom and doom at large scale food production, touting that they “only want to make the food system healthier for people and the planet”. That is all fine and good, and you would be hard pressed to find a farmer with either a large scale or small scale farming operation who doesn’t agree with the goal of providing consumers with safe, healthy food choices. What experts such as Pollan and Nestle don’t provide are ways to feed the world’s seven billion people through local and organic food production alone; reason being, because you can’t. So what is the answer? I certainly don’t pretend to know. But what I do know is that we can’t write off ninety percent of the world’s population because they don’t fit the food movement profile.