Planeta Organico interviews Michael Pollan

Planeta Organico interviewed him in New York, and brings you the points of vue of this organic consumer that believes that " farms produce more than food; they also produce a kind of landscape ".

PO - You start your article mentioning the "Pastoral scene" that is on consumer's mind when he buys an organic product. What pushed you into a closer look at organic product, especially in supermarket?

MP - The expression "organic TV dinner" seemed to me not to fit the organic concept, and looking closely at the organic industry, the pastoral scene begins to get more and more out of focus. The fact is that the big companies have already realized that an organic fruit or vegetable isn’t part of a cultural revolution, but a marketing niche with a turnover of over 7 billion dollars in the USA alone. The big companies also know that health is a matter of the consumer’s perception.

PO - During the interview we'll talk abour the issues raised in your article, but first , please, tell us when and how did you have your first contact with Organic?

MP - It was in seventies, I think. Organic food was something you got in Health Food Stores, and always looked awful. It was not something I was overly concerned with. We used to live in Manhattan and in 1983, we bought a house in the country, when I started gardening. When we bought this house, I started to read organic magazines, I didn’t want to use pesticides, so I got into organic more on the gardening side, more than the consumer side.

My next sort of serious encounter with organics was when I was writing an article on genetic engineering, GMO food, for The New York Magazine, in 1998 – in fact the last chapter of the book "The Botany of Desire", the one about potatoes, is based on that article: "Playing God in the Garden".

PO - What chocked most you during the process of writing the article "Playing God in the Garden"?

MP - In the process of writing that, I was learning a lot about conventional agriculture. I interviewed Idaho potato farmers and learned how potatoes are grown conventionally, which is truly terrifying: 14 applications of pesticide!! Pesticides so toxic that the farmers will not go in their fields for five days after they spray, no matter what. Even if their irrigation is broken down. They know that it is so dangerous that they’d rather lose the whole field than the employees. I've met farmers who can’t eat the potatoes which they’re growing because of the systemic pesticides.

PO - It's really terrifying....14 applications of pesticide !!

"His soil was completely different.
It smelt like life."

MP - So it was a real lesson to me because I didn’t really know how American industrial farming was conducted till I took this trip to Idaho. And there were vast farmers, computer control, very high capital, etc.These are what they call "Clean Fields". Everything is dead except for the one plant you want to grow. The soil is dead. You don’t see one insect. You feel the soil like a powder. It’s not a living thing.

PO - And then you decided to check an organic farm.

MP - The organic people I know were very upset about GMOs. So I went to visit an organic potato farmer and this farm was a completely different place. His soil was completely different. It smelt like life. There was something going on there. And I talked to him about how he controlled disease, his whole philosophy and that was my first extensive encounter with an organic farmer, and learning how they did it. The fact is that he was managing to get excellent harvests, comparable to the conventional farmers, although not as often.

PO - It was a completely different way of culture.

MP - No pesticides. Relying on crop rotation, planting a great variety of potatoes and other crops. Basically what you learn when you’re studying industrial agriculture and GMOs is that monoculture is the problem. It’s growing one thing, in vast amounts.The ideal is polyculture, to group different cultures. So while I was writing this article I thought of writing a whole article about organic. At the same time, the organic market was growing. GMOs were the best thing that could have happened to organics from the business point of view. It created a demand in this country for organic.Organic was the only way you could be sure that your food did not have genetically modified ingredients. The market started growing dramatically. So it was a business story too.

PO - Monsanto replied your article saying the GMO doesn’t spoil the soil.

MP - Well, compared to the toxic industrial agriculture I was seeing, I can see that they can make that argument. I am not sure that it’s true. But if they really have developed a GMO potato that did not need to be sprayed 14 times, yes, they could make the case that it's sustainable.In fact, those farmers were being able to skip one or two sprayings. Even if it’s more sustainable, we don’t really know the environmental effects GMOs have. That’s not saying a lot. But what is curious is that the people of Monsanto genuinely believe that their product is organic, because they were using an organic pesticide: BT. And they were hurt when they were rejected by organics.

PO - And what is your opinion about it?

MP - The fallacy of that thinking is they are going to ruin BT.; they are putting so much BT into the environment in such high doses, that it created resistance in Colorado potato fields. That’s why organic people are so mad. That they have been using BT safely and responsibly for so many years, and Monsanto is ruining that.

PO - Do you think organic and GMOs are incompatible?

MP - One of the questions I ask organic farmers is; "Could you imagine a genetic modification that could be organic?" Some of them could. Some say no. Some of them said: "No, in principle, it’s too synthetic". Others would give interesting answers like: "Well, if you are using genetic modification to advance corn breeding, for instance, and you weren’t taking genes from other species, if you were not crossing the species barriers, but you were just using it to speed up the process within the corn, we could consider supporting that, if all the research was done". I personally don’t think any technology is inherently good or evil, So, there may be a day, some time in the future, when these two things will be not quite so far apart. But, in general, what I learned, is we don’t need this technology...

"So it’s not a question of how much food you produce, it’s a question of who commands the money to buy the food, the distribution.
So it may not be a technological issue…"

PO - : But what about their argument that we need this technology to solve the world hunger problem?

MP - : This is a very complicated subject. I do not think they are entirely sincere in making this argument. Because they are not working on world hunger. They are working on herbicide resistance for commodity producers in industrialized countries. I think their argument is rhetorical, and I think they are appealing to our sense of liberal guilt and concern, and compassion, and I really resent the argument that we, in the first world, have to eat our spinach, so people don’t starve in the third world. In another words, they are saying we should put aside our self-interest, and act for "altruistic reasons", and accept this technology so people in Africa can eat. I just don’t believe their argument.

The other set of arguments goes back to the green revolution, which enormously increased the productivity of crops, but obviously did not do that much for world hunger. The countries with highest rates of hunger are food exporters... So it’s not a question of how much food you produce, it’s a question of who commands the money to buy the food, the distribution. So it may not be a technological issue…

PO - Some people consider being against GMO's is the same as being against progress.

MP - I’m not against research. Science must be done; but my argument is that these products should be labeled, so people know if they are eating GMOs or not, and it should be very well regulated. And it is neither labeled nor regulated. But the growth of organics is very much related to GMOs. People got scared and started looking more and more for healthy food. It makes me a little nervous on an industry that is too dependent on food scares for its growth. I think people need more positive reasons.

Don't miss the second part of Michael Pollan's interview, when he talks about organic processed food, the compromises of being at the mainstream, the important role that restaurant's chefs have.