….The Farm Bureau bureaucracy is all hot and bothered because the UWâ??s Go Big Read program – which seeks to promote a campus-wide discussion about a particular book – selected Michael Pollanâ??s “In Defense of Food” as the text students and faculty will be discussing.
“Pollan has narrow and elitist ideas about how you should eat and how farmers should or shouldnâ??t feed a hungry and growing world,” argues the federationâ??s president.
Actually, Pollan, whose work has revolutionized the discussion about food and food production in the United States, argues that Americans should eat locally grown foods – especially plants – and should be wary of the claims of “a 32 billion-dollar food-marketing machine” that keeps telling us the best way to eat just happens to be the way that yields the highest profits for multinational corporations.
….No matter what the motivations, no matter whether the misread of “In Defense of Food” is malignant or misguided, the bottom line is that Pollan is not the problem for working farmers. He may, in fact, be a part of the solution. So it is good that his book is being read by UW students and it is great that he is coming to Madison to further the discussion.