• In what ways might the practices of Polyface Farms contribute to a solution to the problems Kingsolver and Bittman say come along with industrial food production practices?
  • Based on your review of the criticisms of Polyface Farm, how far, in your view, do the practices of Polyface Farm take us in solving the problems that attend industrial food production?
    • POST REQUIREMENTS: Be sure to quote from at least two of the following texts in your post: Kingsolver, Bittman and Pollan. Be sure to quote/paraphrase and discuss critiques of Polyface using evidence from your web search.  Use Barclay’s Formula, TRIAC, signal phrasing with well-chosen signal verbs, [square brackets], and ellipses in your post. At the end of the post, include a photo of a well-formatted MLA Works Cited page for all sources used in this post (you’ll need to write this in a word processor or Google Docs to get the formatting correct).
  • Bring your Little Seagull Handbook to class with you on Wednesday.

 

Polyface farm does contribute solutions to the problems in the industrial food system, outlined by Kingsolver and Bittman. In the industrial food system Bittman says a locavore is “someone who eats only locally grown food”, and that everyone used to be a locavore. Polyface farm offers a solution to this problem, by growing all their food on the farm and not shipping that food away past a certain number of miles. Before the industrial revolution, all food was eaten is which town it was made. Now food is being shipped hundreds, in some cases thousands of miles. Polyface farm attempts to keep their products close to home to ensure its connectivity to their own community and it’s animals.

A problem about the industrial food production stated by kingsolver ” isn’t ignorance of our food sources causing problems as diverse as overdependence on petroleum, and an epidemic of diet related diseases”.  This coincides with the issue of not knowing where our food comes from, because of how ill educated we are about our food, and the amount of gases and oils used in mass produced food facilities. The world is suppossed to run out of petroleum in the next 50 years, the industrial food system uses “33% of total global warming effect, can be attributed to food production” (http://www.sustainabletable.org).  The industrial food system is a big component of this, and is what a lot of factories operate on.  Polyface farm doesn’t use machines, further seperating them from factory food production.

“About a third of all our calories now come from what is known as community consent, as junk food.” This is a quote by kingsolver that shows how much fast food, and industrialized food has become part of our culture. The convenience and price of fast food is a reason for it’s popularuty, Polyface farm is also popular for the exact opposite reasosns, they grow all their products naturally which doesn’t contribute to the fast food epidemic, and doesn’t contribute to the killing of tens of millions of animals, or the practice of freezing meat.

Mark Bittman writes, “suggest that in the interest of personal and human health Americans eat 50% less meat, it’s not enough of a cut, but it’s a start.” This contradicts what the industrial food system and capitalism is all about, producing the most products to make the most money. Increasing supply so demand will too. Mark is thinking environmentally and more healthy. He knows eating less meat is better for your body, and it’s also heps curb climate change. Polyface farm cows are half of the weight of factory cows, primarily because the cows diet on polyface is 100% gras, and other cows are pumped with growth hormones and antibiotics. This unatural techniques is one of the foundations of factory foods in order to just make more money. Mr. Salatin isn’t all about making money, he and his farm prioritize the animals and the earth before that.

 

“Studies have suggested that free-range and organic chickens may have more negative environmental impacts than traditional poultry products, as the chickens take longer to produce.[9] Additional criticism claims that Salatin’s farm is not scalable, since the Earth—which already uses 26% of ice-free land for grazing—does not have enough land to support free-range meat at current consumption levels”

This criticism does have some truth behind it, the cows at polyface take up 33% more land than industrial size productions and the time to slaughter on polyface (20-29 months) is twice as long as a factory cows. “Given we are already using a lot of land to produce the meat people are already eating, this would not be a sustainable increase.”  Modern technology does allow for more sustainable land use. These criticims are coming from real life scenarios and statistics. The amount of land available for farming is so great but does have a limit. With the population increase in the world, it wouldn’t be very sustainable if every farm went about things like polyface does. With more people requires even more meat production, and an efficient factory that produces more meat in less space is worse for animals but realitically sustainable for people and the current/future challenge of feeding everyone.