- Pollan outlined what this recovery for American farmers and food producers should be. First a post-modern food system should be “resolarized.” Right now it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel to manufacture 1 calorie of food on average, and 55 calories to produce 1 calorie of beef. If any industry should be solar-based it should be food, which was the “original solar economy.” Instead, right now “we are eating oil.” Cheap oil and farm policies subsidize the 5 main crops (and only those crops), upon which the rest of our cheap food system is based. These main crops are planted as monocultures, which require cheap pesticides and fertilizers and produce wastes that are all problems in themselves. Pollan’s solution is not to dismantle the food system but to redirect it. Because of the long-term planning and learning that stewarding land requires, he believes subsidies of some type are essential for agriculture. Agriculture, he stated, should not be a freemarket. By picking the proper incentives we can re-localize, re-solarize, and revive the healing power of balanced farms and wholesome gardens.
- Governments should reward farmers for diversifying away from monocultures. Pollan gave a few examples of where this has worked at scale. They should be rewarded for growing cover crops with the benefit of reducing erosion. Rewarded for returning animals to the mix. Rewarded for the amount of carbon they sequester in soil. Rewarded for halting urban sprawl by keeping farmland intact. In fact farmland should find a similar status as wetlands; developers and communities get “credit” for retaining farmland. Farmers should be rewarded for localize food provision. If only 2% of government contracts for food (as in school lunch programs, or government-run hospitals) required that the food be produced within 100 miles, it would transform the food system.
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