Organic Food Juxtaposed with Industrial Food

I've found through some research that one of the leading causes for organic food consumption is to avoid the misgivings associated with the other food option: industrialized factory farms.  There are stigmas attached to these places, some true some untrue, yet nevertheless it is still important to note the major differences between both types of farming and why these disparities exist.  An interesting quote in Mark Winne's Closing the Food Gap gives insight into perhaps why America is currently known for its addiction to all foods processed.  "'We made sacrifices during the Great Depression and World War II,’ I heard many adults say, ‘but when it comes to food, were are now free from physical work and scarcity’” (5).  The adults quoted are average Americans during what Winne describes are the U.S.'s food "Middle" or "Dark" ages: the 50s and 60s.  The rise in families and the shift in technology after WWII could have unarguably led to the quintessential 50s "TV Dinner".  The Americans of yore yearned for comfort, for ease after hard times, and the 1950s were considered "Happy Days" for many (espeicially the Fonz).  


All of this is very interesting to me because despite the seemingly consensual agreement that there was no problem with food in America during the 50s and 60s, the U.S. still managed to change during the late 60s and 70s.  Of course this was the hippie counter-cultural movement catalyzed by the Vietnam War, promoting all things un-American, which at the time included organic food.  And thus, the organic food movement began, albeit in humble, scattered grassroots fashion.  


Vietnam War aside, however, there were, and still are today, major issues with the American industrial food sector that spurred, and continue to spur, part of society to rebel.  There are health, animal rights, and environmental hazards abound in and around confined animal feeding operation (CAFOs).  According to David Kirby's Animal Factory, agricultural feedlot miasma have near 170 different chemicals, many of which cause debilitating human health problems and rearing cattle is a worse greenhouse gas producer than driving cars.  Kirby describes a dairy farm as having "manure-smeared animals...jammed onto strictly confined tracts of land" (7).  He writes how all the grass in the feedlots was gone, replaced by dirt, urine, and excrement of many cows.  A commonly used phrase nowadays seems to be that cows were designed to eat grass, and when they don't have access to it barely at all, it's hard to imagine that's good for their health.  


There are obviously various issues with factory farming, and they are directly juxtaposed by Kirby as he describes a more old-fashioned dairy farm:  "...she had always delighted at watching mothers and their calves gamboling about the green pastures of their valley home.  She figured they were doing whatever it is that cows do at peace in their world" (6-7).  Although this image is somewhat contrived and cliched, it nevertheless seems that our old-fashioned, grittier way of life was turned upside down over the years to many peoples' excitement and comfort.  But as the megalith that is agribusiness proliferated after decades of compounding growth, some caution was tossed to the wind in submission to the incessant demand.  According to the CDC, "More than one-third (35.7%) of U.S. adults are obese.  Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2-19 are obese."  And if you look at the website linked before the quote paying attention to the obesity progression over the past 25 years, the growth is staggering.  Besides some of the qualms provided above by Kirby regarding today's most profitable food system, it seems that system, or something else, is fueling our country's rampant unhealthiness.  But that is another topic entirely.

Organic Food's Rise and Dip

For the time being, I will be writing blog posts that pertain to my junior theme research paper.  Although we've been working on the paper for some time now, this is my first post where I feel confident in the direction of my thesis, which is exploring the recent growth of organic products in American society.  Contrary to this, however, is an article that I found while researching on the New York Times home page, one of my go-to sites for reliable sources.  The article's title is "Organic Dairies Watch the Good Times Turn Bad", and at first this didn't really surprise me all that much.  We've been living in an economic recession for the past few years, so undeniably people would start to cut back on things deemed as trivial, things like organic food.  This phenomena goes against my paper's exploratory question thus far: "Why has organic food become so popular recently" because of how even though organic products peaked before 2008 after progressive growth, it suddenly dropped in about 2008/2009 (the New York Times provides the helpful graph to the right to show the linear progression in the case of organic milk.)

The article, published on May 28, 2009, says, "As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry."  The article also says that farmers have been told by their "conglomerates" that due to the lack of demand and the excess of supply, milk production must subside by 20 percent.  That, sadly, puts many small-scale farmers out of work.  One Vermont farmer in the article named Ken Preston said, "'I probably wouldn't have gone organic if I knew it would end this way.'"

Preston's remark stirred a thought in me about why people "go organic", and thus why it has become so progressively popular.  There is often a difference, I've seen, between why people in supermarkets buy organic and why farmers farm organically.  It's apparent in Preston's case that, although organic foods are nice, it's really all in the name of profit, and profit depends on the choosy stay-at-home parent sifting through piles of various fruit.  No one can see a recession coming, but if Preston had, he probably would've used conventional farming practices, or whatever would make him a living of course.  Despite this downturn in organic food in 2009 especially, there has still been considerable growth from where it used to be, so there must be something strong that still causes regular people to buy organic even in tough times.  In a report titled "Recent Growth Patterns in the U.S. Organic Foods Market" done by Carolyn Dimitri and Catherine Greene of the USDA, "Growth in retail sales has equaled 20 percent of more annually since 1990.  Organic products are now available in nearly 20,000 natural foods stores, and are sold in 73 percent of all conventional grocery stores."  Why the growth is what I'm looking into right now for the next blog post-update, but it seems major retailers selling organic products are definite signposts in the dense forest that is this complex issue.

Introvert vs. Extrovert

Being introverted runs in the family, it seems.  My Mom is self-proclaimed introverted and shy, her mother was, and now, so am I.  For a long time, I was always that shy, quiet kid, and still am in many respects today.  Although I've grown a bit from how timid I used to be, it has always been a deeply-embedded part of my personality and psyche.  To put it honestly, I've for as long as I can remember been a bit embarrassed and somewhat ashamed by my natural timidity, but my insecurities were reassured when I saw the Time Magazine front cover "The Power of (Shyness)".  I wish I could link the article for you, but unfortunately it is only available to online subscribers.  I will attempt to seek out the most important, pertinent, and interesting quotes and ideas for you to get the full picture.

As you can imagine, this cover truly beckoned me.  I was very excited and intrigued to find that someone had written about this topic, and I'm sure some of you would have been too.  One of the first and important parts of the article included the differentiation between shy people and introverts.  Although I've sort of been using the terms as though they're synonymous, technically shy people are anxious about social situations and introverts just prefer to be alone more.  I deduced, however, that these two qualities probably go hand-in-hand.

The author, Bryan Walsh, says, "Simply being an introvert can also feel taxing--especially in America, land of the loud and home of the talkative" (42).  The article often references how we live in a world of extroverts, or very outgoing, gregarious, people.  It mentions some of the world's famous extroverts and introverts.  Take, for example, Joe DiMaggio and Mohandas Gandhi, both introverts, or Steve Jobs and Bill Clinton, both extroverts.  Although, as Walsh writes, there are ambiverts in the middle of the personality spectrum and usually people aren't completely one side or the other, it is often easy to see what bio-genetic tendencies people have.  The following questions are selected from a little mock personality quiz.  See if you or someone you know is an introvert or an extrovert:

1. I prefer not to show my work or discuss it with other until it is finished
2. I do my best work alone.
3. I feel drained after being out and about, even if I've enjoyed myself.
4. I concentrate easily.             
5. People tell me that I'm a good listener.

It might be easy to tell the slant of these questions, but if you answered yes, that means you possess an introverted characteristic.  

It's ok if you did.  In fact, it should probably make you feel a little good because according to author of Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking in the article, "'Extroverts are much more likely to get really excited by the possibility of a reward, but because of that, they won't always pay attention to warning signals...Introverts are much more circumspect'" (44).  Also, the article quotes professor of psychology at Florida State University K. Anders Ericsson about other introversion benefits.  "'You gain the most on your performance when you work alone...And the introverted temperament might make some kids more willing to make that commitment'" (44). 

If you're reading this and feel bad that you or someone else you know is an extrovert, don't feel this way.  Extroverted people have a lot going for them, but are rarely overlooked, unlike introverts.  The pensive introspection that often comes with introverts can't be seen by others, yet many times it should be.  Introverts aren't just spacing out and ignoring society; more times than not they are thinking, and this can behoove a person every once and a while.  I don't mean to sound defensive or facetious, but it really is true.  Outgoing people, although they often probably would consider themselves right in many situations, can learn from quiet people and vice versa.  People are not locked in to one personality, and thank goodness for that.  To quote the last line of the article to end my piece, "I'm happy to be an introvert, but that's not all I am."      

Because It's There

In response to an Outdoor Education class movie we watched today about professional rock climbers, I began to ponder one of the thoughts brought up during the movie: why do people do such dangerous and physically strenuous activities for little to no benefit?  My teacher told us (unsurprisingly to most) that rock climbing as a profession is not filled with fame, money, or luxury.  These guys live out of their cars, so climbers do what they do for personal fulfillment mostly, it seems.  But over time, their fingers get messed up, and ultimately they each have a close encounter with death or terrible injury at some point during their careers.  Is personal fulfillment a good enough reason to do such crazy things?

On the New York Times home page, I found a video about an ice climbing competition in Colorado which was quite similar to the video I saw in class today.  In it, one of the competitors says, "When I rock climb, I feel like I'm moving up to the true potential of a human being.  You know, it's like I'm not bound by the money I have, or the house that I live in, or the car that I drive.  I'm allowed to be free in such a primal way.  I feel like it's just living."

People feel an intense passion to explore their abilities through conquering nature.  In a somewhat like-minded idea, it is commonly believed that British mountaineer George Mallory said the words "Because it's [the mountain] there" to justify his love for climbing, and the phrase has turned into a kind of mantra in the climbing world ever since.  It succinctly, yet somewhat incompletely, epitomizes the need for humans to climb mountains and do whatever else in nature that might be taxing or dangerous.  I always associated the ideas behind climbing, skiing, and other sports as similar to those of industrialization, but after hearing some of the thoughts from the New York Times video, I'm beginning to have some second thoughts.  For instance, some believe that the world was created with obstacles that were meant to be conquered, and the best place to look for these obstacles is in nature.  Just look at recreational hunting; it's mankind showing dominance over the wild.  But it seems as though people don't climb to conquer, as with hunting, but more to be free.

Whether you agree with hunting or not, is it right to adamantly try to declare superiority over our surroundings in other ways?  In America we see it distinctly; skyscrapers have sprouted up in places where there were no established buildings in less than a couple of centuries, and after a mere 28 years since declaring independence, Lewis and Clark set out to explore the West.  That West was then settled and established as a part of the United States culturally homogeneous to practically the rest of the country in less than 150 years.  If I were to go to Wyoming, there would be Wal-Marts, supermarkets, Chuck-E-Cheeses, and shopping malls.  If I were to go to Delaware, there too would be Wal-Marts, supermarkets, Chuck-E-Cheeses, and shopping malls all identical to the ones in Wyoming.  All of these societal locales have replaced what used to be open land, uncivilized wilderness.  This conquering of wilderness has always been one of mankind's greatest intentions, but also one of its greatest controversies.

If you listen to the video, it's hard to not sense the true, unhindered love of life the climber feels when he says the quote written a couple of paragraphs above.  Do you feel that for this reason (or another reason) it is justified for human beings to live above nature instead of with it?  Or do you think that rock climbing and other activities are examples of people becoming one with nature?  Although there are clear, unmistakable differences between rock climbing and "civilizing" nature, do you think that they embody the same kinds of ideas, or are they completely different in terms of their rationales?  Should we cut down a tree to build a building because the land is there?  Should we climb a mountain simply "because it's there"?

Invasive Species

I pressed the tiny play button and was delighted by a whimsically sketch-like animation with a talking rodent (called a Nutria).  I at first expected the New York Times video to be an environmental reprimand telling me to quit being so negligent of my surroundings, but towards the end of the clip, the little rodent says this:

I know that us Nutria have a bad habit of overpopulating areas and over-harvesting the edible plants in a small area resulting in the die-off of desirable plant species, but that sounds a lot like someone else I know of.  I know I'm not really supposed to be here, but neither are you.  [The animation then focuses in on a drawing of a Caucasian man.]

As you can tell, I somewhat just happened to stumble across this little video editorial.  But it raises some profoundly significant issues pertaining to some of our purposes and actions as human beings, specifically many Americans.  It's difficult to tell what the author was trying to get across by saying we're not really supposed to be here, but it definitely argues that many are hypocritical for despising invasive animal and plant species.  Perhaps it is trying to get people to understand a past wrongdoing and hypocrisy within our society's groundwork.

The video focuses a little bit on the prominence of the fur trade in North America during pre-colonial and colonial times.  In looking back on this portion of the animation, I couldn't help but see some criticism of our colonial predecessors.  A massive amount of money, time, and energy was spent on fur trading in North America; the video says that our neighboring 3-million person metropolis of Chicago was started because of rodents' fur.  The author of the video's script might be wanting us to look at the triviality of some of America's beginnings.  We wanted to spread our population, steal the homes of millions of Native Americans and animal species so to more easily trap for luxury fur coats and hats?  And now we're upset at the animals we used to (and sometimes still) trap and kill?  Of course it doesn't make sense, but were our predecessors wrong in their actions?

In an interview with PBS, Donald Fixico, Professor of American Indian History and Director of the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at the University of Kansas, said:

...all of the North American continent has been taken away, except for about two percent that American Indians still have that they call their homelands.  The American Indian almost disappeared with the buffalo when less than a thousand buffalo were left by the turn of the 20th century, and only 225,000 Indians had survived the deadly new diseases and more than 1,000 wars. 

Notice how Fixico uses "has" instead of "had" in the first sentence.  The land was and still is stolen from the original owners.  America has been colloquially dubbed "the land of opportunity", but is it really?  Maybe it really is just the land of opportunity for those willing and able to push themselves forward and beat out others.  Were the white colonists and especially settlers wrong in seeking out opportunity on already claimed land?  And as I look at the video's opening shot of the Nutria rat's river-home under a maze of highways, I wonder: are we wrongful and invasive species?  On one final thought promulgated by the end of the video, does all of this matter at this point even though we can't change the past?  As the rodent said, "I'm here now, you're here now, let's just be friends."

Society...Should We Accept or Reject It

Currently in American Studies class, we are reading a book called White Noise written by Don DeLillo.  It paints a vivid satire of the complicated and distinctively funny, yet depressing, world in which we so blithely live.  I couldn't help but connect topics brought up in White Noise to some of our earlier-in-the-year content, particularly the book Into the Wild.  The meticulously detailed, Jon Krakauer-authored biography on the societal renegade, Chris McCandless can be summarized in cliffhanging fashion by a poignant, yet undeniably essential inquisition posed in a review from Publishers Weekly:  "So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska?"


McCandless' death was almost as mysterious as it was tragic in that nobody will probably ever truly know exactly why he did what he did.  Krakauer's book does as close a job to perfect as possible in uncovering the mystery by providing ample detail from primary documents written in McCandless' hand.  Notably, the young man wrote about himself, "No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild" (163).

In DeLillo's White Noise, he chastises through satire society's incessant desire to be inundated with material possessions as he does here when the protagonist, Jack Gladney, is at the shopping mall:

The more money I spent, the less important it seemed.  I was bigger than these sums.  These sums poured off my skin like so much rain...We ate another meal.  A band played live Muzak.  Voices rose ten stories from the gardens and promendades, a roar that echoed and wired thorugh the vast gallery, mixing with noise from the tiers, with shufflineg feet and chiming bells, the hum of escalators, the sound of people eating, the human buzz of some vivid and happy transaction (84).       

You may be able to sense the irony of the first sentence due to how the more money you spend either the bigger the debt and/or the bigger the material smothering.  DeLillo feels, as McCandless did in a way, that society can give us essentials, but it can also more importantly give us non-essentials: frivolous things that drone out (not coincidentally like white noise on a TV set) the true meaning that hides beneath the surface of things.  The passage above describes white noise that we hear every day, white noise that drowns our senses, he feels (live Muzak?  That can't happen.)

DeLillo's satire and McCandless' disapproval can be expressed, ironically, in the popular, alternative-rock/pop song "Sprawl II" by Arcade Fire.  The song goes, "Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small, that we can never get away from the sprawl.  Living in the sprawl, dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains, and there's no end in sight.  I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights."

If you watch the music video for the first time, you'll probably be confused and maybe even discomforted, as I was.  But if you look past the inherent weirdness of the video into the message that's being sent, there are interesting parallels to be found.  The girl in the video says at the beginning that others tell her to "quit these pretentious things [singing] and just punch the clock."  She also says "I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights."  In White Noise Jack says, "Brightness settled around me" (83-84) as he entered a shopping mall, a mall that, as Arcade Fire would say is "dead" and "rise[s] like mountains beyond mountains" with "no end in sight."

Perhaps Jack is drowned by the brightness and noise of modern life, a life the girl in the video wants to escape by "cutting the lights" and by singing to avoid "punching the clock".  Also, in the video there are these strange people with no faces.  Maybe they have no more human qualities and are just products of the modern society.  I don't really know, but do you?  What issues exist with our material and technology-based society?  Or do you think that there aren't any issues?  How would Don DeLillo and Chris McCandless react to this music video?


If you're interested in this topic, there's a song by Eddie Vedder called "Society" and it plays on the "Into the Wild" movie soundtrack.  I have it posted below.

Save the Jobs or the Polar Bears

I've recently recalled a conversation I had with my Mom about her brother-in-law, Mike, who is a petroleum engineer.  Uncle Mike has always been in the oil business, and this loyalty to his trade can be seen by how he wouldn't support buying a hybrid car when my Aunt mentioned the possibility.  According to the website Energy Tomorrow, "America's oil and natural gas industry supports 9.2 million men and women across the United States in a wide range of highly skilled, well paying professions."  The site also touted that the "oil and natural gas industry exploration and production wages are more than double the national average."  It also said public data gathered by the American Petroleum Institute found that "the industry distributed $176 billion in wages paid to U.S. employees, plus benefits and payments to oil and natural gas leaseholders."  In a story done by MSNBC (the video is in this post), a large job boom is discussed due to what the video says are "billions of barrels of oil inside a rock formation here: 14,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, and parts of Canada."


Despite the large number of jobs and money created as a result of oil and gas corporations, many believe that they indirectly support global warming by literally fueling the automotive industry.  For example, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says, "Automobiles, the second largest source [of global warming], create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually."  The NRDC also says "hybrid gas-electric engines can cut global warming pollution by one-third or more today."  It also chastises the auto-industry by accusing it of creating "loopholes" making SUVs consume more gas than they should.  They claim that closing this loophole would cut 120 million tons of CO2, and that if companies utilized the technology they have to create more fuel efficient cars, CO2 pollution would be cut by more than 650 million tons per year.

This amount of cutting would in turn, of course, cut jobs in the petroleum field.  If America eventually left gas behind, what would happen to all of these jobs?  It is possible that they can be replaced by new jobs created in the cleaner energy field, but this could very well prove to be a difficult transition.

Despite this possibility, the transition does seem to be plausible.  According to an article on HybridCars.com, making electric batteries for cars is a viable future for jobs.  The article says, "Michigan will add thousands of new jobs as it ramps up to manufacture as many as 400,000 battery packs a year by 2012."  If you watch the video in this post, it shows in high speed the process of making a Chevrolet Volt battery.  What do you think about a switch to more electricity over gasoline?  Do you feel that the negatives of plausible U.S. job loss in the petroleum industry are outweighed by job creation in the electrification field?  On a different note, how, if at all, do you feel U.S. dependency on foreign oil fits into this issue?