I don’t think our goal should be to make all food in America as cheap as cheap food is now. … If the goal is cheap food, we’re going to hurt our farmers, we’re going to hurt the environment, we’re going to hurt the public health. The goal should be to give people the money so they can afford to buy good food.
We’re in this kind of reverse Fordism situation. You know, Fordism was this idea that Henry Ford said, “I’m going to pay my workers enough so they can afford to buy my cars.” It raised everybody’s boats. This was the social compact in America, an economic compact, up until the ’70s, and then it collapses.
We have the opposite, it’s kind of the Wal-Mart model, which is, “We’re going to pay you so little you can only afford to buy our crummy food.” And that’s the kind of cycle we’re in.
The answer is to give people the buying power.
— Michael Pollan, in an interview on The Splendid Table
