Michael Pollan

Let's mend, not end, ag subsidies

"It's a dead end to try and eliminate subsidies, because then you get all of America's farmers, who have political power out of all proportion of their number, unified against change. Right now the incentives are to produce as much as possible, whatever the costs to the environment and our health. But you can imagine another set of assumptions, so that they're getting incentives to sequester carbon. Or clean the water that leaves their farm, or for the quality, not the quantity, of the food they're growing."

-- Michael Pollan, reflecting a growing consensus

If Michael Pollan ruled the world …

"If it had been President Pollan, I probably wouldn't be here right now."

-- USDA chief Tom Vilsack

Grist cooks lunch for America’s leading food writer

Today Grist had the somewhat surreal experience of hosting Michael Pollan, the nation’s premier food writer, for lunch. And just to make it more stressful, we decided to do a potluck — each of us brought in a dish. Cooking for Pollan! Yikes! Happily, he enjoyed the food, and we had a nice conversation. We’ll […]

Pressure rises for a reform-minded USDA pick

The Obama transition team is taking its time mulling candidates to head up USDA. That’s a good thing, considering the generally dismal names that dominate the circulating short-lists. Meanwhile, the temperature is rising around Obama to pick a real reformer, not a business-as-usual politician or outright industry flack. The latest: New York Times op-ed pundit […]

Michael Pollan and Monanto’s Hugh Grant square off at Google.org forum

What do you get when industrial agriculture’s most famous critic crosses swords with industrial agriculture’s (arguably) most powerful executive? Michael Pollan and Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant squared off at a forum put on recently by google.org (video below the fold.) The topic of the discussion: how to “feed the world” as population expands over the […]

A conversation with Michael Pollan

  In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz’s definition of cuisine came down to conversation. For Mintz, Americans just didn’t engage in passionate talk about food. Unlike the southwest French and their cassoulet, most Americans don’t obsess and […]