This book was a magnificent ride. Starting out with a depressing description of the industrial food system, and the great river of corn flowing across the American continent, he proceeds to look at what he calls the industrial organic food system, the coopting of sustainability values by unsustainable big agriculture, and finally homes in on local growing and foraging. The section on Polyface farm in Virginia, with its insight into the biology of grazing, is truly inspiring, especially when contrasted with the nightmarish images of factory farming and CAFOs. The section on foraging and hunting touched me, too, but probably more for it’s Northern California flavor than for its content. As Pollan himself points out, foraging and hunting aren’t viable strategies for feeding a population any more, but reading about mushrooms in Berkeley, pig hunts in Sonoma and morels in the Sierra made me profoundly homesick.
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