Hop over to Harold Henderson’s blog for an economists’ take on Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Which, well, my econ chops are rather rusty and it is Saturday night. But the Slate article under discussion does touch on my most significant quibble with the book: Pollan is clearly enamoured of the “fourth meal”–the beyond-organic methods of Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. But he almost willfully sidesteps the question of how such practices–small-scale, sustainable, symbiotic farming; direct producer-to-consumer distribution–might be remotely realistic in a thoroughly industrialized, urbanized society (or “market”) like the United States. I’m not sure that the resigned acceptance of globalization advocated by Cowen is the answer, but I’d like to hear some alternative solutions.
