Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner (Extended Interview)

America’s favorite food intellectual talks about ethanol, the carrot lobby, and secularizing food.

MJ: So what do you think of the appointment of Tom Vilsack, the governor of Iowa, an agribusiness state known for its love of corn and all things ethanol?

MP: Well, you know, if you look at it historically, there’s reason to be very concerned. He oversaw a tremendous expansion of feedlot agriculture, ruining the Iowa countryside, ruining the lives of many farmers. This move toward a confinement hog production. He helped to get local control over the zoning decisions. He also has been very friendly toward Monsanto and genetically modified products and was named governor of the year by BIO, the big biotech trade organization. There’s not a lot there to get hopeful about.


But people who I respect say that he is someone who will listen. He is someone who has an open door to organic activists and local food activists. He was interested, in Iowa, in developing local food systems, helping Iowa to feed itself to a greater extent than it does. It feeds the world but it doesn’t feed itself. It’s a food desert, weirdly enough. All the raw material leaves the state and comes back in processed form, even though you can grow anything you want there. It’s some of the best soil in the world, and it’s just a shame that people aren’t eating from that. I also think, and this is putting the most positive spin I can on it, that as governor of Iowa there are some positions that you simply must have. One is support for corn-based ethanol. Another is a tacit support for feedlot agriculture and biotech. But he’s no longer governor of Iowa and he is a politician; his positions are circumstantial, as will be President Obama’s. And I’m hoping that as a politician, when he senses where the wind is moving, he will move with it. It could have been a whole lot worse; there were people on the short list who were truly alarming in their commitment to the most retrograde and unsustainable forms of agriculture. I think he’s a blank slate on a lot of issues, like commodity subsidies and stuff like that. We don’t know who will be designing the agenda; it may not be him. It may be people in the White House.

MJ: Although it seems that, as a former governor, he has a vested interest in insuring that we always have an Iowa caucus. How much of our current agricultural policy can we lay at the feet of the Iowa caucus?

MP: Look, you get rid of the Iowa caucus and you could have a much more realistic debate about food and agricultural policy. You can’t be elected president of this country without passing though Iowa and bowing down before corn-based ethanol, before agricultural subsidies. You can’t get out alive. And that’s too bad. I mean, even McCain was a critic of ethanol, but when he got to Iowa he was singing a different tune. On the other hand, this time around the candidates talked to other people and they learned there is a progressive farm lobby. Iowa came close to electing as agriculture secretary of the state a woman organic farmer. Almost won until the farm bureau realized what a threat she was and came after her.

And I think Obama saw, in fact he said he saw, the importance of local control. He said a lot of progressive things in Iowa, too. That idea that there is a monolithic farm bloc