Reading Pollan 2
Though many of the animals do a lot of the work in Polyface Farms’ natural system, the farmers do all of the heavy liftings. It can be easily seen that the animals do all of the work for the farmers instead of the other way around. This can be hard for the credit of the farmers. The animals are doing what is natural to them, which in turn helps the whole process. But every day from dawn until dusk the…
Reading Pollan 1
Polyface Farm is so successful because they treat their animals more humanely than the “average” farm that is associated with the food industry today. On page 209 of “The Animals: Practicing Complexity”, Pollan explains how they treat their chickens. They have pens that are ten-by-twelve, two-foot-tall, and have grass areas behind them for the chickens to roam, eat, and fertilize the grass. After 24 hours the pens are moved so that they have fresh feeding ground and don’t have to…
What the World Eats
The infographic from the National Geographic begins in 1960, and in the TED Talk Bittman explains how around this decade in America fewer homecooked meals were being made by mothers, and meat consumption started to increase drastically. The industry became more into play with more and more foods being sold and marketed in grocery stores. When looking at America at the start of the infographic, you can see that meat made up 13% of America’s diet. As you go along…
Class Notes and Free Writes 3/26
One thing that was really surprising was that originally, the concept behind children going to school around Labor Day and ending in June was due to freeing up children’s labor when it was needed most on the farm. Though this is just a simple fact, it just shows what has been lost throughout the years as Kingsolver discusses; something that I have been taking part of for around 13 years now I had no idea about. Another surprising thing about…
Reading Kingsolver
Oil is used in many different ways during food production. Each citizen consumes about 400 gallons of oil for agriculture, this is about 17% of the nation’s energy use. synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides use oils and natural gas along with their manufacturing. To get the seed to crop takes up a fifth of the oil. The actual distribution of each crop takes up the most amount of oil. Any piece of food in the U.S. may travel up to 1,500…
Class Notes and Free write 3/21
I agree with Bittman when he says “the time has come to stop raising [animals] industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly”. This is because I feel as though if we keep eating the way that we do, we will run out of livestock for us to even eat, which provide essential nutrients for us. Though they have nutrients we need, we do not need to eat nearly as much as we actually do. I personally am disgusted with how animals…
Herzog and the Troubled Middle
Part I The main idea of the first segment is the relationship between humans and animals as food, as a product that we consume and what it does to us mentally. The first example shows a woman who believes that fish are not animals; she considers herself vegetarian even though she still eats fish because of her beliefs. When her husband comes into her life she eventually comes to terms that fish are animals, and has a sort of identity…
