wendell for wednesday

If you’ve been reading here for long or if you’re familiar with the growing local food movement, you’ve heard of Michael Pollan. He is coming out with a new book last week, and in a recent interview, he reveals that Wendell Berry is responsible for his illustrious career in food. I thought Pollan could take over “Wendell for Wednesday” for this week:

It was in reading Berry that I came across a particular line that formed a template for much of my work: “eating is an agricultural act.” It’s a line that urges you to connect the dots between two realms—the farm, and the plate—that can seem very far apart. We must link our eating, in other words, to the way our food is grown. In a way, all my writing about food has been about connecting dots in the way Berry asks of us. It’s why, when I write about something like the meat industry, I try to trace the whole long chain: from your plate to the feedlot, and from there to the corn field, and from there to the oil fields in the Middle East. Berry reminds us that we’re part of a food system, and we need to think about our eating with this fact—and its implications—in mind.

Michael Pollan (read the whole interview)