Zia Laboff

Dr. JR Estes
Sustainability 101
October 25th, 2015

The Indefinite Life of Industrial Organic

Many consumers think they can easily avoid the chemicals and malpractice of the
big farming companies simply by buying organic, but this is not the case. When people
think of an organic farm most envision the communal farm where modern day hippies
carefully tend to each crop, devoting their lives to the land. Theyd be quite shocked if
they ever visited the land of migrant labor crews, combines the size of houses, mobile
lettuce-packing factories marching across fields of romaine, twenty-thousand-broilerchicken houses, or hundreds of acres of corn or broccoli or lettuce reaching clear to the
horizon. (Pollan, 158). So what led to this? How did the misguided ways of non-organic
agriculture spread to its seemingly pure counterpart?
It is often quite easy for the consumer to be manipulated by big business. Most of
our buying habits are heavily influenced by what we see in advertising. Herbert Marcuse
understood this control in his written piece The New Forms of Control. One issue he
touched on was the idea of false needs. These are ideals that are artificially created by
society. When Pollan talks about how Rosie, a chicken who was grown under organic
methods, wasnt even as good as her bigger nonorganic brother Rocky (Pollan Pg 177).
Societies false needs would tell us we need to buy Rosie since shell taste better as she
was organically grown, yet thats not always true. Another need that he discusses is the
idea of vested interests. These are needs that are manipulated or created by the

government. Our dependence on corn is probably the biggest example of just that. Corn is
so heavily subsidized by the government that its become ingrained in every aspect of our
diet. Theres no simple way to phase corn from our plate because the government and the
big agriculture companies that support it are heavily invested in this crop.
Marcuses biggest point is the idea that we created technology to add to our
capability of control, but now that technology controls us. In this example, technology is
represented by the innovations in farming practices. These new advances have led to
practices that are great for profit but crippling our health. This incorporates the idea of
technological rationality. This is the conscious decision to incorporate technology to the
point that can change what is rational in society. He cites this with The impact of
progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to the dynamic capability
of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life (Marcuse Pg 116). This is
exactly what has been happening in the farming industry. They continue to expand their
crops and practices until the typical mom and pop farm is a distant memory. Now it is
seen as completely reasonable to expand farms, use pesticides, and work for profit all in
the name of progress.
Progress always spurs competition. That is the essence of Marcuses theory and it
can be proved true when looking at big organic. When nonorganic agriculture started to
develop and expand it became an even larger threat to the organic farmers. In order for
organic to ascend to the national level that its competitor had reached, they were forced to
disregard the integrities of organic farming. While some might say that they progressed
forward since they are now a larger industry and making more money, the real question
that needs to be asked is at what cost? Lets look at the chickens again. If a

knowledgeable shopper goes to the grocery store they may feel satisfied with their
purchase of free-range eggs thinking that theyve made a more ethical choice. Little do
they know that these chickens arent running free in grassy pastures, they still spend most
of their lives indoor and only have the option of a tiny grass yard that is rarely used.
Since they are given no antibiotics the farmers rarely let them out for fear of infection.
These are the sacrifices big organic has made in order to scale. Theyve lost the integrity
that used to coincide with the term organic.
Not all farms have fallen to this technological rationality, many have maintained
the integrity that organic farms once had. Polyface Farm is a prime example of this.
Polyface Farm, run by Joel Salatin, works to be everything that industrial agriculture
isnt. Instead of annual species they use perennials, instead of fossil energy they use solar
energy, instead of selling to a global market they sell to a local market, and the list goes
on and on (Pollan Pg 130). Salatin stands firmly against the big industry and was quoted
saying You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? Make an
unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmers bookshelf. Because
what youre feeding your emotions and thoughts is what it is really all about. The way I
produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview. You can learn more about that by
seeing whats sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms
(Pg 132). His ideas are pretty much as far as you can get from the principle of
technological rationality.
In the larger picture, Polyface farms sacrifice a lot for the common good. This is a
prime example of Matthew Cahns principle of civic virtue, which he defines as
something that requires citizens to sublimate their individual passions for a common

good (Cahn Pg 121). By sticking to his principles, he doesnt get certain benefits that
other industry farmers do. Salatin gives up all the government subsidies, the profits of
monoculture, and receives the consequences of being an outsider to the typical social
norm of farming. He does this all for the common good. Instead of producing a product
that hurts both the consumer and the environment he manages a farm that doesnt poison
the land. This in turn creates a product that is much healthier for the consumer.
So why dont all farms adopt these practices? If its better for the environment and
the consumer, it seems like a simple choice. But it isnt that easy. There are a few
significantly large barriers that must be overcome. The first is the fact that many large
industry farms are run by for-profit companies. It is highly doubtful that the board of
directors would ever approve a movement towards a farming practice that would be more
time consuming with less profit. All their decisions are centered on economic growth.
This is evidenced by all their efforts to industrialize organic as Pollan found when he
came across organic beef being raised in organic feedlots and organic high-fructose
corn syrup (Pollan Pg 139). This system that they abide by is already so cemented in
place that it would take a large catalyst to change it. Not all the blame can be pushed on
big business. To truly move towards a civically virtuous food system, the consumer
would need to play a critical role. Currently, we as consumers eat an unsustainable
amount of meat. Great amounts of energy are lost during the process of cultivating meat.
It takes a lot of resources and space while also releasing a lot of pollutants. This boils
down to the fact that it is an overtly wasteful system and cant be sustainable for the
amount of meat we consume. To live in a civically virtuous food system, we would have
to cut back on meat quite drastically. All these would be personal sacrifices, but without

them the common good can never prosper. The barrier to this outcome is society. As
Cahn said, Society, as manifest in the social contract, exists not to find some higher
collective good, but simply to ensure individual rights (Cahn Pg 123). This sentiment is
very strong in the United States, where people are generally opposed to any action that
would limit their personal choices.
These industrial farming practices influence our future more than most people
understand. Most Americans dont even think about it, as long as they can get cheap and
readily available food. Yet this only takes care of their own self-interest and not the
common good; a practice which we cannot keep up indefinitely. Another practice that
can be very unsustainable is progress. Through progress we gain many new and helpful
concepts and inventions, but we also take on all their negatives. As Marcuse said
Advanced industrial society is approaching the stage where continued progress would
demand the radical subversion of the prevailing direction and organization of progress
(Marcuse Pg 118). At a certain point, the consequences that come with progress will out
weigh its benefits. What will it take for the consumer to realize this about big organic?
Will we have to completely pollute our atmosphere by feedlots releasing methane? Or
watch as the soil dries up and becomes completely unusable? In the end the consumer
needs to move past their self interests and think about the common good if we ever want
most past our toxic industrial system.