OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA

Omnivore's Dilemma

Omnivore's Dilemma

Introduction

By now most persons have probably read “Omnivore's Dilemma” but I'm (N.) a little late to the game. We stopped buying publications about 6 months before and for awhile we were going to the library every week but now that we've moved and our schedules are busier we haven't been reading much. When I was out on impede isle though I was without TV so while browsing one of the island's two publication stores I glimpsed this publication and determined it was about time I read it. I'm going through it gradually and will mail my thoughts on it in little sections.

Discussion

The book is split up into three parts: maize, lawn and forest. And this review will cover sections one through three which are all inside the maize section. Some of the details and figures he best features were also mentioned in monarch Korn. Both this publication and that documentary will make you take a hard look at how common maize is in our inhabitants and why that's so.

An intriguing fact that only garnered a little mention in the publication is the present increase in soybean production. When corn is developed in the identical patch of ground year after year it's more prone to bugs and disease. So rather then letting the soil lay fallow ranchers take turns between maize and soybeans year after year. This explains why soybeans are starting to find their way into more and more nourishment and non nourishment products. Soybeans are being fed to animals as well as being present in “two-thirds of all processed food.” I'm sure most of us understand that soybeans can be utilized for biofuels but now they are being utilized in installation and passed off as a green alternative. At first glance finding multiple values for soybeans may seem green because they are “natural” and they are currently being grown but the reality is soybeans are evolving more prevalent for the identical cause that maize did, it's cheap and we have a surplus provide that we have to do certain thing with. When the truth is that soybean output increases the use of fertilizer and pesticides which in turn rises pollution in our air and water. After all it was the “flood surge of bargain corn [that] made it profitable to fatten beef cattle on feedlots instead of on grass and to lift chickens in monster factories rather than in farmyards.”

Inextricably bound to the increase of maize was the increase of the chemical fertilizer industry. In 1947 the government discovered itself with a surplus of ammonium nitrate, previously used in explosives. Corn consumes “more fertilizer than any other crop” and therefore availed greatly from the new industry. In fact Pollan notes that the first order the Chinese government placed after opening to the west in the 1970's was for thirteen massive fertilizer factories.

Pollan conspicuously goes into much more minutia about the rise of maize as well as chemical ...