Christopher Shea writes about changes in perspective in recent food writing. [via A&L Daily]

Time was, a war of words between a food writer and an organic-foods retailer would have attracted the interest of maybe seven people in your local food co-op–a bit of chatter over the brown-rice bin and everyone would move on. Those of us in a Safeway with our Perdue roasters and our broccoli avec a hint of pesticide would not have known that an argument took place. But the recent exchanges between Michael Pollan, author of the 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, are, if not squarely in the mainstream, awfully close to it.

Shea meanders through the various claims of newly relevant food writers contrasting their strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, on the other hand, but there's no gripping hand. He concludes:

Organic food presently accounts for only 2.5 percent of all food sold in the United States–and that counts all the “industrial organic” food Pollan scorns. Are, then, these debates about the ethics and politics of food largely a pastime of a tiny elite–grist for editors’ dinner parties but of tiny relevance to most consumers, who rush to the nearest market and grab what they need? A review of Pollan’s book in Reason thought so: “What Pollan fails to explicitly acknowledge...is that his brand of boutique eating is a luxury good.” But what’s more elitist–Pollan’s disdain for McDonald’s and Whole Foods, or The Economist’s argument that if organic shoppers had studied economics they’d realize how stupid their views are? I call it a draw. In the end, the elitism argument will be answered by citizens who are already changing their habits.

Jill Wendholt Silva, the food editor of The Kansas City Star and president of the Association of Food Journalists, takes charges of elitism seriously. But she says Missourians’ interest in organic and local foods continually surprises her. When she first wrote about Community Supported Agriculture cooperatives a decade ago, “people told me, ‘That will never work,’” she says. “But they’ve grown slowly and now people want us to report on the local csas, and how to join them.” During her fourteen-year tenure as editor, she’s watched foods from respected local farms enter a few elite restaurants. Now they’re catching on in supermarkets. And this year, for the first time, she’s been buttonholed at her son’s and daughter’s soccer games to talk about community agriculture. “When it’s in the supermarkets,” Silva says, “and the soccer moms are talking about it, you know it’s the start of something big.”

So, it has been an elitist pass-time that is now going more mainstream.

Shea notes that many of the barbs slung by various writers to deflate the claims of opponents are semi-scientific. They carefully select research findings that support their positions, while maintaining a cordon-sanitaire around science in general and agricultural science in particular since it is the engine of industrial agriculture - the origin of pesticides, fertilizers, and improved crop cultivars including GMOs. The new food fetishes seek to enlarge the discussion to include softer concerns such as aesthetics, ethics and social purposes - subjects that are normally outside science and that believers claim trump science.

I think that Shea is mistaken. There's nothing new here. This is the current version of a debate that is very old, and that has changed remarkably little over the decades and centuries. The details have changed because the science and engineering have changed, but then as now there was a quasi-informed conflict that used oddments of science to support rank quackery. It's entertainment and commerce that uses and abuses aesthetics, ethics and science for gain. Situation normal. Joel Salatin and Frank Perdue were doing the same thing. They both tapped into a vein of popular concern about food to sell chickens by selling themselves. All the talk about methods is marketing speak that builds an illusion of food quality for the comfort and satisfaction of customers.

There is a scientific basis for food production that continues to evolve, and it is worth your attention if you can hold the mark and evaluate the findings without sliding into belief. There are more questions than answers still, but the answers we have, though partial and disputed, are what have allowed us to stay a step ahead of food armageddon, while also making progress on the aesthetics and ethics fronts. Do not confuse the scale of current aesthetic and ethical lapses with an increase in either degree or prevalence. However deficient current methods are in style and grace, they are improved from those of the past, a fact that is usually hidden by making apples and oranges comparisons between the best of the past and the worst of the present rather than looking at the whole picture, then and now.

Recent scientific progress in soil science - such as the use of char and a renewed focus on soil microbiology - are poised to shift the debate between recidivist believers in a historical fiction about the virtue of more primitive agronomic methods and those who embrace the brave new world of higher technology and industrial methods. To some extent they are becoming indistinguishable - thus the attempt to maintain or sharpen difference by claiming that local is the new organic, hoping to ride climate hysteria for a few clicks. Surrounding large cities with subsidized, bucolic agricultural theme parks so that the wealthy can "eat the view" is a part of this.

The progress is real. We are getting better. We have learned some things about producing more with less while improving the quality of our environment, not least the soil we depend on. This won't eliminate the elitist food conflicts, but it holds great promise for the far more important task of feeding our ever growing world population while having less destructive effects on the environment, and that is worth a moment's reflection. A close study of history reveals an eons old tale of serial degradation and loss of arable lands, most noticeably in areas that have been densely populated for the longest such as China and southern Europe. It now seems possible that we may soon be able, at long last, to live long and well in a location without ruining it and so needing to emigrate, or import that which is no longer available locally.

The agricultural era is the merest blip in the story of humanity, an exceedingly recent behavior that we may just now be gaining some skill and expertise in performing. I wonder how long we will do so? Many see the future of food production becoming ever more industrial, manufacturing food rather than growing it in the conventional sense. All manner of food substances can be cultured in bio-reactors. The brewer is more the model for this sort of enterprise than the farmer. But it may well go further and be more like the current chemical and refining industries than brewing. The atavistic taste for the flesh of plants and animals would become a kinky elitist behavior. And in that sense nothing would change.