Michael Pollan: Antitrust + Democracy At Your Dinner Table

#053: Acclaimed food and food systems author Michael Pollan identifies the driving forces behind the corporatization of organic food, including income inequality and unenforced antitrust laws. At stake is more than just a loss of choice for the consumer, but in fact democracy itself. 

Michael Pollan is a celebrated author and journalist who has devoted much of his career to writing about food and the food system. His books included The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and In Defense of Food. He is currently the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His latest books, How to Change Your Mind and This is Your Mind on Plants, focus on using psychedelics to heal trauma and to eliminate humans' natural fear of death.

To watch a video version of this podcast with access to the full transcript and links relevant to our conversation, please visit:

https://www.realorganicproject.org/michael-pollan-antitrust-democracy-dinner-table-episode-fifty-three

The Real Organic Podcast is hosted by Dave Chapman and Linley Dixon, engineered by Brandon StCyr, and edited and produced by Jenny Prince.

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We believe that the organic standards, with their focus on soil health, biodiversity, and animal welfare were written as they should be, but that the current lack of enforcement of those standards is jeopardizing the ability for small farms who adhere to the law to stay in business. The lack of enforcement is also jeopardizing the overall health of the customers who support the organic movement; customers who are not getting what they pay for at market but still paying a premium price. And the lack of enforcement is jeopardizing the very cycles (water, air, nutrients) that Earth relies upon to provide us all with a place to live, by pushing extractive, chemical agriculture to the forefront.

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