The Animals Practicing Complexity Analysis

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Pages: 7

With the United States having numerous amounts of health issues and food outbreaks yearly, it is safe to say that we need a hopeful idea for the future to bring healthy and natural foods. Many people believe industrial/factory farming should continue to increase but it’s quite the contrary, industrial/factory farming needs to be put to end and the only type of farming that should be expanding is the system used in Polyface farm, which is holon farming. In the text, “The Animals: Practicing Complexity”, by Michael Pollan, he discusses Joel Salatins’ Polyface farm and its complex system. All the animals depend on each other and Salatin is basically imitating a natural ecosystem where there is no such thing as waste. However, in the text, “What …show more content…
Farmers are perishing as each year passes and machines are taking their place. Furthermore, industrial farms keep ascending while the agriculture culture moderately vanishes. Berry suggests, “In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, why should there be any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions” (107). Individuals have goals to retire by a certain age, and try to find shortcuts to the easiest way to complete a task, which is what machines do. They replace the manual labor, humans do and it is the easiest way to manufacture food. Pollan responds, “My guess is that there aren’t too many farmers today who are up for either the physical or mental challenge of this sort of farming, not when industrializing promises to simplify the job” (380). Polyface farm is a lot of work and factory farms do not require humans to do so much work, which may be why factory farming is taking over. Berry agrees with Pollan and believes people are becoming lazier. All these new technological advances can complete the job, leaving no incentive for people to do it. Pollan and Berry both agree on this issue for the same reason because both authors argue that the human race is becoming lethargic and nobody wants to do more work than they have to. What people are not realizing is which …show more content…
Berry adds, “But this is a productivity based on the ruin both of the producers and of source of production. City people are unworried about this, because they do not know anything about farming” (106). Berry as a farmer has to deal with soil erosion issues and maintaining land to stay productive. He is describing how city people do not worry about such issues leaving it only to the farmers to deal with, although the city people eat the food produced from such farms. With the same audience in mind, Pollan points out, “To measure the efficiency of such a complex system you need to count not only all the products it produces (meat, chicken, eggs) but also the costs it eliminates; antibiotics, wormers, paraciticides, and fertilizers” (377). People are not aware of how safe and natural Polyface farm is, in contrast to factory farms. Instead of being grateful or appreciative, people blindly buy food without questioning how it is made. His intended audience is those individuals that lack knowledge of the agriculture culture. Pollan and Berry have the same audience in mind but Pollan has that specific audience because they are not aware of how safe and natural Polyface farming is. While Berry has that audience in mind because they are not aware of the difficulties farmers go through and do not appreciate all that farmers do. Both authors argue that