The Animals Practicing Complexity Analysis

With the United States having numerous amounts of health issues and harvest outbreaks yearly, it is safe to say that we need a promising plan 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, …show more content…
Passive consumers also known as the majority of the population, know nothing about the food they consume. 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 …show more content…
Industrial farmers lose their knowledge of the agriculture culture since every aspect of the farm is now run by machines. Berry argues, “Is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal? One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-term preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization” (107). Humans no longer are being used due to the growth of technology running everything. In response to Berry’s argument, Pollan claims, “So much of the intelligence and local knowledge in agriculture has been removed from the farm to the laboratory, and then returned to the farm in the form of a chemical or machine”(381). The knowledge of farming is now extinct due to industrial farming. Laboratories make all the chemicals to give the plants and animals and the machines do the rest. Berry has a tone of urgency because he believes human beings rush into technological advances so quickly. Humans do not realize what they are leaving or throwing away by rushing into technology. Pollan’s tone is less urgent but more understanding. He is aware that these new innovations are a simpler way to get the job done. He is not promoting it but he understands why some people would follow these new innovations instead of being traditional. Although berry and Pollan agree that human beings are following the footsteps of modernization,

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