[finders] The Informavore's Dilemma

[finders at findability.org]

September 11, 2007: The Informavore's Dilemma

http://www.findability.org/archives/000185.php

The Omnivore's Dilemma is among the most provocative books I've read. It's
fascinating to follow Michael Pollan on his quest to discover the origins of
our food, and disturbing to witness the chemistry and cruelty of industrial
farming.

An extended visit to Polyface Farm serves as the high point, providing an
inspiring glimpse into the genius of Joel Salatin's information intensive
approach to perennial polyculture. Here's an excerpt:

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When a livestock farmer is willing to "practice complexity" - to choreograph
the symbiosis of several different animals, each of which has been allowed
to behave and eat as it evolved to - he will find he has little need for
machinery, fertilizer, and, most strikingly, chemicals. He finds he has no
sanitation problem or any of the diseases that result from raising a single
animal in a crowded monoculture and then feeding it things it wasn't
designed to eat. This is perhaps the greatest efficiency of a farm treated
as a biological system: health.

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To learn more, you can read No Bar Code or buy the book. And, you can find
nearby farms using LocalHarvest or a Slow Food source in your community.
That is, if you really want to know, because this topic often invokes the
Informavore's Dilemma, also known as Mooers' Law:

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An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more
painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not
to have it.

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Michael Pollan offers us a simple choice between ignorance and information,
and to select the latter leads us to a difficult choice between action,
guilt, and denial. No wonder people don't read books anymore!