Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pollan's book lacks balance. He uses two farmers in Iowa (who between them farm <1000 acres) as exemplary of all corn farmers -- overfertilizing, using either new equipment they cannot afford or old equipment that damages their hearing, wearing out the soil, etc. My midwestern farm-raised parents laughed out loud, countering with as many stories of well managed farms whose founding family owners are doing quite nicely, thank you, without raping the land. In the section on pastoral farming, he uses the example of a farmer who will not ship product from Virginia to New York because of the inherent conflict of using fuel to ship 'truly organic' food such a long way, but who invites Pollan to drive down and pick some up - which would use proportionally more fuel than Fedex'ing the damn chicken. The historical and scientific discussions are interesting, and (no pun intended) food for thought, but the lack of factual basis inferred by Pollan's generalizations makes the veracity of these discussions difficult to accept.