The Polyface Farm

This is a picture of the Eggmobile at Polyface Farm.

In the eleventh chapter of Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan spends a week at the Polyface farm, observing their style of farming. He talks of the early morning hours when he has to get out of bed and help Galen and Peter move the pens. The purpose of moving the animals is to keep the animals and the land healthy. Pollan praises the Polyface farm for its self-sufficiency in nitrogen, efficiency, sustainability, and hard-workers. He points out how efficient their farm is because of all the food produced, as well as all that it eliminates (such as the cost of fertilizers and pesticides). He also states how their farm's structure is more of a loop, rather than a linear process like that of industrial farms. One thing affects another - blurring what is the cause and what is the effect. In the thirteenth chapter, Pollan describes the interactions between the farmers of Polyface and the consumers. All the food produced at Polyface travels only a few miles to a half day's drive at most. Many of the consumers explain why they travel to the farm to buy food. They all answer with responses dealing with trusting the farmers and having fresh food that tastes much better than those in the supermarket. Pollan concludes the chapter with a proposal that we need to break off from the mainstream industrial food process and slowly create new alternative food systems.


I think it is remarkable how the Polyface farm is made to be a cycle, almost like wildlife. Because one thing affects the next, the farmers cannot change one thing too drastically. This is similar to nature, in which an imbalance in one part of the food web disrupts the rest of the cycle. The cyclic process of the farm allows it to be sustainable and efficient. I also agree with the consumers when they state that the food tastes much better than that in the grocery store. My family has planted tomatoes, basil, and cilantro in a little garden of our own, in which the grocery store equivalents do not come close in taste. I think that this is one of the many incentives for buying local food. Not only is it healthier and more trustworthy, but it is more delicious than what you can find in the grocery store. Due to this and other benefits, do you think we will ever be able to completely switch to local food systems, like the Polyface farm? More specifically, are other farmers willing to do the arduous work that the Polyface farmers do everyday?