My business ethics class is in the middle of reading The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The students seem to be enjoying it a lot. Many enjoy Michael Pollan's engaging writing style, but they also seem intrigued by what Pollan is reporting about agribusiness and the American food system.

What I find most thought-provoking in the book is Pollan's juxtaposition of the logic of industry versus the logic of evolution. Efficiency is the starting point of the logic of industry and a most American value. Pollan's investigation reveals how pursuing this value in the absence of others has turned good intentions (finding a way of producing abundant and cheap food) into a misbegotten adventure. By relying on a monoculture of corn, we have inadvertently created a fast-food jungle accompanied by health problems like obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease; environmental problems; social justice issues related to the quality of food available to the poor and to the rights of farm workers; and a system that is inhumane in how we treat animals.

I am also intrigued by the biodiverse grass farm of Joel Salatin that Pollan describes. Indeed, I have to be intellectually vigilant to not entirely sucumb to the romantic agarian ideal that it depicts. Indeed, I'm not sure Pollan has entirely resisted the seduction. But it does seem to make so much sense to feed animals what they are biologically intended to eat and to raise them in humane environs. I agree with one of my colleagues that it is hard to find fault with Pollan's methodology and perspective.

But there are those who find fault. In a blog called The Modest Proposal, Pollan is taken to task for only speaking to one representative of each of the producers of his four meals. And there is always the obvious practical critique of Pollan and the local food movement: Is eating locally and seasonally even feasible given the vastness of this nation - both geographically and in term of population? Are we simply too big for it to work?