Poptech hosted foodie favorite Michael Pollan for an excellent talk that you cannot miss.  Pollan wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma, tracing four meals from farm to fork.  It’s an eye opening look at our agricultural systems, and he does an excellent job at uncovering the hidden origin of the food we eat.

Not a reader?  Well then get the general idea in this video:

PopTech 2009: Michael Pollan from PopTech on Vimeo.

The video is full of interesting ecometrics, such as:

• 20% of fossil fuel use and 1/3 of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to the food system
• Before World War II, a single farmer could feed 20 other people.  After the war, 150.
• It takes 26 ounces of crude oil to make  a cheeseburger
• We eat 500 more calories per person per day since 1980 and two thirds of us are overweight
• This is the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents
• A feedlot of 150 thousand cows produce the same amount of waste as 3 million residents of Chicago.

Yesterday, the video contained footage of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms moving his chickens on to the field recently vacated by the cattle.  They scratch through the cow-pies, spreading fertilizer and eating grubs and maggots.  It’s one on the coolest examples of efficiency and systems integration, and they’ve cut it from the video.  Here’s hoping they bring it back.

Via Duarte Design Blog

Can't get enough? Try these related posts:

1. Will Allen and Life-Integrated Systems
2. The Quest for Cheap Food
3. Egg-ulations: the cure may be worse than the disease
4. Why does organic food cost more?
5. Food, (shr)Inc.