ImageTo the Editor:wingo
Re “Factory Farms Are Our Best Hope for Feeding the Planet,” by Michael Grunwald (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 15):
As executive director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, I take issue with Mr. Grunwald’s essay. He claims that “we should think of all farming as a necessary evil.” We absolutely should not.
Around the world, our alliance supports farmers and fishers who are on the front lines of producing abundant food that helps boost biodiversity, create greater climate resilience and provide solid livelihoods. No evil required.
The kind of food production systems that Mr. Grunwald insists we must accept have been rightfully lambasted for decades by leading experts for their dependency on fossil fuels and toxic chemicals — all while actually producing very little of what you or I would think of as food. (Think high-fructose corn syrup or feed crops for livestock.)
These systems are “efficient,” as Mr. Grunwald claims, only if you ignore their true costs — to our health, environment, climate and more. As someone who has heard countless stories from communities devastated by the toxic toll of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, the air and water pollution from factory farms, and the soil loss and land degradation from industrial farming practices, not to mention the exploitation of workers and animals in these systems, this is not a future of food I will accept. Nor should you.
Anna LappéBerkeley, Calif.The writer is the author of “Diet for a Hot Planet.”
To the Editor:
I had just come in from morning milking when I read Michael Grunwald’s essay, with his analysis that “we should think of all farming as a necessary evil. It makes our food and it makes a mess.”
I milk six cows, all with names of course (Buttercup, Carnation, Lilac, Daisy, Dodie and Dandelion), on our 40-acre 100 percent grass-fed dairy farm in northeastern Washington State. And evidently I am a key contributor to the terribly inefficient and nature-destroying small-scale diversified farming that needs to be replaced by uber-efficient large-scale industrial agriculture.
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“I welcome the chance to open a new chapter,” Mr. Biden said in the Oval Office. “The U.A.E. is a nation of trailblazers always looking, always looking to the future, always making big bets, and that’s something our countries have in common and our people have in common.”
Donald J. Trump did not mention Mr. Robinson once at a campaign event in Wilmington, N.C., on Saturday, and several Trump fans who attended said they understood why it was necessary to distance Mr. Trump from Mr. Robinson. The former president endorsed Mr. Robinson in March and held a fund-raiser for him at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., last year.
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