“For even when our food system is functioning “normally,” reliably supplying the supermarket shelves and drive-thrus with cheap and abundant calories, it is killing us—slowly in normal times, swiftly in times like these. The food system we have is not the result of the free market. (There hasn’t been a free market in food since at least the Great Depression.) No, our food system is the product of agricultural and antitrust policies—political choices—that, as has suddenly become plain, stand in urgent need of reform.”
Ever since the pandemic started I've been reading about supply chains, about how the things I buy get to me, about the way in which these systems feel invisible, yet they so obviously broke down quickly in the face of the lock down measures that were taken and people worrying about having enough of everything they normally eat, use, buy. Pollan speaks to how these systems are so broken. The one system that's kept going during this entire time has been my CSA, delivering me quality food every Friday, like clockwork.