Maybe We Can Judge a Book by its Cover

Vision seems to be the most influential sense on our minds immediate perceptions and beliefs. Magicians make a living out of confusing our minds by playing misleading our sense of vision. But, do book covers do this as well? In the novel Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the cover says a lot about the book and helps to foreshadow the argument that Kingsolver makes throughout the book. When presenting arguments of definition design issues such as “boldface and italics, headings or links in online text — can make a powerful contribution to how credible and persuasive it is” (Everything’s an Argument, 232). In this case the book conveys the importance of understanding nature and agriculture through numerous visual displays. The book cover is the color green, one in that we often associate with a healthy landscape. The paper appears to have been recycled expressing Kingsolver’s ideas on conserving and reusing our surrounding environment. Also the hands pictured on the cover are cupped holding beans as if to suggest that we hold the power and ability to produce our body’s nourishments. Does the cover completely convey the meaning of the author’s work? No, however the cover gives the novel a “focal point of emphasis in your definition” that the reader can look back upon to understand the general definition of the key concept (Everything’s an Argument, 232).

 

P.S. The verdict is still out as to whether this type of cover judging works on people, but for now it is not recommended.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Whip

                 Over the past few weeks I have learned many mind numbing facts about our food and what it may be doing to our bodies.  These facts seem to be unlimited arguing that the food we eat everyday is “eating” at us from the inside out.  From Michael Pollan’s to Barbara Kingsolver’s attack on the United States agricultural industry, it seems as if I’ve been let in on a secret blueprint of how exactly the world will come to an end.  Their stories and research make the idea of an Armageddon to be merely a bad Ben Affleck movie as it seems as though the world will not cease to exist from an end all royal rumble but rather as a result of corn as it has long stalked its prey.  Pollan has not discovered anything new, but more or less reiterated the phrase “the cream of the crop will rise”.  The crop has risen, too fast causing these authors to worry and bash the food they consume daily, however each author struggles to offer a universal solution out of this “dreadful” lifestyle.  Kingsolver moved in order to hide from the situation, but not all citizens of the world are able to migrate let alone afford untouched land.  Economically there seems to be no solution to this massive eating disorder and it seems as if there never will be an answer. 

                King Corn sheds light on the fact that this agricultural debacle is unstoppable and unsolvable.  The movie concludes with the dream of changing our food industry concluding as well.  These film makers have no real way to combat this dilemma, so we as viewers and eaters are left asking, “What now?”  The ideas and facts of Pollan, Kingsolver, and King Corn are all quite upsetting but it is the inability of these experts to produce a solution that is alarming.  As I finish my writing I too, (although I wouldn’t call myself an expert) leave readers with no answers to the problem and leave the crops to someone else. 

P.S.  Maybe someday we’ll get lucky and global warming will kill all the crops because I feel that it won’t be us to put these crops to rest.

P.S. Talk is cheap!

Arguing Organics

                 In Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his arguments follow a similar format to those expressed in the readings from Everything’s an Argument.  Toumlin’s outline for his arguments are displayed throughout chapter 9 of Pollan’s book allowing his readers to understand what his research argues.  I have constructed an outline of Pollan’s argument bellow using Toulmin’s ideas of exactly how an argument is made.

Claim: “The organic label may conjure an image of a simpler agriculture, but its very existence is an industrial artifact” (137)

Qualifier: “So is an industrial organic food chain finally a contradiction in terms?  It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is.  Of course it is possible to live with contradictions, at least for a time, and sometimes it is necessary or worthwhile” (183)

Good Reasons:  “The inspiration for organic was to find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun.  To feed ourselves otherwise was ‘unsustainable’” (183)

Warrants: “The lot of the workers who harvested the vegetables and gathered up Rosie for slaughter is not appreciably different from that of those on nonorganic factory farms” (182)

Backing: “To a remarkable extent, farmers succeeded in creating the new food chain on their farms; the trouble began when they encountered the expectations of the supermarket” (184)

Evidence: “nature’s logic has proven no match for the logic of capitalism, one in which cheap energy has always been a given” (184)

“In many respects the same factory model is at work in both fields, but for every chemical input used in the farm’s conventional fields, a more benign organic input has been substituted in the organic ones” (159)

“Inputs and outputs: a much greener machine, but a machine nevertheless” (159)

Authority: “Michael Ableman, one of the self-described beyond organic farmers I interviewed in California, said, ‘We may have to give up on the ‘organic’…to be honest, I’m not sure I want that association, because what I’m doing on my farm is not just substituting inputs” (169)

Conditions of Rebuttal:  “The word ‘organic’ has proved to be one of the most powerful words in the supermarket: Without any help from government, farmers and consumers working together in this way have built an $11 billion industry that is now the fastest growing sector of the food economy” (136)

Response: “Agribusiness fought to define the word loosely as possible, in part to make it easier for mainstream companies to get into organic, but also out of fear that anything deemed not organic…would henceforth carry an official stigma” (134)