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)
