Revisiting Pollan

As I have been re-reading Pollan's chapter on control for my term paper, I am revisiting thoughts about desire, control, and convenience. I am writing my paper on convenience and how it affects consumerism and ethics. I now see evidence of this in Pollan's book. Pollan even talks about going through McDonald's drive through. As I was reading carefully, I began to think of convenience and control synonymously. Having control over things makes them more convenient to handle, work with, and use. Genetic engineering allows humans to have complete control over food production, thus making that food production more convenient. Creating the exact species we want, such as the New Leaf potato, makes for less handling of pesticides and other inconvenient practices. I see that if agriculture is made more convenient, production may increase. But where does convenience end and do values take place? I feel that in today's society convenience is consistently chosen over ethics. People are more inclined to eat fast food rather than dine in or make a home cooked meal. Choosing fast food places such as McDonald’s is convenient, but can be unhealthy and supportive of factory farming produced meat. But the way society has taken shape, we are very fast paced and often feel that there is no time to waste on sitting down to eat four courses. Pollan explains how monoculture has become the “single most powerful simplification of modern agriculture…” Monoculture, the act of producing a single crop over a wide area, may be convenient for farming but reduces biodiversity. Basically, I feel that people choose convenience without knowing the consequences and also gain control by doing so. I also think that this is a never ending cycle, quite a circular situation that will not be solved.