Richard Manning's 'Polyface Farm': Article Analysis

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, the harsh reality is that the world needs to produce more food with fewer resources. In terms of the amount of energy currently being used by agriculture, there needs to be a balance of conserving energy while recognizing that in order to feed the growing population a great amount of energy will need to be utilized. The general public, intensely depends on the least difficult, yet the best approach to deliver sustenance for the greatest number of individuals as they can. As a result of that reason, unless a more straightforward method for cultivating tags along, it is unclear if changes will be made. Richard Manning focuses more on the inefficiencies that the agriculture industry
Polyface Farm is all about practicing complexity how one change has implications or impact on other parts. On Polyface Farm, the animals do some of the work for the farmers, by doing this the farmers save a great amount of money on fertilizers, pesticides, parasites, and antibiotics. Like stated above, Polyface farm is all about efficiency. Pollan claims that the workers at Polyface Farm, “take advantage of each species’ natural proclivities in a way that not only benefits that animal but other species as well” (348). For example, they use the cow’s manure, which is rich in nitrogen, for a heat source in the winter and when spring comes along they use it as a food source for the pigs. “In an ecological system like this everything’s connected to everything else, so you can’t change one thing without changing ten other things” (347). Everything works in a loop at this specific farm, everything is so connected. Pollan’s thoughts on turning into a monoculture farm are that since everything is so connected it would be nearly impossible to find the start or the end of anything to begin the
Monoculture farming has been the utmost efficient form of farming for years. Pollan elaborates on the meaning of efficiency by saying, “how you choose to measure efficiency makes all the difference, and industrial agriculture measures it, simply, by the yield of one chosen species per acre of land or farmer” (348). He looks at the word efficiency from a different point of view; he claims that the word efficacy by definition is “the very opposite of simplification” (348). Polyface Farm’s main objective is all about “mimicking relationships found in nature and layering one farm enterprise over another on the same base of land” (348). In order to measure efficiency, according to Pollan, the cost of the pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics, and parasites need to also be included in the production cost, not just the end products that are being produced. The meaning of efficiency for Richard Manning is not quite the same as the one for Michael Pollan. Manning’s way to deal with settling the issues that agriculture finds a way to farm that is organic and using the least amount of energy. The kind of adequacy that Pollan discusses depends more on the essence of the nourishment created, and cash and assets being spared. The kind of viability that is centered around the industry today is how much and how rapidly our food is produced and