Friday, October 30, 2-4 pm
Monday, November 2, 3-5 am

Featuring Michael Pollan and based on his best-selling book, this special takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration of the human relationship with the plant world -- seen from the plants' point of view. Narrated by Frances McDormand, the program shows how four familiar species -- the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato -- evolved to satisfy our yearnings for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control.

Michael Pollan is the author of The Botany of Desire, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by The New York Times and The Washington Post. It won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the James Beard Award for Best Food Writing and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Pollan is also the author of A Place of My Own and Second Nature.

A contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards, including the James Beard Award for Best Magazine Series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. His articles have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing, Best American Essays and The Norton Book of Nature Writing. Pollan servedfor many years as executive editor of Harper's Magazine and is now the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley.

The website (link provided above) includes behind the scenes, downloadable transcript, lesson plans, and excellent resources.

2) Special: Michael Pollan - Deep Agriculture (LINK TV) Check local listings.

http://www.linktv.org/programs/michael-pollan-deep-agriculture

Saturday Oct 31 at 11:30 pm
Sunday Nov 1 at 3:30 am, 1:00 pm, and 8:00 pm

Category: Documentaries
Regions: North America
Topics: Environment, Health

This Link TV special brings you celebrated author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) as he takes on the industrialization of the U.S. food system, and proposes dramatic solutions to America's addiction to mechanized agriculture and processed foods. This national obsession has spawned a health care crisis, straining our medical system with epidemics of obesity and preventable illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. And it's not only our health that's suffering: the well-being of our planet is at risk from the massive amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas needed to produce, distribute, and refrigerate our food. "When we eat from the modern industrial food system," Pollan says, "we are eating fossil fuel and spewing greenhouse gas."

But Pollan doesn't just sound the alarm -- he provides us with real alternatives and answers. The movement for a healthier, safer, and more environmentally-friendly food supply, spurred on by Pollan's own influential writings, is already making positive change. "We suddenly find ourselves... no longer holding a sign outside on the granite steps of the USDA or the Capitol, but inside, with a seat at the table. The challenge now is to figure out what to say." Are YOU ready to speak out?

Kimmsr: what shall we tell the folks in the 3rd world when we stop sending them all that relatively cheap grain that they survive on, "sorry, we decided to suddenly go organic"?
Just pokin ya.

Michael

I agree with your sentiment about teaching them to fish, so to speak, and believe it has been tried with varying success. The Israelis are pretty good at growing food in an otherwise inhospitable environment; in fact, they have done much to teach the world how to grow crops in controlled environment conditions. I believe the Turks do a pretty good job with various fruits and probably other crops. Growing enough to feed your own people affordably has been mankind's challenge since we started farming thousands of years ago.

The costs both financial and environmental of doing what is done in "conventional" farming which is "feeding the world" today will be debated for a long time. Me, I prefer organic methods and do all that I can to continue employ them but still rely on other methods when my food supply (crops) are threatened.

For anyone who missed the programs, you can view them online in full:

BOTANY OF DESIRE is a documentary which tells the utterly original story of everyday plants and the way they have domesticated humankind. An interpretation of the relationship between plants and people. This two-hour documentary explores plant evolution and takes viewers from the potato fields of Peru and Idaho, the apple forests of Kazakhstan, and the tulip markets of Amsterdam.

View online in it's entirety: here

This is another related program by the same presenter on LINK TV (a cable access channel) which is timely:

Deep Agriculture
Traditional methods of agriculture in most developed nations have long ignored environmental concerns. Factors such as soil erosion, water shortage and the impact of chemicals on bio-systems have been overlooked in favour of massive crop yields and cheaper food. But what impact does this have on our health and our environment?

View online in it's entirety: here