2/28/07

Signs of the Coming Gastro-Apocalypse

Sheesh! This was supposed to be a good-food, good-news blog. Now all this:

First, as Michael Pollan said at a food symposium at Berkeley a few years ago (E.L.M., thanks for driving), all the country’s bees are sick. So what do we do to pollinate crops? Breed more selectively to make more of the little fellas, even though that can make colonies more vulnerable to disease. Then what? Import some other buzzers from elsewhere, which inevitably leads to the spread of diseases that makes all the bees sick. Mmmk.

Out-of-control growth isn’t only on the producer side. Frigging
Whole Foods is struggling so hard to keep up with a sector it helped create, as well as the customers it carved out for itself against TJ’s and even Safeway that it’s stocking rotten produce at premium prices. You can say the same thing about Home Depot: Piss off enough people and it’ll be painful bringing them back. I’ll take on the five aisles of holistic health crap another day.

At least Frank B had a good time tossing salad in his swanky New York steak-house tour.

UPDATE: The grain market's abuzz, so to speak, over the bee thing.