Grist's Tom Philpott Makes the Washington Post's Ezra Klein Blink Re: Big Ag

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Klein's vision: An industrial turkey farm in Minnesota.

​Our favorite morsel from the blogs.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein took time out from pre-air primp sessions for Rachel Maddow to tap out a brief, charmless defense of industrial food. Klein:

Despite the dreams of many foodies, I can't think of a major industry that went from small, decentralized production methods to large, scaled industrial production ― and then back again. Are there any examples I'm missing? Maybe so. But for now, I think of the preference for farmers markets and small producers as being mainly important in sending certain signals about production methods and branding preferences to Big Ag than in actually creating some sort of viable alternative.

Klein meant to serve up a big can of reality, using Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner as cover ("Big agriculture is the only option to stop the world going hungry"). What he reaped instead was the well-reasoned ire of Grist's Tom Philpott: The alternative food networks popping up everywhere present "no viable alternative" at all, Klein insists. We should all forget the farmers market and let Big Ag's diesel-gulping combines lead us forward. Yesterday, Klein responded ― by sort of admitting he didn't quite have an argument in the first place. He suggested his first post was "tossed-off," and he acknowledged that Rayner's morbid argument "wasn't particularly tightly argued." Klein, in short, blinked.

Well played, Philpott.