Part 2 of the book focuses on land, particularly the food we eat that walks on it. The main focus of this section is to show us the importance of small farms and farming communities, places where people live mostly off of what they can grow and the natural resources surrounding them. This is the type of living that is best for our planet, but overall we are much too focused on industrialized farming and producing as much livestock as we can for consumption. The author mostly focuses on geese, chickens and pigs here.
We meet Eduardo Sousa, a farmer from Spain, who produces some of the most expensive foie gras in the entire world, around 700$ for one goose liver. Foie gras is expensive to begin with, because geese are not easy to keep, the birds need to eat a lot in a short period of time to get fat, and the fact that they are often force fed is cruel and has meant that raising geese solely for their livers or even selling foie gras is banned in a lot of places. Eduardo’s product is so expensive because his birds are not getting fat by shoving food down their throats, they are free range, they eat what they want, when they want.
Why is it that his free roaming geese are getting fatter than the geese being force fed? Simply, the goose that is raised in a factory does not know how to feed itself. The same goes for geese that live on farms or within fences, even though they may be surrounded by grass and plants, their diet is usually also being supplemented with some grain from the farmer. The goose knows that someone is going to deliver its food, and therefore it only eats when the food comes. A free range goose eats whenever it wants, because it has to be able to feed itself.
The bird’s freedom does come at a cost. They are more at risk of being killed by a predator. Their eggs are also more likely to be picked off. But the birds are happier, which also happens to produce better flavor. Animals that are stressed during their lives or right before their deaths produce less tasty meat. Eduardo also believes in humanely putting his birds down, he lets them make their own way into the room where he gases them to sleep. This isn’t exactly pleasant conversation, but if foie gras is banned because of the cruelty involved to the geese, imagine what the lives of the majority of those birds is like, and how terrible the end must be.
Other than geese, the author does go into one of the most famous exports of Spain, jamon iberico. If you want to learn more about the region where Spain’s famous acorn eating, black pigs are from, you’ll get to read about one of the families that raises them. You’ll also find out that other rare and delicious foods come from this same area, but most people don’t know about them because of the celebrity of the aged ham.
There is so much more I could write about this part, but I want to leave some things for you to discover yourself. It was just as interesting and informative as the first part of the book, and I have a feeling the next part will be equally as engaging.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 