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In reading “The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq”, I found that Richard Manning’s analyses were very thorough, and his statistics were revealing and relevant yet not overwhelming. It is difficult for readers to argue with a well thought out essay such as this, when his research clearly shows fastidious effort. Manning argues that the mass production of food is not efficient; however, he forgets that we do not really have an alternative. The reason for the mass production is the result of the population boom in not only the United States, but worldwide during the twentieth century.
He explains very well that the system is flawed, but provides no possible better alternative. Manning explains that he gets his family’s protein by shooting an elk, however it would take thousands of hunters to feed a mid-sized city. Growing and hunting for our own food would be too time consuming to be productive.
The only way that we could increase our efficiency in producing our food is to go back to local farms where cattle graze, rather than fed grain, which greatly increases the cost required to produce the food we need to survive.
I liked his reference to Rube Goldberg, because that was exactly how I was thinking of this process. The food chain does work as a Rube Goldberg machine, in that with each added step, more and more efficiency is lost and in a way, the end result becomes further away.
Manning’s main point is mostly to inform readers that no matter what we eat, whether we are vegetarians, eating mostly vegetables and processed soy products, or if we eat meat, we are all guilty of supporting the more cost effective methods that companies are using, when they do not realize the cost of the resources needed to feed animals, or produce cereals. I feel that Manning has succeeded in doing this, because many people do not realize what goes into every calorie we eat. After reading his article, I feel very informed, and he has caused me to think about these ideas, and if there is any way to change our ways, which the only thing would be to go back to the colonial ways of living.
At the end of the article, Manning states that while he kills his annual elk, the rest of the productivity of the system continues on. This is a very clever way to conclude his ideas, because it is a cycle that keeps going, and there is nothing practical that we can do to make it more efficient. There will always be ways of improving our methods of yesterday; however, as we are seeing in this example, they may not actually be improving anything.
Some of Manning’s points were a little exaggerated, however he was able to back them up with specific details and statistics, and overall, reading this article has made me think differently about the foods we eat, and the choices we make in our diets and their effect on the economy as well as the environment. I enjoyed reading this article, and it has made me aware of what goes into what we eat.

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The Oil We Eat Summary

In “The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq”, Richard Manning examines the agricultural aspect of civilization. The article encompasses many things, but mainly it focuses on energy. “The journalist's rule says: follow the money…We'll follow the energy”. Richard Manning follows the food chain all the way through, as though it were more of a food web. He discusses the inefficiency of the entire food industry, from the amount of energy it takes to make a box of cereal (half a gallon) to the side effects of replacing gasoline with gasohol, Manning leaves few rocks in the field un-turned.
Manning even discovers that vegetarianism is not as good as people believe. The vegetarian's case can break down on some details. On the moral issues, vegetarians claim their habits are kinder to animals, though it is difficult to see how wiping out 99 percent of wildlife's habitat…is a kindness”. The author claims that because some farmers are so dedicated to making as much as a profit as possible, they “gut-shoot” the deer, hoping they will “limp off to the woods and die where they won't stink up the potato fields”.
The main idea of the article is that the food industry is wasteful and inefficient. Countless amounts of energy, whether in the form of fossil fuels, calories, or just simple money, are lost in the entire process. Manning explains that he is a hunter at the end, and that it is a more natural way to get nutrients because it is local, and he doesn’t destroy as much of nature when he does it. While the animal he hunts is killed, everything else in the ecosystem lives on.