I’ve never been inside a Wal-Mart, and fates willing, never will be. But still, I read with fascination Michael Pollan’s article in today’s NYTimes about the coming entry of Wal-Mart (!) into the organic foods business.

As Pollan points out, there is both good and bad in this.  Nobody will be able to deride organic as “elitist” anymore.  Wal-Mart’s purchasing power will be voting in favor of reducing pesticide use.  But,

To say you can sell organic food for 10 percent more than you sell irresponsibly priced food suggests that you don’t really get it — that you plan to bring business-as-usual principles of industrial “efficiency” and “economies of scale” to a system of food production that was supposed to mimic the logic of natural systems rather than that of the factory.

In other words, get ready for an explosion of organic factory farms, and seeing more organic food imported from halfway across the world — and therefore soaked in petroleum.

Interesting times.