Restaurant Review: 2.5/5 stars (fair, satisfactory)—Ratings range from zero to five stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, with ambiance, service and price taken into consideration, as well.

The Original Cottage Inn

512 East William Street Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Hours Mon-Fri 11:00am-11:00pm Sat 11:00am-12:00am Sun 11:00am-10:00pm

(734) 663-3379

Reservations suggested

In December of 2011, the Washtenaw County Health Department noted that The Original Cottage Inn was “under new management,” and that improvements in the restaurant’s cleanliness and food handling were “tremendous.” In October of 2012, the State of Michigan revamped its health inspection terminology. Violations went from easy to understand (i.e. “noncritical” and “critical”) to ”core” and ”priority foundation.”  To read the definitions of the new restaurant health inspection lingo, click here. The Original Cottage Inn was last inspected in December of 2012 and cited for two “core” violations, both related to food storage unit upkeep. In short, the violations are nothing to get your knickers in a twist about.

The service? It made reviewers on Yelp.com downright cranky:

“The service is spotty…”

“The wait staff is always ever-changing (it IS a college town after all) so the level of service is always ever changing….”

“The wait times for service are horrible and servers tend to become very careless when they see that you are ordering nothing but a personal pizza….”

“This paired with the waitress who (although she did her job in taking our orders and getting the food to us) gave off the impression that she *really* didn’t want to be there made for a negative experience.”

My experience, alas, was similar.

You don’t usually make reservations at a restaurant and then expect to wait over 30 minutes for your table, but at The Original Cottage Inn they had some very different expectations. My group arrived at about 6:55 p.m. for a 7:00 p.m. reservation. There where 13 of us so we’d order the food in advance as well as made a reservation (usually a good move when the idea is to speed dinner along). Unfortunately it did not work as well as planned. We weren’t seated until 7:35—all of us significantly hungrier than when we’d arrived. When we finally did get seated, our salad was already at the table, which was very nice, but there were no plates. The waitress finally appeared and brought some plates, but immediately disappeared before we could order drinks.

The décor of Cottage Inn is supposed to remind one of a rustic Italian home. Unfortunately from the unclean bathrooms to the rickety tables to the frying cheep carpet on the stairs leading to the second floor, Cottage Inn feels more like a ruin of ancient Rome. Noise levels are loud, making conversation difficult, and the evening I was there the restaurant felt like an overheated box—though this certainly could have been the result of a temporarily turned up theromostat, or some other temporary problem.

The Greek salad was very tasty. However, the salad was populated by some roughly cut vegetables (huge chunks of carrot and onion) and massive cubes of feta. The dressing was very flavorful and savory and the lettuce mix was crisp and fresh. The salad also had some nice fresh olives and tasty beets, which leant some nice flavor and color to the plates.

While waiting for the pizza to show up some of us wondered if perhaps they had they had called out for delivery. When the pizza did finally appear it was without its escort, the plates. The plates after being requested from a staff member where disappointingly small and could only hold one piece of pizza max and the ends were dangling off the side like they were sitting on the edge of a cream colored ceramic dock. The pizza itself was not a disappointment at all and almost, and I stress almost, worth the wait. The pizza although a little on the greasy side, had not too much sauce and seemed to be fresh when it finally appeared at our table steam rolling off, available in a multitude of different crust types the pizza is quite filling. My party got four pizzas for 13 people and that was quite enough. The pizza at Cottage Inn should be a focus of their menu but does not appear until the end of the 8-page behemoth. Also it has a high base price $13 for a regular larger and $20 if you want to add more than 5 toppings. You can also add any number off additional toppings for $2 each.

Cottage Inn also has a verity of Italian dishes and a “make your own” pasta section. This section of the menu is not one to be frequented and if at all possible to be avoided. When I went another time we all ordered non-pizza items which proved to be a huge mistake. The dishes took a very long time and two of them had to be sent back mine because it was so salty I could not eat it and another one because the salmon in the grilled Atlantic salmon ($15) was undercooked. Mine, the portabella mushroom ravioli ($13), had to go back a second time because it was stone cold and almost to hard to eat. When they managed to get my ravioli to an eatable state it was under seasoned and did not have much actual mushroom flavor. The pasta itself was gummy and overcooked, which was a disappointment for a restaurant that claims to import its pasta (I suspect it might be from Kroger).

Yelpers collectively gave the Original Cottage Inn a 3.5/5. They attributed this to good pizza and some good dishes with huge portion sizes, but also did note spotty service, loud noise levels and unpleasing décor. I would be remiss to not to mention that while at Cottage Inn I did see the entire University of Michigan women’s gymnastics team, they came in after us while we where waiting and got seated immediately along with about six or eight other parties who came in after us.

As one person I talked to said about Cottage Inn it is “a great place for U of M alums.” This I would have to agree to, there are some far better alternatives in this city and many within the price range or cheaper. Cottage Inn is a great place for pizza but not for much past that. Just remember to make you reservations far in advance for large groups or be a young attractive female collage student.

In 2010, A2Politico posted this in a piece about Ann Arbor Restaurant Week titled, “The Politics of Food: Ann Arbor Restaurant Week Hype? Caveat Emptor, Epicurians”:

In case you haven’t noticed, January 17-22 is Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, an event put on by the Main Street Area Association. It’s the second Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, and 26 joints are participating, according to Lisa Allmendinger’s piece in the A2Journal. The participating venues will offer “a $12.00 lunch and some restaurants are offering two-for-one pricing.” A three-course dinner during the week at participating restaurants will set you back $25.00. This year, the event organizers talked several sponsors out of money (Lord only knows why Frog Holler Produce needs to sponsor such an event) so that the Main Street Association could “create a web site, which lists all of the participating restaurants and other information,” according to Allmendinger’s piece.

So, am I just a cheapskate, or is $25 bucks for dinner per person way too rich for your blood, as well? If we take the tots (crazy, I know) that’s $100 for dinner for four during Restaurant Week. I wrote in an earlier post about eating at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California last summer and how Alice Waters’ restaurant made me painfully aware of exactly how over-priced and badly cooked meals in our local restaurants can actually be. Chez Panisse completely destroyed my ability to rationalize paying $17-$30 for an entreé at any local restaurant in our town.

In 2011, A2Politico posted this in a piece about Ann Arbor Restaurant Week titled, “The Politics of Food: Ann Arbor Restaurant Week — The Sequel”:

Ann Arbor Restaurant Week is baaaaaaaack and runs from January 16-21. I last wrote about the first annual Restaurant Week in Ann Arbor on January 15, 2010. The title of that entry, “The Politics of Food: Ann Arbor Restaurant Week Hype? Caveat Emptor, Epicurians,” could be the title of this entry, as well. The hype is the same: “One Price Dining, One Week, Several Options.” Ok. That’s pretty straightforward. It’s when we get into the small type that the used car salesman hard sell kicks in:

“Extraordinary three course dinner menus and prix fare lunch menus from Ann Arbor’s best restaurants. Experience cuisine that delights your palate and defines the art of dining in Ann Arbor. Now is your chance to discover new restaurants and enjoy favorites at a discounted price.”

It’s the “discounted price” part that sticks to the roof of one’s mouth, much like a big bite of a peanut butter sandwich on Wonder Bread. The Main Street Area Association members, and marketing gurus are already stretching it big time by calling a burrito or tacos at Sabor Latino “extraordinary” food. Pasta at Argerios?Definitely not extraordinary by any stretch of the imagination, unless one considers canned tomato sauce worth the $12.50 entreé price charged by the restaurant for a serving of manicotti. The pizza is better, chewy crust, topped with real mozzarella cheese, but the gnocchi are shameless impersonations of what Romans do with their leftover Wednesday potatoes. (Thursday is gnocchi day in Rome.)

It’s 2013, and Ann Arbor Restaurant Week is upon us once again. It runs from January 20-25. The Main Street Area Association describes the event thusly this year: “Extraordinary three course dinner menus and prix fare lunch menus from Ann Arbor’s best restaurants. Experience cuisine that delights your palate and defines the art of dining in Ann Arbor. Now is your chance to discover new restaurants and enjoy favorites at a discounted price.” The cost of Ann Arbor Restaurant Week lunch will set you back $15.00 and a three course dinner is now $28.00. In short, the prices have been jacked up since 2010. The cost of a Restaurant Week lunch is 25 percent more than it was in 2010, and the cost of dinner is up 12 percent.

Remember this: Except, perhaps, in the world of high-class courtesans, paying more does not guarantee high quality, just as the number of hours worked does not guarantee a job well done. In the world that is Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, a fool and her/his money are soon parted.

Before the recession, the average American ate 52 percent of his meals out of the house, or from take out, in 2006. In 2011, the number dropped to 45 percent, according to Zagat. AnnArbor.com has a page where diners can grade their Restaurant Week experiences. There is also a survey which asks respondents to spill the beans about how often they go to downtown Ann Arbor to eat out. The results demonstrate quite clearly why the Main Street Area Association launched Restaurant Week. The majority of those who cast votes (46 percent) said they go downtown to eat out less than once per month. In the comment section, one diner writes:

Went to R.U.B. last night. Did the math on the regular menu prices and found that the restaurant week “menu” had no savings over just picking off the regular menu.

As A2Politico has counseled would-be epicurians in past, $25.00 for a single three-course dinner in Ann Arbor is not a deal, and neither is a $12 lunch. Thus, this year’s $28 dollar dinner and a $15 lunch are even less of a deal. Beware, because at several of the participating Restaurant Week establishments, the “discount” is somewhere between $.50 cents and $1.00 off of non-Restaurant Week menu prices. Offering a $.50 cent discount on a $15.00 lunch and calling it a special deal is just plain sleazy. Several restaurants, in addition, have raised prices for Restaurant Week. Amadeus, for instance, is offering a two-for-one $15 lunch. That’s nice. Of course, the restaurant routinely offers $6.95 lunch specials. On the other hand, the restaurants offering two-for-one pricing (at lunch), and those that have decent ratings (3.5 stars or higher)  from reviewers on Yelp.com should get your business during Restaurant Week, if you are inclined to go out for a meal. Here’s a list of Restaurant Week joints offering two-for-one pricing at lunch that is actually a discount over regular menu prices. Remember to do the math; check out restaurant menus online, and stick with the two-for-one lunches. A2Politico recommends you call ahead, then visit the following spots with a luncheon companion:

The Blue Nile (spotty, slow service, but the food is worth the wait)

Conor O’Neill’s (always friendly service and good pub grub)

Frita Batidos (irksome hipster service, but two for $15 lunch is a great deal for good Cuban sandwiches)

Grizzley Peak (generally good service and reliably good food; spring for a beer)

Old Town Tavern (surly service and one of the best burgers downtown)

Seva (slow service, but reliably good vegetarian and vegan food; spring for a drink from the Juice Bar, and for heaven’s sake be adventurous)

Remember to tip generously (when the service merits it), check back and leave a comment. Let us know where you ate, how you enjoyed your meal, the service, etc…

Restaurant Review: 3.5/5 stars (good, reliable)—Ratings range from zero to five stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, with ambiance, service and price taken into consideration, as well.

Great Plains Burger Co.
1771 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Hours 11:00 am–10:00 pm Mon-Sat, Sun 11:30 am–9:30 pm
Ph (734) 769-6900

No reservations needed or taken

by Richard Saunders

Mo Farha wanted Great Plains Burger Company to be the epitome of Americana. ”I have a great passion for the American hamburger. For me, it’s a source of American pride,” the Ann Arbor native said in a 2009 interview. “I have a true burger, fries and shakes passion. These things go together.”

Farha is the manager and a partner in the Plymouth Road restaurant across from University of Michigan North Campus that opened in 2009. Gary Staub, son-in-law of Tom Monaghan is one of Farha’s partners in the venture the concept for which was developed after two years of study. Great Plains Burgers hamburger meat is Michigan-grown and ground fresh every day. You don’t usually think of higher quality restaurants as being located beneath student apartments and in a strip mall, but Great Plains Burger Co. is the exception that proves the rule. Great Plains Burgers serves up a great local burger and fries. All the menu items are made fresh and cooked to order including the fries, which are made from the 1,200 pounds of potatoes stacked in the dining room on any given day. Great Plains Burgers also offers fresh hand-crafted milkshakes and a wide selection of soft drinks and other beverages.

Great Plains Burgers is housed in a modern and airy building, which can lead to some heating issues, and I found the restaurant a little to cold for my tastes. One corner has the feel of a brightly light sports bar, with a flat screen TV mounted over a stainless steel bar area in the corner near the kitchen. Even though the volume is on as opposed to having subtitles, it is not too loud at all and doesn’t interfere with conversations. The fore mentioned kitchen is open completely to the restaurant (they use the space meant for an enclosed kitchen as a storage room), which is not unpleasant at all, and in fact lends a lively feel to the space as the workers bustle around making sandwiches, whipping up shakes and hand-cutting potatoes for french fries.

I have been to Great Plains Burgers more times than I can count, but the most recent time I went with my family for the purpose of reviewing the restaurant. We got there at about 6:15 in the evening, just about prime dinner time, and the restaurant was about half full. We reached the counter and two young women came over immediately and took our orders promptly. We ordered two chicken sandwiches ($5.69), a single burger made of 1/3 pounds of Black Angus beef (at $4.89 it’s the smallest burger on the menu). We also ordered a double 2/3 pounder (at $7.59 the largest burger on the menu). Each sandwich was laden with a wide variety of toppings—from the classics, lettuce and tomato and cheese to green olives and perfectly grilled jalapeño peppers. We also ordered a basket of fries to share ($4.49). Be warned, the large basket of fries is enough to feed a small army (4-6 people), and a side of fries will satisfy 2-3 eaters easily.

Suffice it to say Great Plains Burgers goes big on portion sizes when it comes to almost everything. The paper sauce cups, into which condiments are pumped, are on the small side.

Once we ordered we selected a table in the dining area, and went to go sit down. The table and my chair had not been wiped down, and there were a few small chunks and smears of food on my chair. We decided not to make a fuss and switched out a chair from an unoccupied table. A worker  quickly came over the wiped down the table when asked. My family and I made conversation for only a short time before our fries arrived, piping hot and fresh from the fryer. The fries were perfect—golden brown, crispy, hot and perfectly salted. We dug right in dipping them into the four house made special sauces available at Great Plains, including truffle mayo and Kentucky bourbon sauce. No matter which of the sauces the fries were paired with they tasted great.

We worked on the fries for a short time before the sandwiches arrived. My burger was the double and quite the imposing structure; when topped with tomato, cheese, lettuce, green olives, pickles, mayo, ketchup and my favorite ranch it was almost impossible to get my hands not to mention my mouth around. Somehow I managed and it was well worth it. The meat was well-seasoned and the toppings where fresh and not wilted. The bun, which can almost be called the most important part of the burger, was toasted to perfection, which makes all the difference.

The chicken sandwich that I tried the most recent time was well-seasoned and perfectly cooked.  When cooking a kind meat with a lack of natural piquancy, such as chicken breast, how it is seasoned can make all the difference: the good people at Great Plains Burgers know how to make a well-seasoned and juicy chicken breast every time. My only complaint about the chicken sandwich is that on a few ocassions the bun has been a little bit soggy, but that could also be the result of combining sauces and grilled veggies.

In my last review, I wasn’t enthused about the fact that fries had to be ordered a la carte. Those fries were frozen, but good. While fries must also be ordered a la carte at Great Plains Burgers, here a single burger in $4.89, is not anywhere near as expensive as the $8 burger I ordered at Sava’s. In fact, add an order of regular fries to a 1/3 pound burger at Great Plans Burger Co., and you’ll still spend less than $8 (and get a generous order of fresh cut fries to boot).

I have saved the best for last: milkshakes. Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Pick one. Pick them all. The hand-dipped shakes are made to order, topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. Each shake costs $3.79, and you’ll have to wait while it’s made. Wait. Gladly. These simple treats are, without a doubt, some of the thickest, tastiest milkshakes in town.

The most recent Washtenaw County restaurant inspection of Great Plains Burger Co. was on October 2012. There were no violations. Yelpers have given Great Plains Burgers a combined 3.5/5.They raved about the fries, but some did find the burgers a little on the greasy/messy side. In all I think that Great Plains Burger Co. is a great northside neighborhood joint, and the concept has solid potential going into the future. When the restaurant opened in 2009, Mo Farha said he and his partners intended to open up more locations. Thus far, the Plymouth Road restaurant remains an only child. My few concerns (wipe off the tables and sweep the dining room floor more regularly, guys) are far outweighed by the many great sandwiches, sides and shakes they sell. I would suggest Great Plains Burgers for any night of the week when you don’t feel like making dinner and want a tasty alternative. It’s a great kids restaurant, and perfect for a casual date, as well. Just don’t go with anyone who shouldn’t see you with ketchup on your chin, and remember to grab a pile of napkins.

Restaurant Review:  *** (good, reliable)—Ratings range from zero to five stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, with ambiance, service and price taken into consideration, as well.

Sava’s
216 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Hours: 8 a.m.-midnight daily
Ph: 734-623-2233

Reservations suggested for Sunday brunch.

Trying to find the door to a restaurant and almost walking into a research lab is something I have never done before, except at Sava’s. Once you get inside, the first thing you notice is a cramped waiting area with a few benches with more room for the maitre d’ than for customers waiting on a cold Sunday morning, most on their feet, for more than 30 minutes if you forget to make a reservation at least one week in advance. If you were informed enough to make a reservation, you are seated in the middle of what seems like a busy road where customers and wait staff alike bustle up and down the narrow restaurant to reach the extremely popular Sunday breakfast buffet. The décor of the restaurant is 50 shades of gray with wood accents. The noise, when the restaurant is full, is ear-splitting, and this makes conversations difficult even with the people sitting next to you.

The Sunday buffet costs $16 per person, plus drinks, tip and taxes, is actually what it’s talked up to be. There is a full table of hot prepared foods such as pies, potato dishes, corned beef hash, corned beef (other guests commented that the corned beef was a little too salty) and a plethora of egg dishes, including poached eggs. Each of the dishes on the buffet was hot when it was supposed to be hot; cold when it was supposed to be cold, and all the house made pastries—excluding the bread and bagels— were delicious. Pastries, in fact, were uniformly the perfect combination of “ooie” and “gooie.” The homemade poptarts are flaky-amazing, and the fruit-filled poptarts come highly recommended from a fellow brunch diner.

After that brunch I was anxious to return. I went for lunch. The restaurant, which had been bustling and full on the weekend when we were last there, was empty and quite quiet except for staff members who were lurking around and chatting among themselves.

The restaurant has an exposed ceiling, wood floors and a second floor indoor balcony area that, while charming, amplifies the noisy first floor. When I visted for lunch, Sava’s was a winter wonderland and decorated with oversized Christmas ornaments covered in glitter and an immense Christmas tree also covered in glitter and fake snow. My fellow diner and I sat down at a high-backed booth with padded seats and a wooden table. The server came promptly over and took our drink orders—a Coke for me, and a sparkling water for my guest. Usually it’s a bad sign when you server starts your meal by bringing tonic water (used in the making of mixed drinks) instead of the sparkling a.k.a. soda water requested, but the server apologized quickly, when found, and brought the correct drink.

We ordered an appetizer at the same time as our food, and fell into a deep discussion about, of all things, Punnett squares. The conversation was pleasantly interrupted when our appetizer came (spinach and artichoke dip). We tried to dig right in but found, when an entire castle keep of pita chips is stacked around the dip, it can make it slightly difficult to find the food. When we did make it in, we found that perhaps the pita chips, which themselves where very crisp, warm and tasty, were placed in the castle like formation to stop you from drowning in the copious amounts of oil in the roux. The dip was a disappointing mixture populated with huge chunks of tinny canned artichokes and bits of wilted spinach. Once we dismantled the pita chips, found a small amount of the roux devoid of artichoke chunks and were able to taste the flavors themselves, they were actually quite good.

Our entrees came as soon after we were finished with the spinach and artichoke dip. Our main courses consisted of a steak sandwich with regular fries that I had selected and a burger with sweet potato fries for my companion. The fries, which come in small portions and are a la carté, make a pricey lunch pricier—$3 for regular fries and $4 for sweet potato. Both the regular and sweet potato fries were served hot and perfectly crispy. While sandwiches themselves were good, the steak in my flank steak sandwich ($10) was bland, and the meat in my companion’s burger was also in need of a bit of salt and pepper. In my steak sandwich the horseradish sauce (which appeared to be grated horseradish mixed in with a small amount of mayonnaise) overpowered the meat. When combined with the wilted arugula and balsamic braised onions there was simply too much going on—as if the sauce would cover for the meat.

The burger ($7) on the other hand was cooked perfectly medium well, had very fresh vegetables and a snappy sauce made with mayonnaise and hot sauce—the same sauce served with the sweet potato fries.

We concluded our meal with dessert even though a dessert menu was as hard to find as the door to the restaurant (we had to locate our server and request one). We tried the peanut butter cheesecake, cooked by Sava’s in-house pastry chef. The cheesecake was silky smooth and extremely chocolaty. While it was called peanut butter cheesecake, the peanut butter flavor was lost in the layers of chocolate. I’m not complaining; I love chocolate. If you’re looking for the taste of peanut butter, you’ll get it from the crumbled peanut butter cups that surround the square of cheesecake. The peanut butter cheesecake had a layer of peanut butter cheesecake sandwiched between two layers of chocolate cheesecake. All of this was perched on a double chocolate Oreo crumb crust. Alas, the crust was slightly soggy, but you won’t notice.

Yelpers, collectively, give Sava’s 3.5 stars. On Yelp.com, multiple reviewers praised the sweet potato fries, and panned the noise levels. While our service was good both times, more than a few Yelp.com reviewers commented on what they considered spotty service at Sava’s. All in all the food, ambiance, service were, for the most part pleasant, but not worth the $52 some dollars we paid for lunch, (including drinks and tip). Sava’s is a great restaurant for Ann Arbor, but I wouldn’t rush there. If you do decide to find your way to Sava’s, put it on your calendar for brunch with friends. Just remember to go the Sunday after payday.

by Robert Paarlberg

From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions. We want to save the planet. Help local farmers. Fight climate change — and childhood obesity, too. But though it’s certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.

Helping the world’s poor feed themselves is no longer the rallying cry it once was. Food may be today’s cause célèbre, but in the pampered West, that means trendy causes like making food “sustainable” — in other words, organic, local, and slow. Appealing as that might sound, it is the wrong recipe for helping those who need it the most. Even our understanding of the global food problem is wrong these days, driven too much by the single issue of international prices. In April 2008, when the cost of rice for export had tripled in just six months and wheat reached its highest price in 28 years, a New York Times editorial branded this a “World Food Crisis.” World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that high food prices would be particularly damaging in poor countries, where “there is no margin for survival.” Now that international rice prices are down 40 percent from their peak and wheat prices have fallen by more than half, we too quickly conclude that the crisis is over. Yet 850 million people in poor countries were chronically undernourished before the 2008 price spike, and the number is even larger now, thanks in part to last year’s global recession. This is the real food crisis we face.

It turns out that food prices on the world market tell us very little about global hunger. International markets for food, like most other international markets, are used most heavily by the well-to-do, who are far from hungry. The majority of truly undernourished people — 62 percent, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization — live in either Africa or South Asia, and most are small farmers or rural landless laborers living in the countryside of Africa and South Asia. They are significantly shielded from global price fluctuations both by the trade policies of their own governments and by poor roads and infrastructure. In Africa, more than 70 percent of rural households are cut off from the closest urban markets because, for instance, they live more than a 30-minute walk from the nearest all-weather road.

Poverty — caused by the low income productivity of farmers’ labor — is the primary source of hunger in Africa, and the problem is only getting worse. The number of “food insecure” people in Africa (those consuming less than 2,100 calories a day) will increase 30 percent over the next decade without significant reforms, to 645 million, the U.S. Agriculture Department projects.

What’s so tragic about this is that we know from experience how to fix the problem. Wherever the rural poor have gained access to improved roads, modern seeds, less expensive fertilizer, electrical power, and better schools and clinics, their productivity and their income have increased. But recent efforts to deliver such essentials have been undercut by deeply misguided (if sometimes well-meaning) advocacy against agricultural modernization and foreign aid.

In Europe and the United States, a new line of thinking has emerged in elite circles that opposes bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers and opposes linking those farmers more closely to international markets. Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that “sustainable food” in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn’t work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.

If we are going to get serious about solving global hunger, we need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming. And that means learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we’ve developed in the West. Without it, our food would be more expensive and less safe. In other words, a lot like the hunger-plagued rest of the world.

Original Sins

Thirty years ago, had someone asserted in a prominent journal or newspaper that the Green Revolution was a failure, he or she would have been quickly dismissed. Today the charge is surprisingly common. Celebrity author and eco-activist Vandana Shiva claims the Green Revolution has brought nothing to India except “indebted and discontented farmers.” A 2002 meeting in Rome of 500 prominent international NGOs, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, even blamed the Green Revolution for the rise in world hunger. Let’s set the record straight.

The development and introduction of high-yielding wheat and rice seeds into poor countries, led by American scientist Norman Borlaug and others in the 1960s and 70s, paid huge dividends. In Asia these new seeds lifted tens of millions of small farmers out of desperate poverty and finally ended the threat of periodic famine. India, for instance, doubled its wheat production between 1964 and 1970 and was able to terminate all dependence on international food aid by 1975. As for indebted and discontented farmers, India’s rural poverty rate fell from 60 percent to just 27 percent today. Dismissing these great achievements as a “myth” (the official view of Food First, a California-based organization that campaigns globally against agricultural modernization) is just silly.

It’s true that the story of the Green Revolution is not everywhere a happy one. When powerful new farming technologies are introduced into deeply unjust rural social systems, the poor tend to lose out. In Latin America, where access to good agricultural land and credit has been narrowly controlled by traditional elites, the improved seeds made available by the Green Revolution increased income gaps. Absentee landlords in Central America, who previously allowed peasants to plant subsistence crops on underutilized land, pushed them off to sell or rent the land to commercial growers who could turn a profit using the new seeds. Many of the displaced rural poor became slum dwellers. Yet even in Latin America, the prevalence of hunger declined more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2005.

In Asia, the Green Revolution seeds performed just as well on small nonmechanized farms as on larger farms. Wherever small farmers had sufficient access to credit, they took up the new technology just as quickly as big farmers, which led to dramatic income gains and no increase in inequality or social friction. Even poor landless laborers gained, because more abundant crops meant more work at harvest time, increasing rural wages. In Asia, the Green Revolution was good for both agriculture and social justice.

And Africa? Africa has a relatively equitable and secure distribution of land, making it more like Asia than Latin America and increasing the chances that improvements in farm technology will help the poor. If Africa were to put greater resources into farm technology, irrigation, and rural roads, small farmers would benefit.

Organic Myths

There are other common objections to doing what is necessary to solve the real hunger crisis. Most revolve around caveats that purist critics raise regarding food systems in the United States and Western Europe. Yet such concerns, though well-intentioned, are often misinformed and counterproductive — especially when applied to the developing world.

Take industrial food systems, the current bugaboo of American food writers. Yes, they have many unappealing aspects, but without them food would be not only less abundant but also less safe. Traditional food systems lacking in reliable refrigeration and sanitary packaging are dangerous vectors for diseases. Surveys over the past several decades by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that the U.S. food supply became steadily safer over time, thanks in part to the introduction of industrial-scale technical improvements. Since 2000, the incidence of E. coli contamination in beef has fallen 45 percent. Today in the United States, most hospitalizations and fatalities from unsafe food come not from sales of contaminated products at supermarkets, but from the mishandling or improper preparation of food inside the home. Illness outbreaks from contaminated foods sold in stores still occur, but the fatalities are typically quite limited. A nationwide scare over unsafe spinach in 2006 triggered the virtual suspension of all fresh and bagged spinach sales, but only three known deaths were recorded. Incidents such as these command attention in part because they are now so rare. Food Inc. should be criticized for filling our plates with too many foods that are unhealthy, but not foods that are unsafe.

Where industrial-scale food technologies have not yet reached into the developing world, contaminated food remains a major risk. In Africa, where many foods are still purchased in open-air markets (often uninspected, unpackaged, unlabeled, unrefrigerated, unpasteurized, and unwashed), an estimated 700,000 people die every year from food- and water-borne diseases, compared with an estimated 5,000 in the United States.

Food grown organically — that is, without any synthetic nitrogen fertilizers or pesticides — is not an answer to the health and safety issues. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last year published a study of 162 scientific papers from the past 50 years on the health benefits of organically grown foods and found no nutritional advantage over conventionally grown foods. According to the Mayo Clinic, “No conclusive evidence shows that organic food is more nutritious than is conventionally grown food.”

Health professionals also reject the claim that organic food is safer to eat due to lower pesticide residues. Food and Drug Administration surveys have revealed that the highest dietary exposures to pesticide residues on foods in the United States are so trivial (less than one one-thousandth of a level that would cause toxicity) that the safety gains from buying organic are insignificant. Pesticide exposures remain a serious problem in the developing world, where farm chemical use is not as well regulated, yet even there they are more an occupational risk for unprotected farmworkers than a residue risk for food consumers.

When it comes to protecting the environment, assessments of organic farming become more complex. Excess nitrogen fertilizer use on conventional farms in the United States has polluted rivers and created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, but halting synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use entirely (as farmers must do in the United States to get organic certification from the Agriculture Department) would cause environmental problems far worse.

Here’s why: Less than 1 percent of American cropland is under certified organic production. If the other 99 percent were to switch to organic and had to fertilize crops without any synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, that would require a lot more composted animal manure. To supply enough organic fertilizer, the U.S. cattle population would have to increase roughly fivefold. And because those animals would have to be raised organically on forage crops, much of the land in the lower 48 states would need to be converted to pasture. Organic field crops also have lower yields per hectare. If Europe tried to feed itself organically, it would need an additional 28 million hectares of cropland, equal to all of the remaining forest cover in France, Germany, Britain, and Denmark combined.

Mass deforestation probably isn’t what organic advocates intend. The smart way to protect against nitrogen runoff is to reduce synthetic fertilizer applications with taxes, regulations, and cuts in farm subsidies, but not try to go all the way to zero as required by the official organic standard. Scaling up registered organic farming would be on balance harmful, not helpful, to the natural environment.

Not only is organic farming less friendly to the environment than assumed, but modern conventional farming is becoming significantly more sustainable. High-tech farming in rich countries today is far safer for the environment, per bushel of production, than it was in the 1960s, when Rachel Carson criticized the indiscriminate farm use of DDT in her environmental classic, Silent Spring. Thanks in part to Carson’s devastating critique, that era’s most damaging insecticides were banned and replaced by chemicals that could be applied in lower volume and were less persistent in the environment. Chemical use in American agriculture peaked soon thereafter, in 1973. This was a major victory for environmental advocacy.

And it was just the beginning of what has continued as a significant greening of modern farming in the United States. Soil erosion on farms dropped sharply in the 1970s with the introduction of “no-till” seed planting, an innovation that also reduced dependence on diesel fuel because fields no longer had to be plowed every spring. Farmers then began conserving water by moving to drip irrigation and by leveling their fields with lasers to minimize wasteful runoff. In the 1990s, GPS equipment was added to tractors, autosteering the machines in straighter paths and telling farmers exactly where they were in the field to within one square meter, allowing precise adjustments in chemical use. Infrared sensors were brought in to detect the greenness of the crop, telling a farmer exactly how much more (or less) nitrogen might be needed as the growing season went forward. To reduce wasteful nitrogen use, equipment was developed that can insert fertilizers into the ground at exactly the depth needed and in perfect rows, only where it will be taken up by the plant roots.

These “precision farming” techniques have significantly reduced the environmental footprint of modern agriculture relative to the quantity of food being produced. In 2008, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a review of the “environmental performance of agriculture” in the world’s 30 most advanced industrial countries — those with the most highly capitalized and science-intensive farming systems. The results showed that between 1990 and 2004, food production in these countries continued to increase (by 5 percent in volume), yet adverse environmental impacts were reduced in every category. The land area taken up by farming declined 4 percent, soil erosion from both wind and water fell, gross greenhouse gas emissions from farming declined 3 percent, and excessive nitrogen fertilizer use fell 17 percent. Biodiversity also improved, as increased numbers of crop varieties and livestock breeds came into use.

Seeding the Future

Africa faces a food crisis, but it’s not because the continent’s population is growing faster than its potential to produce food, as vintage Malthusians such as environmental advocate Lester Brown and advocacy organizations such as Population Action International would have it. Food production in Africa is vastly less than the region’s known potential, and that is why so many millions are going hungry there. African farmers still use almost no fertilizer; only 4 percent of cropland has been improved with irrigation; and most of the continent’s cropped area is not planted with seeds improved through scientific plant breeding, so cereal yields are only a fraction of what they could be. Africa is failing to keep up with population growth not because it has exhausted its potential, but instead because too little has been invested in reaching that potential.

One reason for this failure has been sharply diminished assistance from international donors. When agricultural modernization went out of fashion among elites in the developed world beginning in the 1980s, development assistance to farming in poor countries collapsed. Per capita food production in Africa was declining during the 1980s and 1990s and the number of hungry people on the continent was doubling, but the U.S. response was to withdraw development assistance and simply ship more food aid to Africa. Food aid doesn’t help farmers become more productive — and it can create long-term dependency. But in recent years, the dollar value of U.S. food aid to Africa has reached 20 times the dollar value of agricultural development assistance.

The alternative is right in front of us. Foreign assistance to support agricultural improvements has a strong record of success, when undertaken with purpose. In the 1960s, international assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and donor governments led by the United States made Asia’s original Green Revolution possible. U.S. assistance to India provided critical help in improving agricultural education, launching a successful agricultural extension service, and funding advanced degrees for Indian agricultural specialists at universities in the United States. The U.S. Agency for International Development, with the World Bank, helped finance fertilizer plants and infrastructure projects, including rural roads and irrigation. India could not have done this on its own — the country was on the brink of famine at the time and dangerously dependent on food aid. But instead of suffering a famine in 1975, as some naysayers had predicted, India that year celebrated a final and permanent end to its need for food aid.

Foreign assistance to farming has been a high-payoff investment everywhere, including Africa. The World Bank has documented average rates of return on investments in agricultural research in Africa of 35 percent a year, accompanied by significant reductions in poverty. Some research investments in African agriculture have brought rates of return estimated at 68 percent. Blind to these realities, the United States cut its assistance to agricultural research in Africa 77 percent between 1980 and 2006.

When it comes to Africa’s growing hunger, governments in rich countries face a stark choice: They can decide to support a steady new infusion of financial and technical assistance to help local governments and farmers become more productive, or they can take a “worry later” approach and be forced to address hunger problems with increasingly expensive shipments of food aid. Development skeptics and farm modernization critics keep pushing us toward this unappealing second path. It’s time for leaders with vision and political courage to push back.

This originally appeared in Foreign Policy and is used here with permission.