Pollan uses Monsanto's new patented potato, NewLeaf, which has bt (Bacillus thuringensis) a natural soil dwelling bacteria that's used as a pesticide. Planting GM crops is still a novel idea and tests haven't been thoroughly conducted to find long term effects. In the case of bt crops, bt can build up in the soil and kill all the good bugs and can cause biological pollution in the form of "gene flow" where genes from crops can drift to any part of the ecosystem. The FDA considers GM crops to be organic equivalents yet labels bt potatoes as a pesticide. When Pollan visits the potato fields of Idaho, he sees large fields clean of weeds and full of monoculture. He goes on to talk about how Ireland became so dependent on one crop that when the potato blight spread, millions of people died and fled to America halving the population. Pollen compares the soils from a farm that uses Monsanto chemicals and how it's a powdery, gray void of nutrients and only used a medium to grow the potato. When he visits an organic farm, all haphazard looking, the soil is a familiar crumbly brown.
What stuck me the most was learning the fact than an average potato farmer spends $1,950 to upkeep one acre that he'll make almost $2,000 on, since that's the price he can get. He's demanded to grow Russet Burbank potatoes, even if they naturally don't grow well, because McDonald's uses them to create their beautifully uniform golden fries.
This goes back to Pollan's main point; the human desire to control, make things neat and uniform. We want things to work our way, efficiently, ordered in a nice row even if it means spraying thousands of tons of pesticides into the Earth that destroy the soil and groundwater all in the name of cheap monoculture.
Pollan brings up a great point about our need to control the environment. It seems we have this need to execute power over something at all times (after all, we are the top of the food chain). It's both frustrating and confusing as to why farmers don't utilize the land in the most optimal way: instead of using such extensive amounts of water they could plant using Hugel beds (usually they can look really unkept and definitely NOT uniform) or create swales or farm at the bottom of a hill. These options, although initially may require labor and a few resources, not only is it cheaper, it's more sustainable. Farmers are smart--I think there has to be some reason for the hardship they create for themselves, I just wonder what it is.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I love the title of your post, haha! Although I am hopeful that the number of community gardens are increasing, organic growing practices seem to be much harder to carry out. Seed companies like Monsanto are dominating the market and creating products like NewLeaf that change the game for farmers that do not have the economic gain to hold out. If we chose to work with Mother (or Brother) Nature, instead of against her, companies like Monsanto may not be so monopolizing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the majority of your post, just not the end, as I know that not all farmers use the same farming practices that most big food producers and agribusinesses do. There are farmers in the world who do work with nature to produce sustainable yields and not deplete the soils valuable nutrients. However, they do not produce the high yields that the big agribusinesses prefer. So they turn to GMO’s, pesticides, and large plots of farmland to create efficiency in producing these larger yields. However, I agree that these practices are unsustainable, and even though man has always experimented in the garden, it is a little unsettling that these experiments (GMO’s) are not even labeled are explained to the public. Also, I really like your title!
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