Pollan, M. 2001. The Potato. Page183-238 in The Botany of Desire. Random House,
Inc. New York
Decaestecker E, Gaba S, Raeymaekers JAM, Stoks R, Van Kerckhoven L, Ebert D, De Meester L. 2007. Host-parasite ‘Red Queen’ dynamics archived in pond sediment. Nature 450:870–3
Genetic engineering, poisons and potatoes – A farmer life is
definitely more complicated that it was in the past. The selective monoculture
of the contemporary society is causing a great deal of stress to both our lives
and the plants we choose (or not choose) to grow. Pestilence and insects are
concerns to a farmers crop and they must be fought tooth and nail if we want to
survive (and make money). But this battle is extrapolated by us. “Agriculture
is, by its very nature, brutally reductive, simplifying nature’s
incomprehensible complexity is something humanly manageable...” (Pollan, 185).
A quote that’s bitterly true about monoculture; we pick and choose what we what
(say Russet potatoes for the best French fries) and grow it in extreme amounts,
killing all intruders who grows on its land. While we may have the best
potatoes for French fries (and in large quantities, thank god) it does leave us
vulnerable. The Irish of 1845 know this all too well as the blight came and
wiped out there potato crops, leaving them with little food to rely on. The great famine reportedly caused Ireland’s population
to fall between 20%-25% in just seven years (granted a lot of that came by way
of immigration as well). Their reliance on relatively little crop diversity was
their downfall. Currently, we defend our crop with chemical weapons – both internally
and externally. By using Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt),
Monsanto has created NewLeaf potatoes, which are capable of
producing a
toxin that kills the Colorado Potato Beetle if he dares taste it. Organic
farmers dare not use such a thing, but sometimes (as in the case with Percy
Schmeiser) wind can cause “environmental pollution” (Pollan, 213) of GMO free
crops. Percy was taken to court by the
Monsanto juggernaut for growing their plant without a patent. Monsanto has
somehow patented entire plants and can sue people if they find their plants on
your property without a patent, and seem to dismiss the idea that plants can cross-pollinate
and even have their seeds carried by anything but a tricky farmer trying to
screw Monsanto out of $15 an acre. While Schmeiser eventually won a small
battle and Monsanto had to pay to clean his crops of their GM canola, they
still hold a patent on these plants and continue on their way. I guess I should be writing NewLeaf™ as it is listed on Monsanto's website. Pollan touched
on these same patent laws while growing his NewLeafs but also found another
interesting yet worrying fact: “The plants [NewLeaf potatoes] themselves were
registered as a pesticide with the Environmental Protection Agency” (Pollan,
190). So now not only are plants being drenched in chemicals externally, they
internally produce another poison which they claim not to be hazardous to
humans (we’ll see in the future I guess).
There is also the problem of super plants – plants that
become increasingly resistant to chemicals we use to kill them. These resistant
plants reproduce creating a whole population of resistant plants causing us to
use stronger poisons to kill them then they once did, something Percy Schmeiser
stressed great concern about. All these chemicals we use to keep weeds or
insects out is startling, and it is constantly increasing in potency and number.
All of these chemicals, toxins, whatever you call them, could be the downfall of
our sustainable agriculture and even our health as time goes on, and what is Monsanto
answer to this? “There are a thousand other Bts out there, we can handle this
problem with new products” (Pollan, 215). This has got to be the worst way to
deal with this inevitable problem – just throw more new chemicals at them that
will make us a ton of money! It seems like a lazy answer and not a proper fix
at all, just more poisons littering the ground and food of our already poisoned
world. But, perhaps there is more to this than I originally thought. A couple
years ago, I read a paper called “Host-Parasite ‘Red Queen’ dynamics Archived
in pond sediment” that provided evidence for the Red Queen’s Hypothesis which
is an evolutionary system between two competing species. This is a sort of
evolutionary arms race in which one species develops an advantage to another competing
species, leaving the other to develop something to counteract said advantage.
This goes back and forth in competition and eventually the species will have
some completely difference traits (perhaps being stronger in one way, but
weaker in a way it stronger in the past). In the paper listed above, they found
pond sediment with Daphnia and its
parasites going back years. What they found is that the parasite is most virulent
to the Daphnia that is current,
rather than previous or future generations. This means that although Daphnia are getting more resistance and
advantageous traits against the parasite as time goes, the parasite is evolving
with Daphnia, and therefore it may
lose some of what made it so virulent to past Daphnia in favour of new traits to be more virulent with the
current Daphnia. With all this
evolving, changing, and selection going on, neither of them got very far. This
dynamic can also be seen in predator-prey interactions. Now to relate this to
these super plants; perhaps new (or even old) chemicals are just the thing to
control these super plants. Maybe (I may be way off here) the plants being
selected for currently that are resistant to our current chemicals are not
resistant chemical the plant was resistant to in the past. So instead of
increasing the potency and toxicity of the chemicals being used, switching
between less strong, safer chemicals after set periods on time (years) around
and around could do the trick. Either that or the plants will just keep getting
more resistances and were all fucked, but hey I am no scientist and could be
completely in the dark here.
The Incas created a spud for every environment instead of
changing the land to suit just one type. They had dozens of species of edible
potatoes and showed immunity to such threats as the blight that decimated
Ireland. It was a natural defence against nature. However by Western standards,
an Inca garden would have looked “patchy and chaotic” (Pollan, 193), something
we cannot stand. Even with the monocultured Russet Burbanks grown today, we spray
them with some of the most toxic chemicals available (Monitor) just to stop
aphids from giving our brilliantly organized potatoes net necrosis; net
necrosis cause brown spots on the Russet Burbanks. While the potatoes taste
fine the brown spots produced would cause farmers to reject a whole crop for aesthetic
reasons alone. We are so concerned with aesthetics we are willing to spray a
harmful chemical just so we can eat without being bothered a simple blemish.
Makes sense. Although Monoculture has its problems, I’m afraid we’ve gone too
far to turn back to the chemically free, diverse Inca way. We must deal with
our problems in the future not the past and for better or worse, genetic
modification and chemicals are at least part of our future.
I think you are probably right about this - monoculture is going to keep rolling along, at least for now. It has too many real advantages to give up easily. Creating new, targeted pesticides every so often to overcome new resistances is probably workable, and I don't doubt it's exactly what the agrichemical companies have in mind.
ReplyDeleteYour idea from that Daphnia paper is very interesting. I wonder if there are any herbicides so old that they've gone out of use, so we can see if they work again now? Do herbicide resistance genes impose any costs on the plant, so that they'd be selected against when the herbicide isn't around? Better yet, could you make a herbicide that specifically attacks via the herbicide resistance pathway? Probably way too much to hope for.
Thanks, this is very well written and gives me lots of food for thought.