"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."

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.

The Human Criteria

Diamond, J. 1999. How to make an almond. pg. 114-130 in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York.

Pollan, M. 2001. Introduction. Page xiii to xxv in The Botany of Desire. Random House, Inc. New York.

Both of the readings cited above were overlapping in their theory and information presented, however they had different points of view and when read consecutively added to each other significantly. Guns, Germs, and Steel approached the domestication of plants and the human-plant interaction with a humanistic explanation (we domesticated said plant because we want it) , while The Botany of Desire seems to make us think more about maybe we are the ones being used. After all, certain plants, such as the oak tree, we would love to domesticate for the acorns produced but we have not been able to, even with today’s technology. So what is the true story?

Like everything in life, I believe nothing is black and white. We are not the lone ones benefiting from the domestication of plants, nor are plants – the true story is gray. Its true humans are the best (or worst) at altering and controlling our environment to suit our needs, and through various methods of trial and error, the domestication of certain plants occurred throughout our history. We saw what we liked, we took it, and we grew it. Through this act, we were able to pick what we liked and artificially selected it against the usual natural selection. The example used in Guns was almonds. Almonds in the wild contain amygdalin, which is metabolized to cyanide, however we eat them by the handful when we buy them in the store. This is because a mutation of a single gene in the almond prevents the synthesis of amygdalin and, therefore, the almonds are delicious and edible. Humans at one point or another stumbled across this mutant plant and started cultivating and caring for these plants leading the plants to be able to reproduce – even though in nature these almonds would be eaten before reproduction. This human intervention blocks natural selection in favour of our human criteria.

Birds, bats, bees and many other animals pollinate and disperse genetic material for plants, however they “don’t fulfill the other part of the definition: they don’t consciously grow plants” (Diamond, 116) like humans do. We collect, harvest and plant the most desirable plant to use – back to this human criteria. However, while “human desires...connect us to these plants” (Pollan, XVII), the plants also benefit. In nature, plants with certain mutations (such as the edible almonds described in Guns) would be stripped clean and fail to reproduce, where as the amydgalin containing almonds outcompete and reproduce effectively; in human cultivation, we take these mutants which should be selected against and protect them, giving them a sort of second chance to reach that “moment of bliss” (Lyn Baldwin). The protection granted allows these plants to thrive with our help and reproduce more than they could ever could in the wild, leading to a benefit for both species.

 “Plants are so unlike people that it’s very different for us to appreciate fully their complexity and sophisitication.” (Pollan, XIX). This quote for Botany of Desire speaks loudly to me, as I myself didn’t have any interest in plants before being forced into learning about them in my second year of my bachelors, however the more I learn, the more respect I have. I personally look at domesticated crops and fruits as opportunists of the plant world – much like the Mako Shark, which follows boats for easy meals or the common crow –seizing a opportunity presented. These plants were easy to domesticate and thus can almost be thought of as willing to fit the niche we unknowingly created for them.