Plants create life out of thin air.

Pollan M. The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Newyork, NY: Penguin books; 2006. 1-119p.

I remember holding my mothers hand, wanting nothing more than to explore a world of infinite smells, tastes, and colors. I remember being in a super market as a child. The speech troubles of my adolescence created a keen observer of a little boy, a little boy more readily interested in analyzing and evaluating those playing a game than playing the game itself. I learned to love the world around me. I learned to watch. Slightly frightening, maybe, but all children go though hardship. All children grow. These events in my life history, transformations, are supporting evidence for my dissociation with food. I, like many little children, thought food came from the supermarket.

Micheal Pollan understands this.  To explain the fundamental thoughts behind any child of today in a supermarket, Pollan invites the reader to come on a personal journey. He attempts to explain, on pg. 2, how “so violent a change in agricultures eating habits is surely the sign of a national eating disorder”. This is what his book is about, the pleasures of eating. To explain our relationship with food, Micheal Pollan explains the story of corn. From the moment pollen meets carpel, to the products in our cupboards. Pollan goes on a journey to investigate the true story of corn in agriculture today. Explaining corns’ dominance in supermarkets and homes the same; explaining the rational behind the history that got us to present. Among other things, Pollan explores the idea of whether or not a given food is the sum of its parts. He touches on the disagreement of whether we should have the ability to own life, the ability to put a patent on living, breathing organism; Pollan explains the irrational decisions taking us to a gloom future.

Amidst feeling slight shame for my animal relatives, Pollan strengthened, my every increasing, respect for plants. Pollan credits us, on pg. 16, with the “Linnaeus-defying twinky” and plants, on pg. 4, as creating “life out of thin air”. A contrast that I couldn't ignore, after hearing we are processed corn walking people since 1492. It makes me contemplate who I should be ashamed of, the crop or the cultivator. Pollan increasingly gives more credit to plants as he explains how extraordinary the science behind the C-4 plants is. The thought of how a plant could be selective for an isotope for its selfish carbon needs is nearly incomprehensible. This is because of our perspective on plants.

We never see plants as having control. Or how they have led us to be dependant. Without our hands to rid it of its husks there would be no fecundity. And like it or not we share this truth with plants. Because of this integration between plants and people, when talking of the success story of corn, Pollan says we are also talking of coevolution. Saying that agriculture is plants “coevolutionary bargain with humans”. Pollan is able to describe the importance of “selfers” and hybridization in this relationship. Saying, “hybridization represents a far swifter and more efficient means of communication, or a feed back loop, between plants and humans”.

As I drove home Friday afternoon I found myself questioning ideas of dependence and its origin. I thought of how interesting it is that every human being is the product of sex, or at least the product of two gametes coming together. How everything in existence has an origin, and how as time passes, every origin seems to fade - Diminish. I thought of how likely it is every individual sees himself or herself as moving forward in the world around them. When really the world moves with each of us at exactly the same pace, time never plays favourites.

The beauty in such a daydream, of which I should have tired to avoid while driving, is something I constantly feel Pollan try to give to his readers. With his great use of comparisons and analogies, Pollan tries to connect with even the most environmentally distant people to agriculture. For example, on pg. 38, he describes modern corn to skyscrapers in a city, to “maximize real-estate values”. It is quite the experience to feel, and visualize, the environment change as Pollan describes Iowa’s shift into modern agriculture - It reminds me of the changing of a grape to a raison. If nutrients are equivalent to maximizing productivity, then on the level of a mathematic formula we needn’t get concerned. After all, everyone knows science has an answer. But don’t we represent something greater being the most intelligent organisms, thus far proven to exist? There is something other than water missing from the raison that makes it different from the grape. There is an absence of life.

"Ok that was a bit much. I will lighten up..."

The more I keep reading of the direction the world took to get where it is today, the more I feel concerned for the future. I feel like we are driving our world in an off course direction. I don’t want to be responsible for the grape becoming a raison. Why can’t we get a measure of our actions from the fact that, thus far, we have never truly turned a raison back into a grape? I wonder if a bigger better soybean exists?

When plants are a source of capital, there is too little accountability for the deleterious affects to the environment that come as a product, in obtaining the capital. We bring ourselves to the age-old question of whether or not the end justifies the means. There is no longer a strong connection between the earth, which grows food, and the man, who cultivates it. I say “man” for an added strength in my writing, less concerned with whether or not it is politically correct.

“Ouch that hurts”

I jut realized the pitfall of homologous genes. I am tempted to think like those before me, the very people that let one advantage take precedence over many disadvantages; like the creature behind Monsanto. Maybe if I keep reading, trying to consciously keep away from such dangerous carelessness, and eating my “nutritional” foods I will cause enough epigenetic change to clear future generations of the weakness in my genes. In hopes that one-day, I foster a descendent capable of thinking things through, different from myself, different from those before me. 

"I thought I told you to lighten up Travis..."

Sponges to evolution, like Fertile Crescent to agriculture?

Diamond J. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of human Societies. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1999. 84-113, 131-156.

Terms of interest

Poignantly: affectingly: in a poignant or touching manner

Breadbasket: an agricultural area that provides large amounts of food, especially grain, to other areas

Chufa: an african plant of the sedge family

Piecemeal: one piece at a time, gradually

Teosinte: a tall grass of Mexico and Central America, related to corn

Ethnobiology: the study of plants and people being treated or used by different human cultures

Husks: the dry external covering of certain fruits or seeds, found in corn

This weeks reading, chapters 4-7 and 8 of Guns, germs, and steel, fell under the larger of heading of “the rise and spread of food production” – Jared Diamond couldn’t have described these chapters better. As we progress through the chapters, we progress through Diamonds explanations of the rise and spread of food production.  He provides a keen sense of detail in his explanations and allows us, the reader, to understand the uncertainty in much of the scientific method used. Although Diamond raises many questions, overall he seems to focus on why food production spread the way it did, or at least the way it seems to have. Diamond continually reminds us of this questions importance by stating the many areas in the world, other than the Fertile Crescent, which had fertile ground and domestically-able plants and animals but failed take action; He believes this is of particular importance as many of these geographical areas are now the richest centers of agriculture and herding today.  Although Diamonds explanations are only hypothetical, food production having started so long ago, he is able to cultivate our minds. In giving us the relevant information that exists he prepares us, giving us the chance to grow and have an opinion of our own. He seems careful not to take a definitive stance in the matter – something I truly appreciate.

Considering my opinion after the last assigned reading by Diamond, I am surprised that I enjoyed this reading as much as I did. My opinion began to change when, two pages into chapter 4, he tells of exactly what the chapter, and the coming chapters, will entail. However, it wasn’t until chapter 5 when he said “much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots: between people with farmer power and those without it, or between those who acquired it at different times” was I able to consider giving his writings a second chance. Then again, I have always been a sucker for a great use of contrasts.

Unlike the previous reading, it is not hard to notice Diamond goes to great lengths to provide detail in whatever he is discussing. For example, on pg. 95, when he explains the theory behind radiocarbon dating and how isotopes decay, he explains the advantages and pitfalls of such a method too – something thus far I have appreciated in Micheal Pollans writing. I found it very interesting to hear how crops may have developed independently, and my interest persisted as Diamond talked of how food production could be traced back to five areas, the basal most being the Fertile Crescent. I enjoyed hearing “what arrived in to launch food production in Egypt was foreign crops and animals, not foreign peoples”, especially after my childhood of Hollywood movies suggested otherwise.

Above all, I enjoyed that Diamond was able to go above and beyond simply presenting “facts”. He was able to paint a picture. By using words like nuclear, when describing the radiation of plant domestication on pg. 103, he was able to portray a sense of movement in his words. I could see the plants moving. Diamond speaks in an almost poetic fashion as he describes how those with food production had an advantage over others. Saying that, the advantage started the “long series of collisions between the haves and the have-nots of history”. He continued on with beautiful abstract-like descriptions, in ch. 6, saying “…food production evolved as a by-product of decisions made with-out awareness of their consequences”. Furthermore, on pg. 107, I felt he was poetic in saying “human and animal foragers are constantly prioritizing and making effort-allocation decisions, even if only unconsciously”. Explaining that animals go for preferred foods, likely with the greatest payoff, and thereafter, if those foods no longer exist, they shift to less preferred foods. Unfortunately I think that Diamond diminished some of the liveliness of his writing with the use of question marks.

“Stay cool Travis, keep you mind where it should be Travis. This is for school and you are in a cool, calm place. Take a deep breath in..."

Ok, I am going to end this here. I disliked the question marks. I thought they were unnecessary and at the best of times redundant. It was a great read though, and because of it I want to read more – I hoped this would happen. 

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