Fire and Knowledge

I finally got around to reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan a few days ago. I’m about half way through and it’s excellent. Pollan says we have a “national eating disorder” and highlights the irony that our stereotyped unhealthy country is so obsessed with “health food” and diets. He walks through his personal journey with industrial agriculture, organic agriculture, and hunting/gathering. The first 1/3 of the book is devoted to corn, because we eat more corn than anything else, though we don’t know it. It’s in everything, quite literally.

This is a great book to read if you’re interested in the food you eat, which I suppose should be everyone. Actually, if you’re not interested in the food you eat, this might be exactly what you need to read. You’ll never look at industrial (or industrial organic) food quite the same way again.

There are many interesting quotes I’ve marked, which are sure to find their way onto the site in the next few months.

Technology always has unintended consequences. Cell phones have had many — from car accidents to people wearing strange usb-key-looking-things in their ears. Scientists are suggesting another unintended consequence: bee killing. This is significant not only for ecological reasons but for agricultural — bees pollinate our crops so we can eat. An article in The Independent says:

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world – the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon – which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe – was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up….

The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast…. The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

More studies will follow. But let this be a reminder how technology is a bargain — for every advantage, there is a disadvantage that isn’t always obvious. Sometimes “progress” is one step forward, two steps back.

(For further reading on technological consequences, see Neil Postman’s Technopoly.)

Update: Welcome all new visitors! I think Chris, in the comments below, makes great points, so be sure to read that as well. If you like what I have to say, check out the rest of the site and consider subscribing to my feed.

Here is an interesting video of Wendell Berry interviewing Bill McKibben about his latest book Deep Economy, global warming, energy, economics, agriculture, ethanol, local solutions, and more.

From Scientific American:

Environmental group Greenpeace launched a fresh attack on genetically modified maize developed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, saying on Tuesday that rats fed on one version developed liver and kidney problems.

Greenpeace said a study it had commissioned that was published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology showed rats fed for 90 days on Monsanto’s MON863 maize showed “signs of toxicity” in the liver and kidneys.

“It is the first time that independent research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, has proved that a GMO authorized for human consumption presents signs of toxicity,” Arnaud Apoteker, a spokesman for Greenpeace France said in a statement.

If you buy corn from the supermarket, chances are it’s genetically modified. They don’t label it, of course, because you wouldn’t buy anything that says “genetically modified.” These types of studies are not new (this has been known for a while), but since it is independent research and published in a peer-reviewed journal, it is bigger news. Another reason to buy organic corn from a local farmer’s market or co-op.

This tractor does two things—it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.

–John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), 151

The man sitting in the iron [tractor] seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dusk mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat… The driver could not control it–straight across the country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron petals…. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land.

–John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), 35

At last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won’t work anymore. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop.

We have to do it. We don’t like to do it….

But you’ll kill the land with cotton.

We know. We’ve got to take cotton quick before the land dies. Then we’ll sell the land. Lots of families in the East would like to own a piece of land.

The tenant men looked up alarmed. But what’ll happen to us? How’ll we eat?

You’ll have to get off the land. The plows’ll go through the dooryard.

–John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), 33

…the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

–Daniel Webster