This post was originally written as a discussion post in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a graduate environmental literature course. 

Reading: https://michaelpollan.com/books/the-botany-of-desire/

When I lived in Texas, my family and I would walk down to the community farmer’s market every Saturday. We’d buy fresh vegetables, bread, eggs, and even chicken and beef. We quickly became friends with the ranchers from whom we bought our beef, Fred and Amber. Fred and Amber are passionate about the source of food, and they loved talking about the benefits of local small farming. In fact, their arguments sounded a lot like what Pollan says, “The modern industrial farmer cannot grow that much food without large quantities of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and fuel” which “saddles the farmer with debt, jeopardizes his health, erodes his soil and ruins its fertility, pollutes the groundwater, and compromise the safety of the food we eat” (190). Their beef was free-range pasture beef. If they fed their beef any corn, it was the non-gmo corn mash (??) left over from our other friend’s brewing business.

Amber always had a video on hand to lend about sustainable farming, GMOs, etc. (Amber and Fred eventually ended up leaving Texas to work on a farm in Virginia with Joel Salatin.) One of those films talked about Monsanto and the impact round up ready crops were having on farmers. One farmer was sued by Monsanto because his heritage corn was contaminated by Monsanto’s corn. If I remember correctly, the farmer lost, even though his crop was ruined, because Monsanto held the patent on corn. (The “biological pollution” Pollan discusses p 213). According to Fred and Amber, it is very difficult to find corn that hasn’t been contaminated because of the way corn pollinates.

The final section in Botany about potatoes and the Monsanto version (NewLeaf) Pollan experimented with brought me back to those years hanging out with Fred and Amber. I can’t imagine choosing to eat a food that is classified as a pesticide, no matter what the food looked like. It drives my husband crazy (especially now with prices so high), but I always buy organic or local when I can, especially the Dirty Dozen. Even though some folks think eating organic is silly, the quote from the farmer who said that he doesn’t even eat the food he grows and sends to the market makes me glad I do! (220). I think about that farmer and his corn…and Edward Abbey and his concept of the wilderness as a place of protest…and I wonder—if we can’t grow our own food because it’s patented, where does that leave us? According to Pollan: “Were I to save even one of these spuds to plant next year…I would be breaking federal law” (190). (It’s a good thing they stopped making these!)

In addition to providing “the pleasure of beholding the reflection of our labor and intelligence in the land,” it seems that gardens and small family farms are more sustainable and environmentally friendly than factory farms, yet the patenting of food could make home gardens obsolete because it would be illegal. The fact that Monsanto recognizes the problems with their genetically engineered pesticides/foods and yet just wants to face those problems in the future because of profits also reminds me of Abbey: “Today’s gain in control over nature will be paid for by tomorrow’s new disorder…we can cross that bridge when we come to it” (215). And goes back to the conversations we had at the very beginning of the semester about why the environment isn’t viewed as a more important topic today. It’s literally one that impacts the entire world, but we’d rather focus on convenience than sustainability. Like Heath, my friends focused on crop rotation, companion planting, healthy soil, etc, to create food that was healthier and safer and better for the environment (222-23).

Pollan’s discussion about the importance of biodiversity plays into this, as well. If we choke out all other varieties or unwittingly (or not) create a superbug that we can’t stop, we face a future potato famine on an exponential scale. The rhetoric about “feeding the world” from Monsanto hides the fact that they have really, as Pollan notes, gone outside of the rhythms of nature in a frightening way. Rather than crops being “the product of an ongoing back-and-forth between the land and its cultivators, mediated by…the species’ genome,” we now have a crop in which humans have intervened in an unnatural way—and we aren’t sure what the long term results will be (193). (Bee Movie?!) In addition to the destruction of beneficial insects, I’m also concerned about the fact that “the Bt in genetically modified crops is behaving a little differently from the ordinary Bt” (211). And, as bees move pollen around, “those genes can wind up in other plants” (212). And, a very important question for this mom—are these foods actually safe to eat?! If the FDA doesn’t consider them foods and no actual research has been “about the effect of Bt in the human diet,” why on earth would we be advocating that people eat them?! As Pollan says at the end of the book, “I suddenly understood with perfect clarity why Monsanto doesn’t want to label its genetically modified food” (238). Again—I’m so glad this crop was nipped in the bud. 😉

Honestly, I think this book has scared me more than any of the other work we’ve read this semester. Maybe it’s just the mom in me, but, like Mrs. Grimes, I need to feed my family!

I found the rest of the book absolutely fascinating and loved learning about co-evolution and Pollan’s speculation on how plants use our desires to further their species—but this last section really captured my attention. I’m looking forward to discussing insights from the other sections in other threads of the discussion this week. 