three crops account for 71% of arable acreage in the united states...and the three agribusinesses in the graphic, along with bayer and my friends at archer daniels midland, probably supply most of the seed used to plant those three crops...the constraint this places on crop choice should be obvious, but what may not be so obvious is the impact agribusiness is having on plants' genetic diversity...industrial food wants as much as it can get in the way of cheap raw materials, and the folks in industrial agriculture are doing their best to see they get them...in order to do this they have been genetically modifying agricultural plants (particularly corn)...they have increased the plants', tolerance to living closer together...they've genetically "linked" plants to certain herbicides (liberty link corn from bayer for example) so the plant can withstand the application...but another trend is more disturbing...because of the abundance of pesticides and herbicides over the recent decades plant engineers have reached the conclusion that natural plant defenses are uncecssary...if there is an application that will eliminate the pest agribuisness will remove the genetic defense from the plant so that the energy that the plant would have devoted to defense will be transfered to growth [jackson 1980]...fine, i suppose, as long as the applications based on petrochemicals are abundant enough and cheap enough to do the job...since oil is finite you have to think that eventually those applications won't meet either criteria...then what? hope that human ingenuity comes up with a response as cheap and as effective a petrochemicals? maybe...but what if we don't? then you have a staple crop facing nature in a genetically weakened condition without the cover of a manmade defense...sounds like a disaster to me...unless we start to save the diversity that's left...one reason why all the plants and seeds in the garden are from organic growers and heirloom seed companies...i'll be saving seeds as well and am currently searching for area seedsaver groups and seed banks to share with.
hope you all have a great christmas and that we all weather the new year.
for a sobering look at this as experienced by farmers in India see the Frontline program "Seeds of Suicide" (see pbs.org for the webpage and a portion of the film)
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