Future Food

 I've been doing research on seeds. It's that time of year. I've already sent off orders for scores of native prairie seeds as well as garden vegetable seeds. Even though it's the heart of winter, this is the time we start to think of spring! And from this latest research, it is clear that there are planetary issues about food and seeds, just like there are issues about so many other things. We already know that our home, the earth, is facing a growing number of threats in the near future. And we know that most of them have been caused by human activities and choices. You are probably all too familiar with the tug of war between folks who are trying to save the planet, and those whose short-term gain is more important than long term sustainability. This kind of news hits us in the face every day and it's not fun to think about. In this post and the next one, let's not focus on blame. Instead let's just look at the situation we have now, and use our imaginations and creativity to go some way toward restoring balance.

One of the challenges that is threatening our long-term food supply is the declining number of varieties of seeds. Because most of the world's seed supply is controlled by a handful of companies, and it is more profitable to concentrate on just a few varieties, over 90% of seed-bearing plants that we've used for food are becoming extinct. That is truly an alarming fact. Seed-bearing plants have been evolving for thousands of years, and we humans have been carrying them with us from place to place, planting them in all sorts of terrains and climate. Yet the vast majority of these plants are no longer here. This is not the kind of thing we would notice when we go to the grocery store. The abundance of food there would suggest we are doing just fine. But for scientists who look at agriculture from an historical perspective, this huge decline in kinds of seed available to us is a big cause for worry. Why?

One way to look at this is to realize that seeds and the plants that grow from seeds are not just static commodities. They're living, growing, adaptive beings. So over time, plants can slowly adapt to a changing environment. That is good! Unfortunately, our environment is changing all too quickly these days. So it is important to have a large diversity in our seed banks so that some varieties may end up better weathering future hardships like drought, heat, flood, blight, insects or cold. When profit is the deciding factor in the choice of which seeds to propagate, a few of the most successful varieties of grains or vegetables are the only ones chosen. But what if something happens to threaten those crops? A famous example is the potato famine in Ireland almost two centuries ago. In those days, Irish farms were a monoculture of potatoes, and all were the same variety of potato. It was chosen because it gave the best yield. The Irish population by and large lived on potatoes. When a potato blight struck, all the fields of potatoes died and there was mass starvation.

We've been learning over time that biodiversity is a key to ecosystem health. So it's a no-brainer that our farming practice of monoculture (huge fields of corn, wheat or soybeans) is not good for the whole system. Yet we've been doing this for a long time, and change is so hard when it's threaded into the whole economic fabric. Maybe we've come so far down this path that it's too late to fix it. What do you think? Frankly, I think there's a lot we can do, and it may even be fun. Stay tuned to the next post for ideas!