Bookshelf: Shattering: Food, politics, and the loss of genetic diversity
Billy Brack writes: Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity by Fowler and Mooney is one of the important books of our times, explaining how agribusiness is putting the world at risk by limiting the world’s food crops to a few genetic strains. Quite literally we are putting our eggs in one basket.
Pros: Love of plants comes through to any gardener, in this important political work.
Cons: Some people might be offended by leftist politics and miss the message.
This is one of the important books of the 20th century. In Shattering Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, Gary Fowler and Pat Mooney explain how agribusiness is putting the world at risk by limiting the world’s food crops to a few genetic strains. Quite literally we are putting our eggs in one basket.
For this and related work, Fowler & Mooney were awarded the Right Livelihood Award by the Swedish Parliament. This award is known as the alternate Nobel Prize. The Right Livelihood award “embodies the principle that each person should follow an honest occupation which fully respects other people and the natural world.”
Personally I’m not that much into Doom & Gloom. Political Correctness bores me, and I find corporation bashing generally tedious. Much of the book is about politics and I’m apolitical, but I find plants and how people react to them in general and farming in specific fascinating. I get the feeling that Fowler & Mooney would rather be talking to rice farmers in Borneo or wheat farmers in Manitoba, but much of the book is devoted to criticism of the network of international seed banks that are tasked with preserving the genetic diversity of the crops that feed us.
Unfortunately political action is necessary. Most ecological activists are urging that we leave nature alone, but Fowler & Mooney are advocating that we must act to preserve the genetic diversity of food crop plants that have been passed down to us by farmers for the thousand generations that mankind has been farming on this earth.
Shattering
Shattering is the process by which plants scatter their seeds. Over the years farmers have selected the seeds of one plant over another for planting, but the first quality early farmers selected for in grain crops was shattering. In nature the grain which easily lets go or “shatters” is most likely to fall to the ground, germinate and provide for the next generation. The earliest farmers selected grains that held on to their stalks as these were easier to collect. This genetic trait is counterproductive to nature, but of great benefit to man. While shattering is the first genetic quality man selected for his food crops; there are thousands more qualities that have been bred for by millions of farmers. While these selected strains came from nature, they will be lost if man doesn’t preserve the wide variety of variations on food crops that have been bred over the course of civilization.
Vavilov
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov is one of the great scientists of the 20th century whose face should on posters in high schools around the world. This isn’t likely as his theories immediately lead to a discussion of politics. In the 1930s Vavilov mapped the “centers of origin of cultivated plants” this theory has been confirmed and elaborated on by others. Basically all of the important cultivated food plants came from a few areas in the tropical belts primarily in the southern hemisphere.
While food plants such as wheat, corn and barley are grown in the north, they were first domesticated in these “centers of origin”. Very few seeds were taken North, and the bulk of genetic diversity remains in these centers of origin.
Economic Value of Genetic Diversity
Today we understand the value of genetic diversity. For example in the 1830s the potato famine in Ireland could have been avoided had farmers known about the hundreds of varieties of potato cultivated in Peru. Many of these varieties were resistant to the potato blight that caused so much starvation and economic disruption.
These blights are not confined to the historical past. As recently as 1971 the Russian wheat crop failed because the high-yielding Besostaja strain was susceptible to frost and drought both of which occurred that year. While the industrialized nations were able to buy their way out of the crisis, the poor countries who could not afford grain imports starved.
Similarly the corn blight of 1970 in the US did major damage because the few widely-planted strains across the US were not resistant to this disease.
After these disasters, it became apparent to the world governments that there was a need for the UN and other regional organizations to collect seeds from Vavilov’s centers of diversity and store them in seed banks. Scientists responded to these disasters of the industrial North by heading South to find the genetic stock that would be resistant to a wider range of diseases and climactic conditions.
Politics
This is where the politics comes to play in Shattering Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity. It is not a pretty story with the “haves” pitted against the “have-nots”. The basic split is that the economic bulk of production is in the North and the diverse gene pool is owned, preserved and managed by impoverished third world farmers.
The Green Revolution
The authors are particularly critical of the Green Revolution. Since the late 1970s scientists in the industrialized North have been working on breeding crops that will yield more food per acre. The idea is to raise the standard of living and end hunger. Unfortunately these high-yielding crops are dependent on insecticides, fertilizers and tractors. While this has raised crop yields, it has had the effect of concentrating wealth in the hands of the few who can afford the tools required for modern farming.
While this concerns Fowler & Moody, the main reason for writing this book is their concern for loss of genetic diversity when third world farmers switch over to “modern” varieties. The traditional crops are the beneficiary of thousands of years of genetic selection by intelligent farmers, and they can best be preserved by people who actively plant the crops.
Foodies Will Save the World
This book was first printed in 1990, and the second printing from the University of Northern Arizona Press is 1996. The new popularity of this book is happening at the same time as the spread of the World Wide Web. The bad news is genetic engineering and laws encouraging the “patenting” of plants are making the problem worse. The good news is there are thousands of back yard gardeners and small university and private seed banks that are trading information and seeds.
While Fowler & Moody are critical of the government sponsored seed banks, they feel they are essential as part of a larger system of amateurs, traditional farmers, and smaller scale organizations if we are to preserve our food-crop heritage.
Of course this book was written before the web, and I doubt that Fowler & Moody had ever heard the term “foodie”, but I’m optimistic that there are enough people interested in what they eat to help us provide alternatives to the uniform foods that corporate agriculture is putting on our plates.
Unfortunately Epinions does not have an image of Richard Hendel’s cover design showing David Cavagnaro’s photograph of heirloom tomatoes. I don’t believe that in 1990 many of the book-buying public would have recognized an heirloom tomato. Today many people not only recognize the image, but they are saving seeds and continuing this legacy.
Much like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Shattering Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity is an important book because many people are changing their behavior based on the ideas these authors put forward for the first time. There has been much written on this subject since 1990, but this book is the landmark publication on this subject.