Want some flounder with your tomatoes?

The Botany of Desire
By Michael Pollan
Published in 2001 by Random House

Today's Assigned Reading: Chapter Four (p181-238)
Otherwise known as Desire: Control, Plant: The Potato

In this eloquent and casually written essay, Pollan interweaves his historical narrative about the potato with examples of how people have attempted and are currently attempting to control nature, plants, animals, economies, and ultimately people and societies.

For example, he discusses how the strength of large-scale industrial monoculture relies upon massive inputs of synthetic compounds and similar machinations. By following the train of logic that suggests genetically modified foods are critical to feed the world because their modifications will relieve farmers of the need to use these synthetic inputs, Pollan got me to understand and even sympathize with the conventional farmer — he almost got me thinking that maybe GM crops were a good thing.

But next ……… next, Pollan shatters this idea with a terrible and stark reality — this is not the only way to grow food! For example, organic farmers do NOT use massive amounts of synthetic inputs; they hardly use any at all! And furthermore, their farms are sustainable, alive, and producing yields equal to that of conventional farmers (p224)!

So why doesn't all our food come from organic farms? Well, there is a very simple answer to this question, and yet it is a very complex one. This answer is best summarized by the name "Monsanto," but really is a matter of how we as consumers are willing to buy what such massive multinational corporations offer us. By giving them the power of our purchase, we allow them to dictate what is available, what is the norm, and what is acceptable in society. Basically we have given faceless, nameless corporations — whose main goal is to make money — utter control of a critical resource that every single human on this planet needs to survive: food.

This multinational control is particularly well demonstrated by the case of the Russet Burbank potato. As dictated by McDonald's, fries must be made of this potato. However, as this variety is particularly vulnerable to net necrosis (p226), farmers must frequently load up their spray guns and douse their plants with pesticides so toxic that they'd rather loose their crop than go near a recently sprayed field (p219).

Shocking, eh? Well, it gets better (or worse, depending upon your perspective…). When Pollan asked a nearby organic farmer how he gets around this disease without applying any pesticides, he replied "That's only really a problem with Russet Burbank's… So I plant other kinds" (p 226).

To this I thought WHAAAAAAAAAAAT? A national; no, an INTERNATIONAL corporation with stores in almost every country of the world is DEMANDING their farmers grow varieties that require multiple applications of several different TOXIC and LETHAL pesticides, all to make the perfect french fry????

Er…… what else, aside from potato and veggie oil and salt (the listed ingredients) was in that french fry I ate yesterday?

Furthermore, how the blazes can this have occurred? How screwed up IS our food system — how can people allow this to happen? How is this morally, socially, environmentally or ethically acceptable? Surely the perfect french fry is not worth this much.

But no, someone wants to get rich and control the market and screw up our future's food supply — and then they say "trust us". Um… I want to point out — if someone representing a massive multinational corporation that has its fingers in every part of the food system's pie asks you to trust them, would YOU? WOULD YOU?


Another part of this narrative that especially worried me was the eventuality of insects developing resistance to genetically modified crops, in addition to other conventional pesticides. Monsanto estimates this will occur, at the latest, in thirty years (p215). Um, I'll be 50 then, and still around to see this happen. So this makes me worried as it'll definitely occur in my lifetime — what'll my food look like then?

With regard to the issue, Pollan raises this question regarding the use of crops GM'd to produce Bt - should Monsanto be promoting resistance to one of the safest organic pesticides around? In my opinion, this is essentially like shooting our grandchildren in the foot.

Furthermore, what right has Monsanto to destroy Nature's own pest-control mechanism, one that has been used by farmers since the 1930s to keep crops organic and plants safe from marauding pests (p215)?In light of this horrifying thought, I would like to offer a personal addition to the notion of wide-scale resistance — such resistance will have a far greater impact than just upon our food.

For three months last summer, I patrolled around the Thompson and Okanagan valleys looking for the West Nile Virus. Basically, I collected mosquitos and dead birds and shipped them off for testing at the BCCDC in Vancouver. But West Nile is not what I want to talk about here - I want to talk about the density of mosquitos in the city. While last spring was very wet and in some places in the country the bugs were horrendous, their densities were kept pretty low in the city thanks to my mosquito-killing counterparts.

Beginning in mid-April, teams all across the Interior were out killing mosquitoes using Btk, a variation of the chemical produced by Bt-impregnated potatoes. In this case, bacterial spores are caked upon corn grits and are applied to water bodies when mosquito larvae are present in high enough numbers to warrant treatment. Aside from killing 99.9% of mosquito larvae, this "pesticide*" is pretty amazing as it only affects mosquitos and black flies in their larval stage; it harms no other critters. For example, my boss has two dogs and they have eaten the grits many times to no ill effect. Even better, the killed mosquito larvae provide a non-toxic food source for local fish and insectivores!

Now imagine if mosquitoes became resistant to Bt… Consider first the efficacy of this product — it is about 99.9%, meaning that about one out of every thousand mosquito larvae survives treatment. Next, I encourage you to remember the occasional mosquito you saw from your sun deck last summer — and multiply it by a thousand. Now, please visualize a whole horde of mosquitos dive-bombing you and making your life a miserable living hell.

I don't know if mosquitos would become resistant to Bt, but this is one thing I know I do NOT want to experience.

As you can probably tell, I thought this chapter was bloody disturbing, especially due to Pollan's comparison between conventional GMO farms and Mike Heath's organic farm. If people would simply chose to eat different things (i.e., not french fries), maybe we wouldn't need to screw up our environment in such a way and maybe we could all eat organic too.


Well, Lyn, you wanted emotion in the writing — you've gotten it from me. I am just a little bit disturbed and ticked off and seriously disheartened by this reading… Monsanto sure has done a good job at getting us to swallow what they feed us, both literally and figuratively.

*if you want to get your hands upon some of this "pesticide," you need only to wander into your local Zellers or Home Hardware where you can buy it like you do toilet paper. Btk-encased corn-grits is only considered a restricted product and a pesticide-applicator's licence is required only if you want to buy 18 kg bags of the stuff. Which seriously, unless you intend to nuke your local lake, you don't need AT ALL. In fact, the only danger this product poses is that…… um…… er…… uhhhhh…… it kills mosquitoes! Yeah, this stuff is real dangerous.