We Take The Dance Away

I watch more documentaries and do more research on food and food production than is probably healthy. Along the way I try to figure out what the crux of the problem with modern agriculture is. It is easy to blame the human insistence on instant gratification, but that only really describes the necessity we created without explaining where it went wrong.

While watching Queen Of The Sun which is a documentary about bees it stuck me that there is a simple but perfect dance that nature - left alone - performs. The pollinators in a diverse ecology have food sources where they are needed to pollinate crops so that they produce.

At the heart of this dance is the bees who are responsible for over 4 of every 10 bites of food we eat - more if you eat like me. They currently need beekeepers to keep them alive thanks to our "conventional" farming which involves huge growths of one crop - monoculture. It has efficiencies for mechanical farming, but it leaves pollinators with no food source. It also provides for specialization of insects that are dangerous to that type of crop.

The answer to dangerous insects in this system is more and more pesticides and anti-fungals that are poisonous to the pollinators that are necessary to the food supply. This is a downward spiral of a system that is in too big of a hurry to harvest. It is the failure of fast food cultivation.

The process is like an arranged marriage where there is no dance and no romance. It is an unnatural transaction that requires unnatural inputs to keep it going. It is unnecessary to feed the world as the proponents argue.

A diverse ecology such as you see in good organic farming provides food for the pollinators and allows for the dance of nature to occur. It lets nature do what it does best - produce life. The biodiversity doesn't lend itself to pest specialization so insect control is a natural process where other insects and birds eliminate most of the pests.

This is a "slow food" system that requires more human input in sowing and harvesting, but it can be done without chemical herbicides and pesticides. The food has to be better for us with less chemicals on it.

That is why I choose to eat food that has had a chance to enjoy the dance that nature provides that not only feeds us, but the pollinators and humans and animals that have yet to be born. It is sustainable over the long run.

Be very well and more soon....