Two Worlds Collide: The Unintended Ramification of Agricultural Progress

The Columbian exchange, coupled with modern agricultural techniques combined “killing as many as two million people, half of them in Ireland, in what came to be known as the Great Hunger.” (Mann, 2011, Chapter 6, Section 3, Chapter 22) Many of the factors that coincided to create the Great Hunger are still at play today. Cloned rubber trees in the far east (Mann, 2011), inability to understand the impact of introducing invasive species and creation of farmlands that ultimately cause more harm than good are lessons we should have learned from “the new scientific agriculture: one kind of potato, on a terrain shaped for technology, rather than biology.” (Mann, 2011, Chapter 6, Section 5, Chapter 7) and the invasive species of the P. infestans blight that took advantage of it.

Genetic diversity and lack thereof

It is important to understand that in the Andes, where European potatoes originated, “Andean natives mainly grew their tubers from seed.” (Mann, 2011, Chapter 6, Section 2, Paragraph 7). Scientists have found that “families in a mountain valley in central Peru grew an average of 10.6 traditional varieties” (Mann, 2011, Chapter 6, Section 2, Paragraph 15) of potato. They were very genetically diverse. In contrast, potatoes or S. tuberosum, having been introduced to Europe by Spanish explorers, where planted from pieces of the tuber containing at least one eye mistakenly called “seed potatoes” (Mann, 2011). During the rise of potato farming in Europe, nutritionist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, “the Johnny Appleseed of S. tuberosum.” (Mann, 2011, Chapter 6, Section 5, Paragraph 21) encouraged people to plant this very limited sampling of potatoes “unknowingly promoting the notion of planting huge areas of clones” (Mann, 2011...

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...ty to understand the implications of reducing the biodiversity of potato crops coupled with choosing mass production over the lower yield but functionally superior “lazy bed” technique resulted in a perfect storm that resulted in massive deaths throughout Europe, especially the less wealthy Irish. While we may be tempted to see ourselves removed from the plight of our ancestors, even today we rely on largely cloned, transplanted farms of rubber trees (Mann, 2011), the intentional cloned perfection of GMO’s as well as an inability to understand the implications of creating massive farms that are engineered for production over a holistic integration with the environment. The next ecological disaster is not a question of if, but of when.

Works Cited

Mann, C. (2011). 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created [Kindle iPad Version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com