I want to paint a picture that connects the atmosphere, photosynthesis, soil micro-organisms and the varied regions & inhabitants of the world.
I wonder if any of you have ever grown a root from a tuber that you buried in the earth or sewed life from a seed that emerged, genetically new, like a child who comes into the world. In order to grow, there must be a pathway where nutrients can flow: a foodway. Micro organisms who depend on the consumption of living plant excretions continue to cycle the nutrients they consume through layers of life - transforming and passing out what they have eaten from. The digestive and excrement process is more obvious in mammals and other macro-life forms, however, it is occurring on the most minute levels as well. Breaking bonds of elements, forming new compounds, and finding enough nutrients to continue this cycle takes energy.
Immense lightning bolt level energy is needed to convert the Earth’s atmospheric nitrogen (N2) {the most abundant gas in Earth’s atmosphere} into forms that can be fixed into the soil, which then allows plants to grow green and photosynthesize. Thankfully- lightning literally can break the strong N2 atmospheric nitrogen bond and cycle nitrogen into the Earth’s organisms. When nutrients are not bio available; it means the organism’s physiology does not harness the energy alone to digest/breakdown/cycle/metabolize the nutrient. Thank goodness for the symbiotic relationships between plants and other organisms- a connection that mirrors humanity’s similar need to develop cultures that elevate our reach when there is not enough energy to complete a task of life alone.
Nitrogen feeding bacteria and nitrifying prokaryotes make their homes in the soil and around the roots of plants. They, like lightning, innately have the energy to convert N2 atmospheric nitrogen from the air into the soil. The microbes pull from the atmosphere and transform N2 into NH3 aka ammonia; a bio-available nitrogen compound that plants can work directly with. Other forms of plant available nitrogen appear in the soil via plant & animal decomposition, exudates from living plants, lightning and rainfall.
Nitrogen must remain fixed and be continuously fixed into the soil in order for plants to form chlorophyll to photosynthesize and beneficially affect wider circles of life. The cycling of nutrients is constant, all around, and within us.
Before contemporary laboratories and scientific research funding, agricultural science had evolved through the lived earth-human connection centered on respect, gratitude, reliance, and providence. Through the story of the potato, we can notice cultural practices attuned to those qualities that allowed for nations of people to grow and nourish their families.
The Nightshade family that potato, tomato, eggplant, tobacco, chili, etc. are members of, contains various toxic compounds. The toxins vary in the way they manifest in the plant and in the nature in which they can be rendered benign, in order to be ingested. The potato’s ancestral home land of the Andes mountains presently recognizes at least 5,000 different varieties of potato that have been intelligently cultivated in order to move away from biologically incompatible constituents and form a diverse and reliable foodway.
It is an oxymoron we must accept that ever-changing genetics through landrace seeds is reliability.
These landraces have been produced through generations of collecting and planting seeds, which is distinct from cloning; a practice where the cultivation is maintained by cuttings or tissue cultures from selected plants- rather than the former sexual reproduction. Through landrace techniques, Andean people’s culture has proliferated such great biodiversity that results in parasites, pests, and pathogens (oh my!) being on their toes when it comes to infiltrating the radiantly healthy soils that plants and certain microbes co-create. Diversity truly is our wealth.
Potatoes in their homeland to date, have not had an issue with mass pathogenic susceptibility/attack, yet there have been several instances of such in the regions that have cultivated potatoes in a different cultural context. Human behavior and the prosperity of agricultural fields are directly connected.
During the hundreds of years that passed while potatoes were gaining popularity in Europe and later, North America, the relationships between the importing and exporting nations were rocky, to oversimplify. Therefore redundant methods of potato cultivation began that were not akin to the methods of cultivation engineered by generations of Andean families.
In 1821, Peru (where a great portion of the Andes reside) gained independence from Spain, and in 1840 they began a new mass export; guano. Guano contains a plant-available nitrogen in the form of excrement from flocks of birds.
Tones of guano (1 ton=2000lb) were being mined on the coastal islands of Peru, and more being vehemently sought out through government funded sea expeditions; industrial scale chemical agriculture had emerged. The United States Congress passed a federal law in 1856 “The Guano Islands Act”, stating that citizens of the United States were enabled to take possession, in the name of their country, of unclaimed or unoccupied islands containing guano deposits.
You can imagine how the frenzy of mining occupied the thoughts of many. There was a struggle to maintain soil fertility and be able to feed emerging nations. Fear of survival can motivate many behaviors that in other circumstances would not be exhibited. The Europeans and North American settlers held memories and stories of countless famines throughout the middle ages and following centuries, including the 1845-1852 Irish Potato Famine, which was was due to a massively widespread potato-destroying pathogenic fungus and warring human cultures. The great genetic similarity in their potato crops made it easy for the pathogens to overcome the potatoes defense system.
Pathogenic organisms, and pests that decimate root and leaf systems, are a problem when their numbers are enormous. Otherwise, the population of these organisms are balanced through plant-beneficial organisms who act as shields and immunity fields for the plant. The ecosystem in the soil has biological incentive to keep the soil biome in favor of the plants health because photosynthesis is the initial step, the first trophic layer, and the origin point for nutrients to reach other forms of life.
A system of life guards and perpetuates life. This type of culture one should train the eyes to see and participate in, because there are cultures that do not center mutual benefit.
After some time of North American settlers cultivating potatoes in the Mississippi River Basin and Rocky Mountains, a pitfall to their cultivation style, which centered imported fertilizer and cloned potatoes, was reached. The Colorado potato beetle had moved into the potato grow zones and this introduced population preferred the potatoes to other non-crop members of the Nightshade family. The desire to exterminate grew in the minds of many.
In 1870, decades before laws to regulate chemical-agriculture were passed, news began to spread that the arsenic-based paint ‘Paris Green’ was an effective insecticide. Here lies the beginning of mass applied synthetic pesticides.
The beetles quickly adapted and developed resistance. Their resistance was met by unregulated chemical-pesticide companies continuing to synthesize chemical compounds of arsenic, lead, mercury, chlorine, etc.
So, a new branch of human innovation; industrial scale chemical assault on select organism’s reproductive systems, began. Chemical innovations snowballed, and in 1909 the culmination of many scientists attempts to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere artificially, actualized via Fritz Haber of Germany.
Five years after World War 1 began, Haber was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize "for the synthesis of ammonia (NH3) from its elements". Ammonia was first manufactured using Haber’s process in 1913 in Germany. When the war began the factories were turned towards militaristic desires because the compounds they were producing were not just fertilizers, but also powerful explosives. A link between agricultural industry and war industry was made.
The advent of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizers that could be manufactured meant that there was no waiting on lightning and rain to draw down nitrogen and no need to maintain practices that keep the nitrogen in the soil if production of thousands of pounds of bio-available nitrogen had been proven to work. This mental and behavioral shift of industrial agricultural growth is known as The Green Revolution.
Haber’s synthetization process of nitrogen still guides the majority of thought on how soil, plants, and agricultural regions should be managed.
What mysterious ways have the Andean people been growing potato crops that have led to long lasting, widely diverse, and pathogen dodging potato genetics?
I see it as a case of the humble genius more than something to be bewildered at. The bridging of the Andes peaks and valleys with the great plains of the Mississippi River Valley, Rocky Mountains, and beyond, has already happened and we move forward amongst the spread of the spores, micro, and macro life. Hopefully, we choose to elect cultural practices that are in coherence with sustained nourishment, abundant energy, and appreciation. Hopefully, we become aware of the life systems in the soil that function through the strength of multi-species communal resilience and mimic their functionality in how we tend land.
Cultural motives guided by systems of life guard against the potential of Earth becoming susceptible to the nonreciprocal movements of organisms that do not care if our crops are decimated, so long as they are fed.
The capacity of Earth’s fertility is hidden within the life giving ways we maintain our relationships- to the soil, to the water, to our plant & algae partners-in-breath, and to each other.
When we gather information that harmonizes with systems of life, the light of this education radiates and transforms. When we are educated holistically on how genetic diversity is proliferated and move our scientific thinking towards the times before and beyond the modern laboratory and funding - we reach a reality where scientific exploration works as a student of the system of life, not a self serving harvester and dominator. We can lay to rest extractive and strenuous ways of stewarding land and agricultural fields. From here, we can employ modern scientific thought and practices in forms that are loyal to life as a whole.
I empathize with the attempts of people who lost touch with the thread that binds life together, while thinking they were forging pathways of evolution. Many times the most temporally convenient way is not the virtuous and wise way, and having long term vision is not an effortless task. Nonetheless, pivot is available to us.
