Posts Tagged monoculture

Last fall, in anticipation of raising pigs, we plowed up a section of the field and put down a seed mixture consisting of yummy, nutritious, and easy-growing plants that pigs like: rye grass, sudan grass, field peas, and rape-seed. Although wild pigs live exclusively on forage, we don’t have enough space for us to raise them that way. We are using feed, but we also wanted to supplement with forage as much as possible. For one thing, the other plants would add variety to the pigs’ diet. For another, rooting around in the field would make the pigs happier, since rooting is a basic part of “what pigs do.” And of course, there could be some financial savings if the calories gleaned from the field translated into lower feed consumption.

From one perspective, open pasture is nature’s solar panel. Grass and other field plants capture the sunlight that falls on them and turn it into calories through the wonder of photosynthesis. Pastures are not, typically, composed of calories that humans can use, since we lack the physical adaptations that would allow us to digest grass very efficiently, but certainly other animals are more than happy to consume those calories, and convert into yummy meat (if you’re into that sort of thing). Anybody who’s ever had a garden knows how much work it can take to squeeze a meaningful amount of food out of a vegetable plot. Anybody who’s ever had to mow a lawn knows how little work it takes to grow grass, as well as plantain, dandelion, clover, violets, and other such “weeds”. So, the idea of something that eats grass and “weeds” and turns it into meat is awfully darn appealing (again, if you’re into that sort of thing).

Twice now, this year, the grass in the field has gotten tall enough that I have mowed it, and seeing the cut grass composting in clumps on the ground has ticked me off every time. The solar energy stored in that grass is incredibly valuable. It is one of the only truly sustainable forms of energy that exists. If I am going to call that field “mine” and bend its form to my will, then I feel like I have an obligation to do something more with that energy than leave it to rot. I have interrupted the life-cycle of the grass. I have deprived the animals that would live in the high brush of their habitat. I have denied the trees that would grow there the opportunity to take advantage of this sunny, clear spot. And for what? So I can have a pretty view out my window every morning?

For all the ways that we are just apes, I do think that humans have something that other animals lack. Our big brains give us a unique ability to imagine the world as we would like it to be. Likewise, they give us the technological wherewithal to realize our imaginings, for good or for ill, on a Herculean scale. Other animals may sometimes cause destruction in the same way that we do, but I doubt that they have the same intellectual capability to realize what they are doing. They are what they are, and they live or die, thrive or decline, on the merits of their selves. And, really, so do we, it’s just that we (might) have the unique ability to make conscious choices that change “what we are,” and so to shift the outcome.

When I look at all the environmental damage that the human urge to modify has caused, I sometimes revolt, and wish that we could “just be animals” again. But of course, that genie is out of the bottle and won’t go back. I took some comfort in the words of Joel Salatin, who says:

Plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness.  Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.

The comfort comes from the realization that looking at how things are and imagining how they could be is just as much a part of a human’s psychological distinctiveness as rooting in the ground is a pig’s. There’s no sense hating it or denying it. Just like a pig wouldn’t truly be fulfilled as a pig if it couldn’t root in the earth, I wouldn’t be truly fulfilled as a human if I didn’t see things and imagine how they might be better. So, I accept that doing so is just a part of my unique contribution to nature. Pigs root. Chickens peck. And humans cannot leave well enough alone.

But idle hands are the devil’s plaything, and a clever clever human is apt to make changes to his or her environment, for good or for ill. If I poison the plants in my yard and then put down sod and treat the land with weed killer so nothing else can grow there, I will have made the land one kind of “better.” But it is a very expensive form of “better.” Monocultures are fundamentally unstable. They require massive inputs of energy in order to sustain themselves. I will have to apply fertilizer to make up for the nitrogen that the lack of legumes like clover is causing. I will have to use weed killer or manual labor to keep out unapproved plants. I will probably burn gasoline to run a mower and a string-trimmer and a leaf blower. What I will have done is taken nature’s solar panel and turned it from a net energy producer to a net energy consumer.

Another option is to look at that land and ask myself, “What is that land capable of doing, in a way that will sustain me without fundamentally depleting it?” The field by my house is too small to raise a cow on, never mind a whole herd, but my few acres could possibly support a sheep. Better yet, they already support a colony of rabbits! If I want the grass to be short, is it better to expend my own energy to cut it, and to then leave it to rot in the field, or to bring in animals that will cut the grass for me, and will use that energy to sustain themselves? Even if you set aside the potential for those animals to become meat in the future, the answer to me seems clear. Fossil fuel being shipped from around the world so that I can run a mower to cut some grass and leave it to rot? Or happy sheep or bunnies living their lives off that grass, providing entertainment, companionship, and possibly even wool, milk, or meat to me? There’s no question to me which one is more Right.

The bottom line is that it feels fundamentally disrespectful for me to mow the field and nothing more. It’s disrespectful to the plants that would have grown if I hadn’t mowed, and to the animals that could have lived off of those plants. If I was to leave the field alone, then I don’t think that I would have any responsibility towards it, but when I divert the field from the path that it would take in my absence, I feel like I also take on a responsibility towards it, and leaving that grass to lay in the field doesn’t feel to me like I’m fulfilling that responsibility.