If only the Tea Party activists ate rice every single day!

Margaret Thatcher famously commented that there is no such thing as society, in her articulation of a political economic thinking that promoted the individual and individual's rights.  Thatcher and Reagan set the world onto reexamining the role of the individual and the individual's contract with others.  As we look around, it is hard not to notice that we are yet to arrive at any definitive version of the contract--in fact, our disagreements appear to be getting more and more intense on the issue of individuals and society (think Obamacare, for instance.)

An anthropology professor notes in the NY Times forum, "The Stone":

modern evolutionary research, anthropology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience have come down on the side of the philosophers who have argued that the basic unit of human social life is not and never has been the selfish, self-serving individual. Contrary to libertarian and Tea Party rhetoric, evolution has made us a powerfully social species, so much so that the essential precondition of human survival is and always has been the individual plus his or her relationships with others.

"Plus" is the operative word there.

The sanctification of the rights of individuals and their liberties today by libertarians and Tea Party conservatives is contrary to our evolved human nature as social animals. There was never a time in history before civil society when we were each totally free to do whatever we elected to do. We have always been social and caring creatures. The thought that it is both rational and natural for each of us to care only for ourselves, our own preservation, and our own achievements is a treacherous fabrication. This is not how we got to be the kind of species we are today.

I don't imagine the patron saint of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, reading that essay and thinking about the ideas discussed there.  It is a shame that from the intellectual weights of a Jefferson and Franklin and more we have now arrived at the likes of Palin as powerful leaders.  This surely cannot be evolution! ;)

So, why the rice, you ask?  There is a reason, dear reader.  Keep in mind that this blogger does not simply rant like how Palin does!

Here is what a report in the Scientific American notes:

research from the U.S. and China indicates that northern Chinese may have a mind-set closer to individualistic Americans than their southern compatriots. And the reason is rice.

Got your interest there?

Farmers north of the Yangtze predominantly grow wheat, and those to the south grow rice. Cultivating rice is very labor- and water-intensive, and it therefore requires sharing resources. Communities have to cooperate to plant and irrigate. Growing wheat requires half the labor and depends more on rainfall patterns, so it can be managed with much less reliance on one's neighbors.

Sets up well for the question, which is:

[University of Virginia doctoral candidate Thomas Talhelm] wondered if agricultural practices could help explain the more individualistic, or Western, mind-set he found in the north compared with the more holistic, or Eastern, way of thinking in the south.

Aren't you dying to know what Talhelm found?

As expected, the researchers found that holistic thought and loyalty were higher in provinces with rice cultivation and that individualism was more common in wheat-farming areas. To see if the rice theory applied beyond students, the researchers also looked at provincial divorce rates, another indicator of individualism. “Wheat regions had a 50 percent higher divorce rate than rice regions,” Talhelm says.

Aha!  There is more:

The rice theory jibes with other cultural research into how agriculture influences thinking, explains Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. For example, Nisbett found that in Turkey, farmers (an interdependent occupation) were much more holistic than herders (an independent occupation).

If only Sarah Palin and the Tea Party nutcases would do some serious reading and thinking before they opened their mouths, and if only people across the political spectrum engaged in reading and thinking!

Yep, from the New Yorker ;)

Genetically modified bullshit! The Oregon wheat story

Professor Harry Frankfurt observed that one reason, among many, for the astounding growth in bullshit, which we mostly tolerate, comes from the fact that in a democracy we the people are pretty much expected to have opinions on everything.  Whether we know anything or not is immaterial.

This blog is, perhaps, a wonderful illustration of his point--every post is more bullshit, it seems like, because I opine on so many issues. Surely, I am bullshitting, right?

A few weeks ago, it was big news in my part of the world when researchers found that wheat from a certain farm tested positive for genetic modification.

On May 1, with GMO-positive test results in hand, Mallory-Smith contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s  Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to tell them that unapproved seeds which had been engineered 14 years beforehand by one of the biggest agricultural companies in the world, Monsanto, had somehow found their way into a wheat field in Oregon. And on May 29, the USDA alerted the public about the genetically modified wheat’s presence in Oregon.

Ah, Monsanto. So much has been said and written about this company that I now have no idea how much of  anything is true anymore.

So, what the heck is this GM-wheat?

click to enlarge

If Monsanto destroyed, back in 2011, all the experimental seeds that were developed then how come this Oregon presence?

“It would be nice to know how the wheat got there,” Rowe says. “We don’t want to solve the wrong problem and waste a bunch of effort because of speculation.” 

We don't know!

So, GM crop is the issue?  GM crops are not grown?

Not!

Three years ago, I blogged about this chart from The Economist:

That was three years ago!

Oh, it is ok in other countries but not here in the US?

Not!

Here's the full list of food crops for which you can find GMO varieties: Corn, soybeans, cotton (for oil), canola (also a source of oil), squash, and papaya. You could also include sugar beets, which aren't eaten directly, but refined into sugar. There's also GMO alfalfa, but that goes to feed animals, not for sprouts that people eat. That leaves quite a lot of your garden untouched.
GMO versions of tomatoes, potatoes, and rice have been created and approved by government regulators, but they aren't commercially available.

So, a recap.  GM crops are grown in many countries. In the US, too.  But, we have a problem with GM wheat.  Really?  Is GM bad?

Not!

The GMO story has become mired in the eco-wrecking narrative of industrial agriculture, and that is too bad for those who understand the real risks of climate change and discern our desperate need for innovation. And while the blue-sky hype of a genetically secured food supply has not become a reality, there have been a few breakthroughs. Even as climate change has increased the prevalence of many plant diseases, the new science can take credit for genetic inoculations that saved Hawaii’s papaya business. It’s also led to flood-resistant rice, created by Pamela Ronald of the University of California–Davis.

Confused enough?  Welcome to my club!  Do you now see why I bullshit, a lot?

So, can we do anything constructive?

GMO agriculture relies on the relatively new science of bioinformatics (a mixture of bio- and information science), which means that DNA sequences look a lot more like software code than a vegetable garden. And if Monsanto is the Microsoft of food supply—raking in the rent on bites instead of bytes—perhaps the time has come for the agricultural equivalent of Linux, the open-source operating system that made computer programming a communal effort.

Imagine if we made this a ballot issue, and we voters have to cast a yes/no.  Aren't you convinced by now that most of our votes will not be based on any scientific understanding and, instead, an overwhelming majority of us will rely on good ol' bullshit?

It is a surprise that we have come this far with democratized bullshit. Let us see how much more we can extend it!

Ug99 Fungus: big ag problems ahead?

A neat follow-up to my eggplant post, with respect to how important the agricultural battles are going to be:

The enemy is Ug99, a fungus that causes stem rust, a calamitous disease of wheat. Its spores alight on a wheat leaf, then work their way into the flesh of the plant and hijack its metabolism, siphoning off nutrients that would otherwise fatten the grains. The pathogen makes its presence known to humans through crimson pustules on the plant’s stems and leaves. When those pustules burst, millions of spores flare out in search of fresh hosts. The ravaged plant then withers and dies, its grains shriveled into useless pebbles.

On the one hand, the rising population and their affluence will trigger higher demand for food of various types. On the other hand, the possibility of pests causing large-scale problems.  The report at Wired.com continues:

While languishing in the Ugandan highlands, a small population of P. graminis evolved the means to overcome mankind’s most ingenious genetic defenses. This distinct new race of P. graminis, dubbed Ug99 after its country of origin (Uganda) and year of christening (1999), is storming east, working its way through Africa and the Middle East and threatening India and China. More than a billion lives are at stake. “It’s an absolute game-changer,” says Brian Steffenson, a cereal-disease expert at the University of Minnesota who travels to Njoro regularly to observe the enemy in the wild. “The pathogen takes out pretty much everything we have.”

These are the kind of reports that make me dismiss the extraordinary events that Hollywood movies, for instance, portray as our huge dangers.  In contrast, it is such "small" and "old" problems that I worry will cause large-scale havoc on this planet.  It turns out that Yemen is at the nerve center of this problem too:

The fungus is also an efficient traveler: A single hectare of infected wheat releases upwards of 10 billion spores, any one of which can cause the epidemic to spread. The circumstances have to be just right, though — the prevailing winds must blow toward an area of wheat cultivation, and the P. graminis spores must survive the airborne journey.

That is precisely what happened in the case of Ug99. Two years after its initial discovery at Kalengyere, the pathogen drifted into the fields of central Kenya, where it caused major losses and wreaked havoc on thousands of subsistence farms. The pathogen’s next stop was Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest wheat producer, followed by eastern Sudan. (So far, those two countries have escaped major damage thanks largely to dry weather, which tends to hinder.) By 2006, the pathogen had hopped over the Red Sea into Yemen, a disturbing migratory milestone. “I look at Yemen as the gateway into the Middle East, into Asia,” says David Hodson, former chief of Cimmyt’s Geographic Information Systems unit and now with the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, where he tracks global wheat rusts.

The father of the "Green Revolution" died

MSNBC:

Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, the father of the "green revolution" who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in combating world hunger and saving hundreds of millions of lives, died Saturday in Texas, a Texas A&M University spokeswoman said. He was 95.

From his Nobel Lecture, which was in 1970:

For the underprivileged billions in the forgotten world, hunger has been a constant companion, and starvation has all too often lurked in the nearby shadows. To millions of these unfortunates, who have long lived in despair, the green revolution seems like a miracle that has generated new hope for the future. ....

... Some critics have said that the green revolution has created more problems than it has solved. This I cannot accept, for I believe it is far better for mankind to be struggling with new problems caused by abundance rather than with the old problem of famine. Certainly, loyalty to the status quo in food production - when being pressured by population growth - cannot break the chains that have bound the peasant to poverty and hunger. One must ask: Is it just to criticize the green revolution, with its recognized accomplishments, for failure to correct all the social-economic ills of the world that have accumulated from the days of Adam and Eve up to the present? Change we must, or we will perish as a species, just as did the dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.

The green revolution is a change in the right direction, but it has not transformed the world into Utopia. None are more keenly aware of its limitations than those who started it and fought for its success. But there has been solid accomplishment, as I have already shown by concrete examples. I have also tried to indicate the various opportunities for capitalizing more fully on the new materials that were produced and the new methods that were devised. And, above all, I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that further progress depends on intelligent, integrated, and persistent effort by government leaders, statesmen, tradesmen, scientists, educators, and communication agencies, including the press, radio, and television.

Thank you, Dr. Borlaug.