jdmann@cdp.uucp (David Yarrow) (10/08/89)
/* ---------- "Seeds of Hope: Our Genetic Heritage" ---------- */
/* Written 3am 10/7/89 by David Yarrow(jdmann) in en.agriculture */
SEEDS OF HOPE
Preserve Our Genetic Heritage
by David Yarrow for SOLSTICE magazine
THE LAW IS IN THE SEED
The Law is in the Corn
the people of the southwest say this...
to be there with the morning star in that sacred time...
to talk to the corn, to hear it talk in the wind
in the language of movement...what to do.
Out here at the Eastern Door, we say, it is
the Original Instructions,
but also that a sacred thing happened when we were
given the Great Law, for we had forgotten
the Original Instructions...
when crooked men arise and become dictators,
murderers, thiefs, cannibals...
The People would take the seed and move
to plant their Corn in a new place,
once again under the shelter of the Tree of Peace,
This is called Democracy,
it is in the land, it is in the seed.
The Law Is In The Corn
The Law Is In The Seed.
-Alex Jacobs/Karoniaktatie
reprinted from: INDIAN ROOTS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Northeast Indian Quarterly, 1988
Special Constitution Bicentennial Edition
published by: American Indian Studies Pgm, Cornell Univ, Ithaca, NY 14853
ANCIENT HERITAGE IN A MODERN WORLD
"Neolithic woman was the greatest plant biologist in history.
She understood she had to domesticate wild plants and improve
them. No one knows how she accomplished these feats. Meanwhile,
scientific man has never created an important new grain of any
magnitude. We have worked only with what neolithic woman gave us."
-- Norman Borlaug, Nobel Prize winner
for his work on the Green Revolution
SCENE #1: It's April 1, 1989 - April Fool's Day. A seasoned young
mother - housewife, shopper and consumer - stands in a supermarket checkout
with her husband and kids. On a magazine rack Newsweek screams: "How Safe
is Your Food?" while Time counters: "Is Anything Safe? How two tainted
grapes triggered a panic." Kids pressure her for candy and gum; her
husband checks her visit to the meat counter. Brave and determined she
hands mustard greens - dripping wet - to the checkout girl and asks, "Are
these organic?"
"I don't think so. I think they're brussels sprouts," comes a confused
reply as she flips her Product Code charts.
Creator was definite about the Order of the Universe. The umbilical
passage leads from your navel to your mother. Women are responsible for
humanity's reproductive life force: our genes, the logbook of evolution.
Childbirth, childrearing, cooking, gardening, and health care identify her
fundamental biological responsibilities. Through control of egg and seed,
women had custody of the genetic material - the actual biological
information of evolution within each seed and egg, cell and plant.
ORIGINAL INSTRUCTIONS
SCENE #2: At 7,000 feet in the Painted Desert of northeast Arizona, the
sun is bright, hot and relentless. Softly singing, a 5 foot Hopi woman
steps up to a 5 foot blue corn plant. After a moment's silence, she
resumes singing and gently grasps its stalk to bend its tassled crown over
her wood plate. Tenderly she shakes pollen from the ruptured husks; fine
gold dust drifts onto her plate. This is only done if there's no wind.
Hopi corn adapted to survive in a high altitude desert of harsh sand and
clay. Planted one foot deep, it waits for deep soaking rain to germinate.
Rain may wash dust from its leaves only twice in a season.
Later the woman makes prayer bundles and gifts, each dusted with golden
corn semen. At harvest she selects perfect ears of each color to become
Corn Mothers on altars.
At dawn, facing east, the woman holds a newborn kept in dark while
parents and grandparents sang ancient songs of Creation and Migration.
Suddenly rising sun's first ray pierces the east; she lifts the babe to see
the first gold shaft. Softly mouthing an ancient Hopi blessing, she rubs
gold pollen into the child's soft skin to welcome this being to Earth.
SCENE #3: A young woman details her medical history. Two doctors agree
her endometriosis requires surgery - her uterine lining has overgrown
beyond the cervical opening, and invaded fallopian tubes.
I ask a question to learn she usually begins her day with eggs. I
suggest her body was born with enough eggs, and to stop eating eggs. In
their place she should eat seeds, thus exchange plant for animal in her
diet. Her face looks surpised, then confused. With genuine innocence she
inquires, "Seeds?"
WHAT IS A SEED?
So predictable is Nature's diversity, you can tell a foodplant by its
seed. No less than 15 come from the Brassica family alone - daikon,
mustard, cabbage, kale, collard, cauliflower, kohlrabi, broccoli, brussel
sprout, turnip, radish, rapini, rutabaga... the names become a litany.
Such awesomely complex yet distinct uniqueness needs a name of its own; I
call it "Uniquity."
Today few Americans can identify vegetable seed, or tell weed from grain.
This lost knowledge isn't only genetic code, it's a personal practice of
life. As acid rain denudes mountains and depopulates lakes, acid blood
corrodes our brain synapses and our culture erodes away. Who took
"culture" out of "agriculture?" Where have they hidden it?
A seed is an entire plant - biological life in a most yang form. Each
seed is an embryo, already born - its biomagnetic ki compactly compressed
into a tiny speck called "germ" embedded in a huge package of food.
Quinoa, ancient Inca grain, reveals this coiled energy when cooking
releases the tiny spring spiraled about each seed. Coiled lifeforce
sleeps, awaiting its awakening.
With water and warmth, "germ" explodes as irresistible, all penetrating
force - root and shoot, bud and leaf, flower, then fruit. Each fruit holds
seeds of a new generation. If we could watch this eruption in time lag
where one second is one day, we'd see a full color firework explode, unfold
and condense in one to three seconds. Quite a miracle. Why did God make
it happen so slow?
Images of spark, explosion and fire are accurate. In biology, DNA in
seeds is called "plasm." Next door in physics lab, matter charged with
enough energy becomes "plasma"-a state, where it emits light, heat, and
other radiation. Within a seed is a trigger that unites matter and energy
in a dance as plasm becomes plasma creating plasm.
If a seed's outer membrane ruptures, oxygen-fire licks its way to the
embryo, discharging the energy of its food, then to consume the fetal plant
itself. Once dead, all genetic material (ie. DNA, RNA), essential oils
(ie. vitamin E), and enzymes to read, replicate and reproduce (ie.
mitochondria, cholorplasts) all decay. Molecular machinery to read a
species' record of evolutionary intelligence turns rancid.
Rancidity shortens shelf life, so modern technology refines nature's
diversity of life into products which no longer look like living organisms,
and have no genetic material. White sugar is perfect symbol of this
sterile, neuter, Mongoloid view: it has no DNA. Superrefined, bleached,
bromated, enriched white - its germ plasm gone, either removed or
deliberately destroyed.
WHO TOOK THE SPICE OUT OF LIFE?
Anna Bond points out in "Lost Ark," we're all guinea pigs in the biotech
lab. But remember, this is a millenium long War. Chemical technology
spawned in World War II gave rise to petrochemical food production. Now
we're offered nuclear and biotech strategies to "preserve" our food.
The Cold War brought germ warfare. As in all wars, the true victims are
nameless civilian innocents slaughtered in generals' battles for power. In
the war of man against Nature "civilian" is the very diversity of Earth's
biological life. "General" is General Foods, General Mills, General
Electric, General Motors...
On Jan. 2, 1989 Time magazine proclaimed: "Planet of the Year: Endangered
Earth." (Veteran journalist Bill Dufty observed, "Media wait til you're
dead before they canonize you.") In the article "The Death of Birth":
Variety is the very stuff of life.
Peter Raven, Director of Missouri Botantical Garden, predicts
man will drive 100 species to extinction every day for the next
30 years. Extinction is part of evolution, but the present rate
is at least 1,000 times the one that prevailed since prehistory.
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson said, "Mass extinctions 65
million years ago that killed off dinosaurs and countless other
species didn't significantly affect flowering plants." But
plant species are disappearing now, and people, not comets or
volcanoes, are the angels of destruction. Wilson called this
"the folly future generations are least likely to forgive."
As Earth's human population explodes, other life is ebbing
from the planet. Earth suffers a decline of entire ecosystems -
nurseries of new life-forms. Norman Myers calls it "the
greatest single setback of life's abundance and diversity since
life's first flicker 4 billion years ago."
Extinction is one calamity that is irreversible. As species
disappear, they take with them hard-won lessons of survival
encoded in their genes over millions of years. "It's as though
the world's nations decided to burn their libraries without
bothering to read what's in them," said Univ. of Pennsylvania
biologist Daniel Janzen.
Genetic mapping and engineering give the power to improve
crops by direct transfer of genes from wild strains. Biotech
firms hope to transform a plant into a "loose-leaf notebook"
from which scientists can select a particular page. NPI Biotech
transplanted genes from tropical tomatoes to increase density of
US tomatoes 2%, and promise catsup manufacturers extra profits.
Bio-diversity has just surfaced on the world's political agenda.
Southern Leaf Blight wiped out the 1970 corn crop; this was the "genetic
shot heard round the world" to usher in a new battlefield in the war. The
villain in this modern genetic drama is the virus. To pathologists, blight
is caused by virus. Our enemy is a tiny fragment of genetic material
enclosed in protein; it's on the border between living and inanimate
matter. Their genetic material - DNA or RNA - permits viruses to be
classified among the living. Otherwise, like molecular vampires, they're
lifeless parasites. Our confusion progresses from bacteria to viruses -
from "germ war" to "gene war."
How can something so tiny, with as little chromosomal intelligence as a
virus, threaten an organism with the genetic resources of a human being?
It's on the order of an entire galaxy held hostage by a firecracker on a
skateboard. Yet only 20 years after blight (a plant virus) struck a corn
crop, AIDS virus threatens to overthrow the sexual revolution. In a
single generation gene warfare threatens to infect entire nations.
As Anna Bond describes, our reservoir of plant genetics is drying up, or
becoming property of transnationals. What does this mean to those who try
or dream to live the fabled "meek shall inherit the Earth?"
* In 1900 US cooks could select their favorite pie apple from
1,000 varieties. Today bakers choose from fewer than six.
* Four generations ago farmers grew 1,100 varieties of bean,
700 tomato and 320 of corn. Now two peas make up 96% of the
harvest, and 71% of corn is from six varieties.
* Not just seed; farmers are disappearing, too. In 1900 they
were 30% of US population; now they're 2% and still dropping.
HAVE YOU SEEN MY THREE SISTERS?
SCENE IV: A clearing opens in a forest of massive, ancient trees.
Scattered seeming disorder are small raised mounds of earth less than 2
feet high. A woman wanders from mound to mound. On week earlier squash
seeds - the "elder sister" - were planted atop each mound; they now unfold
their first leaves. With a planting stick she pokes a ring of shallow
holes around each mound and drops a corn seed in each. Next the woman will
return to plant the "younger sister" - beans.
Her corn was blessed in a ceremony weeks earlier, and soaked in limestone
powder and herbs. This field is reserved for a special white corn which is
used for ceremonies. She will plant enough to last three years, in case of
a poor harvest. The excess harvest can always be traded.
An elder clanmother beside me says, "My parents said before white man
come, we never weed our gardens." At first I laugh to think of blaming
Europeans for weeds, but then I look and count: mustard, dandelion,
plantain, bedstraw, goosefoot, pigweed, ragweed, quackgrass.... All are
European plants, as foreign to native soil as we are to native culture.
To preserve vanishing varieties, many people engage in lively exchange of
old standard seeds. Every gardening magazine has a "Seed Swap" column for
readers to seek or offer heirloom seeds. The crusade to preserve old
varieties began in earnest in 1970's when Missouri gardener Kent Whealy
"inherited" some unusual varieties from his father-in-law.
Alarmed by the loss of traditional garden seed, Kent founded Seed Savers
Exchange (SSE), a network of home gardeners who swap old, unusual or
endangered varieties of fruits and vegetables. Members of SSE collect
vegetable seeds from the finest specimens of their cherished varieties and,
when necessary, protect flowers from alien pollen. Then they list seed
they're willing to exchange and varieties they hope to find.
Whealy and many gardeners believe old open-pollinated "Standards" are
best suited to home gardens. Patented hybrids are invariably bred to the
needs of commercial growers. Since standards predate pesticides and
irrigation, like tough old pioneers, they survive well without pampering.
For example, old fashioned polebeans save the trouble to put up poles
because their favorite support is a cornstalk. To Native Americans corn,
beans and squash are the Three Sisters; they grew together in a balanced
companionship. Today genetic traits needed for them to grow together is
bred out of hybrid seed and the Three Sisters now grow alone.
Kent was disturbed old varieties seemed to be vanishing. "Losses seemed
to be escalating, but we had no complete view of the seed industry to show
what was being lost and how quickly." So Kent sat down at a computer to
list every open-pollinated variety sold in the US. His first 1985 "Garden
Seed Inventory" became a tool to help locate open-pollinated vegetables.
The Inventory confirmed Whealy's fear many old varieties are becoming
extinct. Of 230 companies inventoried in '84, 54 were out of business by
'87. Large companies prefer hybrids and patented varieties. As a result,
943 open pollinates in '84 were no longer sold in '87. Nancy watermelon,
for one, tolerates drought; in 88 it lived 45 days without rain.
Several new entrepreneurs are dedicated to keeping desired old varieties
in circulation. Between 1984 and 1987 1,271 open pollinated varieties were
reintroduced. Sixteen companies were responsible for 69% of those new
varieties. Today preservation of seed plasm is less a dearth of seeds than
a shortage of peasants humble enough to practice traditional agriculture.
Seed can only be saved by being grown every year. Taxonomic seed
collections and cryogenic seeds banks are tombs for genetic intelligence.
In other words, germplasm preservation isn't "in vitro," but "in vivo" and,
even moreso, "in situ." TIME, Jan. 2, 1989 in "The Death of Birth:" "The
best place to preserve Earth's biodiversity is ecosystems that gave rise to
it. Man must abandon belief that natural order is mere stuff to be managed
and domesticated, and begin to accept that humans, like other creatures,
depend on a web of life that must be disturbed as little as possible."
SAVE SEED
SCENE 5: Perched 8,000 feet high on a rocky mountain over the Urubamba
River sits mysterious Machu Pichu. The ruins are precision-crafted
buildings with neat polygonal lines, beveled edges and mortarless seams of
the best of Inca architecture.
Incas displayed austere practicality in every aspect of life. Compared
to them, ancient Sparta seems like home for the frivolous. Incas lined the
mountain with terraces to last for eternity, even though there was little
soil. From the river below they hauled dirt over steep banks one half mile
deep. This is equivalent to hauling dirt from the Colorado River to plant
fields atop the Grand Canyon.
These terraces are all quite small for extensive agriculture - some as
little as six inches wide. They even built terraces high up on Huayna
Picchu peak, an hour's steep climb from the city. This makes no more sense
than if America today was to farm the faces of Mt. Rushmore with flower
boxes.
Every explorer offers to explain this paradox of why Incas built this
moutain citadel. Some claim it's a capital, others say a fort, or a
temple. A few believe it was a power generator and communications node.
But in INDIAN GIVERS Jack Weatherford explains Machu Pichu is an ideal site
to conduct plant breeding and foundation seed generation.
"Machu Picchu became an agricultural station - the mountain lies
in strips of vegetation microzones to pass through a series of
ecological layers. It's a scientist's dream - perfect for
controlled experiments at a range of altitudes and sun angles. It
was sacred because agriculture was a sacred activity; Incas worship
Pachamama, earth mother, and Inti, the sun, who together make
plants grow. Thousands of years before Inca natives produced
extremely high yields on small plots.
"They were the greatest experimenters with agriculture. They
built numerous areas where crops were grown in different ways. The
Incas probably did more plant experiments than any people anywhere
in the world. They developed a plant for every type of soil, sun
and moisture. They prized diversity... potatoes in various sizes,
textures and colors, from white and yellow through purple, red,
orange and brown. Some tasted sweet, others too bitter to eat.
Some mature fast and some slow, important where growing season
varies with altitude. Some require lots of water and some little.
Some store for long periods, other are livestock food."
"Spanish armies, clergy and disease swept Inca lands. Whole
villages died or were taken to work the silver mines. Urubamba
River valley now has a fraction of its former population. While
terraces and fields lie neglected, Peru imports potatoes."
FREE TRADE
Thomas Jefferson's devotion to liberty was equalled by a keen interest in
farming. Though he was a plantation farmer, in his day 85% of the
population was farmers. His experiments contributed to his inability to
make money at farming, and earned him an empathy for farmers throughout
history. One of his pursuits was growing rice. In 1784 Congress appointed
Jefferson Ambassador to France.
SCENE 6: In 1787 Thomas Jefferson spent his 44th birthday on muleback
crossing the Maritime Alps into Italy. He was still pursuing rice, but did
not find it until he reached Vercelli. Here he made the discovery he was
looking for: the superiority of European rice over American was inherent in
the species.
Jefferson decided to take with him some rice to grow in America, but was
told he could take rice out of the country only at the risk of his life.
There was a death penalty for rice exportation. Jefferson considered the
regulation so arbitrary he had no scruples about breaking the law. He
filled his coat pockets with rice and then hired a muleteer to smuggle two
sacks across the Apennines to Genoa.
BE LIKE THE GRASSES
SCENE 7: It's June 21, 1986 - Summer Solstice. Hopi and Navajo natives
gather beside Big Mountain to discuss efforts by the US government to
remove them from their ancestral homelands. Jane Biakeddy, a Navajo
mother, says, "We are safe within this land. We do not need to exchange it
for money. We are held within a noose, but the only law we go by is
natural law. We need to teach our young ones our traditions."
Later Pauline Whitesinger, a traditional Navajo, says, "We and the Hopi
are governed by the Old Ways. We earn respect by the way we live. We only
obey the fire - our law. We feed ourselves, and learn responsibility and
values from the fire. We don't elect the fire; it is our natural law. We
can't abandon the traditional ways now. We don't go by linear time; we go
by moons. We're probably made of precious stones. We need to carry on
with prayers and customs and not be governed by Window Rock or Washington.
Where is your corn pollen - your sacred bundle? Washington does not have
corn pollen."
Ten thousand years ago, on land recently scoured by continental glaciers,
the plant kingdom witnessed emergence of a newcomer adapted to survive
harsh, frigid winters and summer droughts. Small, hard seeds sprouted
profuse roots to clutch loose soil, and shoot up a rosette of single bladed
linear leaves. Rather than stand stiffly to fight fierce arctic wind,
these evoluntionary offshoots grow quickly, hug the earth, bend with winds,
and multiply profusely. Growing thick in families, they quickly blanketed
newly exposed plains to cover Earth's nakedness and pioneer for communities
of animals, insect, shrubs, and trees to follow. Success adapting to
planetary glaciation led them to proliferate into myriad varieties
inhabiting every climate and soil. Today they're the most numerous,
widespread and abundant; they're grasses. Their seeds are cereal grains:
rice, wheat, corn, barley, oats, rye, and millet.
Noah's Ark is a timeless symbol of cataclysm and survival. By means of
The Ark human and animal life was preserved to reinhabit the Earth. When
the waters receded God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign of His promise He
had put away his angry arrows and would never destroy Earth again.
And God said, I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall
shall flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither
shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you
and every living creature, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow
in the cloud, a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
I will remember my covenant between me and you and every living
creature of all flesh; and waters shall no more become a flood to
destroy all flesh. The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look
upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and
every living thing of all flesh that is upon the earth.
- Genesis 9:11-16
But a second image of The Ark lies hidden in Judeo-Christian heritage.
The Ark of the Covenant, with Moses' tablets and Aaron's staff, was kept in
the Holy of Holies of the Temple, tangible reminder of God's Law among men.
This, too, is the "Lost Ark." As we sit in doubt at the precipice of
history contemplating both man-made cataclysm and natural cycle of
glaciation, it is time to follow God's example and renew our covenant to
never destroy the Earth again.
No amount of tinkering with production technologies, marketing
strategies or natural food philosophies can solve our problem. Only by
changing the human values that motivate the behavior of our food system can
we avert confrontation with fate grimly hinted at by cancer statistics,
epidemics of immune diseases, contaminated groundwater, rampant inflation,
and poverty. For as surely as yin follows yang, a food system driven by
the wheel of competition will grind our our health, our farms, our
environment to ruin.
The path into our evolutionary future is simple: support native
agriculture; make your farmers your friends; grow your own food; save your
own seed; eat light; chew well; be like the grasses.
We have on our side one great force,
the power of Creation,
with good care, with kindly use,
to heal Herself.
Wendell Berry, 1976
The Unsettling of America:
Culture and Agriculture
=============================================================
- prepared by David Yarrow, the turtle, for SOLSTICE magazine
***** SOLSTICE: Perspectives on Health and Environment, is published
bimonthly at 201 E. Main St Suite H, Charlottesville, VA 22901 804-979-4427
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