Monocultures in crops and people

Biodiversity is a fact that can be measured among a number of different directions, depending whether you focus on the type of life (plants, animals, fungi),  the number of species within a certain type (insects, rodents, small carnivores) or even the genetic variability within a species. And life as we know it relies very heavily on it to be able to perpetuate itself. This variability is the prefect counterbalance for its inertia against changes, establishing a dynamic equilibrium where small innovations are constantly being created only to perish within a short time span with the rare exception of those modifications which prove, at the same time, sustainable for the bearer (not making their life miserable) and profitable in the long run (improving the overall living conditions of the species or the ecosystem).

At the risk of repeating myself, I will point out that this equilibrium is very delicate: if changes are too frequent or too wild the species, the society or the ecosystem can disintegrate when the different elements become unable to cooperate; if changes are too rare the system is rigid and any random variation in the environment can bring it to its knees before it has a chance to react. This is precisely what happens is many of our crops, and sadly it is happening among people too.

Photo: fishhawk

A couple of weeks ago I learnt that certain types of fruits are not considered vegan anymore, but not because they might contain some bugs that get killed when you pick them up and process them for human consumption. The argument that many vegans make against avocados and almonds is that they cannot be cultivated (in mono-cultures) without the "labor" of bees that get ferried around in big trucks to pollinate the flowers in the short days or weeks when they bloom, because otherwise they do not turn into fruits. In the meantime the Vegan Society admits that not all animal suffering can be prevented and admits, as a general rule, fruits and vegetables obtained through "forced" pollination as a lesser evil to prevent the deaths or the suffering of many more animals. However, they still rebuke the honey as an exploitative sort of food. Of course, this has only been a problem since the industrialization of food production because when the fields in the farms were significantly smaller the variety of crops provided enough flowers all year around the guarantee the survival of bugs (in fact, several types of them).

The same problem arises when we put our chips on a mono-culture of people in our societies: when only the ambitious, outspoken and goal-driven extroverts are praised and appreciated by their bosses, their colleagues and even their neighbors, all the people with a different character just limit themselves to scrape by as best they can, trying to stay out of the way of those who would trample them without hesitation, convinced as they are that "theirs is the world". If life as a phenomenon is particularly apt at surviving under constantly changing conditions, we should understand that the repeated mix and match of different people into working teams that are formed to cooperate for a short period of time is the perfect study case to apply the lessons life teaches us: variety is the easiest way to success because, as Belbin pointed out already in the 1980s, balance is way more important than pure intellectual power, and diversity naturally assures that all the necessary roles in the team get covered. While extroverts gravitate towards groundbreaking and leadership positions, introverts will focus on the equally necessary rigor and completeness of the work.

I have landed on this topic today because yesterday we watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager titled "The Good Shepherd" where Captain Janeway discovers that three members of the crew have never served in an "away team", a brief mission of exploration outside the main spaceship where the reduced numbers make the role of each individual is much bigger for the success. With this realization she invites (i.e. commands) the three of them to join her in the exploration of some planetary rings, only to find all them "pouting" in their own way: the theorist does not like risking his life in the field, the hypochondriac is constantly afraid of catching any bug or radiation and the newbie woman is permanently insecure about her judgments. Once the trouble strikes (it always strikes in Voyager, that is the gist of it) they are all forced out of the comfort zone in order to survive and miraculously make it back to the flagship being better crew members than when they left.

While I find commendable the invitation for everyone to participate in the away teams, I slightly resent the authoritarian flair of the captain's attitude forcing them to come. Furthermore, the implicit conclusion that, by going through the ordeal, they became "full-fledged" crew member carries the danger of excluding certain types of people that can make perfectly good contributions to the team even if they do not participate in every single aspect of the teamwork. In the end, a ship can only have one captain and having many candidates for the job can only result in mutiny and division.

I was just ten or eleven years old when I heard about (and never watched) the movie Children of the Corn, based in a homonym short story by Stephen King, where all kinds of horrors happen in the endless fields of corn that surround a small town in Nebraska. Back then I already found the mono-cultures to be very scary, even if I could not put my finger on the actual reason. Over time this reason has become evident enough and only made my fear deeper. From the humble pages of this blog there is not much I can do to fight against them other than writing about it. I hope my words manage to resonate with you in some measure. Have a nice evening.