You first learn about Johnny Appleseed in kindergarten, at least I did. I learned about how he walked around eating apples and throwing seeds all over the countryside as he traveled. looking back now, I almost laugh at how significant this story actually is, especially now that I am really understanding how important our connections to plants are. As children we are told these stories and folktales in order to teach us about the world and really, these stories have a heck of a lot more meaning to them than we realize. the apple has had such an impact on American history, as well as world history in general. Firstly, The apple's genetic variability allows it to make a home anywhere in the world, secondly, apple cider alcohol became an important beverage among the pioneers because it was not regarded as a "sinners" beverage. The apple has been eager to do business with humans (5) and the apple is the hero of its own story(6), Pollan mentions the same thing about corn in "The Omnivores Dilemma", that corn is the hero of its own story. aren't we all the heroes of our own story?
I was surprised to read that Johnny Appleseed was somewhat of a "perv", interested in young girls. Something we never learned in kindergarten. He was a scraggly barefooted man, who died wealthy because of all of his apple tree nurseries. For Chapman the natural world even at its wildest was never falling away or a distraction from the spirit world; it was continuous with it (35), Chapman is an example of the obvious marriage between people and plants (5). Interestingly enough Chapman was regarded as a kind of a satyr without the sex- moving through the woods as if it was his true home (35). the apple is one of the most popular fruits that humans desire, and has shaped the "new world" to what it is today and for that, we have Johnny Appleseed to thank.
On average, an American farmer today grows enough food each year to feed a hundred people. Yet that achievement-that power over nature has come at a price. The modern industrial farmer cannot grow that much food without large quantities of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and fuel. This expensive set of "inputs", as they're called, saddles the farmer with debt, jeopardizes his health, erodes his soil and ruins its fertility, pollutes the groundwater, and compromises the safety of the food we eat (190).This paragraph stuck out the most for me in the potato chapter, as it portrays the consequences of few farmers. Fewer farmers result in massive farms. More farmers equal smaller farms and smaller farms result in sustainable agriculture.
Mass producing crops has lead to problems such as pests and viruses, that can wipe out an entire crop. In order to prevent these devastations from happening genetically modified seeds and plants have been designed to overcome or resist viruses and pests. Monsanto. The leading seed distributor in the world that engineers plants, encodes an industrial sort of intelligence (198). Monsanto makes mass producing crops possible.
Milk and potato is all we really need to survive according to the Irish. The potato is a little packet of goodness, only lacking in vitamin A that can be made up with a glass of milk. So it turns out that mashed potatoes are not only the ultimate comfort food but all the body really needs (201). Potato's became more of an advantage over grain in Europe and entire civilizations were being supported by the cultivation of potatoes. However, with heavy reliance on the potato in Ireland there was a societal collapse when an airborne virus turned the harvest into a black, mushy sludge in weeks, and with the reliance on this single variety of potato the great potato famine catastrophe left more than a million people dead.
references:
Pollan, Michael. 2001. The botany of desire: A plant's-eye view of the world. New York: Random House.
picture: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/08/06/20/32/potatoes-411975_960_720.jpg
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