More and More
Settling into a life of self-employed writerdom has taken a bit of getting used to. Roadblock number one: discipline. Thus, despite grand plans and great lists and now-fleeting moments of inspiration, I've been adoring my French press, discovering there are few breakfasts not bettered by adding a few blackberries (please technophiles, I'm talking about the kind that grow on shrubs, and, specifically, the ones purchased from the Friday farmer's markets at the Wilshire/Vermont Subway station in Koreatown – See Photo) and semi-limbering myself up with a few rounds of Wii Fit Yoga. It's only taken since I first drafted this post in early June to get around to finishing it. There's slow food, a burgeoning slow journalism movement, and, now, slow blogging. Being the bearer of a new master's degree from a large, somewhat unduly-pompous university in Los Angeles and an education from a small liberal arts college in flyover country, I begrudgingly acknowledge I might fit into a class-based stereotype or two, especially now that I've mentioned farmer's markets, yoga (and Wii Fit at that) and fresh coffee in one sentence. At the least I've done my part to prove I like Stuff White People Like. So I'm not doing myself any favors when I mention that one of my other recent joys is the chance to listen to NPR's Morning Edition as I putter around coming up with distractions for the day.
Even better than Morning Edition, though, is the ten minutes KCRW devotes at the end of its broadcasts to the Marketplace Morning Report. Marketplace does a tremendous job of putting business news into plain English without dumbing it down, and I generally find its stories more compelling and educational than the business news from NPR (Planet Money excluded), so I'm glad Santa Monica's gem of a radio station offers this alternative.
One morning, though, I was struck by a promo for one of the Morning Report's underwriters: agribusiness giant Monsanto, which, audiences were told, is “Committed to sustainable agriculture.”
How would Monsanto maintain this commitment? Apparently, in their view, their recipe for sustainability is “Produce more, conserve more.”
The thing is, that's the problem. The entire point of conserving more is to counter the need to produce more.
Monsanto's take is that it's helping farmers produce more food. The company insists it's just meeting the needs of the earth's growing population. But is that the right course of action, or should we be focusing on better distribution of food?
On its Web site, Monsanto continues the claim, adding “improve farmers' lives.”
Contacted for his comment on the seeming contradiction between conservation and production, Monsanto spokesperson Darren Wallis explained that hunger is such a complex problem that neither better distribution nor increased production are solutions alone. Dramatic population increases expected over the next half-century necessitates accelerated production, but it will do so at the cost of existing resources, including land, water and nitrogen.
"From our view,” Wallis said, “The great challenge is to produce more AND conserve more [emphasis his]. Monsanto has committed to that challenge.”
Monsanto, Wallis said, committed to a “sustainable” yield to address that challenge. Their goals include doubling crop yields on core crops, using 1/3 fewer inputs to do so and “helping improve the lives of farmers.”
For the moment, I'm not going to explore the controversial history of Monsanto's relationship with the environment. My extant concern is this attitude that we can somehow continue to produce and produce and produce, just more efficiently, smartly and more “sustainably.” But it's telling that few people, whether corporate agriculture giants, activists or green-leaning politicians define what sustainable means. What are we sustaining? How do we define “improved” lives? All that increased conservation does, if not coupled with decreased production (and decreased demand), is postpone the inevitable.
What I'm writing here is not new. But it's telling that the message that perhaps enough is, indeed, enough is not getting through to the society as a whole. Why do we continue to believe that we can live, — even that we should live — as we have for the past century? Do we even want to? Why do we resist sacrifice, change and evolution so readily on one hand, but continue to demand new technology, cleaner cars, more honest politicians, healthier cities and faster communication? We need none of these things. We need different ideas. Different models. We need not to improve what we have. If we want to live differently then we have to live differently. We need to tear down what we have, not just repaint it.
I say that, yet at the same time I also believe we need to stop trying to improve and just live more honestly, more truly. We need to stop expecting that by traveling just a few more feet we will be home. I guess I think the problem is we can't decide what home is. We can't determine whether home is a place we must return to, if home is some destination in the distance, or if home is where we are, always.
When we discuss conservation we constantly discuss new technology and better habits. We shame each other into improvement. Yet we're still too embarrassed to discuss one topic: overpopulation. Why can we talk carbon credits, carbon sequestration, recycling, compost, energy conservation and smart growth, but not smart people and limited population? Overpopulation shouldn't be discussed without doing so in terms of the consumptive potential of populations (i.e. the environmental strain of an American far outstrips that of an Indian or even a Chinese person, despite the fact those two countries share a third of the world's population — and, when considering the environmental impacts of a developing economy, we must consider the role our domestic demand plays in stirring such foreign economies). True, procreation is our deepest human instinct. What right do we have to suggest to others to deny that instinct? Yet, at the same time, if survival of the species is our ultimate goal, we are dooming it with every moment of silence we maintain on this topic.
We need to share the message that the culture of more is not the answer. More wealth is not the solution. Economists lament that Americans are saving too much money, they're not spending enough to support our economy. Is anyone willing to suggest that might be a good thing, that, for once, some Americans are living within their means? Consumerism's weaknesses are so visible. Why are we so eager to return to where we were, and why are we so eager to bring the rest of the world into our mess?
I hope to write more about this cult of "more." I've never quite understood why accumulation is often considered synonymous to satisfaction, security, and even basic survival. While taking care to prepare for the future and buttress oneself and one's community against unforeseen dangers is a rational action, no argument can be made that this is what is sought through worshiping growth at any cost. There are, sadly, too many examples of society jeopardizing its future and current happiness and strength in the pursuit of consumption's façades.
