The Food Web
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We first learn about The Food Chain at about age eight. It is not really difficult to understand the basics, so why do adults seem to have such a hard time with the concept? Answering this important question may be the key to our ultimate survival.
The modern business community has extended the ‘food chain’ metaphor well beyond the image of a little fish being swallowed by a bigger fish which is in turn swallowed by an even bigger fish. In today’s parlance, the ‘economic food chain’ encompasses everything from militarial-industrial control of raw materials, to global trade agreements controlling labor and ‘acceptable’ levels of environmental degradation, to ‘supply chains’ governing flows of goods from component manufacturers to final sales and distribution. The consumer is the theoretical top link in this chain, but the unbridled profiteers are actually the top dogs as they ultimately swallow the labor, resources and net earnings of the entire society.
While science long ago replaced the simplistic ‘chain’ model with the more appropriate imagery of interconnected ‘webs’, the single dimension provided by a chain is nevertheless a good starting place for rudimentary discussions (which is probably why the corporate “K.I.S.S.” asses continue to rely on it). So before we go any further let’s review the basic Food Chain. (In the following example, we follow 100,000 units of sunlight energy to see how much ends up at the top of the food chain.)
The Sun bombards the Earth with a wide spectrum (array of colors) of light photons. (It is important to remember that, except for geothermal energy vented through the Earth’s crust to which highly unusual life forms are bound, the Sun is the ONLY source of life-giving energy on the planet.)
The Earth’s atmosphere filters out some frequencies (e.g., the ozone layer blocks many harmful ultraviolet rays, although less and less nowadays), but the red wavelengths are absorbed by special blood-like molecules (chlorophyll) within plants, thus beginning the reductive process of photosynthesis which allows plants to build energy-ladened sugars using just carbon dioxide and water (with the help of a few other readily available compounds), and the major ‘waste’ output of these plant reactions is oxygen. Algae and plankton undergo the same processes in the oceans. Therefore, plants are the fundamental layer of the Food Chain. The amount of energy stored by the plants is measured in Calories and this is ultimately the ‘only’ energy input for all ‘higher’ life forms on the planet (namely, animals ranging from insects to humans).
Some ‘higher’ life forms have a diverse array of input options so, for example, a small fish may few alternatives if its main dietary choice is in low supply. But a salmon might choose to eat this fish before swimming upstream to mate, where a bear catches and eats it thus consuming the net collective energy of the entire food chain to that point. So the sun’s energy flows from plants (primary producers) to herbivores (primary consumers) to carnivores (predators). Predators themselves are typically denoted as primary, secondary and tertiary, indicating their increasing rank in the energy flow. It should be obvious that the lowest levels of the food chain should be most prolific, while the top of the food chain has (or should have) the smallest populations, since it takes 10 carrots to feed one hungry bunny, and several bunnies to feed one hungry wolf.
At the top of the chain in every eco-system are ‘super predators’ (like a bear or a shark) who themselves lack a superior predator. Humans are the ultimate super predator, and our choices for energy input span the plant and animal kingdoms. We might even choose to use our ‘superior intellects’ (and thus technologies) to shoot and eat the super predator bear, or net the predatory salmon, or systematically harvest eggs from domesticated chickens, gather wild berries, or cultivate rows of crops. In fact, our technologies (as well as our diverse dietary adaptions) allow the human species to routinely violate the natural laws which would otherwise keep our populations small (since we are at the very top of the food chain).
It is important to note that all biological ‘wastes’ are also captured and re-used by an array of so-called ‘lower’ life forms. For these life forms, our wastes (outputs) are their foods (inputs). For example, we use oxygen to breakdown the calories we have consumed, and output carbon dioxide (used as an input by plants) and other partially decomposed bi-products. Various bacteria breakdown our solid and liquid wastes, eventually returning them (and even us) to the air, soil and oceans. No stored energy is ‘wasted’ (with the notably temporary exception of ‘fossil fuels’ which were living remains entombed cataclysmically before nature could finish its job). Whenever an energy-rich by-product begins to accumulate, some struggling life form evolves into that niche, thereafter making all or part of its living by utilitizing that unused resource.
We can see that, while complex beyond our full comprehension, the cycle is complete, balanced and dynamic. We need now only imagine the ‘chain’ as a ‘web’ where all life forms are constantly looking up, down and sideways for a better, cheaper, more efficient way to make a living in this crowded and competitive world. The complexity of this web can be imagined when we consider that there are often symbiotic relationships between otherwise independant life forms (for instance, there are symbiotic bacteria which live in our digestive tract and help us digest our foods, and which are sometimes killed-off by certain antibiotics taken to cure another ailment, which in turn leads to unpleasant intestinal side-effects from those drugs… we need each other in order to survive). Then contemplate that even minute details of this stunningly complex dance are designed into the DNA of each of the various living organisms on this planet — in response to billions of years of collective wisdom regarding patterns of day and night, lunar tides, weather, seasonal variations, available niches, competitive pressures, potential symbiotic partners, and even some random variations on the theme just in case things change. That is a basic picture of the Earth’s ‘Food Web’.
Paradise Lost?
There was a time when the Earth seemed vast compared to our populations. In such a world one could dream of a paradise where foods grew in natural abundance and people needed only to casually pick and eat their fill whenever the urge struck them. While this has nearly always been a remote dream in the the Northern latitudes, for a time various inhabitants within tropical zones did indeed experience such luxury. We have even speculated that such relatively easy living conditions led to the documented differences in culture between the more laid-back ‘people of color’ (where sunshine and energy-rich foods were abundant) and the ever hard-charging, technology-driven ‘pale skins’ of the frosty Northern climates. So (he says with a wink), perhaps humankind’s chance for paradise was lost when Europe’s forefathers chose to forge technologies allowing them to continue to grind it out in the cold rather than simply retiring to the Carribean? But that is all in the past and there is no going back.
Today we face another major crossroad in human history… but this time the risks are of potentially Biblical proportions. Just as the ‘Garden of Eden’ mythology of western religions warns of the dangers of arrogantly eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge, which ultimately led to humankind’s expulsion from Eden, modern industrial leaders are driven by their greed to arrogantly tinker with the very genetics of our food web. The hubris of this act is most apparent when we consider that the genetic code (DNA) which controls Earth’s food web was created through an elaborate and delicately balanced process over billions of years, whereas Mendel only postulated inheritance of traits 150 years ago, science did not even discover DNA until 50 years ago, and the first full DNA sequences were only completed at the turn of the new millenium, but only for a handful of species, and only for a tiny number of samples in each population! The genetic code for each organism contains billions of codons (letters or digits) to decode! DNA Science still has NO idea what all those gene sequences code for, or what function the proteins created by those genes might serve, or the complex interplay of those genes in the development and function of the organisms, muchless the sequences for all the planet’s species, to say nothing of how those genetically coded proteins and functions interact with other species, including viruses, parasites and symbiotic organisms living in and around us. To be brutally honest, we are still discovering hundreds of new species of organisms each year, and we estimate that we are extinguishing dozens of other species each year before we even discover them, so we don’t even have a comprehensive understanding of our macro world muchless the microscopic world. We are mere intellectual babies in this mature world of nature’s web. Yet, this is the backdrop upon which our rarely trustworthy profiteers are heeding the advice of the snake and greedily devouring apples! As Peter Gabriel sings in his prophetic mini-opera, “Supper’s Ready” (1972), “666 is no longer alone. He’s getting out the marrow in your backbone!” In the name of gold, a select few are ignorantly and brazenly modifying the very foundations of not only our food supply, but our very biology. Do not forgive them, for they DO know what they do.
Beyond Hunters & Gathers
Historically, humankind’s food web evolved from opportunistic ‘hunter-gather’ methods of survival to domestication of live stocks and cultivation of seasonal crops. Thus we began down our slippery slope of apparent technological control, bending the world to our own will. And thus began our ability to increase our population beyond the inherent or ‘naturally balanced’ carrying capacity of our environment. Then we developed storage technologies (processing grains into meals, salting, drying, canning, and eventually refrigerating, freezing and dehydrating) which smoothed out some of the feast or famine cycles, thus increasing our populations even more. When we began to trade foodstuffs we entered yet another era of technology and moved another step beyond evolved nature, again allowing our populations to expand dramatically. Looking for another use of its family’s main product (petroleum), circa 1960, the Rockfellers promoted ‘Green Revolution’ technologies which used newly-developed petrochemicals to increase crop yields in starvation-prone Asia Minor, thus turning India and similar countries (temporarily) into net food exporters… until their well-fed populations then exploded to once again outstrip their own ability to feed themselves. (Indeed, populations of all life forms tend to expand to the upper limit of their available food supply.)
Today, technologies not only allow us to have any food at any time of the year, but to modify the look, taste and texture of that food; to process one food into something that looks and tastes like another; to eliminate most forms of competition for the land, water, nutrients and developing crops or animals; to harvest, process and distribute food so efficiently that we must waste it or warehouse it (e.g., diary products), or otherwise limit its production or distribution so as to protect the ‘market price’ of what financiers now cynically refer to as commodities. The typical lament of a farmer today is that we have become too good at producing food; so good that many farmers can not make a living without subsidies on water, subsidies on production, subsidies on marketing and distribution. Yet still, there are always industrial players hawking new technologies each year, supposedly to further increase yields, and to further eliminate natural and economic competition, regardless of what effects are wrought upon our air, lands, seas, ecologies, cultures, or even our individual or collective futures.
As a case in point, in the early 20th century, farmers netted fully 60% of the retail cost of their goods. Today, with massive corporations (such as Monsanto, Dow, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, etc.) oligopolizing both farm inputs and product markets, small farmers are lucky to net anything at all. Most family farms have closed down over the last 20 years. Only the biggest fish backed by the power of governments are surviving in that economic spider web.
We have become so ‘efficient’ at food production that most people are completely disconnected from the reality of their food web. A recent poll revealed that a majority of people thought our food comes from ‘a supermarket’ rather than from ‘a farm’! No wonder our diets are atrocious, our bodies test positive for an array of known carcinogens, our shelves are filled with fillers, and our minds are numbed to the terrifying threat now facing us: the premature release of genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) into our food supply and environment at large.
Professional apologists and industry’s public relations firms cite the long list of humanity’s technological accomplishment, as well as the ‘selective breeding’ techniques employed even before Mendel’s doctored evidence, to argue that gene-splicing and genetic engineering is simply a more efficient method of doing what mankind has done for hundreds or thousands of years: Distilling the best traits and eliminating the worst traits in crops, animals, etc. While the “etc.” is cause for worry in and of itself, the argument is patently, scientifically false. Cross-breeding involves natural genetic mechanisms at a macro level, thus if we are breeding for increased milk production then ALL of the myriad genetic changes necessary for that increased production are brought along for the ride. Adding, removing or modifying specific segments of DNA through chemical or viral ‘surgery’ is like letting a novice computer user modify a few connection on the circuit board of a network server: Not only would you NOT expect the machine run correctly afterward, but you would have little or no way to guess where errors might show up. Thus, bank balances might stop adding up, e-mails might be mis-routed, ‘buy’ orders might become ‘sell’ orders, and when calling a friend in France you might get an ATM in Sydney. If this server was able to build its next generation based on its own modified blueprint you’d soon have an entire generation of whacked-out network servers. But the real nature of recombinant DNA is even scarier than that because the flawed generation of network servers would have a 50% chance of screwing-up every new network computer ever created from that time forward! Thus, the inventors of Starlink Corn (GMO) are at a loss to explain why butterflies are dying in and around their fields. The truth is simple: At this stage of our scientific understanding, commercial development of genetically engineered life forms is a like a network of pandora’s boxes which we are letting a bunch of selfish, greedy and relatively ignorant children play God with. In the name of sanity and humility we should immediately forbid all commercial development and environmental release of GE/GMO foods (and all other GE/GMO life forms, including biological weapons still being invented and tested by our own government). These should be highly quarantined and never released until we have a much more comprehensive understanding of genetics, molecular, cellular and development biology, and the Earth’s overall web of ecological systems.
Patent Lies
Beyond the sheer terror and arrogance of our premature rush to develop and market commercial GMO’s are the ridiculous positions taken by the investor-interests of biotechnology firms. They argue that they should have complete private control of profits derived from technologies built using government and university-sponsored research, with no licensing fees paid to the public or educational institutions upon whose work the commercial developments are built, and without which there would be NO commercial development at all. Worse yet, they argue that they should be allowed to patent DNA sequences, even those which are largely (99.9999999%) based upon pre-existing forms of life! Ultimately, these biotechnology firms intend to own and control every piece of genetic code, and every form of “new and improved” life on the planet. Investors are salivating at the idea that they can receive a recurring licensing fee for every drop of food grown every year, without the real work of tilling an acre of soil, planting a single seed, watering, weeding, harvesting, or selling a single pound of produce. Here’s a post-Orwell nightmare: Imagine a world where soulless and impersonal transnational corporations own and control even the DNA within the tomatoes on your table.
As if those greedy and one-sided arguments were not bad enough, it gets worse, much worse. Monsanto recently brought suit and won a large dollar award against a Canadian rape seed (canola) farmer who re-planted his own seed which was harvested from his own fields! Hold on to your hat to understand the facts and implications of this chilling court ruling in this age of rampant ‘globalization’. Monsanto does not sell its GMO ‘Round-up Ready’ canola seeds (which are engineered to withstand the otherwise deadly chemicals in Monsanto’s Round-Up broad spectrum herbicide); it LEASES the seed. Under the terms of the seed ‘lease’ a farmer pays for the right only to use the seed for one year. The farmer is NOT allowed to harvest and seed a percentage of his crop to plant next year’s crop. He must buy new seed from Monsanto every year, or negotiate a fee for re-using second-generation seeds he harvests at his own expense. Already we can see how Monsanto intends to corner and control this entire market. However, this particular farmer refused to lease Monsanto’s GMO seed at all, preferring instead to plant his own “non-patented” seeds harvested from his previous crops. But the winds of change they are a’blowin’… and so too are the pollen grains of Monsanto’s patented ‘Round-Up Ready’ crops. Since some neighboring farms DID use Monsanto’s seeds, cross-pollination was inevitable and lo and behold some of the farmer’s next generation seed had indeed incorporated the Monsanto-patented portions of the genome. On this basis, Monsanto claimed that the farmer had ‘stolen’ their genetic engineering and violated their patent rights, ultimately winning their full licensing fee, plus the entire value of the farmer’s crop, plus additional fines and expenses ($145,000 in all)! This court decision sets several frightening precedents including: (1) Anyone with a patent on any form of DNA need only wait until natural genetic distribution mechanisms occur, and they can then claim rights to all forms of life then incorporating those attributes (whether or not the unsuspecting recipient wanted those genetic modifications); (2) The marketing department only needs to directly solicit upwind farms, then let nature do the rest of the work for them, guaranteeing rapid ‘saturation levels’ of market penetration; (3) There is absolutely no way to prevent such cross-pollinization or the future licensing fees thereafter demanded; (4) Bio-tech firms like Monsanto should be able to corner the market on the lowest levels of the food chain within a decade or two, thus subjugating all of humankind beneath the claws of their self-serving licensing schemes.
Once a patent is issued, patent laws allow the owner to demand any fee and any terms they desire for the life of the patent. Since patents are only good for 17 years (in the U.S.), we can expect “new and improved” crop patents every 10 – 15 years, with rapid cross-pollinization occurring immediately after initial release. But industry experts are expected to insist that consumers will still have a choice: They can choose not to eat.
Finally, we must remember that saying “I’m sorry” does not always set things right. While our governments have apologized for their mistakes in allowing the Savings & Loan swindles, the Vietnam war, $27,000 military coffee-pots, and innumerable other blunders, how sorry will they be (and how will they remedy it) if they allow greed to introduce devastating and irreversible changes to the genetic codes of life? News flash to the arrogant new Gods: The planet is not your personal laboratory playpen, and humanity (not to mention the rest of the Earth’s species) are not your guinea pigs!
Golden Harvests
Thus far, we have not even touched on the myriad other problems associated with the “new and improved” modern food web. There are the disgusting factory farming techniques with livestock and poultry. There are the biological dangers of massively overdosing commercial animals with antibiotics, thus creating many new drug resistant forms of disease. There are the growth hormones from livestock showing up in our milks, cheeses and meats and ultimately in us, proportedly causing an actual acceleration in maturation of entire pre-pubescent populations. There are the toxic and carcinogenic petrochemicals routinely coating our foods and fixing themselves within our bodies and environments, causing severe levels of ‘collateral damage’ (to borrow the military euphemism). There are the many documented health problems associated with our highly-processed and chemically-doused foods. There are the over-salted, stripped and raped soils, now dependant on massive watering and fertilization in order to produce any yields at all. There are the insane Federal laws prohibiting the cultivation or consumption of numerous natural substances while sanctioning secrecy and deception for dangerous man-made products (aspartamine masquerading as NutriSweet, Monosodium Glutamate – MSG – based products trademarked as “Natural Flavors” on consumer labels, and a legal definition of “organic” which is as ‘double-speak’ as anything in Orwell’s 1984). There are the billions in annual taxpayer subsidies flowing largely to giant agri-corporations while fewer that 2% of our population can now make a living as a farmer (while 100% of our population continues to eat food). And there is the culture so removed from the basis of life that everything, it seems, is taken for granted. Even our individual liberty.
Yet, rather than dwell on those details (many of which are explored excellently by John Robbins in “Diet for a New America” and “The Food Revolution”), let’s consider what steps we can take to avoid weaving a such tangled food web that our banishment from Eden will look like a picnic. (All puns definitely intended.)
Change Our Diets! It has been said that it is easier to change a person’s religion than it is to change their diet… but we can easily change our own diet. Try mostly organic, unprocessed and largely vegetarian fare for 6 months and see how you like it. We think you’ll agree that it is relatively easy, fun, creative and (surprise!) delicious. In a ‘free market’ economy this is the surest way to bring about change.
Grow Organic Crops! Like ‘Victory Gardens’ from WWII, a personal organic garden is a strong political statement, a relaxing form of exercise, re-attachment to our tangible world, a reliable source of toxic free food, and a big cost-saver (compared to tomatoes at $2.99 per pound and $1 for each piece of fruit). Search for “permaculture” to quickly start a do-it-yourself Eden, even in city apartment buildings. An added bonus: Renewed consciousness of the rhythms of the sun, moon and seasons… an inspired family project! To get started check out this index site.
Support Local Organic Farmers. Even if you have every excuse which prevents you from starting your own garden, it is a virtual certainty that there are local farmers, farmers markets, and CSAs in your area. Most CSAs (Community Support Agriculture) will even deliver their produce directly to their annual subscribers (who prepay for an entire year’s array of produce). If you don’t grow your own, there is no excuse for failing to support your local growers.
Demand an Open and Free Genome! Do not let a handful of transnational corporations lock-up the future of the world’s food supplies. Join the many national and international protest against GMO/GE food. Rally against premature introduction of these new Frankenstein life forms (“FrankenFoods”). Demand that all GMO/GE products be immediately banned from cultivation, import and use until independent scientists can PROVE that they are fully understood and completely safe. Demand a full, open and free genome for all life forms. If ever there was an overwhelming case for public rather than private control, the essence of life itself is surely the place to begin. Write your Senators and Congresspersons today and urge your friends and neighbors to do the same.
Reform Existing, Corrupt Farm Practices. End all price supports, agricultural subsidies and protectionist laws for corporations… only transitional supports should be provided for small family farms until renewed, localized food economies are stabilized. Prohibit the use of chemicals and routine antibiotic interventions, and reinforce ONLY natural, organic and sustainable farming practices. Legislate requirements for completely organic and sustainable agricultural practices. Rorbid imports from any nation which does not do likewise.
These are the personal, local community, and national / international agenda items needed to reclaim some of our most basic human rights from those who would play God. This is a very do-able ‘action item’ list which can ensure a golden harvest for all of the tomorrows, ours as well as our offspring. The bad guys’ agenda is clear, and unless we act forcefully and quickly their time-tested and true methodologies will win… then the rest of us will lose, perhaps forever.
Summary & Conclusions
If there is an ‘original sin’, it is that of apathy, to standby complacently making excuses while all around us our beds are burning. Perhaps it did not matter when our taxes were increased and re-routed to fight endless foreign wars. Perhaps it does not matter that we have lost control of our political system to legalized corruption and transnational corporations. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter if we have no privacy, no sanctity of our private homes as a castle, no ability to opt out of the ubiquitous system. But, any way you slice it, it does matter if we lose control of our food and the very essence of life itself (the genome).
The fabric of our food web is now threaten by the same old greed, arrogance and corruption which has brought us the terror-filled world we now inhabit. This is the end of Act II in our real B-movie horror show. If such a threat fails to raise us, en masse, from our social and political slumber soon then we will begin to live those endings often dismissed as pure flights of fancy.
You now feel overwhelmed, of course. So many ideas to consider. So many things to do: Personal changes to make; Letters to write to Congress when you never even write to your parents or best friends. “Oh, hell, why bother?” It’s an understandable sentiment. But, perhaps you should think about it over your next meal or two. As you cut and chew just think about it… The Garden of Eden, Liberty & Responsibility, and your place in the web of life.
Thank you for your attention, interest and concern.
