Apple mango, product of selective breeding Dr Abe V Rotor
Domesticated plants and animals may be classified according to the manner and degree with which their relationship with man is defined. One has lead to total dependency like hybrid crops of corn, rice, wheat, and hybrid animals like today's Landrace swine, and Bantress broiler. The more we modify farm animals for greater economic advantage, the more we make them dependent on us.
Not only that. We narrow down our choice of genes that directly benefit us. Of the 100,000 cultivars in the gene bank of IRRI, we can count with the fingers so to speak of the varieties actually planted. And this is farther narrowed down to the present commercial varieties.
Wheat varieties have been likewise narrowed down on the former prairies of North America. Scientists warn that a major pest outbreak can drastically decrease yield. So with the effects of sudden change in climate. Generally the higher the level of diversity is - different species, varieties, different time planting and harvesting, so with the technology used, etc - the less impact a calamity can cause. High diversity provides natural barriers against the spread of epidemic. They cut down life cycles of pests and pathogens. They provide alternative sources of food.
This is the grave danger of a highly specialized culture. We call it monoculture which fits well with mechanization, bulk handling and processing, infrastructure, etc. Monoculture is designed with the supply and demand of commodities in the international market, as in the case of cereals, meat and dairy products.
Today domesticated animals cannot survive without antibiotics, plants without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or irrigation. They lose their hybrid vigor in the second generation, more so in the succeeding ones. We have caused organisms to live in places they are not supposed to be adopted. We brought the Anglo-Nubian Goat from the high Steppes of the Middle East to the tropic. Highland crop such as Irish potato though still a temperate crop can now be grown on the lowland. Grapes from temperate countries are now grown in the warm tropics.
The history of civilization is also a story of agriculture in three sequences: domestication of organisms of the wild into the folds of agriculture. This took place in the Fertile Crescent which was to become the seat of the Babylonian civilization. Chinese settlements were even of earlier date.
The second phase in the improvement of stocks and varieties through agronomy and horticulture which lasted for many centuries. The third is the opening of new frontier and diversification. The horizon of agriculture expanded, new products discovered that led to diversification. It too, led to the Age of Colonialism which lasted for several centuries, around four hundred years in the Philippines. Avocado and kalachchi came from Mexico, grapes and citrus from Europe.
Modern agriculture was born out of science and technology beginning in the fifties. Here domestication became mass production and increased productivity. Plants and animals - and microorganisms, as well, began to be raised in volumes. They became living machines to produce large quantities in a short period of time milk, cheese, oil, starch, meat, perfumes, rubber, resin, medicine and drugs, wood, etc. to meet the demand of an expanding market, and to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding population and increasing affluence in living.
I remember the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. It's about a ship loaded with seedlings of breadfruit or rimas (Artocarpus communis) to be planted in British penitentiary islands. It is a classical example of introducing plants across the globe - something nature can't do within our lifetime. It's like introducing the penguin from the South Pole to the North Pole all the way across the equator. Well, the ship ran into trouble when a certain Christian led a mutiny that deposed Captain Bligh. The ship was commandeered to Tahiti. Captain Bligh miraculously survived the long dangerous trip to England in the long boat. Subsequently the mutineers were hunted down and brought to justice. Others were killed in the process, others died mysteriously.
With genetic engineering whereby genes or genetic materials are spliced and incorporated into an entirely different organism, we are playing God's role of creating new life forms heretofore unknown. We are tinkering on speciation, the tortuous, slow process of species formation. It is unthinkable to apply Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that only the fittest survive the long and uncertain pathway of evolution. Here we are doing the short cut, a detour from the rules of reproduction. It is no longer the joining meeting of male and female gametes to form a zygote, it is not enough to multiply plants and protists through asexual means.
Genetic engineering has opened creation in man's hand by rearranging the code of heredity, in fact the "book of life" according to our purpose and pleasure - not even from the dictate of our conscience. It is a short cut not only to domestication, but creation itself. Genetic engineering is a modern version of Frankenstein that created a monster which had no name - except the fear that remains to this day in the hearts of the meek, peace-loving and righteous people. We who detest the atomic bomb, biological warfare, global warming, and now genetic engineering - the Aladdin's Lamp to ultimate domestication - human cloning. ~
Dragon cactus, recently introduced from Vietnam. Dragon fruit is commercially grown and exported
by Israelis farming the desert.
Living with Nature 3, AVR
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