The Next Chapter in Corporate Bio-terrorism.

The potato, originally from Pisac in Peru, is an amazing enabler of animal life. Not only do people benefit from potatoes, but so do many other animals that eat it. It has been suggested that the Industrial Revolution owes as much to the potato as it does to the steam engine, as this crop made it possible for shrinking farmlands to support swelling urban populations. If I remember correctly, a potato is a more efficient converter of agricultural nutrients into digestible calories than any other domesticated plant, including rice, by a large factor. What's more, a diet of potato and milk is a complete diet, containing adequate quantities of all the essential nutrients and vitamins that humans need to thrive, according to Michael Pollan. This means that an acre (why is such a British spelling preserved in American English - ought it not be 'an acer'?) of potatoes produces more food than an acre of rice, a gallon of water likewise. As urban centers spread around factories that put worker productivity into a sort of hyper-drive, supply chains struggled to keep up with demand. Food for workers, obviously, would have been one of these.

Monsanto saw this opportunity, and manufactured a resistant potato, BT, in 1985, that produced a protein which killed these bugs. But in 2001, responding to pressure in the form of public protests, and fearing a public relations disaster, McDonald's stopped selling BT potatoes, effectively killing the lion's share of that market. Strangely, the survival of genetic diversity of potatoes owes a lot to McDonald's marketing acumen, because this one public relations decision fostered an environment where potato farmers interested in biodiversity and the 'organic' label were able to become profitable in the face of the profit turbocharging that chemical & bioengineered farming techniques offer at first blush.

It is my feeling that this battle is far from over, and safeguarding the continuing health of the agricultural planet against the depredation of business engineering might be one job that needs doing and that it's not too late to do so well that it won't even be recognized as bringing anyone back from the brink. Will it be possible to safeguard the potato from, for example, the type of damage that Monsanto has done to the biodiversity of corn already?