A plantseye view Michael Pollan

it’s a simple idea about nature and I

want to I want to say a word for nature

because we haven’t talked that much

about it the last couple days I want to

say a word for the soil and the bees the

plants and the animals and tell you

about a tool a very simple tool that I

have found although it’s really nothing

more than a literary conceit it’s not a

technology is very powerful for I think

changing our relationship to the natural

world and to the other species on whom

we depend and that tool is very simply

as Chris suggested looking at us and the

world from the plants or the animals

point of view it’s not my idea other

peoples have hit on it but I’ve tried to

take it to some new places let me tell

you where I got it like a lot of my

ideas like a lot of the tools I use I

found it in the garden I’m a very

devoted gardener and there was a day

about seven years ago I was planting

potatoes it was the first week of May

this is New England when the apple trees

are just vibrating with bloom they’re

just white clouds above I was here

planting my chunks cutting up potatoes

and planting it and the bees were

working on this tree bumblebees just

making this thing vibrate and one of the

things I really like about gardening is

that it doesn’t take all your

concentration you really can’t get hurt

it’s not like woodworking and you can

you have plenty of kind of mental space

for speculation and the question I asked

myself that afternoon in the garden was

working alongside that bumblebee was

what did I and that bumblebee have in

common how was our role in this garden

similar and different and I realized we

actually had quite a bit in common both

of us were disseminating the genes of

one species and not another and both of

us probably if I can imagine the bees

point of view thought we were calling

the shots I had decided what kind of

potato I wanted to plant I picked my

Yukon gold or yellow fin or whatever it

was

and I had some in those jeans from a

seed catalog across the country brought

it and I was planting it and that’d be

no doubt assumed that it had decided I’m

going for that apple tree

I’m going for that blossom I’m going to

get the nectar and I’m going to leave we

have a grammar that suggests that’s who

we are that we are sovereign subjects in

nature the bee as well as me I plant the

potatoes I weed the garden I domesticate

the species but that day it occurred to

me what if that grammar is nothing more

than a self-serving conceit because of

course the bee thinks he’s in charge or

she’s in charge and but we know better

we know that what’s going on between the

B and that flower is that B has been

cleverly manipulated by that flower and

when I say manipulated I’m talking about

in Darwinian sense right I mean it has

evolved a very specific set of traits

color scent flavor pattern that has

lured that B in and the B has been

cleverly fooled into taking the nectar

and also picking up some powder on its

leg and going off to the next blossom B

is not calling the shots and I realized

then I wasn’t either I had been seduced

by that potato and not another into

planting its into spreading its genes

give me a little bit more habitat and

that’s when I got the idea which was

what would it be what would happen if we

kind of looked at us from this point of

view of these other species who were

working on us and agriculture suddenly

appeared to me not as an invention not

as a human technology but as a

co-evolutionary development in which a

group of very clever species mostly

edible grasses had exploited us figured

out how to get us to basically DeForest

the world the competition of grasses

right and suddenly everything looked

different

and suddenly mowing the lawn that day

was a completely different experience I

had thought always and in fact had

written this in my first book was a book

about gardening that lawns were nature

under cultures but– that they were

totalitarian landscapes and that when we

mowed them we were

cruelly suppressing this species and

never letting it set seed or die or have

sex and and that’s what the lawn was but

then I realize no this is exactly what

the grasses want us to do I’m a dupe I’m

a dupe of the lawns whose goal in life

is to out-compete the trees who it

competes with who they compete with for

sunlight and so by getting us to mow the

lawn we keep the trees from coming back

which in in New England happens very

very quickly so I started looking at

things this way and wrote a whole book

about it called the bottom desire and I

realized that in the same way you can

look at a flower and deduce all sorts of

interesting things about the tastes and

the desires of bees that they like

sweetness that they like this color and

not that color that they like symmetry

what could we find out about ourselves

by doing the same thing that a certain

kind of potato a certain kind of drug a

sativa indica cannabis cross has

something to say about us and that

wouldn’t this be kind of an interesting

way to look at the world now the test of

any idea I said it was a literary

conceit is what does it get us and when

you’re talking about nature which is

really my subject as a writer how does

it meet the Aldo Leopold test which is

does it make us better citizens of the

biotic community get us to do things

that leads to the support and

perpetuation of the biota rather than

its destruction and I would submit that

this idea does this so let me go through

what you gain when you look at the world

this way besides some you know

entertaining insights about about human

desire as an intellectual matter looking

at the world from other species points

of view helps us deal with this weird

anomaly which is intellection this is in

the realm of intellectual history which

is that we had this Darwinian revolution

150 years ago

mini-me

we have this intellectual referal this

Darwinian revolution in which thanks to

Darwin we figured out we are just one

species among many evolutions working on

us the same way it’s working on all the

others we are acted upon as well as

acting we are really in the fiber of the

fabric of life but the weird thing is we

don’t we have not absorbed this lesson

150 years later none of us really

believes this we are still Cartesians

the children of Descartes who believe

that subjectivity consciousness sets us

apart that the world is divided into

subjects and objects that there is

nature on one side culture on another as

soon as you start seeing things from the

plan’s point of view or the animals

point of view you realize that the real

literary conceit is that is this the

idea that nature is opposed to culture

the idea that that that consciousness is

everything and that’s another very

important thing it does looking at the

world from other species points of view

is a cure for the disease of human

self-importance you suddenly realize

that consciousness which we value and we

consider the you know the crown of the

crowning achievement of nature human

consciousness is really just another set

of tools for getting along in the world

and it’s kind of natural that we would

think it was the best tool but you know

there’s a comedian who said well who’s

telling me that consciousness is so good

and so important well

consciousness so when you look at the

plants you realize that there are other

tools and they’re just as interesting

I’ll give you two examples also from the

garden lima beans you know what a lima

bean does when it’s attacked by spider

mites it releases this volatile chemical

that goes out into the world and summons

another species of mic that comes in and

attacks the spider mite defending the

lima bean

so what plants have while we have

consciousness tool-making language they

have biochemistry and they have

perfected that to a degree far beyond

can imagine and their complexity their

sophistication is something to really

marvel at and I think it’s really the

scandal of the human genome project you

know we went into it thinking forty or

fifty thousand human genes we came out

with the only twenty three thousand just

to give you a grounds for comparison

rice 35,000 genes so who’s the more

sophisticated species well we’re all

equally sophisticated we’ve been

involving evolving just as long just

along different paths so cure for

self-importance weight of sort of make

us feel the Darwinian idea and that’s

really what I do as a writer as a

storyteller is try to make people kind

of feel what we know and tell stories

that actually make us help us think

ecologically now the other use of this

is practical and I’m in tucked I’m going

to take you to a farm right now as I use

this idea to develop my understanding of

the food system and what I learned in

fact is that we are all now being

manipulated by corn and the talk you

heard about ethanol earlier today to me

is the final triumph of corn over good

sense

it is part of corns corn scheme for

world domination and you will see the

amount of corn planted this year will be

up dramatically from last year and there

will be that much more habitat because

we’ve decided ethanol is going to help

us so but let me so it helped me

understand industrial agriculture which

of course is a Cartesian system it’s

based on this idea that we Bend other

species to our will and that we are in

charge and then we create these

factories and we have these

technological inputs and we get the food

out of it or the fuel or whatever we

want let me take you to a very different

kind of farm this is farm in the

Shenandoah Valley of Virginia I went

looking for a farm where these ideas

about looking at things from the species

point of view are actually implemented

and I found it in a man the farmers name

is Joel Salatin and I spent a week as an

apprentice on his farm and I took away

from this some of the most hopeful news

about our relationship to nature that

I’ve ever come across in 25 years of

writing about nature and that is this

the farm is called Polyface which means

the idea is he’s got six different

species of animals as well as some

plants growing in this very elaborate

symbiotic arrangement it’s permaculture

those of you know a little bit about

this such that the cows and the pigs and

the em and the sheep and the turkeys and

the what else what else does he have all

the six different species rabbits

actually are all performing ecological

services for one another such that the

manure of one is the lunch for the other

and they take care of pests for one

another and I can’t it’s a very

elaborate and beautiful dance but I’m

going to just give you a close-up on one

piece of it and that is the relationship

between his cattle and his chickens his

laying hens and I’ll show you how if you

take this approach what you get okay and

this is a lot more than growing food as

you’ll see this is a different way to

think about nature and a way to get away

from the zero-sum notion that the

Cartesian idea that either nature’s

winning or we’re winning and that for us

to get what we want

nature is diminished so one day cattle

in a pen the only technology involved

here is this cheap electric fencing

relatively new

up to a car battery even I could carry a

quarter-acre paddock set it up in 15

minutes

cows graze one day they move okay

they graze everything down intensive

intensive grazing he waits three days

and then we towed in something called

the egg mobile the egg mobile is a very

rickety contraption it looks like a

Prairie schooner made out of boards but

it houses 350 chickens he tows this into

the paddock three days later and opens

the gangplank turns them down and 350

hens come streaming down the gangplank

clucking gossiping as chickens will and

they make a beeline for the cow patties

and what they’re doing is very

interesting

they’re digging through the cow patties

for the maggots the grub the larvae of

flies and the reason he’s waited three

days is because he knows that on the

fourth day or the fifth day those larvae

will hatch and he’ll have a huge fly

problem but he waits that long to grow

them as big and juicy and tasty as he

can because they are the chickens

favorite form of protein so the chickens

do their kind of little breakdance and

there they’re pushing around the manure

to get at the grubs and in the process

they’re spreading the manure out very

useful at second echo system service and

third while they’re in this paddock

there are of course defecating madly and

and they’re very nitrogenous manure is

fertilizing this field they then move

out to the next one and in the course of

just a few weeks the grass just enters

his blaze of growth and within four or

five weeks he can do it again he can

graze again you can cut they could bring

in another species like the Lambs or he

can um make hay for the winter now I

want you to just look really close up

onto what’s happened there so it’s a

very productive system and what I need

to tell you is that on a hundred acres

he gets 40,000 pounds of beef 30,000

pounds of pork 25,000 dozen eggs 20,000

boilers a thousand turkeys a thousand

rabbits an immense amount of food you

know you here can organic feed the world

well look how much food

can produce on 100 acres if you do this

kind of again give each species what it

want let it really realize its desires

its physiological distinctiveness put

that in play but look at it from the

point of view of the grass now what

happens to the grass when you do this

when a ruminant grazes grass the grass

is cut from this height to this height

and it immediately does something very

interesting anyone of you who Gardens

knows that there is something called the

root shoot ratio and plants need to keep

the root mass in some rough balance with

the leaf mass to be happy so when they

lose a lot of leaf mass they shed roots

they kind of cauterize them and the

roots die and the species in the soil go

to work basically chewing through those

roots decomposing them the earthworms

the fungi the bacteria and the result is

new soil this is how soil is created

it’s created from the bottom up this is

how the prairies were built the

relationship between bison and grasses

and what I realized when I understood

this and if you ask Joel Salatin what he

is he’ll tell you he’s not a chicken

farmer he’s not a sheep farmer he’s not

a cattle rancher he’s a grass farmer

because grass is really the keystone

species of such a system is that if you

think about it this completely

contradicts the tragic idea of nature we

hold in our heads which is that for us

to get what we want nature is diminished

more for us less for nature here all

this food comes off this farm and at the

end of the season there is actually more

soil more fertility and more

biodiversity it’s a remarkably hopeful

thing to do there are a lot of farmers

doing this today this is well beyond

organic agriculture which is still a

Cartesian system more or less and what

it tells you is that if you begin to

take account of other species take

account of the soil that even with with

enough

more than this perspectival idea because

there is no technology involved here

except for those fences which could be

you know they’re so cheap they could be

all over Africa in no time that you can

we can take the food we need from the

earth and actually heal the earth in the

process this this is a way to reanimate

the world and that’s what’s so exciting

about this perspective when we really

begin to feel darwin’s insights in our

bones the things we can do with nothing

more than these ideas are something to

be very helpful about thank you very

much