The Botany of Desire Page #11

And so suddenly there was

This vast new source of calories

that could underwrite

The growth of the population,

Such as never would have

happened without the potato.

Since one individual can grow

so much food,

You need fewer people

in the fields

To support an urban population.

So it's really hard to imagine

The industrial revolution

proceeding as it would

Without the potato

to kind of support it.

This new world food

remade the old world.

The potato thrived

in the soils of northern europe,

Most dramatically in ireland,

A country sorely in need

of a hearty food.

For the irish,

The potato initially was

a godsend.

Ireland's poor

farmland and bad weather

Made it a tough place

to grow crops.

But the potato plant

actually prospered

In this soggy environment

And seemed to end the country's

long struggle with hunger.

If you had potatoes

and cow's milk,

You had a complete diet.

You had calories, obviously,

And you had the full complement

of vitamins.

So they became very dependent

on the potato.

And in fact,

the population grew.

The problem was, however,

that the irish

Were planting

almost exclusively

One kind of potato -- the potato

they called "the lumper."

And they planted the lumper

all over ireland.

So the irish had really

made themselves

Dependent on this one strain

of potato.

And in 1845,

some ship from south america

Was carrying a fungus,

And it was a wind-spread spore,

And over the course

Of a very few weeks,

The spores spread

across all of ireland,

And within days of infection,

the fields went black

And the potatoes in the ground

turned to mush.

The irish potato

famine lasted for three years.

In the end, the famine killed

one million people --

One out of every eight people

in ireland.

So the irish famine

is, in a way,

The great cautionary tale

Of putting all your eggs

in one basket,

And the great cautionary tale

about monocultures of all kinds.

It's a parable about

the importance of biodiversity

And the dangers of monoculture.

And it's a parable we forget

at our peril,

But, in fact, we're in

the process of forgetting today.

And what's making us forget

Is one of our favorite foods.

Each year, americans consume

About 7.5 billion pounds

of french fries.

They are the most popular

fast food in the country.

We love

our french fries.

We like them really long.

Mcdonald's kind of pioneered

that beautiful red box

And the long french fries

That have to be tall enough

to kind of sprout out of the box

Like a little bouquet

of potato flowers.

And to make those

long french fries,

The fast food industry relies

Almost exclusively

on one variety of potato --

The russet burbank.

And that's what

mcdonald's buys,

All over the world.

Because mcdonald's wants people

to have the same experience --

The same beautiful, golden

mcdonald's french fries,

Whether you're in prague

or london

Or beijing or new york or idaho.

Mcdonald's buys

its french fries

From potato processing companies

like the j.R. Simplot company.

This is one of its plants,

in nampa, idaho.

The potato we process the most

is the russet burbank.

The russet burbank

gives us pretty much

The ideal quality attributes,

if we're going to convert them

Into the product

that our customer wants.

So you see

how monocultures

On the plate lead to

monocultures on the land,

And that a desire for something

like that perfect french fry

Has a whole, you know,

carries a whole chain

Of consequences, all the way

back to the farm.

This idaho farm,

Whose fields extend

for nearly 100 miles,

Is run by ryan cranney

and his family.

Like most idaho potato farmers,

The cranneys sell

most of their crop

To the processing companies

that make

Frozen french fries.

If you want to get them in

before they get frozen,

Then we need

to keep digging.

So, to satisfy

their customers,

The cranneys grow mostly

Russet burbanks.

That ought to make

good french fries.

I think there are

other varieties

That are easier to grow,

But that's what the consumer

demands, is the russet burbank,

And I'd be shot

for suggesting otherwise.

Despite the demand

for russet burbanks,

The business of growing them

is far from a sure thing.

Each year,

cranney and his family

Have to shell out

millions of dollars

For water, seed, fertilizer,

chemicals, and labor.

But they have little control

over the price

Their potatoes will sell for

at harvest time.

It's very risky,

growing crops.

We had some really huge losses

economically here on the farm.

I don't even like to think

about it, how bad it was.

All righty.

A lot of the people

in the community,

Farmers that we grew up with,

That have been here

as long as we have,

No longer have their operations.

Many of us, the only way we

could survive was

To re-mortgage our farms

and re-mortgage our land,

And that's how we stayed

in business.

You can only do --

dip into the well

For so long

until the well goes dry.

And many of us have been

to that point.

Well, it's not too bad here,

Because you're running

enough volume.

They're flowing

pretty good, but...

In addition

to the economic perils he faces,

Cranney must contend

with biological adversaries --

The insects, fungi, and viruses

that prey on his plants.

And his russet burbanks

are especially vulnerable,

Because they are grown

in a monoculture,

Just like the lumper potatoes

were, back in ireland.

If an enemy can kill one

of cranney's russet burbanks,

It can kill them all.

My role as a farmer

is to help the plant

Out-compete

the different pests,

Whether that be weeds

or whether that be insects

Or a fungus of some sort.

It's a constant battle

that we have to fight those off

And to protect against those.

It's a race to the finish line,

whether the pests win

Or whether

the potato plant wins.

To help his potatoes

win that race,

Cranney, like

the great majority

Of large-scale potato growers

in the United States,

Uses chemical pesticides.

The chemicals the cranneys use

can be toxic,

But they follow epa guidelines

That establish levels

that are considered

Safe to use.

I don't necessarily

like to apply

The insecticides --

or any chemical of any sort --

But it's something

that needs to be done

In order to keep

the plants healthy.

We don't use a chemical

unless we need to,

And it's kind of

by prescription, by field.

So you just don't go in

and just blanket

Excessive amounts of chemicals

and fungicides on.

If that potato doesn't need any,

we won't apply it.

If it does, we do.

You know, we love

our children, too.

And we don't want to put

anything on the food

That we eat any more -- to taint

it for us, any more than you.

You know, the control

of nature is expensive.

To spray all those pesticides,

to have 10 sprayings

Of fertilizer over a course

of the season,

To water, to buy all that water

and pump all that water,

It's enormously expensive.

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote