Clone Wars
One of the more common-knowledge plant facts is that every banana you’ve ever eaten is the exact same, a genetic clone of the original Cavendish cultivar which has been carefully curated to create that oh-so-edible fruit. A lot of people also know that the Cavendish is actually the second cloned banana to take over the world. The original, the Gros Michel, is the banana that Laffy Taffy are supposed to take like, and was the fruit of choice for banana plantations up until a fungus — “Panama Disease” — tore through the entire population. As all Gros Michel plants were genetically identical, each was exactly as susceptible to the new disease and each died off in turn, killing off the entire species.
A Gros Michele plant, wilting due to Panama Disease. Photo: Scot Nelson.
A good number of people also know that the Cavendish is now in the same exact situation, facing down a mutated version of Panama disease without any genetic variation to fight it with. Despite our best efforts to develop resistant cultivars and fungicides, it seems like the Cavendish may go the way of the Gros Michel within our lifetimes.
This has gotten, well, some attention.
Some of these hits are really interesting overviews of the science. Some are surreal metaphors for the tech industry. And some are insipid, with headlines like “Bananas Are Facing Extinction – And It’s All Our Fault”. This last category tends to tell the same story, over and over again: us humans have created these massive artificial monocultures devoid of any species diversity sheerly because it’s easier for us than more natural farming systems, and we are being punished for our hubris as we deserve.
Sure, maybe, whatever. There are plenty of people who find this a useful way to look at the world; that’s why it’s one of the dominant narratives that emerges whenever nature-themed news starts getting mainstream attention. But accepting this narrative means accepting the assumptions it makes about how the world works and the things we do — and should — value. That’s a valid perspective to come from; I just don’t think most people who read and agree with these articles actually know they’re making that choice.
For Instance
Take the phrase “artificial monoculture”. There’s a lot to unpack here. Without getting into how "artificial" is an entirely human-invented concept, it’s worth remembering that there are plenty of monocultures in the plant world without any human intervention. We’ve already talked about Pando, the massive forest composed of not just a single species, but a single organism, but plenty of plants will grow fast enough to exclude all others even in normal circumstances. Take bamboo forests, which crowd out all competitors, or the algae that dominates eutrophic streams, or black walnut trees which poison the earth surrounding them in order to kill off any neighbors. Or even the first forests to ever emerge on this planet, dominated by a single species of tree — which completely reshaped the Earth’s ecosystem and the way terrestrial life functioned up until they mysteriously died off, likely because of a fungal pathogen. History repeats.
Artist’s interpretation of the first forests on Earth. Illustration: Stephen Greb
And the repeated emergence of plant monocultures makes a lot of sense. After all, if we buy into Darwin’s view of the purpose of life, organisms exist with the goal of making more organisms. If a plant species has managed to take over all the sunlight and space available to grow in, by this definition that’s one successful plant.
But of course, this success comes at the direct expense of all other plants. Deciding what organisms are supposed to live in an area is a nearly impossible task, as is determining how dominant any given species should be. A perfectly balanced ecosystem, where each plant takes up about as much space as all the others, is just one potential way for a system to function. So is a monoculture; so is domination by two or three species with dozens popping up in smaller numbers. Ecosystems will move between back and forth between all of these stages with time, with entire species appearing and disappearing as the resources available in the system shift and the competitive balance changes. Thinking of natural systems as having a single static “ideal state” is to ignore this constant evolution, and trying to decide which state is the ideal for a specific point in time is almost impossible — especially because it requires you to define “ideal”, as ideal for the dominant plant might not be ideal for non-dominant species or the organisms which depend on them. Deciding what purpose a system should serve is a matter of philosophy.
Traditionally, much of our management has worked from the belief that these systems should serve the interests of humankind. This is the philosophy that leads to monocultured crops, to parceled-up farmland ecosystems of only the most productive plants which can all be wiped out by a single disease. We harness the desire of these plant species to crowd out all their competition and put it towards our own ends, betting the bank on the one single species. Just like all other big bets, the rewards can be massive, and so can the risks.
Now, in a period where those risks have started to hit home, there’s a new philosophy ascendant theorizing that we should manage these systems to prioritize ecosystem resiliency: the ability of the system to resist outside disturbances ranging from pests and diseases to climate change. This means increasing diversity — of genes and of species — in our farms, encouraging competition between plants so that there might be some plants ready to thrive following whatever disturbance is up next. Done in a way that maximizes ecosystem resiliency, this would mean creating systems that can be completely restructured after a disturbance, with entirely new species taking over at entirely new rates and others disappearing entirely. But more frequently we pin this to our mistaken understanding of ecosystems as having a single desirable state and attempt to find ways to protect that state at all costs — see the suggestions for less dense plantings of bananas alongside palm oil trees, creating a slightly more dynamic system in order to try to stick as close to our ideal state of banana monocultures as possible. In this form, we’re still driving for ecosystems that are as productive for humans as possible; we’ve simply realized that we can increase the long-term productivity of these systems by throwing in a few tweaks.
Which is fine. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with managing systems for the benefit of humans, particularly when that management improves the system for other species as well (as diversifying banana plantations would). But I do think we need to admit to ourselves that this is our primary goal in making these decisions, and that we aren’t being motivated by any desire to be a better steward of Mother Nature or that the result is any more “natural” and less engineered than our legacy farms. In this situation, what’s good for humanity is good for the rest of the world, too, and that can be worth celebrating. But we should be careful of giving ourselves more credit than that.
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