In The Botany Of Desire, Michael Pollan asks,“did we cultivate plants, or did they cultivate us?”
Michael Pollanis arguably our most outstanding author on food policy , most notablyIn Defense Of Food , Food Rules , andThe Omnivore ’s Dilemma . Those books crystallizedAmerica ’s wellness - colligate diet subject , explaining the infinite processing of solid food made in factories , the absence seizure of diet - relate diseases in sealed cultures , and how we have over - complicated our ever - changing view of alimentation . InThe Botany of Desire : A Plant’s - Eye View of the World , Pollan make on his former work and prove how humans and plant have form reciprocal relationships .
The human desire for altered states
InThe Botany Of Desire , Pollan note that every human culture in read account has desired to accomplish an altered body politic of psyche . Through one C of year of hybridizing , human being have breed a Cannabis plant perfectly tuned to “ flip the switching ” on the reward centers of the brain .
“ In the same elbow room the human desire for looker and sweetness inaugurate into the world a new survival of the fittest strategy for the plant that could gratify it , the human hunger for transcendence create new opportunities for another group of plants . Noentheogenicplant or fungus ever rig out to make mote for the express use of inspire visions in humans - combating gadfly is the far more likely motive . But the moment humans chance on what these speck could do for them , this wholly accidental magic trick , the plants that made them suddenly had a brilliant new way to prosper . And from that moment on this is exactly what the industrial plant with the strong conjuration did . ”
So a flora that produced tetrahydrocannabinol to throw louse and predators find in humankind the means by which to expand its gene pool .
Big Ag vs Organic
InThe Botany Of Desire‘s final chapter , an organic white potato farmer and a Big Ag Irish potato grower are profiled . Pollan key out Monsanto ’s efforts to develop and own a genetically modified potato ( NewLeafs ) and line in detail the superfluity of chemical substance that Big Ag Farmer employ on their field to guarantee their crops . Pollan ’s verbal description of the grease on these farms is arresting – “ a exanimate gray powder ” , which the farmers ironically refer to as a “ sporty field ” ( because nothing can live in it – no hemipteran , no fauna , no smoke – except the potato ) . Then we meet the organic Irish potato farmer , standing amidst his fleeceable fields where his crops grow in dark , loamy soil , his back turn to industrial USDA . The Big Ag farmer is not painted as an evil overlord – just a man resigned to his luck in what has become the snare of corporate farming .
The Botany of Desireis a brilliant book , thoroughly researched , and thoroughly absorbing .
