Monday, December 17, 2007

Michael Pollan in the NYT Magazine

Michael Pollan has an article the connections among bee colony collapse, MRSA, and factory farming in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. According to Pollan,

...the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

1 comment:

Pattie Baker said...

I read this article Sunday and was really blown away by it--especially the whole part about the almond industry. This is worth reading, folks.