Editor's Note: Excerpted from Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food, by Frederick Kaufman. With permission from the publisher, Wiley. Copyright © Frederick Kaufman, 2012.

Once upon a time, nymphs, sprites, and spirits ruled every cavern, tree, field, and brook, and a meal was plucked from a bush, scooped from the mud, or carved from the carcass of some unfortunate creature. Then everything changed. A tribe of infidels and heretics decided it could no longer leave something as important as breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the vagaries of chance and the whimsy of the gods. These revolutionaries drained lakes, rerouted rivers, chopped down forests, and slashed straight into the guts of Mother Earth. They were the first farmers.

Ten thousand years of meddling with food has not made the meddling any more popular, even if the history of civilization has hinged on the science of food. Assyrian bas-reliefs and Sumerian cuneiform tablets depict artificial pollination—and manipulating the sex life of plants was one of the first technological feats that enabled our world of abundant fruits and vegetables, meat, bread, and chocolate.

What set the earliest agriculturalists apart from the even earlier hunter-gatherers? As the first farmers denuded nature, hoarded seeds, and engineered crops, they most likely appeared to be mad scientists, coaxing mutant monsters from the black earth. Of course, we no longer think very much about the fact that almost everything we eat has been domesticated and that domestication implies a history of human intervention. In fact, most people are unaware that the typical supermarket and green market varieties of apples, oranges, lettuce, and raspberries are not at all the same as their wild cousins.

Domesticated fruits and vegetables are generally larger than their undomesticated counterparts. They are sweeter and more aromatic. Compared to their great-great-grandparents, modern fruits and vegetables have lost their fuzz, their fiber, their thorns, and their puberty. A modern tomato—heirloom, organic, process, vine-ripened, or otherwise—bears little resemblance to its puny, sour, undomesticated relations that sprout in the Peruvian Andes. Tomato breeding has changed tomatoes down to the DNA, and the successful varieties that have found their way into our supermarket carts have been cloned and cloned again.

The red jungle fowl of Thailand eventually became a Perdue chicken. The extinct aurochs of the Fertile Crescent eventually became Holstein cows. The primeval apples of Kazakhstan eventually became Gala and Red Delicious. Ancient tillers of the earth needed at least 300 years to domesticate corn and more than 1,000 years to domesticate wheat. But no one really knows how weeds first became crops.

Did mongrel grains serendipitously meld together and sprout from the sewage dumps of sedentary fishing tribes (a current theory), or was the domestication of wheat grasses, pomegranates, and fig trees a willful act of genius? The most ancient of these technologies created new forms of life. And our fear of Frankenstein predates Mary Shelley's monster.  In  The Winter's Tale, William Shakespeare laced Perdita's voice with anxiety and disgust as she condemned "Nature's bastards," new varieties of flowers created by Elizabethan methods of artificial pollination. Not to worry, argued Polixenes, for "Nature is made better by no mean / But Nature makes that mean; so over that art / Which you say adds to Nature, is an art / That Nature makes."

8 Comments

1. 1. Fixerguy 05:25 PM 10/26/12

   Nice blog article, but it appears to be apologist in nature for the franken foods created by Monsanto. Yes, modification of food to produce more/better can be a good thing, BUT when you are dealing with a food source for metabolic processes that are not completely understood, or a corporation designing a "food" solely on the profit motive you can and do create un-forseen problems like soy that is resistant to Roundup cross pollinating weeds that also become resistant to Roundup; Or creating corn that is toxic to predator bugs but is ALSO toxic (and carcinogenic) to its intended customer (and worse yet creates a super bug that is no longer affected by B.T.).
   "Because we can" does NOT equal "It's a good idea".

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2. 2. jtdwyer in reply to Fixerguy 03:32 AM 10/27/12

   Well put. I'd add an extension - 'because we [someone else] can make money doing it' does not mean 'it's a good thing to do!'

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3. 3. RichardSmith in reply to Fixerguy 03:42 PM 10/29/12

   This comment shows a profound lack of understanding of pretty much everything.
   
   1. We understand the metabolic processes we manipulate in genetically modified plants extremely well.
   2. All products and foods are designed solely on the profit motive; that's entirely how society works.
   3. Weeds becoming resistant to roundup is not in any way related to Roundup Ready plants. It's a natural consequence of herbicide use and applies to any herbicide irrespective of whether it's used on GM plants.
   4. There is absolutely no biological reason to think Bt CRY proteins would be carcinogenic in any system. You've completely made that up (or got it from a source that made it up).
   5. Bugs becoming resistant to Bt is also not a problem, it's expected with pesticides. When it happens, we switch pesticide strategy.
   
   We don't use molecular engineering technology because we can, we do it because it's the responsible thing to do to feed a growing population in a sustainable way.

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4. 4. RichardSmith 03:48 PM 10/29/12

   Interesting excerpt - I'll definitely read the book.

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5. 5. jtdwyer in reply to RichardSmith 07:29 PM 10/29/12

   Interesting, yes, but who is in charge of making decisions about how, why and which technology is applied to agricultural development and production? Are they motivated to magnanimously feed the starving masses or to increase profits this quarter? Sustainability? Nothing to see here - I'll just move along...

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6. 6. eco-steve 06:15 AM 10/31/12

   Modern wheat is mostly starch. I eat bread made from ancient 'épautre' wheat, rich in protein and requiring little fertiliser or pesticides. Modern starch-rich wheat causes widespread obesity in the USA. Which is the best?

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7. 7. sandy_masterson@hotmail.com in reply to jtdwyer 12:03 PM 10/31/12

   I would expect nothing less from a guy with an vested interest in genetically motivating food for human and animal consumption...

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8. 8. greenhome123 02:56 AM 11/2/12

   in response to Richard Smith.
   1. I am 100% in favor of genetically engineering plants to be drought resistant, or root rot resistant, etc... but I am 100% against genetically modifying plants to be resistant to RoundUp so millions of acres of land and food can be soaked in RoundUp. The genetically modified plants may possibly be safe, but what about the safety of RoundUp residue on the plants? Also, there may be long term negative environmental effects of spraying millions of acres of land with Roundup.
   2. I believe sometimes it is in the best interest of society NOT to allow big businesses to do whatever makes the most profit, especially when it pollutes the environment.
   3. Actually, weeds becoming resistant to Roundup IS related to Roundup Ready plants. It is called horizontal green transfer. Weeds will continue to become resistant to RoundUp and new herbicides will have to be made. I believe farmers should use kura clover, living mulch in corn fields instead of Round Up. Kura clover is a legume and actually makes soil more fertile.
   4. True, BT Cry proteins are not carcinogenic. But, inserting the genes from the BT microbe directly into plants has created many super insects which have evolved resistance to them.
   5. Bugs becoming resistant to BT IS a problem, as organic farmers use BT to spray on their crops as organic pesticide, and it will soon become useless. True, you can switch pesticide strategy once you have created super insects that no longer are controlled by BT, but it will be a never ending cycle of creating stronger and stronger insects, which I believe is not the best long term strategy.
   
   There are many useful applications for molecular engineering that can be used to feed our growing population in a responsible and sustainable manner. Unfortunately, Monsanto does not operate their business in a responsible or sustainable way.
   

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