TED2007
Michael Pollan: A plant's-eye view
Filmed:
Readability: 3.9
1,767,571 views
What if human consciousness isn't the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn's clever strategy game to rule the Earth? Author Michael Pollan asks us to see the world from a plant's-eye view.
Michael Pollan - Environmental writer
Michael Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he explains how our food not only affects our health but has far-reaching political, economic, and environmental implications. His new book is In Defense of Food. Full bio
Michael Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he explains how our food not only affects our health but has far-reaching political, economic, and environmental implications. His new book is In Defense of Food. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:18
It's a simple idea about nature.
0
0
2000
00:20
I want to say a word for nature
1
2000
2000
00:22
because we haven't talked that much about it the last couple days.
2
4000
2000
00:24
I want to say a word for the soil and the bees and the plants and the animals,
3
6000
5000
00:29
and tell you about a tool, a very simple tool that I have found.
4
11000
5000
00:34
Although it's really nothing more than a literary conceit; it's not a technology.
5
16000
5000
00:39
It's very powerful for, I think, changing our relationship to the natural world
6
21000
6000
00:45
and to the other species on whom we depend.
7
27000
3000
00:48
And that tool is very simply, as Chris suggested,
8
30000
3000
00:51
looking at us and the world from the plants' or the animals' point of view.
9
33000
5000
00:56
It's not my idea, other people have hit on it,
10
38000
4000
01:00
but I've tried to take it to some new places.
11
42000
3000
01:04
Let me tell you where I got it.
12
46000
2000
01:06
Like a lot of my ideas, like a lot of the tools I use,
13
48000
3000
01:09
I found it in the garden; I'm a very devoted gardener.
14
51000
4000
01:13
And there was a day about seven years ago: I was planting potatoes,
15
55000
4000
01:17
it was the first week of May --
16
59000
2000
01:19
this is New England, when the apple trees are just vibrating with bloom;
17
61000
5000
01:24
they're just white clouds above.
18
66000
2000
01:26
I was here, planting my chunks,
19
68000
3000
01:29
cutting up potatoes and planting it,
20
71000
2000
01:31
and the bees were working on this tree;
21
73000
3000
01:34
bumblebees, just making this thing vibrate.
22
76000
2000
01:36
And one of the things I really like about gardening
23
78000
3000
01:39
is that it doesn't take all your concentration,
24
81000
3000
01:42
you really can't get hurt -- it's not like woodworking --
25
84000
2000
01:44
and you have plenty of kind of mental space for speculation.
26
86000
4000
01:48
And the question I asked myself that afternoon in the garden,
27
90000
4000
01:52
working alongside that bumblebee,
28
94000
3000
01:55
was: what did I and that bumblebee have in common?
29
97000
4000
01:59
How was our role in this garden similar and different?
30
101000
4000
02:03
And I realized we actually had quite a bit in common:
31
105000
2000
02:05
both of us were disseminating the genes of one species and not another,
32
107000
6000
02:11
and both of us -- probably, if I can imagine the bee's point of view --
33
113000
5000
02:16
thought we were calling the shots.
34
118000
2000
02:18
I had decided what kind of potato I wanted to plant --
35
120000
4000
02:22
I had picked my Yukon Gold or Yellow Finn, or whatever it was --
36
124000
4000
02:26
and I had summoned those genes from a seed catalog across the country,
37
128000
5000
02:31
brought it, and I was planting it.
38
133000
2000
02:33
And that bee, no doubt, assumed that it had decided,
39
135000
4000
02:37
"I'm going for that apple tree, I'm going for that blossom,
40
139000
3000
02:40
I'm going to get the nectar and I'm going to leave."
41
142000
3000
02:43
We have a grammar that suggests that's who we are;
42
145000
5000
02:48
that we are sovereign subjects in nature, the bee as well as me.
43
150000
5000
02:53
I plant the potatoes, I weed the garden, I domesticate the species.
44
155000
6000
02:59
But that day, it occurred to me:
45
161000
2000
03:01
what if that grammar is nothing more than a self-serving conceit?
46
163000
3000
03:04
Because, of course, the bee thinks he's in charge or she's in charge,
47
166000
4000
03:08
but we know better.
48
170000
2000
03:10
We know that what's going on between the bee and that flower
49
172000
4000
03:14
is that bee has been cleverly manipulated by that flower.
50
176000
4000
03:18
And when I say manipulated, I'm talking about in a Darwinian sense, right?
51
180000
3000
03:21
I mean it has evolved a very specific set of traits --
52
183000
3000
03:24
color, scent, flavor, pattern -- that has lured that bee in.
53
186000
5000
03:29
And the bee has been cleverly fooled into taking the nectar,
54
191000
4000
03:33
and also picking up some powder on its leg,
55
195000
3000
03:36
and going off to the next blossom.
56
198000
2000
03:38
The bee is not calling the shots.
57
200000
3000
03:41
And I realized then, I wasn't either.
58
203000
2000
03:43
I had been seduced by that potato and not another
59
205000
3000
03:46
into planting its -- into spreading its genes, giving it a little bit more habitat.
60
208000
5000
03:51
And that's when I got the idea, which was, "Well, what would happen
61
213000
4000
03:55
if we kind of looked at us from this point of view of these other species who are working on us?"
62
217000
3000
03:58
And agriculture suddenly appeared to me not as an invention, not as a human technology,
63
220000
5000
04:03
but as a co-evolutionary development
64
225000
2000
04:05
in which a group of very clever species, mostly edible grasses, had exploited us,
65
227000
6000
04:11
figured out how to get us to basically deforest the world.
66
233000
5000
04:16
The competition of grasses, right?
67
238000
3000
04:19
And suddenly everything looked different.
68
241000
2000
04:21
And suddenly mowing the lawn that day was a completely different experience.
69
243000
4000
04:25
I had thought always -- and in fact, had written this in my first book;
70
247000
3000
04:28
this was a book about gardening --
71
250000
1000
04:29
that lawns were nature under culture's boot,
72
251000
5000
04:34
that they were totalitarian landscapes,
73
256000
2000
04:36
and that when we mowed them we were cruelly suppressing the species
74
258000
4000
04:40
and never letting it set seed or die or have sex.
75
262000
4000
04:44
And that's what the lawn was.
76
266000
2000
04:46
But then I realized, "No, this is exactly what the grasses want us to do.
77
268000
4000
04:50
I'm a dupe. I'm a dupe of the lawns, whose goal in life is to outcompete the trees,
78
272000
7000
04:57
who they compete with for sunlight."
79
279000
3000
05:00
And so by getting us to mow the lawn, we keep the trees from coming back,
80
282000
4000
05:04
which in New England happens very, very quickly.
81
286000
3000
05:07
So I started looking at things this way
82
289000
3000
05:10
and wrote a whole book about it called "The Botany of Desire."
83
292000
2000
05:12
And I realized that in the same way you can look at a flower
84
294000
4000
05:16
and deduce all sorts of interesting things about the taste and the desires of bees --
85
298000
5000
05:21
that they like sweetness, that they like this color and not that color, that they like symmetry --
86
303000
6000
05:27
what could we find out about ourselves by doing the same thing?
87
309000
3000
05:30
That a certain kind of potato, a certain kind of drug,
88
312000
3000
05:33
a sativa-indica Cannabis cross has something to say about us.
89
315000
6000
05:39
And that, wouldn't this be kind of an interesting way to look at the world?
90
321000
5000
05:44
Now, the test of any idea -- I said it was a literary conceit --
91
326000
4000
05:48
is what does it get us?
92
330000
3000
05:51
And when you're talking about nature, which is really my subject as a writer,
93
333000
4000
05:55
how does it meet the Aldo Leopold test?
94
337000
3000
05:58
Which is, does it make us better citizens of the biotic community?
95
340000
4000
06:02
Get us to do things that leads to the support and perpetuation of the biota,
96
344000
7000
06:09
rather than its destruction?
97
351000
1000
06:10
And I would submit that this idea does this.
98
352000
2000
06:12
So, let me go through what you gain when you look at the world this way,
99
354000
3000
06:15
besides some entertaining insights about human desire.
100
357000
5000
06:20
As an intellectual matter, looking at the world from other species' points of view
101
362000
7000
06:27
helps us deal with this weird anomaly,
102
369000
3000
06:30
which is -- and this is in the realm of intellectual history --
103
372000
4000
06:34
which is that we have this Darwinian revolution 150 years ago ...
104
376000
5000
06:39
Ugh. Mini-Me. (Laughter)
105
381000
3000
06:44
We have this intellectual, this Darwinian revolution in which, thanks to Darwin,
106
386000
6000
06:50
we figured out we are just one species among many;
107
392000
2000
06:52
evolution is working on us the same way it's working on all the others;
108
394000
4000
06:56
we are acted upon as well as acting;
109
398000
2000
06:58
we are really in the fiber, the fabric of life.
110
400000
4000
07:02
But the weird thing is, we have not absorbed this lesson 150 years later;
111
404000
4000
07:06
none of us really believes this.
112
408000
2000
07:08
We are still Cartesians -- the children of Descartes --
113
410000
5000
07:13
who believe that subjectivity, consciousness, sets us apart;
114
415000
5000
07:18
that the world is divided into subjects and objects;
115
420000
3000
07:21
that there is nature on one side, culture on another.
116
423000
3000
07:24
As soon as you start seeing things from the plant's point of view or the animal's point of view,
117
426000
5000
07:29
you realize that the real literary conceit is that --
118
431000
4000
07:33
is the idea that nature is opposed to culture,
119
435000
4000
07:37
the idea that consciousness is everything --
120
439000
4000
07:41
and that's another very important thing it does.
121
443000
3000
07:44
Looking at the world from other species' points of view
122
446000
3000
07:47
is a cure for the disease of human self-importance.
123
449000
4000
07:51
You suddenly realize that consciousness --
124
453000
5000
07:56
which we value and we consider
125
458000
4000
08:00
the crowning achievement of nature,
126
462000
2000
08:02
human consciousness -- is really just another set of tools for getting along in the world.
127
464000
5000
08:07
And it's kind of natural that we would think it was the best tool.
128
469000
4000
08:11
But, you know, there's a comedian who said,
129
473000
2000
08:13
"Well, who's telling me that consciousness is so good and so important?
130
475000
4000
08:17
Well, consciousness."
131
479000
2000
08:19
So when you look at the plants, you realize that there are other tools
132
481000
4000
08:23
and they're just as interesting.
133
485000
2000
08:25
I'll give you two examples, also from the garden:
134
487000
4000
08:29
lima beans. You know what a lima bean does when it's attacked by spider mites?
135
491000
5000
08:34
It releases this volatile chemical that goes out into the world
136
496000
3000
08:37
and summons another species of mite
137
499000
3000
08:40
that comes in and attacks the spider mite, defending the lima bean.
138
502000
4000
08:44
So what plants have -- while we have consciousness, tool making, language,
139
506000
6000
08:50
they have biochemistry.
140
512000
2000
08:52
And they have perfected that to a degree far beyond what we can imagine.
141
514000
5000
08:57
Their complexity, their sophistication, is something to really marvel at,
142
519000
5000
09:02
and I think it's really the scandal of the Human Genome Project.
143
524000
2000
09:04
You know, we went into it thinking, 40,000 or 50,000 human genes
144
526000
5000
09:09
and we came out with only 23,000.
145
531000
4000
09:13
Just to give you grounds for comparison, rice: 35,000 genes.
146
535000
8000
09:21
So who's the more sophisticated species?
147
543000
3000
09:24
Well, we're all equally sophisticated.
148
546000
1000
09:25
We've been evolving just as long,
149
547000
3000
09:28
just along different paths.
150
550000
2000
09:31
So, cure for self-importance, way to sort of make us feel the Darwinian idea.
151
553000
8000
09:39
And that's really what I do as a writer, as a storyteller,
152
561000
3000
09:42
is try to make people feel what we know and tell stories that actually
153
564000
7000
09:49
help us think ecologically.
154
571000
1000
09:50
Now, the other use of this is practical.
155
572000
2000
09:52
And I'm going to take you to a farm right now,
156
574000
2000
09:54
because I used this idea to develop my understanding of the food system
157
576000
4000
09:58
and what I learned, in fact, is that we are all, now, being manipulated by corn.
158
580000
5000
10:03
And the talk you heard about ethanol earlier today,
159
585000
5000
10:08
to me, is the final triumph of corn over good sense. (Laughter) (Applause)
160
590000
5000
10:13
It is part of corn's scheme for world domination.
161
595000
8000
10:21
(Laughter)
162
603000
1000
10:22
And you will see, the amount of corn planted this year will be up dramatically from last year
163
604000
4000
10:26
and there will be that much more habitat
164
608000
2000
10:28
because we've decided ethanol is going to help us.
165
610000
2000
10:30
So it helped me understand industrial agriculture,
166
612000
4000
10:34
which of course is a Cartesian system.
167
616000
2000
10:36
It's based on this idea that we bend other species to our will
168
618000
3000
10:39
and that we are in charge, and that we create these factories
169
621000
3000
10:42
and we have these technological inputs and we get the food out of it
170
624000
3000
10:45
or the fuel or whatever we want.
171
627000
2000
10:48
Let me take you to a very different kind of farm.
172
630000
2000
10:50
This is a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
173
632000
3000
10:53
I went looking for a farm where these ideas
174
635000
3000
10:56
about looking at things from the species' point of view are actually implemented,
175
638000
4000
11:00
and I found it in a man. The farmer's name is Joel Salatin.
176
642000
2000
11:02
And I spent a week as an apprentice on his farm,
177
644000
3000
11:05
and I took away from this some of the most hopeful news about our relationship to nature
178
647000
6000
11:11
that I've ever come across in 25 years of writing about nature.
179
653000
3000
11:14
And that is this:
180
656000
1000
11:15
the farm is called Polyface, which means ...
181
657000
3000
11:18
the idea is he's got six different species of animals, as well as some plants,
182
660000
4000
11:22
growing in this very elaborate symbiotic arrangement.
183
664000
3000
11:25
It's permaculture, those of you who know a little bit about this,
184
667000
2000
11:27
such that the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the turkeys and the ...
185
669000
8000
11:35
what else does he have?
186
677000
2000
11:37
All the six different species -- rabbits, actually --
187
679000
2000
11:39
are all performing ecological services for one another,
188
681000
3000
11:42
such that the manure of one is the lunch for the other
189
684000
3000
11:45
and they take care of pests for one another.
190
687000
2000
11:47
It's a very elaborate and beautiful dance,
191
689000
3000
11:50
but I'm going to just give you a close-up on one piece of it,
192
692000
3000
11:53
and that is the relationship between his cattle and his chickens, his laying hens.
193
695000
6000
11:59
And I'll show you, if you take this approach, what you get, OK?
194
701000
5000
12:04
And this is a lot more than growing food, as you'll see;
195
706000
2000
12:06
this is a different way to think about nature
196
708000
2000
12:08
and a way to get away from the zero-sum notion,
197
710000
4000
12:12
the Cartesian idea that either nature's winning or we're winning,
198
714000
3000
12:15
and that for us to get what we want, nature is diminished.
199
717000
3000
12:19
So, one day, cattle in a pen.
200
721000
2000
12:21
The only technology involved here is this cheap electric fencing:
201
723000
3000
12:24
relatively new, hooked to a car battery;
202
726000
2000
12:26
even I could carry a quarter-acre paddock, set it up in 15 minutes.
203
728000
4000
12:30
Cows graze one day. They move, OK?
204
732000
4000
12:34
They graze everything down, intensive grazing.
205
736000
2000
12:36
He waits three days,
206
738000
2000
12:38
and then we towed in something called the Eggmobile.
207
740000
3000
12:41
The Eggmobile is a very rickety contraption --
208
743000
3000
12:44
it looks like a prairie schooner made out of boards --
209
746000
3000
12:47
but it houses 350 chickens.
210
749000
2000
12:49
He tows this into the paddock three days later and opens the gangplank,
211
751000
6000
12:55
turns them down, and 350 hens come streaming down the gangplank --
212
757000
4000
12:59
clucking, gossiping as chickens will --
213
761000
2000
13:01
and they make a beeline for the cow patties.
214
763000
4000
13:06
And what they're doing is very interesting:
215
768000
2000
13:08
they're digging through the cow patties
216
770000
2000
13:10
for the maggots, the grubs, the larvae of flies.
217
772000
4000
13:14
And the reason he's waited three days
218
776000
2000
13:16
is because he knows that on the fourth day or the fifth day, those larvae will hatch
219
778000
5000
13:21
and he'll have a huge fly problem.
220
783000
2000
13:23
But he waits that long to grow them as big and juicy and tasty as he can
221
785000
6000
13:29
because they are the chickens' favorite form of protein.
222
791000
3000
13:32
So the chickens do their kind of little breakdance
223
794000
2000
13:34
and they're pushing around the manure to get at the grubs,
224
796000
4000
13:38
and in the process they're spreading the manure out.
225
800000
3000
13:41
Very useful second ecosystem service.
226
803000
4000
13:45
And third, while they're in this paddock
227
807000
3000
13:48
they are, of course, defecating madly
228
810000
3000
13:51
and their very nitrogenous manure is fertilizing this field.
229
813000
6000
13:57
They then move out to the next one,
230
819000
2000
13:59
and in the course of just a few weeks, the grass just enters this blaze of growth.
231
821000
8000
14:07
And within four or five weeks, he can do it again.
232
829000
2000
14:09
He can graze again, he can cut, he can bring in another species,
233
831000
3000
14:12
like the lambs, or he can make hay for the winter.
234
834000
5000
14:17
Now, I want you to just look really close up onto what's happened there.
235
839000
4000
14:21
So, it's a very productive system.
236
843000
1000
14:22
And what I need to tell you is that on 100 acres
237
844000
2000
14:24
he gets 40,000 pounds of beef; 30,000 pounds of pork; 25,000 dozen eggs;
238
846000
5000
14:29
20,000 broilers; 1,000 turkeys; 1,000 rabbits --
239
851000
3000
14:32
an immense amount of food.
240
854000
2000
14:34
You know, you hear, "Can organic feed the world?"
241
856000
2000
14:36
Well, look how much food you can produce on 100 acres if you do this kind of ...
242
858000
5000
14:41
again, give each species what it wants,
243
863000
3000
14:44
let it realize its desires, its physiological distinctiveness.
244
866000
4000
14:48
Put that in play.
245
870000
2000
14:50
But look at it from the point of view of the grass, now.
246
872000
3000
14:53
What happens to the grass when you do this?
247
875000
2000
14:55
When a ruminant grazes grass, the grass is cut from this height to this height,
248
877000
6000
15:01
and it immediately does something very interesting.
249
883000
2000
15:03
Any one of you who gardens knows that there is something called the root-shoot ratio,
250
885000
4000
15:07
and plants need to keep the root mass
251
889000
4000
15:11
in some rough balance with the leaf mass to be happy.
252
893000
3000
15:14
So when they lose a lot of leaf mass, they shed roots;
253
896000
4000
15:18
they kind of cauterize them and the roots die.
254
900000
3000
15:21
And the species in the soil go to work
255
903000
3000
15:24
basically chewing through those roots, decomposing them --
256
906000
4000
15:28
the earthworms, the fungi, the bacteria -- and the result is new soil.
257
910000
6000
15:34
This is how soil is created.
258
916000
3000
15:37
It's created from the bottom up.
259
919000
1000
15:38
This is how the prairies were built,
260
920000
2000
15:40
the relationship between bison and grasses.
261
922000
2000
15:43
And what I realized when I understood this --
262
925000
3000
15:46
and if you ask Joel Salatin what he is, he'll tell you he's not a chicken farmer,
263
928000
4000
15:50
he's not a sheep farmer, he's not a cattle rancher; he's a grass farmer,
264
932000
5000
15:55
because grass is really the keystone species of such a system --
265
937000
4000
15:59
is that, if you think about it, this completely contradicts the tragic idea of nature we hold in our heads,
266
941000
9000
16:08
which is that for us to get what we want, nature is diminished.
267
950000
6000
16:14
More for us, less for nature.
268
956000
2000
16:16
Here, all this food comes off this farm, and at the end of the season
269
958000
5000
16:21
there is actually more soil, more fertility and more biodiversity.
270
963000
6000
16:28
It's a remarkably hopeful thing to do.
271
970000
3000
16:31
There are a lot of farmers doing this today.
272
973000
2000
16:33
This is well beyond organic agriculture,
273
975000
3000
16:36
which is still a Cartesian system, more or less.
274
978000
3000
16:39
And what it tells you is that if you begin to take account of other species,
275
981000
6000
16:45
take account of the soil, that even with nothing more than this perspectival idea
276
987000
7000
16:52
-- because there is no technology involved here except for those fences,
277
994000
4000
16:56
which are so cheap they could be all over Africa in no time --
278
998000
5000
17:01
that we can take the food we need from the Earth
279
1003000
4000
17:05
and actually heal the Earth in the process.
280
1007000
4000
17:10
This is a way to reanimate the world,
281
1012000
2000
17:12
and that's what's so exciting about this perspective.
282
1014000
2000
17:14
When we really begin to feel Darwin's insights in our bones,
283
1016000
4000
17:18
the things we can do with nothing more than these ideas
284
1020000
5000
17:23
are something to be very hopeful about.
285
1025000
2000
17:25
Thank you very much.
286
1027000
1000
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael Pollan - Environmental writerMichael Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he explains how our food not only affects our health but has far-reaching political, economic, and environmental implications. His new book is In Defense of Food.
Why you should listen
Few writers approach their subjects with the rigor, passion and perspective that's typical of Michael Pollan. Whereas most humans think we are Darwin's most accomplished species, Pollan convincingly argues that plants — even our own front lawns — have evolved to use us as much as we use them.
The author and New York Times Magazine contributor is, as Newsweek asserts, “an uncommonly graceful explainer of natural science,” for his investigative stories about food, agriculture, and the environment. His most recent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, was named one of the top ten nonfiction titles of 2006.
As the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley, Pollan is cultivating the next generation of green reporters.
Michael Pollan | Speaker | TED.com