Damn the Butterflies

Damn the butterflies

The folks in a small town in Western Mexico, not far from the coast, used to hail the annual migration that used to bring the Monarch butterflies from all over North America to their humble community. For some reason, the Monarchs assembled there. Maybe they liked the climate; maybe it was the special trees; maybe it was the fact that this place had been programmed within them for countless generations.

And it happened every year like clock-work. The Monarchs came from all over North America taking the 1700 mile or longer migration in stride, stopping along the way to eat and rest..

And then one day, it virtually stopped. The Monarchs came but in falling numbers—numbers that were noticeable.

And the humble folk asked, ‘what happened?”

Nobody seemed to know.

So the microbiologists and entomologists and others within the scientific community who were involved in the habits of different species started to inquire.

What had happened?

The scientists started retracing the routes of the Monarchs and discovered that many of them seemed to stop in the mid-west on their way down to Mexico.

They would go to the corn fields and feed themselves and rest and then join the rest of the migration.

Only, it wasn’t happening the way it always happened.

And then someone had a bright idea, it was their food.

You see, the Monarchs were eating corn on the way down. Only this time, it wasn’t providing the nutrition and the Monarchs were literally unable to digest the corn.

Why?, they wondered.

It turned out that the concerns of the people had been realized. In order to give the corn disease resistance and the ability to grow faster, scientists at Monsanto had developed a hybrid corn that they promised would not get mixed up with the natural corn.

It was now clear, that the hybrids were out of control and that there were inherent problems with them; they produced results that were indigestible to the Monarchs.

Science can be a two way street. In many cases, it can be used to produce a desirable result; but, in this case, it may be responsible for wiping out a butterfly.

Fewer people seem alarmed by such developments; but in Europe, anticipating that such a result—or something like it could occur—they banned agricultural imports from America that involve chemical or agricultural tampering with Nature.

Clearly, they knew something the rest of us chose to ignore.

And now we stand to pay the price.

It is not only corn, we have tampered with the genetic structure of many crops—including wheat, barley, oats—in order to give the crops important disease resistance. We add hormones to cows so that they produce more milk. We grow fish now in farms and when they escape the nets and mix with regular fish, they produce off-spring not as disease resistant as the natural fish in its environment.

In so doing, we have gone along far enough to affect natural diversity and some wonder whether in providing what we presume to be a stronger, more distant strains, we have also tampered with diversity, leaving us open to the hazards of unforeseen ravages that we yet don’t know about.

We won’t know the answer to that question until it happens but some in the scientific community are worried. To guard against such an eventuality, there is a massive ongoing program now to find original seedlings, with all of their diversity, and store them away against any emergency that might befall our lands—from draught to excessive rain-fall.

For the time being, this is all we have as back up against the possible loss of our primary food supply. For without grain, we will be unable to feed cattle, chicken, or the pigs that constitute our fundamental supplies of meat.

Something to think about as we tamper with Nature.

But we didn’t just mess around with grains and other basic food supplies. No, we were to clever for that. We even got down to the basics.

We messed with the equivalent of the canary in the miner’s cap….and then we blinked.

No kidding!