Book Review: Never Out of Season

[osprey_archer]

I’d like to be able to whole-heartedly recommend Rob Dunn’s Never Out of Season: Why Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future, because I think it’s got an important and thought-provoking message; certainly in my post-apocalyptic imaginings I had not spent much time contemplating the possibility of a vast famine (followed probably by a vast pestilence, given that the malnourished survivors will be easy prey for disease) caused by some pest destroying our increasingly homogeneous genetically modified crops, in much the same way that the potato blight caused the Irish potato famine.

The Irish potato famine was as devastating as it was in part because the potatoes themselves were so close to genetically identical: they all came from a very few ancestors imported to Europe from the Americas. Naturally, human beings learned nothing from this, and instead of diversifying have spent the last century narrowing down the crops we grow to the few highest-producing varieties of just a few plants.

Never Out of Season is a cri de coeur for us to embrace and protect crop diversity before it’s too late, and it’s, well, it’s just a bit repetitive. It could have made a kickass magazine article but as a book, each chapter is just a further repetition of this theme - not even really an elaboration of it; just variations of the same story where a lack of crop diversity leads to disaster.

Although I did find the story of the scientists in the Leningrad seed bank during the siege quite touching. There they are, surrounded by bags of rice and barley and wheat, succumbing to diseases brought on by malnutrition because they’re stoically saving their seed collection for the future.

In any case, there’s a great seed for an apocalypse story in here. Or a post-apocalyptic paean to crop diversity, centered around the characters working their polycultural garden and feasting upon the fruits of their labors.

Comments

[sovay]

Naturally, human beings learned nothing from this, and instead of diversifying have spent the last century narrowing down the crops we grow to the few highest-producing varieties of just a few plants.

I still can't believe that after the catastrophic collapse of the Gros Michel banana monoculture we replaced it wholesale with the equally susceptible Cavendish monoculture and are now, I am shocked, shocked to report, facing the sweeping loss of the Cavendish to another variant of Panama disease. It's not like there aren't other kinds of banana! Plantains are delicious! This literally isn't rocket science!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

RIGHT, THOUGH? "We just lost all our genetically identical clone bananas to a gruesome banana disease. Let's.... replace them with another type of genetically identical clone bananas! What could possibly go wrong??"

It occurs to me that taking advantage of this flaw would be a really good way to destroy swathes of clone troopers in Star Wars, too. Maybe that's why the Empire replacement moved away from clones by the time The Force Awakens rolled around.

[sovay]

It occurs to me that taking advantage of this flaw would be a really good way to destroy swathes of clone troopers in Star Wars, too.

That's is a horrifying but hilarious theory. Thank you.