The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis (34 page)

  
122
   
Set loose even more problems:
A characteristic of a “wicked problem” is that solutions to the problem create new problems, with no clear stopping point (Rittel and Webber 1973).

  
123
   
Aid of animal power:
Pingali 2007; Ehui and Polson 1993.

  
123
   
Crop’s native New World tropics:
El-Sharkawy 1993.

  
123
   
Expended in the process:
Smil 2004.

  
123
   
Fossil-fuel-powered farming:
Rasmussen 1982.

  
124
   
Steam-engine tractor:
Ibid.; Binswanger 1986.

  
124
   
Atop the rich resource:
Giebelhaus 2004; Cadman 1959.

  
124
   
“[T]emples of modernity”:
Quoted in Linton 2008, 12.

  
125
   
Issues of the twenty-first century:
The most reliable source of information on climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which publishes publicly available periodic updates.

  
125
   
Today is without doubt:
Arrhenius 1896.

  
125
   
Ancient Maya to the Norse of Greenland:
Climate change and variability are some of the many factors that contribute to a society’s stress and ability to adapt, including social institutions (Butzer and Endfield 2012). Diamond (2003) described several civilizations that have succumbed to stresses.

Chapter 7: Monocultures March Across the Midwest

  
128
   
Breeding is like natural selection:
Largent 2009; Theunissen 2012.

  
128
   
“. . . [W]hole geological periods”:
Darwin 1859, 84.

  
128
   
“. . . [M]uch more remote ancestor”:
Ibid., 13.

  
128
   
“. . . Effects of Close Interbreeding”:
Darwin 1868, title of Chapter 17.

  
128
   
Wrote to a friend in 1858:
Quoted in Berra et al. 2010, 377.

  
129
   
Inbreeding were well founded:
Berra et al. 2010.

  
129
   
“. . . [T]o the offspring,” he wrote:
Darwin 1859, 96.

  
129
   
Parents of the same variety:
Different hypotheses for hybrid vigor, or heterosis, are explained in Birchler et al. (2006).

  
129
   
His painstaking experiments:
Mendel’s life is described in Weiling (1991) and Zirkle (1951).

  
130
   
And long or short stems:
From the translation of Mendel’s “Experiments in Plant Hybridization,” read at meetings of February 8 and March 8, 1865, in Blumberg (1997).

  
132
   
Gotten his beautiful ratio:
There have been claims that Mendel falsified the data. These claims have not been substantiated (Hartl and Fairbanks 2007).

  
132
   
More than thirty years:
Sclater 2006.

  
132
   
Rediscovered Mendel’s experiments:
Stansfield 2009; Sandler 2000.

  
133
   
Farmland in the country:
Amount and acreage of major crops grown in the United States is provided at “Major Crops Grown in the United States,” April 11, 2013, Environmental Protection Agency,
www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/cropmajor.html
.

  
133
   
Who later rediscovered his work:
Coe 2001.

  
134
   
Ears as seed to farmers:
Troyer 2009; Leaming Corn, Reid Yellow Dent, Lancaster Sure Crop, and Minnesota 13 were some of the popular varieties.

  
134
   
Twenty-five bushels:
Troyer 2009; Lee and Tracy 2009.

  
134
   
“Freak” seeds for their experiments:
Crabb 1947, 318.

  
135
   
Hybrid seeds worthwhile:
This period of hybrid corn development is described in Troyer (2009), Rhoades (1984), and Coe (2009), with more detailed accounts in Crabb (1947) and Wallace and Brown (1988).

  
135
   
Acres of corn in the United States:
Sprague 1967; Griliches 1957.

  
135
   
Pollen had fertilized crops:
Troyer 2009, Fig. 1.

  
135
   
Traced to hybrid seeds:
Duvick 2005.

  
136
   
From 1950 to the mid-1980s:
Ibid.

  
136
   
“. . . [W]heat crop of the world”:
Crookes 1898, 565.

  
136
   
Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado:
The story of Turkey wheat is described in detail in Quisenberry and Reitz (1974).

  
137
   
“. . . [I]nto valuable commodities”:
ABA 1905, 197.

  
137
   
“. . . [N]ew variety or breed”:
Ibid.

  
137
   
Quantities of hybrid seeds:
Knudson and Ruttan (1988) described many unsuccessful attempts to commercially produce hybrid wheat. Recently there have been advances.

  
138
   
Marquis, Blackhull, Fultz, and Fulcaster:
Dalrymple 1988.

  
138
   
“. . . [C]rop, as in the United States”:
USDA 1874, 369.

  
138
   
Yields took off:
Dalrymple 1988.

  
139
   
Rice, wheat, barley, and millet:
Singh and Hymowitz 1999.

  
140
   
Shorter plants that stayed upright:
The collection of soybean accessions has not been well preserved and many were discarded. Only a fraction remains of the original collection. This loss of a valuable genetic resource cannot be replaced because East Asian farmers no longer use land races for soy (Hymowitz 1990).

  
140
   
Mato Grosso’s Soybean King, in more recent times:
The history of soybeans in the United States is described in Singh and Hymowitz (1999), Hymowitz and Shurtleff (2005), Hymowitz (1984, 1987, 1990), and Hymowitz and Harlan (1983).

  
140
   
Started to take on the role:
Duvick (2001) described the evolution of the private sector in plant breeding in detail.

  
141
   
Remained to work the large farms:
USDA 2009.

  
141
   
“. . . [W]heat-importing countries”:
Crookes 1898, 565.

  
141
   
Doing the work on US farms:
USDA 2009.

  
142
   
Provides to the person who eats it:
Schramski et al. (2011) provided a summary of the various estimates of energy costs of industrial food production systems in the United States. Other authors have estimated EROI (energy return on investment) in historical European agricultural systems. See, e.g., Krausmann et al. (2008) and Krausmann (2004).

  
143
   
In 1935 in countries around the world:
Bennett 1941, 374.

  
143
   
From non-starchy foods:
Bennett 1941.

  
144
   
Assertions may imply:
Smil 2002; Dutilh 2004.

  
144
   
Climbed almost another billion:
United Nations 1980. Population estimates from a compilation of sources at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency’s History Database of the Global Environment, “Population,”
http://themasites.pbl.nl/tridion/en/themasites/hyde/basicdrivingfactors/population/index-2.html
.

Chapter 8: Competition for the Bounty

  
146
   
Food shortages throughout history:
Locust plagues are described in Coffin (2005) and Yu et al. (2009).

  
147
   
Lockwood concluded:
Quotation from Levy 2004, 2.

  
147
   
Rocky Mountain locust:
The Rocky Mountain locust is discussed in Chapco and Litzenberger (2004), Levy (2004), and Lockwood and Debrey (1990).

  
148
   
Ten tons afterward:
Sanchis 2011.

  
148
   
“Triumph of Genetics Threatens Disaster”:
Schwartz 1971. The southern corn leaf blight of 1970–1971 is also described in detail in Ullstrup (1972).

  
149
   
Gardens to kill off the pests:
Mueller and Gerardo 2002; Sen et al. 2009.

  
150
   
Throughout tropical Africa:
Norgaard 1988.

  
150
   
Damages to the wheat crop:
Haley et al. 2004.

  
150
   
United States in the early 1900s:
Office of Technology Assessment 1993.

  
150
   
Wheat farmers to this day:
Pauly 2002.

  
150
   
Species under control:
Additional information about the threats from invasive species are in Pejchar and Mooney (2009), Hulme (2009), and Pysek and Richardson (2010).

  
151
   
Get trapped in the net:
The Egyptian method for capturing quail is described in Hasselquist (1776), 209.

  
151
   
Scene in the mid-twentieth century:
Peryea and Creger 1994; Ware and Whitacre 2004; Gavrilescu 2005.

  
152
   
“. . . [O]ne for the neighbor”:
Quoted from a farmer in surveys reported in Morales and Perfecto 2000, 56.

  
152
   
Case of bad outbreaks:
The traditional farming practices are also described in Morales and Perfecto (2000). The farmers surveyed reported using synthetic insecticides mostly to avoid pests in storage areas and sporadically in the fields when pest populations were high.

  
152
   
Have not been recorded:
These examples are from Abate et al. (2000).

  
153
   
“. . . [P]ests as little as possible”:
Hoskins 1939, 120. Hoskins is also discussed in Kogan (1998).

  
153
   
“More Discriminating Use of Pesticides”:
Hoskins 1939, 119.

  
153
   
“. . . [U]se of poisonous insecticides”:
Ibid., 122.

  
154
   
Malaria during the war:
Nobel Foundation 1948b; Casida and Quistad 1998.

  
154
   
“. . . [P]oison against several arthropods”:
Nobel Foundation 1948a.

  
154
   
Disease is more virulent:
Andrews et al. 1950; Kitron and Spielman 1989; Sachs and Malaney 2002. Andrews (1948) discussed many factors, including rural migration to urban areas and increase in cattle populations, that may have contributed to the decline of malaria in the United States.

  
155
   
Popularity in the early 1960s:
The production and use of DDT from the 1940s to the 1970s in the United States are given in World Health Organization (1979). This source notes that there is no record of world production of DDT for this time period.

  
155
   
A frightening nuisance:
Buhs 2002.