eGarden © 2004 Ed Mues

The Greening of Our Planet

Plant life has existed on earth at least 3.5 billion years. Photosynthetic cyanobacteria have been around that long, according to fossil records. These primitive oxygen producers coexisted with other photosynthetic bacteria and had to be content to remain as minor players for another 2.5 billion years. A significant thing to remember is that plants are unique among all life forms, in that, they alone can manufacture their own food. These paved the way for all future life forms as we know them on our planet. They modified our earth.

Somewhere between a million and five hundred thousand years ago, a variety of algae began to take root on land and they became the predecessors of mosses. An explosion of other life forms, both in the sea, on land, and in the air began to take place and, the first available food was the very plant life that provided the necessary oxygen. As other flora and fauna evolved, grew, died and decayed, the first earthworms began feeding and turning them into humus.

About twelve thousand years ago, near the end of the last ice age, the dramatic changes in climates around the world were followed by equally important changes in how early man obtained his food. After perhaps millions of years of hunter-gatherer subsistence, domestication of food plants and animals took hold and the first farmers coexisted with hunter gatherers.

By 8000 B.C., wheat and barley were domesticated in the mid-East , and squash in what is now Mexico.

The invention of the wheel around 3500 B.C. transformed agriculture as well as every other aspect of life in the early civilizations that sprung up in the fertile river valleys.

The Sahara Desert is a vast area of Northern Africa. 3.32 million square miles. It was once a fertile area. It became desert by 3000 B.C. as a result of overworking the soil and overgrazing. At about the same time, emmer and flax were grown in Egypt's Nile River region, and the sickle was invented to harvest them. Five hundred medicinal plants were grown and written about in Egypt at the time.

The planet is greening at a rapid pace. Around 2000 B.C., Africans were cultivating watermelons. In Arabia, figs were being grown. In India, tea and bananas became favorites, as did apples in the nearby Indus Valley.

Plant life has a hold on us. It provides our oxygen and our sustenance. Without plant life we cannot live. In 1190 B.C., Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses III, commissioned more than 500 public gardens. He was onto something. Our needs are not many, but, are not just physical.

Aesthetics are of great importance to the human psyche. In 600 B.C., King Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon, after all the wrong he inflicted on Jerusalem and the Jews he kept in captivity, five years before his death, he had the Hanging Gardens built. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, these gardens are 75 feet above ground, and watered by means of irrigation screws that lifted the life giving liquid from the Euphrates River. At the same time, wine and olive oil were traded throughout the Mediterranean region.

By the first century A.D., Roman farmers realize that compost can replenish soils in a single season, and they begin to spread dung on fields to enhance fertility. By the 6th century, the mold board plow was invented allowing heavier soils to be worked and virgin soils to be exploited. By 900, horses began to replace oxen.

In the early 1500s, Spanish explorers to the Americas, bring back our native sunflowers, and introduce much of Europe to a major oilseed crop.

European honeybees are introduced to the Americas. Unfortunately, they escape from hives, establish wild colonies, and begin to replace natives. The time frame is the mid-1600s.

A global revolution in agriculture took place as sciene began to play a major role in agricultural research. New crop rotations with legumes enrich soils and improve yields.

In 1744, Frederick II, aka "Frederick the Great", King of Prussia, distributed, free of charge, seed potatoes to peasants. He forced them, under threat of physical harm, to plant them, or else.

Forty years later, New England Shaker communities put together paper packets of seeds in small manageable quantities, and began selling them to gardeners.

Chemical fertilizers were mixed, patented and sold in Baltimore, Md. in 1849. Three years later, a Long island company began selling gardeners a blend of guano and ammonium sulfate. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden Pond. In it, he celebrated his life lived in tranquility, close to nature.

Johnson and Stokes, a Philadelphia seed company, in 1889 introduced the "Brandywine" tomato. To this day, it remains an all time favorite.

Three years later, a little known English author, artist, and naturalist, was the first person to clarify that lichens are a successful symbiotic relationship between an alga and a fungus. She was, of course, ( surprise! ) Beatrix Potter, the author of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" among others.

Hearkening back to 1 A.D. Rome, Sir Albert Howard saw the publication of his landmark work "The Waste Products of Agriculture: Their Utilization as Humus". The year was 1931, 1800 years after documentation of similar Roman practices. It's never too late to learn.

In 1934, 300 million tons of topsoil were lost from Kansas, Texas, Colorado and Oklahoma. The most violent dust storm in history sent it into the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1939, the "Peace Rose" was discovered in a French garden.

In 1943, DDT was introduced to the United States. Seventy years after its invention by a German chemistry student, Othmar Zeidler, it became the darling of the chemical pesticide industry, as well as the farmers' and homeowners' beloved ally against pests.

1972 was the year that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT nationwide. In the same year, molecular biologist, Paul Berg, pioneered recombinant DNA technology.

Eight years later, a genetically engineered organism was granted a first American patent. It's a bacterium designed to clean up oil spills.

In 1994 the "Flavr Savr" tomato was introduced to U.S. supermarkets ushering in the second revolution in agriculture in 10,000 years: genetic engineering. In 1998 a herbicide resistant corn "Starlink", not intended for human consumption, found its way into our food supply. It was finally withdrawn by its developer, Aventis.

In 1999, scientists from the University of Wisconsin reported that over-fertilization by farmers has caused farm soils to age 5000 years in just 40 years.

On May 11, 2004, Monsanto drops Genetically Engineered (GE) wheat, and Bayer Crop Science withdraws GE maize from the United Kingdom.

June 16, 2004, consumers from 25 European Union nations reject GE products in their food.

Currently, commercially planted GE crops worldwide constitute 40% corn, 69% cotton, 68% soybeans, 60 Canola, 15% potatoes.

Are we moving fast enough? And, in which direction? Are Frankenfoods here to stay? I wonder what the first farmers would think of all this.

Stay tuned. It's only 2004.

From The Garden of Ed. Submitted for publication in The Towne Crier on July 28, 2004

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