Your Food Starts Here
Sometimes an advertisement so captivates your eye that it makes you
think. So it was with a picture of a single small seedling, bearing
only three or four tiny leaves, with a developing root system
apparently thriving in hospitable soil. The caption read: "Your food
starts here". It was but a single tender seedling, not a field, not a
vast prairie, not an extensive productive farmland - just one solitary,
lonely seedling. But wait, surely the seed came first?
Leaving aside the puzzle of "Who or what came first?", we soon realize that there are many players who provide food for our table. Out crops are part of the great plant kingdom. They need sunshine, water, carbon dioxide, other nutrients, and a sustaining soil medium replete with beneficial bacteria in which to grow. Toxic substances, whether natural or man imposed, need to be absent. The grains give us our daily bread. In the animal domain, the herbivores graze on nature's providence, the carnivores eat the herbivores, and we eat the beneficence of both of them for our food.
Without the plants, life as we know it comes to an end. Will the future billions have enough? Where or how can we grow or sustain more of this harbinger of life? Our planet surface is 70% water covered, and 30% is land. Thank goodness for the fishes of the sea, but this resource is greatly depleted from what it used to be, and is declining. How long will this food source last?
Only a small fraction of the land is arable (maybe 3%), while most is mountain or desert. The plants on the land and the organisms of the ocean not only provide food, but also the oxygen we breathe, hence together they are indeed "the lungs of the planet". In addition, plants give us structural cellulose - woods for our homes, paper and other fibre products. From an epoch of long ago, plants gave us a capital of fossil fuels to provide energy for our modern civilization, including our food-producing agriculture.
The animal kingdom of which we are a part depends on the plants to produce viable seed and off-spring to continue the essential cycle of germination, maturation, and return to nature. The plants in turn depend upon the pollinators of the world - mainly the bees - who freely donate their services, transporting the fertility-giving pollens from flower to flower. Without the bees, the plants we need and want are doomed, and so are ....
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comment form
Latest Events
- Radio Controlled Car Club
May 22, 2012 (18:30)Please join this enthusiastic group of young and old at the Village Hall as they RACE with radio-controlled cars! No speed limit required.
