In Our Decrepit Food Factories in today’s New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan ties together the problems of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from factory farms and Colony Collapse Disorder in bees. Here’s his bottomline:
From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.
Bee on Colchicum autumnale ‘Alboplenum’
