A Complicated Solution to a Simple Problem: The Assumption of the Promise of Technology

Our technology won’t be able to help us solve our environmental problems until it is based upon a thinking rooted in deep systemic change and a relationship with the earth.

     “What do you think of indoor farms?” the students in my high school garden club asked me. We were outside in the garden cleaning out what was left of the spring season and preparing to plant the summer crops. I took a deep breath to organize my thoughts. I had recently watched a video on Facebook touting the marvelous indoor garden in the middle of a grocery store inGermany. It gushed over the ability of employees to monitor soil moisture and light via an app on their phones! “Or,” I thought, “They could monitor these things with their brain and eyeballs…” I wondered, if the greatest advantage was how close and; therefore, fresh the food would be, then why not grow the food on the roof top? There would be all of the benefits of a green roof and the sun is free. “I would hate to see their electric bill. “ I said to the students.

     I then saw another video on Facebook extolling the virtues of a robotic garden tender; its greatest asset being you can grow your own food without ever having to touch your garden. So once again, what are the true costs here? Power? Materials? A lost opportunity? My heart breaks at the thought of so many lonely gardens! Our gardens thrive depending on our relationship with it and a garden knows when it is loved and appreciated. Besides, we need to touch soil. Touching soil and tending a garden has been shown to relieve depression and anxiety. We need to be around plants. We need sunshine too. We don’t exist in isolation. We are a part of this web of life on this planet and we need to cultivate a deeper relationship with our planet if we are to solve the problems we face today.

Now, I am not against technology per se and I am not suggesting we should never farm in this way. There is much that is wonderful and useful about technology and some places in the world experience winter. However, I am cautioning against the assumption that more technology is always the solution, the best solution, or the only solution because, frankly, this isn’t necessarily true. We are so busy trying to create technology to solve our problems, such as pollution and environmental destruction, created by the technology we have invented (coal burning electrical plants and cars, for example) we don’t consider that maybe more technology isn’t the answer. Typically, the gains in sustainability we experience with new technology are actually overshadowed as we increase production, consumption, and consider the true costs of creating these sustainable technologies in the first place. So what are we to do? If technology isn’t the solution, what is?

     Einstein is purported to have said, “Problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them.”  Our problem isn’t our lack of technology—our problem is with our paradigm (an untested assumption taken for granted as truth) and until we fix our paradigm, our technological ‘solutions’ will never help us create a sustainable society. Modern society takes technology for granted, assuming without question it is better and will make our lives easier; however, research conducted by anthropologists have called this assumption into question by showing that modern day hunter-gather societies have far more leisure time than their counter parts in the developed world. Particularly here in the modern west, we assume our technology is beneficial for humanity, but this isn’t necessarily true when you actually consider all of humanity. Someone recently told me they believe humanity has benefited from smart phones and the internet (these are things I really like), but they forgot about the vast number of humans in the third world, and here, who don’t have smart phones or the internet! We must also take into consideration the lives of those who manufacture our smart phones and computers… are they really benefiting? If you were a factory worker in China, would you really say you were benefiting? What about the toxins people are regularly exposed to in order to ‘recycle’ our old electronics? What about the damage done to mine materials? If your land is contaminated, air polluted, and water poisoned, have you really benefited? If you are stuck in a cycle of modern slavery manufacturing phones or stuck on the consumerist treadmill of consumption in order to afford your technology, are you really benefiting?

     Considering all of this, what is the cost of soil and water and sunlight compared to the building, machinery, and specially designed ‘to mimic the sun’ light bulbs (I look out of my window toward the sun in utter confusion… we need to mimic the sun?) and all of the electricity needed? As I said before, our technological solutions tend to create whole new problems and unintended consequences. Plants grown under strictly controlled, sterile, and artificial conditions tend to be extremely susceptible to contamination from algae or fungus or whatever. I know this all too well from my time running experiments with lab grown moss as an undergraduate at UNLV. The lab bred plants just couldn’t handle life. This is what tends to happen when living things are grown in isolation under tight control as if they were merely machines.

     This unwavering faith in technology is why we choose shallow solutions like developing hybrid or electric cars instead of solving the problem with behavior change toward public transit, bicycles, or walkability. A shallow solution is bulldozing the desert to build ‘solar farms’ (which preserves corporate utility dominance) instead of putting solar panels on people’s rooftops. These shallow solutions give the appearance of creating a greener world while allowing people to go about their business as usual. The deeper solutions would break this pattern of ‘business as usual’ comfort and require a completely different way of living and relating to each other and the other living beings with whom we share this planet.

     It seems the idea behind indoor farming is we don’t need the sun and we don’t need soil or bacteria or mycorrhizae because we have liquid nutrient solution! We don’t need to interact with plants or their communities to understand their needs because we have an app to tell us what they need! It seems like a step to further remove us and isolate us from the natural world and this has been the source of our environmental problems in the first place. Technology won’t save us, a relationship with the planet will save us and indoor gardens and farms are taking us in the wrong direction with this relationship.  We believe we can improve upon nature and grow more food in a lab setting. This is a very mechanical way of thinking… again, the plants are seen as little machines and they just need the right parts… However, plants (and people) thrive in community! Living things are not machines; they are living systems and function within systems (such as ecosystems). In a living systems perspective, relationships between objects/things are emphasized and the flow of energy and information is important. It is the relationships which make a thriving garden or society! When plants are growing in healthy soil they aren’t just growing in a nutrient rich substrate, they are growing, communicating, and participating in a rich living community!

     If we truly want to save this planet, if we really want to create a sustainable society as human beings on this planet, then we need to create a better relationship with our planet. Our technology won’t help us do this until we change the way we think about and relate to all of the other living things on this planet. Our paradigm needs to reflect respect, symbiosis, and community! 

Resources and Further Reading:

AJ Plus. (2016, July 29). Robot Grows Veggies. AJ Plus Facebook Page. [Web Video]. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/769827263158783/

Bell, M.M. (2004). An Invitation to Environmental Sociology, 2^nd Edition.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Brende, Eric. (2005). Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology. Harper Perennial. Link to information on the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/143159.Better_Off

Kamenetz, Anya. (2013, July 29). A Day in the Life of An iPhone Factory Worker. Fast Company: 3 Minute Read, Technology. [Web Article]. Retrieved from: https://www.fastcompany.com/3014988/a-day-in-the-life-of-an-iphone-factory-worker

Kauffman, Draper, Jr. (1980). Systems 1: An Introduction to Systems Thinking. Future Systems, Inc.

Kiss the Ground. (2016, May 31). Why Soil Matters. Kiss the Ground Facebook Page. [Web Video]. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/kissthegroundCA/videos/1032566466810045/

Markham, Derek. (2016, March 23). This Berlin Supermarket has a verticle micro-farm inside it. Treehugger. [Web Video]. Retrieved from: http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/berlin-grocery-store-store-vertical-micro-farm.html 

Dr. Miller, Daphne. (2016). The Curious Case of the Antidepressant, Anti-anxiety Backyard Garden. Yes! Magazine, Winter. [Article]. Available online at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/good-health/the-curious-case-of-the-antidepressant-anti-anxiety-backyard-garden-20151112

Putnam, Robert. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Ryan, John C. and Allan Thein Durning. (1997). Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things. Northwest Environmental Watch. Link to more information on the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318690.Stuff

Spradley, James P. and David W. McCurdy. (1990). The Hunters: Scarce Resources in the Kalahari. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 7th Edition. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company. 

The Beauty of a Little Bit of Chaos

"If these gardens on the edge of the harshness of this desert are teaching me anything it is that life doesn’t flourish under strict order and control. Life is not pristine perfection. Life is a little bit ‘messy’!"

A community garden in Ballard, Seattle, WA in July.

     I happened upon a small community garden nestled in the middle of Ballard and marveled at the brilliant blue flax flowers, vibrant nasturtiums, and young zucchinis peeking out from under deep green leaves. I gazed at the small apple tree winding itself around and through a fence at the garden’s entrance. The mulch was soft under my feet, so different from the crunch of the dusty gravel usually under my feet in my gardens in Las Vegas. The air was so full of moisture and the soft filtered sunlight had a quality of making all of the colors brighter, while the intense sun of the Mojave Desert tends to bleach and wash things out.

     The contrast is sharp between the effortlessly verdant community gardens of Seattle and the rugged defiance of my gardens in Las Vegas, NV. The nasturtiums I planted here in the Mojave scorched months ago. The work of an Urban Farmer Desert Rat is not an easy one. In the intense heat of the summer it is certainly no joke! The plants and the people must be of a tougher and harder variety. When I see my gardens in all of their comparative lushness in the middle of July I am convinced a miracle has happened. It seems so magical to plant a seed, watch over it, and then be rewarded with beautiful tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, zucchini, and so, so much more! The green spiny leaves with the brown edges represent a battle being won, a fight for life on the edge. 

A school garden in Las Vegas in the middle of July.

     I am amazed I can grow food in such an extreme place. The Mojave is the driest desert in North America and Las Vegas is only a stone’s throw away from Death Valley. We only get 4 inches of rainfall a year. Our summer temperatures easily reach 116 degrees F in the shade. Our UV indexes are in the extreme category and, yet, in the winter we will have days below freezing and every once in a while snow will fall on the valley floor. This is a desert that will not suffer fools; human, plant, or otherwise!

     To garden or farm in this desert, ideas about the perfect, beautiful garden must change… these gardens and small farms are rough around the edges and their keepers have dirt under their fingernails! We rain sunblock laced sweat onto the soil! My gardens are the one place I let go of control and perfection because I know in order to get the best production I have to let the plant be a plant and do what it needs to do. I am not in charge here! I let the plant do its thing and I just give it the support and help it needs. If I want cucumbers I had better be willing to let it spread out to its heart's content. Attempts to maintain strict control will give you a smaller yield and could stress the plant; attracting disease and pests. Zucchini doesn’t care about the borders of a raised bed and will happily sprawl over the edge, but the reward is usually more zucchini than you know what to do with! Small cherry tomatoes grow best here and being indeterminate they will happily sprawl and grow and cover the ground. I have seen many attempts to cage and corral these beasts; resulting in huge plant towers and then crushed cages and broken stakes. The exposed fruits are scorched by the sun, eaten by the birds, and the leaves crisped. The thing about these tomatoes is if you let them spread out, they will create new roots along their stems which make it easier to transport water and nutrients throughout the plant; resulting in more tomatoes. The leaves will shade and hide the fruits from predators. It may seem messier, but the plant is healthier!

     So many people have images in their heads of immaculate, controlled, orderly gardens but I am learning that a slightly messy vegetable garden is a very productive garden. The plants, the soil, and the entire garden ecosystem benefits from this slight wildness and little bit of chaos. It reminds me of how much people love pristine mountain lakes not realizing they are dead lakes… while a thriving, living, and biodiverse lake is a messy and sometimes scummy lake. If these gardens on the edge of the harshness of this desert are teaching me anything it is that life doesn’t flourish under strict order and control. Life is not pristine perfection. Life is a little bit ‘messy’!

     We need to recognize as a society that our attempts to control nature and make her perfect are not in the best interests of life on this planet. We need to realize that the controlled gardening of our grandparents isn’t necessarily the best way to grow food. In fact, many of our agricultural practices and traditions, particularly in the west, haven’t been developed with the goal of using the same piece of land for thousands of years. Our model has been to use up and area and then move on to the next. Our goal has been to dominate and control our plants instead of working with and helping our plants flourish.

     Our climate is becoming more extreme and we need to experiment and try new things with the aim of sustainability and growing food on a piece of land for the next thousand years. We need to re-evaluate our ideas of perfection and messy. We need to learn to let our plants be plants and do what they do best. 

     We need to see the beauty in a little bit of chaos.

Sources and Further Reading:

Macy, Joanna and Molly Brown. (2014). Coming Back to Life. New Society Publishers: Gabriola Island, BC Canada.

Pollan, Michael. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The Penguin Press: New York.

Pollan, Michael. (1991). Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. Grove Press: New York.