Legacy-inspiration: Five Cows
K was feeling a bit chilly when he returned from the walk; the dog, as dogs are want to be, just felt content and tired. The ice had held, though towards the end, ominous - to him at least - cracks had appeared and K was happy to settle at his desk with a nice cup of tea to prepare the last vignette.
His desk was arranged so that he looked out over the melting snow. Winter had begun to recede and although the days were getting longer again, K was not really able to notice this through the gray and dirty days.
And yet …
The smell of spring, of life was in the air. Like animals who can sense thunderstorms and even earthquakes better than humans, K could sense spring better than the makers of calendars could. He was in a good mood as he dug into the legacy example. It starts with the agricultural industry, but ends up with the folly of humans who insist on driving with their reading glasses on.
Born out of the struggle to make ends meet that is as old as humankind, the 'agricultural industry' evolved in symbiosis with the industrialization of agriculture. It is the story of an eight-fold increase over the last one hundred years of energy inputs to crop cultivation . Punctuated by highlights like the mechanization of draft energies and especially the invention of ammonia synthesis by Mr. Haber and Mr. Bosch almost a hundred years ago.
Bolstered by the history, reputation and success of helping bring better food to more people, the agricultural-industry willingly embraced the new promise of biotechnology - and one by one, saw itself as part of a grander 'life science' industry. K, however, prefers the less pretentious agricultural-industry, a preference born out by subsequent events, as we shall see.
Biotechnology allowed a more precise and targeted understanding and intervention in specific traits. For example, one could create a grain or a soybean that was not affected by a particular pesticide, which in turn had been created to kill everything else. It is as if a code had been built into the grain that signaled to the pesticide: 'Don't kill me, I am your friend'. Both pesticide and grain were of course copyrighted, patented and available from only one producer. Farmers loved this combination, because weeding crops several times a season is costly, does not work one hundred percent and is certainly not much of a thrill.
Other applications were the addition of certain vitamins to basic food stuffs like rice. Food became more functional, in the jargon. All this was done in the context of productivity, the same context that had provided the background for all it's previous improvements in food production and food quality. In fact, productivity improvements had been taken to be so obviously 'good' that it required no further discussion. A clear case of the adage that a worldview is a worldview when you no longer notice that it is a worldview.
Farmers, the immediate customers, liked and bought the new and improved agro-chemical products, as they had done for ever and secure in the knowledge that their customers would snap up whatever the farmer produced. And if there was a hiccup, well, there always was the common agricultural policy of the European Union - or one of its countless variants elsewhere in the world.
But the security was the security of the previous frame: scarcity. If that is your world, you do not argue, you take what you can get - with gratitude. And as seller, you do not sell, you allocate, you ration in other words, your production to those who stand in line.
Unfortunately, it turned out, the ag-industry was selling its new high tech products into markets where people had too much food to begin with. What all the experts somehow managed to overlook is that if you have more than enough, productivity improvements are actually a lousy sales argument.
Instead, consumers, that is the customers of the ag-industry's customers, asked questions about the biotechnology. Was not gene manipulation akin to 'playing God' - to manipulating legacy? If the industry answered at all, it did so in a belittling way: "Of course, it is not. We have had biotechnology serving human needs ever since we have brewed beer, distilled alcohol and fermented wine - hardly 'playing God', is it now?" The 'ha-ha-ha' was always implied and at times even spoken.
In a world of scarcity, the chastised questioner would have responded: "Sorry to have raised this impertinent question. I didn't really mean it - and of course, I am deeply grateful for the genetically modified milk, grain, tomato, rice… whatever." For in this world the producer has the consumer, to quote the Rolling Stones, 'by the balls.'
In an abundant world, however, the questioner, neither impertinent nor chastised, responded: "I have asked a question I would like an answer to. If you do not want to answer, I go elsewhere; and if no one answers, I say to you 'No, thank you.'" In this the consumers had strong allies, namely the retailers. Ever on the lookout for the next trend to differentiate themselves, they said: "I am neutral, but if you want me to, I guarantee to you that in my store there are no products produced in a way you do not like."
Within a few years, no one talked about life science any more, the promised synergies between agriculture and pharmacology are yesterdays news, the ones who spoke them suffering from memory lapses or spending more time with their families. The new mantra is health, longevity and happiness. Who, in their right mind, could be against that? Questions about 'playing God', i.e. about legacy, are waved aside with reference to the Hippocratic Oath, the extreme safety standards and the resident professor of bioethics.
But the case of the Five Cows who brought down ministers, changed eating habits and dethroned the agricultural lobby - all in a matter of weeks - makes K wonder if he should not sell his pharmaceutical stocks before it is too late. But before he calls his broker - for some reason he cannot really put his finger on why he distrusts on-line trading - he leans back in his chair, looks at the fading light of a winter's day and recalls what an extraordinary few weeks he has been witnessing in Germany.
Germans do love their meat. K is old enough to remember how after the war meat became a symbol of recovery, like the Mercedes for him and the fur coat for her. Following Mae West, who once said that you can't have enough of a good thing, if a little meat is good, a little more must be better and a lot of it really good. To provide ever leaner meat to some fifty and later some eighty million people, who at the same time wanted it ever cheaper, cattle had to be raised and kept under most unbelievable conditions. Who would have ever thought that you can get antibiotics into your body as a matter of routine from the meat you eat? Who would have thought that cattle at times travel further and under more despicable conditions that you do on your adventure travels? And who would have thought that grinding up dead animals and feeding them to live ones who had been vegetarians sine the beginning of time, was a good idea? Well, all this became first possible and then standard practice because apparently no one thought or wondered. Least of all the consumer, who quite willingly did his or her share to remain purposefully ignorant. Ignorance, they say, is bliss - but only for a while.
Cows contracted a disease so unusual that a new pathway of transmission had to be discovered - a prional pathway in addition to the viral and bacterial ones. And it happened, conveniently, elsewhere. We, of course, were safe. The fact that in an abundant and globalized world the very concept of 'elsewhere' has lost all meaning was, in the interest of letting sleeping dogs lie, conveniently overlooked.
Until one day a German cow was diagnosed with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE for short. It took only a few more cows, a handful in all, before disaster struck: beef consumption fell by a third, creating a consequent glut of beef, leading in turn to the proposal to destroy four hundred thousand animals; several ministers resigned; and, most extraordinarily for K, ended with one stroke the preeminence of farmers and their concerns over consumers with theirs. Symbolized by the new minister, who in one of her first interviews said: "My ministry is responsible to eighty million consumers and half a million farmers. Of course, I will treat all with the respect and attention they deserve."
As always, it will be a while before the symbolism becomes reality. What was extraordinary in the change was the realization, which K has a feeling is still mostly subconscious, that we do have enough: Nothing, nothing special at all is necessary to ensure that eighty million people living in Germany have enough to eat. Period! And that fact, not hope or assumption, allows them to shift their focus away from subsistence to something else: safety, ethics, purpose. Quite extraordinary to witness a system actually tip-ping, from one state to another, K thought.
Night had fallen, the dog, as dogs are want to do, was snoring and speaking of food, K felt it was time for dinner. He got up to prepare some pasta, but as he opened his refrigerator, the limping vegetables convinced him to make a 'left over' vegetable soup. As he worked, he thought how an abundant world couldn't be further away from some sort of Utopian land of milk and honey. On the contrary, having the freedom implies the obligation to consider the dimensions of abundance, identity - creativity, relation - values and emotions, purpose - selfless service, legacy - inspiration and memories, as well as the old friends scarcity and subsistence.
He recalls watching a talk show about the ethical implications of killing four hundred thousand cows in Germany (and over a million in the European Union). Ninety percent of the time the participants hurled accusations at each other about who really was to blame. Behavior appropriate to the world of scarcity - a world that is in fact no more. It is hard to find the words, the behavior the concepts and the trust that is appropriate when the world has changed so much - a little bit like falling in love again after your heart has been broken. All we have in these situations are the habits and instincts of the past, and they don't feel right any more.
The soup was ready, K opened a bottle of wine and after taking the dog for a quick evening walk, went to bed early. The next morning he woke early and the was pleasantly surprised to find the headaches that had become quite constant companions had begun to recede a little.