In doing this, we so far have managed to keep up with much of the world’s food demand. As population has grown, so has food production (though the world still manages to be the home of close to a billion undernourished people, and there are many people in our world who are literally starving to death as you read this). But will modern industrial agriculture be able to keep up with the numbers of people who want something to eat? Those numbers are rising more rapidly than ever before in Earth’s history. Will modern agriculture be able to feed all those people without poisoning them with chemicals, degraded land, and pollution?
Down below Zea diploperennis.
Start down the mountain after paying your respects to Zea diploperennis.
It will take a while to descend to the valley, even in a four-wheel-drive
vehicle, for the “road” is sometimes no more than a mostly
dry creek bed, full of back-wrenching rocks and gullies. You will pass
through several sorts of forest. The Sierra de Manantlán lies
at the northernmost edge of the Neotropical zone and the southernmost
side of the Nearctic zone, and so you are rewarded with the most interesting
of both worlds — the cloud forests, pine and fir forests, and
oak forests that are typical of the northern hemisphere, and, lower
down, tropical forests. There is ample evidence of cattle
ranching. Occasionally a very large steer refuses to yield the right
of way to your vehicle.
Everywhere there are patches of maize — the modern kind — in plots large and small, some of them on hillsides so steep you wonder how the farmer can harvest the ears. You may pass an empty herbicide container, its instructions and precautions written only in English. Does the Spanish-speaking farmer know that the chemical can be harmful to human health? All around, but invisible from the road, another plant is being cultivated: Marijuana may be illegal, but it brings in a lot more money than maize. And there is talk of remote fields of poppy, the kind that is used to make heroin.
The road finally reaches the valley, but it is only slightly wider now as it passes through a tiny village. There are few electrical wires, but one lighted telephone booth stands in the center of the community, near the one flat plot of land that serves as the soccer field. Nearby is the community's church.
A stream tumbles down from the mountain and across the road, then turns back on itself and crosses the road again. It is late afternoon, and women and men are at the stream, filling plastic buckets and jugs for the evening meal and bath. Two women trudge across the stream and up the road toward their homes.
Despite the warmth of the day in the valley, the women are bundled in long dresses with long sleeves, and wide-brimmed hats tied to their heads with scarves. Other scarves tightly cover their faces like surgical masks. They are on their way home from work in the commercial tomato fields lower down, where pesticides are used heavily. Nobody wants to inhale those chemicals, with their distinctive unhealthy odor.
On the valley's floor.
On the floor of the
valley now, there are what seem to be miles upon miles of tall, bright
green, bushy plants growing furiously, urged
on by irrigation sprinklers that throw the mountain’s waters over
an enormous area. The green plant is sugar cane. It, and not maize
or even marijuana, is the main crop of this valley.
A few miles away is the factory that processes the sugar cane. It generates a grey-black smoke that streams across the valley and into the air above some of the communities. The sugar industry is widely accused of being a polluter of water. But it also produces income for the people of the valley. Trucks roar in and out of the gates of the factory, which is named Ingenio, and head for the nearby towns of El Grullo and Autlan.
Soon you cross a stream, perhaps twenty meters wide. It traverses the flat valley floor, but its waters have the force of the mountains’ gravity behind them, and they move swiftly. At a bridge that spans the river, someone has erected a sign in the shape of a tombstone. There is a cross at the top, and under that are the words:
Aqui Agoniza
Rio Ayuquila
(Here, in the throes of its death, is the Ayuquila River.)
Beneath the inscription is the further message:
Culpables: Autlan
El Grullo
Ingenio
Etc.
(Those responsible for the river’s agony: the two towns, the sugar mill, and others.)
 |
| The Rio Ayuquila, which receives clean water from the Sierra de Manantlán, now is in "the throes of its death." (Fred Powledge) |
If you look closely, you will see that the sign, like much in this poor part of the world, has been recycled. Underneath a new coat of paint is an advertisement from the past. On sale at this river crossing, once upon a time and before the stream became polluted, were fresh-water shrimp.
The shrimp, like the maize at the top of the mountain, are relics of a past in agriculture that has been all but abandoned. But both the shrimp and Zea diploperennis have not been completely forgotten. The anonymous sign painter remembers the river the way it once was and wants it to return; the rare relative of maize was remembered, and rediscovered, and perhaps will live again. It may have to live again, and the Rio Ayuquila may have to be rescued from its agony, if the world of our immediate future is going to be fed.
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