Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Hungry Ghosts
On page 228, Carroll discusses the educated people of communist society, and outlines how the Chairman Mao Zedong of Communist China destroyed his nation's agriculture by ordering close planting of crops, deep plowing, refraining from fertilizers, and extreme pest control. Explain how the Chinese's failure to learn from the Russians caused their crops to fail, why exactly their crops failed (or how each one of these things can cause plants to die), and how these things could have been avoided if simple Mendelian genetics could've been taught in school.
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Mao Zedong followed the suggestions of Lysenko, the USSR biologist who did not believe in genetics or heredity. The ideas to plant crops closer together, deep plowing, refraining from fertilizers, and extreme pest control were all those of Lysenko. Because of this, Chinese agriculture suffered a hard hit and many of their crops failed, resulting in the starvation of thousands of people.
ReplyDeletePlanting the crops closer together and refraining from using fertilizers directly resulted in the lower crop yields because of lack of nutrition. Plants, like any organism, require certain nutrients in order to grow. If enough nutrients are present, the plant with grow string and healthy. An abundance of available nutrients also results in the faster growth of plants as the nutrients can be put to immediate use by the plants. By planting the crops close together, the amount of nutrients available to each plant is highly restricted. There are only so many nutrients available in the soil and the more plants there are, the less nutrients there are per plant. This meant that many of the plants did not have enough nutrients available survive from. Even for the plants that were able to grow, being in such close proximity to other plants restricts their growing space. The plants are in constant competition not only for nutrients in the soil but also for water and sunlight, two other essential elements for plant growth. The lack of fertilizer also did not help the situation as it could have provided the plants with enough nutrients with which to grow that the plants were not getting from the soil.
Deep plowing presents another issue for plant growth in that it makes it much more difficult for the crops to reach sunlight. Seeds are equipped with stored nutrients with which the young plant uses to grow immediately after germination. However, this supply is very limited and plants soon need to start creating their own nutrition through photosynthesis. Sun light is the key ingredient required for photosynthesis to occur and this means that the plant must break the surface of the soil so that its leaves can absorb the sun. Deep plowing puts the seeds much deeper in the soil and required them to grow taller before reaching the sun. This results in smaller crop yields as many of the plants simply do not make it to the surface and therefore die while still underground.
Extreme pest control was the final piece of advice the Chinese followed from the USSR. While controlling pests may seem like it would be a good thing, this approach soon backfired. While controlling pest is very helpful and does result in higher crop yields, this only occurs when it is doen intelligently with moderation. Unfortunately, the extreme pest control initially wiped out the pests, some of them did survive and it is these pests that survived long enough to reproduce. They were therefore able to pass on their genes that contain the resistance to the pesticides originally designed to kill them eventually these resistant pest were the only ones left, posing a larger problem as now the old pesticides were unsuccessful and the pests were back to destroying crops.
Had basic Mendelian genetics been accepted, this evolution of the pests and passing on of genes could have been anticipated and hopefully would have resulted in more careful pest control that would have allowed the crops to flourish but also oppose the development of resistance to the pesticides.
Like Katie have said, the communist Chinese followed USSR biologist Trofim Lysenko’s ideals. Lysenko had two main theories, both of which were proven to be untrue. The first, he believed that close seeding of the same crop would not lead to competition (because they were “family”). Secondly, he thought that deep plowing of up to two meters deep would be advantageous because this would yield plants with extra large root systems. These agricultural plans were part of the movement called the Great Leap Forward of China; an economic and social plan used from 1958 to 1961 which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers into a modern, agriculturalized and industrialized communist society. Mao Zedong based this program on the Theory of Productive Forces. It ended in catastrophe as it triggered a widespread famine that resulted in millions of premature deaths (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward).
ReplyDeleteLysenko’s first mistake, believing that close seeding will not lead to competition, was based on no scientific proof, therefore leading to the famine. If two plants are set too close to each other there is not enough nutrients in the soil to feed both and both die. The State promoted close planting of grain to increase productivity. The initial growth of a plant derives from the nutrient stored in the seed itself. With close planting the initial germination produces spectacular results, but when the growth of the plant has to depend upon nutrients drawn from the soil the close planting produces failures. This was linked to the Marxist notion of classes in which members of the same class do not compete but instead help each other survive. So Marxist ideology seemed to support the notion that the denser grain is planted the better it is for the grain. But in reality this close planting led to whithering of the plants after the initial germination phase. Lysenko was responsible for many other foolish notions most based upon the precept that environment not genetics determine plant characteristics. Lysenko argued that if you grew plants a little farther north each year they would adapt to the climate and eventually you would be able to grow oranges in the arctic. All of the Lysenko nonsense had to be accepted in the Soviet Union and promoted in propaganda as scientific truth. The Marxists in China apparently believed it was the truth. The reality was that this nonsense resulted in diminished production of food under conditions of bare survival.
Lysenko’s second big mistake was his belief that deep plowing would give the plants a better and stronger root system, making them grows larger thereby leading to more production. In reality, most of the plans were unable to grow long enough to reach the surface, and they were never able to utilize the sunlight for photosynthesis. Therefore, the communist Chinese had to learn the hard way that deep plowing does not help the growth of crops and actually lead to major failures.
In conclusion, Lysenko’s two major non-science based theories that the Chinese adopted led to one of the most critical famines in history. Lysenko’s conclusions were never properly proven by the scientific method. Like Katie have pointed out, the idiotic idea that using pesticides at large amounts instead of using it in moderation over time proved to be horribly wrong. Therefore, education in basic biology and Mendelian genetics definitely would prevented the catastrophic famine.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
http://www.answers.com/topic/trofim-lysenko