WHY AMERICA DOESN’T PRODUCE

In 1947, at the end of World War II there were about 7.9 million Americans living and working producing food and materials in agriculture.  By 1998 that number had dwindled to 3.4 million.  BY the year 2007 it had further eroded to 2.2 million.  So what happened to all the farmers?  Where did they go?  What did they do instead of living on their farms? Why did they leave farming?

While each farmer assuredly has their own individual story about why they left and where they went, collectively there are identifiable reasons.  But the one overwhelming cause was the Federal Government.  And the shift in populations was perhaps the greatest relocation of people ever accomplished under government coercion.  While the US Government did not use the forcible methods of a totalitarian regime such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, they never-the-less accomplished a similar relocation of people.  Only in this case people went from a rural existence that was tremendously productive to an urban life that was marginally productive.

With thousands of men returning from the war and the nation on a war economy there was little work for all of them.  During the war years the government had erected numerous agencies and enacted many regulations to martial the country’s economy to wage the war.  So the government used those same powers to do what many people probably thought was a good thing. 

They enacted the G.I Bill which allowed thousands of men to attend college.  They created the Veterans Affairs programs to provide returning veterans with support, health care, and training for employment.  And they offered subsidized loans for housing so the returning veterans could afford to buy homes and establish families that had long been postponed to defend the country.  While intended to reward courageous veterans and defend against economic chaos with so many out of work, these measures also enticed many men to leave the farm and move to the cities where they created overcrowding and urban sprawl. 

Men who had been independent business men and farmers now became industrial employees in manufacturing and industry.  Others joined the burgeoning crowd of service and white collar workers living in suburbia.

To pay for these measures and the war debt that had accumulated the government raised taxes, of all kinds and all levels.  The growing cities saw increased demands for space and services.  In order to raise funds for local expenses such as schools, roads, fire and police protection they raised property taxes.  But property taxes became a two edge sword.  While it raised funds to care for the displaced workers moving to the cities, it raised the cost of farming thus driving more people from the farm.

A well-managed farm of thirty of forty acres can support a family in an almost self-sufficient manner, with a little to spare to sell for cash and to support their local neighbors.  But such a family farm could not generate enough money to pay the increased tax burden.  More farmers were driven from their farms by higher taxes and into the cities, thereby increasing demand for services and yet higher taxes. 

Those who left the farms either attended college and became white collar and service workers, or entered into the building trades and work in manufacturing plants.  In the latter occupations, independent men increasingly found themselves employed in settings that were restrictive and dehumanizing, controlled more as machines than men.  In response, the movement to unionization that had occurred before the war in response to poor work conditions continued. 

While union leaders are often seen as corrupt and greedy, the rank and file members were usually more interested in gaining some independence and control of their lives and decisions, a little more like the independent farmers and businessmen that they had been.  But their discontent usually became translated into higher pay and fewer working hours. 

So today America is overwhelmingly urban and either white collar, service, or unionized.  White collar workers and service employees do not produce product.  Expensive union labor has taken America out competition for production.

Agriculture does not have to be based on huge farms of thousands of acres to be successful.  Small farms and manufacturing units can be successful, and in some overall way be healthier for the country.  There are alternative ways of organizing the country that can be imagined.  But they cannot probably be accomplished under present law and government regulation. 

There are many people clamoring for lower taxes and reduced government interference.  But it is not enough to just proclaim the need to reduce government regulation.  There needs to be some kind of vision of what the country can be, and needs to become, so that the regulations can be reduced or changed in specific ways.  What those ways are not being addressed by our current leaders, even those who are involved in the so-called Tea Party. 

It is shortsighted to complain about the past and criticize present policy without offering solutions.  In my next blog I will try to sketch out an alternative view and suggest policies that might help to make America productive.

THE CREATOR LOVES THE CREATION

          The Creator loves the creation: both the act and the product.  Why else would He create?  We are told that he has created “worlds without number”.  That is not something someone does out of duty.  Creating this world is quite enough to impress me.  When I have created something I am sometimes tired of the project, and sometimes aware of how it could have been better.  But it is still my creation and I love it in a certain way. 

          Gods love for His creation is mysterious to most of us.  So much of the creation appears to have no human purpose.  The beautifully colored beetle and the lilies of the field are loved by God yet serve no particular purpose to mankind.  Yet they are part of the pattern of which we are a part.  They are part of the whole that sustains us.  We share a common parentage in creation. 

          Humans have made some strides towards understanding the patterns of creation that binds the earth together, though it is doubtful that we will ever understand it completely.   We have found many ways to use parts of the creation in practical ways.   We may respect and preserve the creation.  But we cannot control it.  There is always the wedding of the mysterious and the practical, the Heavenly and the earthly.

          Humans are generally interested in the practical, the physical acts that we practice.  We often separate abstractions into a separate area.  Freedom may be a political, theological, or physical concept.  But it is not an abstraction, it must be lived.  Love of our fellow man, which the Bible sometimes calls charity, may be a theological or philosophical concept.  But it must be practiced.  And so it requires a certain skill. 

          One cannot be free if they cannot earn their own living.  One cannot love one’s neighbor if they cannot keep their trash out of their yard, their poison out of their water, or care for themselves so they are not a burden.  If one has not learned to play the piano, they are not free to play the piano for a Church service.  If one cannot produce something and have nothing to offer, you cannot help your community.

          The good man is not the man who committed no crime.  Doing good is not the same as doing nothing.  Doing good is the ability to do something well.  In order to do good you have to know how to do something.  Doing good is not just about the Heavenly, but also includes the practical.  It is learning and practicing these practical skills that we become Heavenly.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR THE LAND TO HEAL?

Several years ago I went to Lake Powell with some friends.  We climbed up through a place called the Hole in the Rock where some early settlers took their wagons as they traveled down to Bluff to settle the country down there.  It was an amazing feat to take the wagons down that canyon wall.  People still talk about it today. 

Later we went across the lake and followed their trail for a couple of miles on the other side.  This country was much friendlier, with rolling hills of grass, sage brush and junipers.  No other vehicle had traveled this trail for well over a hundred years, but the ruts of their wagon wheels were still visible in the sand.  

This image has stayed with me for a very long time.  As impressive as the human accomplishment of determination and ingenuity was, the record of their damage to the land may be even greater.  Not because it is such an eyesore.  But it is a lasting testimony to how long it takes for the land to recover from mans interference. 

When the first American settlers arrived in the plains of Nebraska and Kansas they found top soil that was more than a foot deep.  They were amazed at the fertility.  Now we routinely add chemical fertilizers.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  There are ways of farming that replenish the soil and maintain nature’s richness and variety.  But modern farming is often more like strip mining.  How many years would it take to replenish the great plains of the United States?

A trail of wagon ruts is no big deal.  A mountain side of four-wheeler and motorcycle tracks is probably not significant except in terms of aesthetics.  But they are symbols of how little humans know about the earth, and how little value they place on the land.  We understand very little about the responsibilities of dominion, the techniques of replenishment, or our position in nature.    

IDEALS AND NECESSITIES

I looked on the internet for images from 1913, the year my Father was born.  Should I have been shocked that it seemed like such another world?  Not only was it unlike today, it was totally unlike the year I was born, 1945.  I am not as impressed with the machinery, prices, or styles as I am that the entire way of life was obviously different. 

Most people still lived on their land.  Even so-called townsfolk had large lots, gardens, chickens or a milk cow.  If one wanted chicken, they had to raise their own, or buy from a neighbor.  There was electrical refrigeration so there was no way to keep meat, eggs, or milk fresh.  It all had to be pretty much local.  That means that most people participated in agricultural activities, or in other words work.  And since physical labor was needed, families had to work together.  The home wasn’t a place as much as a series of events that required cooperation and participation.  This was not some idyllic existence.  This was necessity. 

But then things changed, and what was necessity became less necessary.  Government policy encouraged large farms.  People moved to the cities.  Cars made it possible to work ever farther away from home.  Television made the idyllic seem trivial.  And public education took our children away from home.  Education is good, of course.  But does it really take as many hours of the day as it presently takes.  Or is it, perhaps, that school is more about watching the children while parents work (and play)? 

Now, we worry because the family doesn’t work together.  If we try to work together it must be before early morning when the bus for school leaves, or late afternoon after the school activities.   We pay for gym memberships because we don’t do enough physical labor.  And we’re never quite sure if our food is good for us or not.  The tendency is to think of the way it was then to be an “ideal”.

But as the idyllic has become less necessary, it has also become less possible.  In 1913, the benefits, and difficulties, couldn’t be avoided.  Now the ideal would have to be upheld mostly by will.  There is no necessity for such a way of life, and that makes it very difficult to create or continue. 

That does not mean it is less important.  It doesn’t mean it’s impossible.  It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try.  It’s just that government and culture will not help you. 

WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR?

I took my grand-daughter (age 11 at the time) to hear the Vienna Boys Choir perform. On the way home, she and a friend were talking and giggling in the back seat when my grand-daughter suddenly asked, "Papa, why did Heavenly Father make leeches?" I don't know where that question came from. My reply that He must have thought they were important, simply provoked a large, "Yuck!" from my grand-daughter. She obviously disagrees with Heavenly Father.
For several years I was involved in mosquito control activities. One of the most frequently asked question was, “What good are mosquitoes?” At first I took the question quite seriously because it provided me with the opportunity to showcase my otherwise useless biological knowledge and understanding of ecological matters. But it soon became apparent that people didn’t really care about the role mosquitoes might play in the natural ecosystem. For most people, the mere existence of mosquitoes is simply unfathomable.
But recently I had the random thought, “What are people for?” I think maybe people need to think about that a little.

EZEKIEL SAW A WHEEL . . . .

“Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air.”
(Negro spiritual)

Actually, he saw two wheels, one inside the other (Ezekiel 1:16). When two wheels are set inside each other they are made to turn together, in the same direction, in harmony. And Ezekiel tells us that where the living creatures went, the wheels went. These wheels are united inside one another, turning in the same direction, with similar purpose. Working together favors life.

In contrast, William Blake wrote, in his poem “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time” (second stanza only presented here):
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
What mill wheels did he reference? It is generally thought that he spoke of a wheel outside of a wheel, as found in an industrial mill of his day: the two wheels in opposition to each other. In this arrangement, one wheel turns the other by inter-meshing cogs. These two wheels are divided in space, direction of rotation and purpose. And this image he found “Satanic”.

The word “control” literally means to roll against. It is interesting that as a mechanical principle, opposing wheels are excellent forms of control. But as a metaphor for a culture, or a person, it suggests that sometime after Ezekiel, man began to see himself as turning, not with the forces of creation and God, but against it.

GDP AND FAILURE

Can a country survive when it is more profitable to be sick or broken than to be well or repaired? Soon the major portion of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will not be about production, but about health care. No one can make money out of keeping people healthy, so we are worth more to our country sick and well. Why? Because we will spend more. Of course, this is true only if the only our culture values only money. GDP does not measure many other variables such as top soil, stability, creativity, safety, friendliness, food quality, reliability of products, or freedom.

This is true of almost everything. For example, instead of talking about the life of one person, what if we examine the value of one marriage and family. If a husband and wife are united in their goals and committed to their marriage, they will work together, diligently to purchase a home, care for it properly, raise children, educate them, and try to be productive in the community. They will be of great worth to that community as will their children as they grow into responsible adults. But they will not be worth as much financially to the community because they will be frugal and consume less.

They will be worth more, financially, to the economy if they divorce. Then they will no longer be able to help each other out. There won’t be two people to help with the children and they will need child care. There will have to be two houses instead of one. Instead of producing part of their own food they will have to purchase more because there is no time to garden. They will have to purchase more processed foods because there is less time to cook. They will eat out more often. There will be legal bills, and trips back and forth to share children, and more cell phones so the children can stay in contact. More computers, TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, furniture, cars and such will be needed for two households.

The divorced family is worth so much less to the community and to society, but so much more to the financial economy. Could the same thing be said for neighborhoods, communities, counties, states, and countries? Perhaps the GDP could be used as a measure of just how broken and inefficient a nation is: the higher the GDP, the worse off it would be in many of the things that matter most. Is the GDP a direct predictor of divorce? Could it be used as an indicator of ill health or failing communities? I haven’t done the statistics, but it sort of seems like someone ought to look at that.

CONTROL

Humans are obsessed with control. We say we want to “keep things under control”. We try to “control” inflation, erosion, traffic, crowds, development, and even our selves. Much of our efforts are spent in trying to control the forces of nature. But we have been successful enough that we sometimes think we have control.

However, it is impossible to control anything, if we refuse to identify, and set, the limits of the extremes. So while we use the word, we have no real intent. If one cannot limit the cause, one cannot limit the effect. And humans refuse to limit spending, borrowing, cars, houses, or just about anything else, even ourselves. We wish to control the forces of nature, but not limit human nature.

For whatever reason, humans have taken control mostly through violent means. How much of our society depends on explosions? We use the concept in mines, building highways, weapons, inside internal combustion engines, even fighting fires. And wherever there is energy there is always the risk of explosion. We even experience “boom and bust” economic cycles. The industrial revolution could be called the explosion revolution.

When something is very complex we generally assume there must be some single cause. Early scientists discovered a law that for every action there must be an opposite and equal reaction. While this appears to be true, it has led mankind to believe that there must always be central control. In fact, in nature, control is almost always decentralized. But humans have difficulty seeing how order can arise spontaneously from disorder, even though it appears to happen over and over again.

Thus we continuously try to control the world with central control, when all of nature testifies that it is not possible. Nature and human nature are not the same thing.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

I have decided to get in shape. And the shape I have chosen is a triangle.

On second thought, all those sines and cosines would probably confuse me. I have enough trouble following street signs. But the shape of things, including signs and sines, have always interested me. Why do things even have shapes? I mean, a chair has a shape suited to sitting in. But why do things like rocks, trees, rivers, and crickets have the shape they have? And who gets to decide what shape they will be? No one ever asked me. As you can see I also have problems with tangents.

But to have a shape, something must be a solid. It’s hard to have a shape if you can’t hold it, and only solids can hold their shape. Solids are a result of the interface between order and disorder, and the arrangements of elemental particles called atoms.

Atoms always strike me as odd things. I think of them as particles, but I am told they are mostly empty space, with a few smaller particles like electrons and protons floating around. But these packages of mostly space can be packaged together in different ways to make what we call the three states of matter.
The nature of what physical state we perceive is less about which specific atoms are involved, although that is often important, and more about how close together these packets of space are packaged. Atoms, which are mostly empty space, when packed close together become the thing we call a solid. And solid things have shapes.

Someone has said that “solids are those parts of the physical world which support when sat on, which hurt when kicked, and kill when shot.” So if I understand this correctly, if we pack something that is mostly empty space closely enough together we get a solid.

But of course, the space in atoms isn’t really empty, it is just empty of material. Uhm, what else is there? Well, I am told that the space in atoms is filled with things such as electronic fields. Fields are empty space so you see the space inside atoms is filled with fields. Is this getting more clear?
But electronic fields actually can fill space, in the same way that a magnetic field can fill space. If one take two magnets and bring like poles together you will feel a resistance filling the space between the two magnets. Depending on how strong the magnets are, and how strong you are, it may be very difficult, or impossible, to push the two together. The space between the two magnets seems to be full of something.

So it doesn’t really matter which atoms we are talking about, just how close together they are, for us to experience solidarity. (Wait, isn’t that a political movement?) Anyway, a solid is a substance in which atoms and their accompanying fields are packed together very closely. If the atoms are not closely packed they can slide around across each other, much like two magnets with like poles seem to slide around each other, instead of ever actually touching. Such a substance can’t hold a shape and is called a liquid.

So, much of what we experience in the physical world, the shape of things, depends simply on how close together the atoms are packaged. Solids are closely packed empty spaces, liquids are less closely packed empty spaces, and gasses are empty spaces packed into a larger empty space, loosely. Seems perfectly clear to me.
Of course, once atoms are brought into close proximity to one another, they have to fit together according to their shape, like a pattern on wall paper. That is where it becomes important which shape of atom is involved. Some fit together in hexagons, some as cubes, and some even as triangles. That’s my kind of shape.

PROGRESS

I have just recently been through a time of perplexity and complexity. It occurs to me that whatever good we might accomplish in this life is not done by raw intelligence, information, or determination alone. It requires knowledge, skill, and subtle characteristics such as restraint and judgment. Much knowledge, and many of these characteristics, come from our past, handed down through generations. There are at least two forces in our modern world that threaten past knowledge and character development.

In our modern world, run as it is from electronic connections, we value the ‘new and improved’ over the ‘tried and true’. The newest electronic equipment or software package is desired, even when older ones perform tasks perfectly well. Often the promise of the new simply means more applications that are seldom, or never, used anyway. Progress is always seen as forward and upward towards something better. But, of course that assumption depends entirely on what one defines as better. A straight line can also go straight down. Without the past we have no way of knowing what trajectory we are on.

Another difficulty we face today is the question, which past do we learn from? Multiculturalism has clouded this issue by attempting to make all pasts equally valuable. To the individual all pasts may be equally valid. But to a culture it is not so simple. The past that has given us freedom, democracy, order, the rule of law, and economic opportunity is not the same past that is based upon tyrants, social justice, bribery, or the collective domination of community. For example, science, which today is often seen as anti-religious, was born only from Christianity where the habit of reason and critical thinking was actually encouraged for centuries. Science did not arise spontaneously in other cultures where different religions held sway such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism. Not all pasts are of the same significance in the modern culture.

At one time, humans were thought to exist in our own sphere, somewhere between the angels and the animals. With this knowledge we were able to act benevolently towards the latter and reverentially towards the former. It generated a thoughtful approach to life and our own proper role. This idea has been mostly abandoned, and modern man sees himself as just another animal. Animals are seldom benevolent towards one another, and have little regard for the future. They do not plan ahead and the capacity of self-restraint or wisdom. That’s progress, of a sort.

TOP SOIL

Can an object have conflicting characteristics simultaneously?
• Could an object be strong and flexible at the same time?
• How about an object that is soft and rigid simultaneously?
• Could something drain and retain all at once?

Well, in fact, these kinds of objects are quite common. Almost all biological objects are combinations of attributes, often in opposition to each other. Wood is strong and flexible. Sponges are soft and rigid. Good top soil both drains and retains water.

Man-made objects are often quite different. Humans tend to focus on the characteristic they need for a given task and engineer for that task over everything else. Modern industry simply doesn’t know how to make top soil. It can make steel that is strong and inflexible, or steel cables that are flexible, but lack the same strength. And modern agriculture usually practices water retention and water drainage as two separate issues, never practiced at the same time, in the same place, or in the same way.

Modern humans have bedroom communities in which to live, but they have to work many miles away. Men have stores where they get their food, but the food must be shipped long distances. Mankind has an extended learning period to function in the world, so they put their children into school far away from home, work or the natural world to learn.

Could it be possible for people to live in small communities scattered across the land, live and work in their own fields and businesses close by, and educate their children in their own homes or businesses? That was the way it was for centuries. Many now believe that is impossible because we are now too big. But there is reason the world must be structured the way in is in the United States now. In fact, most of the world is not structured in the modern way at all.

Our present world of full of these odd behaviors developed only after World War II through government programs and incentives. The government purposely encouraged the movement of people off the land and into towns in order to benefit large industry. This was part of the progressive dream. Society would take care of us all and the efficiency of society was all that was important. Not the sanctity of freedom and human life. In fact, our country accomplished this massive reallocation of the population, greater than Pol Pot or Mao Tse Tung ever dreamed of, in the course of a single generation.

The world could be more like top soil, more organic, more able to retain and drain water simultaneously, if it were more organic.

HOW BEES HAVE ALWAYS LIVED

Bees have been around for a long time. Most of that time, literally millions of years, they have built their hives on their own, in hollow trees or caves, or even sometimes in the open.

Humans have been stealing their honey for perhaps fifteen thousand years. No, I have no personal recollection of that, but that is what people who study such things tell me.

People appear to have been “keeping” bees in some form or another for about four thousand years. There are historical records from Egypt and even older civilizations that make reference to beekeeping operations. But for most of that time, beekeeping mostly just consisted of providing a hollow log of straw skep. The bees themselves were usually killed each year in order to extract the honey.

It wasn’t until 1851, about one hundred and sixty years ago, that Lorenzo Langstroth invented the modern bee hive with moveable frames. This invention allowed easy manipulation of the bees and extraction of excess honey without destroying the bees. But this hive is not a large departure from their normal wild existence, and bees seemed to thrive just fine.

In 1851 the majority of people still lived a rural existence, closely tied to agriculture and the land. Even those who lived in small towns usually had gardens and often domestic animals. Not everyone kept bees, but many did.

Bee keeping, for the next one hundred years after the Langstroth hive, was a modest affair with a few hives set aside on a corner of many farms, and mostly just ignored until honey harvest. Requeening had to occur every few years, but it was not religiously attended to because the bees did pretty well on their own. Farming was basically a nurturing activity, not the extractive activity it has become today. Bees were valued for their pollination, honey and wax for candles. They were not yet an industry.

But that has all changed in the past few years. In my next post I will explore the massive changes that have occurred very rapidly in the last few years.

OF SPACE, TIME, AND BEES

Modern urban life has removed us to a great extent from natural cycles and, therefore, a feeling for changes as they occur through time. The study of history is sometimes seen by modern students, and many lay people, as irrelevant and useless. Geography is also sometimes seen in an archaic light. There seems to be less interest in where things are located, and why they are there, than there once was. Now we just want a gps systems to tell us how to get there.

But the distribution of events through time and space can sometimes shed light on current events that are explanatory, and sometimes even prescriptive. This blog will be the first in a series of blogs in which I will explore how bee keeping has changed through time, and how bee distribution in space has had an effect on all people whether they know it or not.

Space and time are the constant parameters of the human drama. Much of physics is devoted to these subjects. Chemistry is about invisible events that occur in short time spans and within a miniscule topography. Biology has adopted (I believe wrongly) how living things change through time as a central tenet.

Over the next few weeks I will discuss how bees and bee keeping has changed over time and in relationship to space. I hope you come back and visit.

QUANTITY AND QUALITY

We often make a distinction between quantity and quality. In chemistry it is sometimes sufficient to know that something is present or not. What is in the water? At other times it is important to know the exact amount of something. Exactly how much mercury is in the water? However, there are times when both are important, and we fool ourselves when we ask the wrong questions.

For example, we often ask ourselves, “should I do something, or not”. This would seem like a qualitative question like, “is something there or not?” But the truth is that we are going to do “some thing”. Maybe we will only sit and stare in indecision, but that is doing something. We are never going to do “or not” (unless we die). Likewise, there is always going to be something anywhere we look. We can’t look carefully at water and not find something there, even if it is only water.

Deciding to do something still doesn’t tell us how much of it to do. One can decide to go to a movie, but that doesn’t mean they must do nothing else all day. One needs to acquire money, but that doesn’t always mean we should do nothing but acquire money. Could there be a time when one has enough?

So while the concepts of quantity and quality may be useful in certain narrow areas of study, they are not of much use in day to day living. This is because there is always a quantity involved. The big question is “how much”. And the question of “how much” is a value question which humans are very poor at answering. It is a rare human who voluntarily says, “I have enough”.

HAS THE WORM TURNED?

It may surprise some people to know that earthworms are not native to the North American continent. They were introduced here by early colonists when they brought earthworm cocoons embedded in potted plants they brought with them. Through agriculture, fishing and on their own earthworms have been disseminated across the continent. In some forested area they are spreading at the rate of about seven meters a year.

The glaciated forests of North America existed for millions of years without earthworms as part of their soil makeup. These forests depend on a rich top soil layer of slowly composting leaf litter and a unique microbial population to supply nutrients to the thin mineral soils. As the worms invade an area, they hasten the breakdown of the leaf litter. The trees of the northern forests of the US depend on the leaf litter to help tree seedlings to survive. The thick leaf litter provides protection against temperature extremes, moisture loss and protection from browsing animals. The leaf litter is essential to seedling survival. So as the leaf litter layer is destroyed by earthworms, the reproductive success of the forest is compromised.

Normally, this earthworm activity has been seen as a good thing because it hastens nutrient liberation and spreads nutrients deep into the soil. However, this conclusion was reached based upon the studies of Charles Darwin from the limited sample of the English countryside. There is no indication that he knew earthworms were not universally distributed. What may be good for a damp cold climate may be less beneficial to a different environment. The reported thick top soil of the American mid-west may have existed because there were no earthworms to hasten decomposition. We'll never know since they are now ubiquitous.

There is also evidence that the microbial makeup of the northern soils is changed with invasions of the earthworm. Some of this is undoubtedly due to the changes in leaf litter and soil nutrition. But there is growing suspicion that the collection of earthworm mucus within the soil structure may also account for some of the changes in microbial balance.

Researchers at the Hebei Agricultural University in China examined earthworm mucus for antibacterial activity and found a short peptide (small protein like chemical) that possessed antibacterial properties against several common bacterial strains. What role this chemical plays in the actual protection of the earthworm, the amount produced and how broadly this peptide protects against bacteria is yet to be determined.

Once again we see that "Man doesn't know what he doesn't know."

LIVING TOGETHER

Sometimes the most important truth can be hidden in plain sight. There are over 250,000 flowering plants that have been described. That is probably a modest estimate, but I am not a Botanist and don’t want to over-sell. There are over 750,000 insects described. That number is actually much bigger and is expected to go over a million.

Together this means that two thirds of all life forms are monopolized by these two groups. This is not an accident. These two groups of living things live together in an intimate way. Flowering plants could not exist without the service of insects to aid them in sexual reproduction, which we call pollination. And most insects could not exist without the shelter, surface, and food (nectar, pollen and plant parts) provided by the plants. These two groups are completely symbiotic: dependent on living together.

This concept of living together is a delicate and changing arrangement. There are flowers like Passiflora incarnata, the Maypop, common in the southern United States in areas like Tennessee, that are only pollinated by Xylocopa virginica, a carpenter bee. If the bee is lost, the flower will also become extinct. Or the “bearclaw poppy”, Arctomecon humilis, which is only pollinated by a solitary bee, named Perdita meconis, unknown until just a few years ago. If the flower is lost the bee will go extinct. These last two live near the Virgin River in Southwest Utah, or Northwest Arizona, as you see it.

Sometimes this balance between organisms is upset and we call the result predation, or parasitism, or disease, or extinction, or pollution or some other term. The problem is that it is very difficult to know what will upset the balance between any two or three organisms. How do we know what to avoid, or how to avoid it. It is akin to a complex structure built out of toothpicks. It is hard to predict which tooth pick can be removed and which cannot without causing the collapse of the whole system. Generally humans don’t have a clue what we are doing in this regard.

Mankind has put a lot of energy into killing insects. Many insects compete with us for our food. Some insects transmit diseases. But ironically, mankind relies heavily on the flowering plants for food and fiber. High mountain peaches, cherries, apples, pears, and apricots are just a few of the hundreds of plants we find desirable that rely on insects. So if plants need insects, and insects need plants, and man needs plants, then doesn’t man need insects?