Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds

by Claire Hope Cummings; review

One of the most important books anyone could read.  A readable explanation of the science and anti-science behind genetic engineering, the scientific and legal history, gene patenting, agri-chemicals, globalization, seed-saving, farm debt, colonialism and its impact on indigenous agricultural practices, storytelling and food, religion and farming.  200 pages of insight about the most basic thing about us: how we feed ourselves.

Each chapter is located in a particular place and a story about that place: The little-known destruction of a seed bank in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood of Baghdad (and US attempts to establish Iraqi dependence upon genetically engineered seed), genetic engineering field tests in Hawai'i and the contamination they cause in one of the most fertile places on earth, corporate control of research at land-grant Universities, focusing on the UCal Berkeley site, etc.

Each chapter then addresses the scientific, political, economic, nutritional, and pragmatic issues inherent in each story and each place.  Some of the stories are appalling and heart-breaking, some made me feel fiercely proud of my fellow human beings.  Some were so beautiful and hopeful they brought tears to my eyes.

The last three chapters (2 chapters and epilogue) stand on their own.  In them, Cummings illustrates the wisdom of indigenous approaches to farming and food, the contamination of the birthplace of corn and the likely consequences of that contamination.  She discusses the need to tell stories about our food and its growing, to link food to place, to have and teach a hands-on approach to growing food, and the spirituality of seeds.  (She points out that, in the event of an oil crisis, natural disaster, or food-security crisis, communities that know "how to get along with each other," are autonomous, diverse, and engaged in growing their food, will not need to rely on the dubious comforts of FEMA or Homeland Security [181].) 

In the Epilogue, Cummings reminds the reader of the story of the Garden of Eden, and discusses its similarities to other creation narratives, in which the Creator gives abundant food to human beings, with a test or string attached.  When the humans fail the test, their relationship to their food becomes fraught with hardship and heavy labor.  The act which causes them to fail the test s often a act of transgressing a boundary: trying to become gods, ignoring their place in the community of the living, repudiating their dependence on and interdependence with other parts of nature.  Since this is a big part of Chapter Two of m dissertation, I was delighed to see evidence that I'm on the right track.  But I think everyone can learn from this chapter, and the book as a whole, that food and the new life of seeds are sacred things, full of the potential to give life in new ways, and that "our survival depends on returning to a sense of the sacred" (186).

She includes Howard Nemerov's poem, "A Cabinet of Seeds Displayed":

"These are the original monies of the earth,
In which invested, as the spark in fire,
They will produce a green wealth toppling tall,
A trick they do by dying, by decay,
In burial becoming each his kind
To rise in gory and be magnified
A million times above the obscure grave.

"Reader, these samples are exhibited
For contemplation, locked in potency
And kept from act for reverence’s sake.
May they remind us while we live on earth
That all economies are primitive;
And by their reservations may they teach
Our governors, who speak of husbandry
And think the hurricane, where power lies."

Amen.