“As far as the eye can see, nothing, not even a bee, How will we grow our food?
~ Cynthia G. Creel
On a warm, sunny morning the world was just waiting to be explored, I ran out the door with my butterfly net following my two brothers. It was a great day to look for bugs. All kinds and if we were lucky we would find some butterflies.
One block away was an empty field, just waiting for 20 years to pass to have a house build on it. This day there wasn’t a house yet, just an open field, one lot for one house to be build. Nothing special just nature gone wild, plants with flowers that attracted butterflies and dirt to dig in to find beetles galore. I looked over at a tiny yellow flower with a bee buzzing and landing on each one for almost a set amount of time.
There she was, a beautiful stripped yellow and black butterfly, a Tiger swallowtail to be exact. I ran after her twisting and turning with her every move. It was always surprising how quickly this tiny fragile creature could move. I had the advantage, sometimes I could anticipate and slow my movements creating the illusion of safety until she landed. Then she was mine. I would have caught her and released her if I had been by myself, sometimes that happened and the other times this creature of mother nature, God’s creation, ended up in my brother’s insect collection.
Insect collections were all the rage back then and we had one of the best. As an eight years old, I could never dream of a day there would not be plenty of butterflies or even bees. They had always been there, tons of them, every evening I could catch and release little colorful butterflies catching the last rays of the sun. Those were the times I love the best, no one to take what I had caught, just carefully capturing and release. It was the hunt that I loved, never the killing. Although my brothers were never cruel to the innocent little creatures, they would put extra effort in being humane to create this collection.
By the time I was 11 we had all lost interest in our insect collections and going on a butterfly hunt. Only 20 years later when I had my first child that I would think one more time of a butterfly net and fun of running all day after something that was grace with wings. I imagined I would train my girl to catch and release to keep the wild things in nature to do the job they were designed to handle. There was no question in my mind that cars and other means of taking butterflies lives had a large toll on the butterfly population. This was my small way of teaching to be gentle and never destroy, to help others.
On my daughters 6 birthday she opened the perfect gift, a butterfly net. The very next day we went on a hunt, the only problem was there really wasn‘t anything to hunt. Just a few bees, those we knew were good and didn‘t want to get stung, so they were off limits. We could find a few crawly critters, nothing beautiful that would flutter from tiny flower to tiny flower. What happened to all the life, this was the same agriculture valley I had grown up in, it apparently was a changed valley and not for the better. The thoughts of butterflies and bees become dormant, we went on about our lives as any family does.
One more time in my life, of over a half a century, the small creatures in the world came in focus, not only my focus, but that of others who could travel the world to discover a true picture of how life was changing for us all in the smallest ways.
It is a small book that carries great information that gained my attention again talked about in the NPR article by a Robert Krulwich focusing on a recent book called A World In One Cubic Foot authored by David Liittschwager. Littschwager traveled the world with various frames shaped as cubes in order to photograph what traveled to though the cubes over a 24 hour period of time then moving from feet away from each other to around the world . This minuscule cube tells volumes of the health of an area as reported by Krulwich, “There were 30 different plants in that one square foot of grass, and roughly 70 different insects. And the coolest part, said a researcher to the Guardian in Britain, "If we picked the cube up and walked 10 feet, we could get as much as 50 percent difference in plant species we encountered. If we moved it uphill, we might find none of the species." (1)
The variations were wildly different from Costa Rica finding “More than 150 different plants and animals live in or passed through that one square foot of tree: birds, beetles, flies, moths, bugs, bugs, then more bugs…” (1) All of these creatures large and small keep the balance creating life where there would be none doing tasks they were solely designed to take care of from pollination to tending the soil to removal of decaying material.
Around the world the cubes were placed until they arrived in corn country USA, in the middle of a 600-acre farm in Grundy County, Iowa, amongst the corn rows to find a spot for the “cube” to land. What would there be, how many could travel through this small space created by the cube? We all are unaware of the importance of knowing what was crawling unnoticed. My thoughts went back to the days I was young with the butterfly net in hand then forward to the time there were none. My stomach tightened just a little when I read the words written in this article, ."There were no bees. The air, the ground, seemed vacant. He found one ant "so small you couldn't pin it to a specimen board." A little later, crawling to a different row, he found one mushroom, "the size of an apple seed." (A relative of the one pictured below.) Then, later, a cobweb spider eating a crane fly (only one). A single red mite "the size of a dust mote hurrying across the barren earth," some grasshoppers, and that's it. Though he crawled and crawled, he found nothing else.” (1)
My heart now knew what I had already known for so many years, our greatest wealth on Earth, the ability to grow food was obviously endanger of having only the clumsy inadequate hands of man take the jobs of the smallest of creatures, to do jobs they were poorly designed for. This would be like traveling to a dessert, yet a dessert, still has a system in place to take care of all the jobs that are needed to maintain the eco system. No, more like another world unfamiliar, unwanted and totally influenced by man. This is what I felt on the day that I took my 6 year old in search of life, emptiness with deafening silent.
I thought of all the little insects I had be party to killing and how frivolous a past time that had been, how damaging it was, yet I knew it wasn‘t just from 3 children having fun. The thought that was stated by Krulwich was so obvious it hurt to think about it, “Yet, 100 years ago, these same fields, these prairies, were home to 300 species of plants, 60 mammals, 300 birds, hundreds and hundreds of insects.” (1)
The further I have read the more I understand what we do as humans doesn’t just affect one little creature, but the world of small and large. People in general are one effect, put the people in one place, working together to form ideas and make money and you have a great tool to do build or destroy quickly.
A creation of a corn that creates Bt pesticide to destroy the rootworm. As nature continues to do what is designed to do, adapts, things are getting to be a bit of a sticky wicket. Mother Jones reports that “And now insects are developing resistance to Monsanto's insecticide-infused crops, reports the Wall Street Journal.” (2) With bee’s being an insect they are at risk to pesticides just the same as rootworms.
So the answer that is the solution of the corporations is to buy a company to be able to genetically change the bee’s, just like the corn as reported in rsn By Anthony Gucciardi, NaturalSociety “It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto's GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of "restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination" could be very advantageous for Monsanto.”
This all has become a little too much like a bad science fiction movie. The “blob is going to take over the world and leave nothing, plants, no bees, no birds, no cats, no dogs, no people, nothing at all but empty space. A world that all the money in the this modern world will do no one a bit of good to fix things or to live well.
If there are no bees there will be no food, we must protect what we have today for future generations, for this generation. Something has to stop so we can travel the path of True Health and gain control over our bodies giving us clear minds to work with. What can we do? If we do not buy it they will not produce it. Vote with your dollars and know where the product come from know that each of us can make a difference. .
I am from the planet Earth, not Mars, the only red I want to see is the red in the fruit I eat. I want to chase butterflies with my grandchildren, until we get to tired to run another step. I want to share a world of beauty with wings that flows through the air without a care, the butterfly who lands on the flower next to the simple honey bee, each a part creating what we all need, truly healthy food that makes life, not only possible but good.
By Design ~ “Life is good By Design.”
Photo by Cynthia G. Creel all rights reserved ©2013
Picture Below: This is a bee I found on a daisy plant, buzzing quickly to each flower. I am grateful for the little things in life and appreciate what they offer. I can not create what they do or make.
2-28-2013
all rights reserved ©2013 written permission is needed to duplicate
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of By Design or Cynthia G. Creel. Consultation of a medical professional is highly recommended before any changes are considered. This article is not saying anyone person in a leadership position is unhealthy or healthy, it is just a possibly of many and is only speaking in general terms. .
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Links:
(1)http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/29/166156242/cornstalks-everywhere-but-nothing-else-not-even-a-bee
(2) http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/08/monsanto-gm-super-insects
(3)http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904009304576532742267732046.html
(4) http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/11094-blamed-for-bee-collapse-monsanto-buys-leading-bee-research-firm
(5) http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/company-report?symbol=MON
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