To catch the 7:04 sunrise, we left in the early dark. Along the forty minute drive, we savored hot coffee and morning stillness while alert for deer. As the cityscape unraveled into countryside, we felt ourselves expand. The dawn revealed sheer white sheets of mist over fields of late soybean, speckled golden brown. At times skunk peppered the cold air.
For weeks, friends had posted pictures of themselves on social media in a sea of sunflowers. Their smiling faces peeked up at brown seedheads bigger than basketballs, their toddlers shaded under petals like little elves. Based on their pictures we imagined acres of sunflowers, their splendor magnified through the rays of the rising sun. But when we turned down the final rural two lane road to our destination, we felt underwhelmed. Then, disillusioned.
Indeed there were acres of sunflowers. I glanced around and noticed smiley faces and hearts in some of the flowers' brown faces. Seeds deliberately pulled by humans. This felt disrespectful, like a mutilation. Why assert, mark territory in this heedless way?
As we approached the fields we sought a path, not wanting to disturb or trample vegetation underfoot. But the ground was hard soil without mulch or weeds. Maybe a stray morning glory vine or bindweed, but it was mostly barren. This field of gorgeous sunflowers typified industrial farming. This was monoculture. Of course it was. What did I expect?
Monoculture is destructive. It hinders beings from living where and how they're naturally inclined to, as multi-species ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems present a pluralistic population that cohabitate in mutually beneficial, self-sustaining ways. A mono-crop field, in this case for sunflowers, requires intensive chemical intervention. Because the inputs to maintain an artificial habitat for a target species compromise that habitat, more chemicals are required to support the species, which degrades water, air and soil.
Our ecological collapse and extinction crisis are driven in large part by monoculture. How can I celebrate this albeit stunning instance of it, knowing it is the brainchild of practices that ruin habitats for living beings?
I stood on the cracked bald ground, a haze obscuring the sunrise. I felt sad. What is monoculture but the elevation or separation of a species, breed or genetic strain at the expense of others? At the expense of the collective good? I know this seems a stretch, but glorification of monoculture is connected to ethnic cleansing, racial profiling and race based subjugation that have devastated people the world over. Besides, there is little life for these sunflowers shivering in the morning cool when you think about what life could have been if they existed in a prairie or plains ecosystem with the other plants, critters and insects that make up their natural family. Were they lonely?
A truth long known by peoples who honored belonging to mutually beneficial pluralistic ecosystems.
But if you're just there for the selfies and hoped to catch the sun shimmer on the green, yellow and brown bodies of sunflowers, none of what these beings actually need--matters.
That's how supremacy works.
