Monoculture, Consumerism and Hubris
How mass-market economics changed earth for the worse
Monoculture
Bananas may soon go extinct.
Why?
Because corporations that wanted to sell tons of bananas around the world decided that the most economic variety ie the cavendish variety would be planted extensively to fuel a market they were creating.
The banana industry was built by converting thousands of hectares of arable land and forest into an unsustainable monoculture.
The cavendish banana became 99% of all banana exports. Meaning that any farmer that wanted to make a living selling banana would most likely plant the cavendish banana on a large piece of land and nothing else.
The problems with this practice are threefold
- Nature hates monoculture: Planting just one crop on farmland is the complete opposite of what occurs in nature. It also goes against old but sustainable farming practices. Because monocultures put a strain on farmland
- Disease: the cavendish bananas are susceptible to the Panama Disease, which is caused by a certain type of fungus in the soil, that can be easily transmitted to banana trees. Once a tree is destroyed for the Panama disease no banana can be planted where it once stood.
- It kills off Variety: Due to the monoculture, farmers are not incentivised to farm other types of banana species we are losing plant diversity to satisfy our need to consume.
This is not something particular to the banana industry. Studies have shown that in the last 100 years we have lost about 75% of crop variety. Scientists fear a food crisis soon and most of it is due to our overdependence on rice, wheat and maize
Consumerism
The need for more is in direct contradiction with one of the fundamental rules of life and economics; that in a world with finite resources, human wants are unlimited.
These days it is more profitable to mine gold from old mobile phones than from gold mines. We may just soon use up all the crude oil deposits in a not so far-flung future. Congo is in turmoil due to the mining of cobalt. It is easy to see that our desire for more, whether influenced by big corporations, marketing or our inability to critically assess the state of our world has created the most unsustainable system of living that humanity and the earth as a whole is facing.
Consumerism is what fuels unsustainable monocultures, but in many ways, this is a result of human hubris.
Hubris
Pride goes before a fall they say and in our bid to conquer the world we have ended up starting a catastrophic chain of events.
Cars were once thought to be eco-friendly alternatives to horses. Plastic was once believed to be the supermaterial of the future. It seems that as human beings we overestimate our knowledge.
We have destroyed native habitats by relocating animals from their natural habitats into foreign ones. Our quest for more stuff and our belief, that we know what we are doing.
But why does all this matter? What is the bigger picture and what does this mean for businesses and brands?
The Lesson
This whole rant was never really about the effects of capitalism and consumerism on our planet. I just wanted to talk about systems that were created to serve the mass market and their long term effect on the world around them.
If your quest is to build a brand or business that is for mass-market as opposed to the few fanatics, you may find out that it becomes unsustainable in the long term.
