The following original short story was written as an attempt to explore the globalization of food and the implications on local food security. It was submitted for Anthropology 330, Rural Peoples in the Global Economy
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In the space between dusk and dawn, a shape coaxed it’s way along the moonlit shore. Quietly, it moved between the rocky crags, taking note of each distinctive feature with a dangerous alacrity. Moving from shore to shore, the shape tread softly in an attempt to mask it’s presence in the slowly rising sun. In the early glow of a gray morning, the vanishing water marks of the shore was the only evidence of encounter borne by the shape as it disappeared. Yet despite the means used by the interloper to operate in the unseen, the landscape was altered by those footsteps. As time wore on, the shape returned to this place, returning to those places which it had noted so carefully, and quietly gathering fragments of the rock which had fallen to the ground. It picked up the grains of sand which had been washed up on the shores, and tucked them inside of a glass jar. Time after time, the interloper returned to these shores, and time after time, it carried away with it a piece of the land. Each time after that, it would leave a piece of itself in the places it had emptied; it would leave a seed. And this seed contained within it the essence of the interloper, it bore its resemblance entirely, and once planted would grow up into a fruit bearing tree containing infinite amounts of similar seeds. Time passed, and the quiet moonlit dawns turned into expeditions carried out in broad daylight; the tiny grains of sand grew to be rocks, boulders, foundations. And slowly by slowly, the seeds took root, plunging their hands and toes into the fertile soil of the shore. And the seeds grew up into trees whose roots spread and become strong and indomitable. The shore, the virgin shore, lost its way and became a forest unrecognizable to its former eyes.
And the trees bore fruit; the fruit was sweet to the taste of the people. They did not know from where it came; they could not see the seed of its origin. Many marveled at the ease with which this fruit grew, its trees spread easily as far as the eye could see. The trees were strong and took no care of the other life forms which lay in its way. Its roots encircled them, and slowly they vanished. As the landscape changed, the people began to forget how they used to live, and began to steal from the land, just as the interloper had done. As the fruit began to replace their former foods, its seed took root within them, and they took on the shape of the interloper. They began to forget who they were, and rather than reject the allure of the ever expanding trees, they took the seeds and began to plant them in distant lands. The fruit was sweet to their taste, and the trees began to spread into all the earth. And the trees replaced the small shrubs, the low lying bushes, and the flowers which had graciously nourished the people for generations. Some quietly mourned the slow disappearance of these old friends, but most had become enamored by the sweetness of the tree’s fruit, and the ease with which they could pick it, and ignored the pleas of the elders. Children grew up knowing nothing of the ways of the past, some did not even know where the fruit came from, for it too began to be mysteriously separated from the tree, being sent to and fro faraway places. The spread of this fruit seemed invincible; before long its roots had circumnavigated the earth, weaving an impenetrable web….
One day, the people began to notice that something was very different; they no longer knew how to care for the earth and the former harmony which had governed their interactions gave way to an entrenched chaos. They used to have enough for everyone; but despite the promised abundance of the fruit, some people began to lack. Some people grew rich, they grew in power, and took as much fruit as they could. Others did not have enough. Slowly, this difference grew, and the rich became more and more rich, while the others grew unable to live. They fled to the margins of the community. Slowly, all around the world, those margins grew and grew, until many people could not live well. The food which had once covered the shores and nourished their bodies became an inaccessible commodity. They ate the fruit, but it did not sustain them. And soon they could not eat the fruit from the trees, for it was quickly gathered by the rich. They exchanged their time, their strength, their health to be able to pick the fruits which had fallen to the ground.
Illness began to spread; it spread to the people, touching their bodies and their minds. And it spread to the earth, touching the soil, the mountains, the rivers, the fish. Even the sky and the air grew faint. All around the world, the systems which had sustained the earth and the people began to unravel until the people began to worry. They began to despair, wondering how they would ever put it back together again. They tried to recover what had been lost, digging deep into the soil to find water which had not become contaminated. They grew hopeless when all that they encountered was roots; tentacles of the seed had monopolized the subterranean world. They began to despise the seed and its fruit. They began to fear it, to distrust it. They began to long for their former days, to dream of a new seed which could replace the old, a seed which could restore that which had been stolen.