The Lesser Whole

Potatoes: The Lesser Whole
    I went to the Dining Commons today for a normal dinner here at RPI. The meal was that of a normal American meal, some meat and potatoes. They were baked potatoes (one of my favorites). As usual I finished everything on my plate. Since being diagnosed with diabetes back in April, I've been much more conscious about my eating habit and those of others. Since I was a child I have always been told that I had to finish everything that I put on my plate. When I lived at home that wasn't as much of a problem, I would make sure not to put more than I felt I could eat. The problem here in the dining commons is you don't really get to choose the amount of food they put on your plate. An example of this is the size of the baked potatoes, you don't choose which one gets placed on your plate.

    When I finished everything on my plate, asside from a little big of fat, I looked across the table and was a bit annoyed. My annoyance wasn't necessarily at my friend, but it was his plate that annoyed me. On his plate sat his baked potatoe which had been cut in half and plastered with sourcream and butter was only half eaten. I've always had a sense of environmentalism, but lately I've been noticing more and more how much of a lack in care is in this world. When I commented about the fact that he hadn't finished his potatoe while he was eating his pie, he chuckled. I stated that he was wasting a perfectly good potatoe. His response was one that most people in the world have been giving to too many important issues in our modern day society; What else am I going to do? He used the fact that the people serving the food had given him a bigger potatoe than he intended to eat was not his fault, and that even if he had simply cut it in half he said it would still be wasted.

    My problem isn't truly the potatoe. The potatoe is just one issue of the whole, it may be one of the lesser problems, but it adds to the overall problem. The potatoe can represent many problems throughout the western world where people are able to rationalize actions through externalization. He was correct in a sense, he didn't choose the size. The problem is he knew he wasn't going to eat the whole potatoe, yet did nothing to keep from wasting a substantial amount of it. The democratic dialogue that is supposed to run this country needs people who do something and bring to the forefront the problems in our systems. A simple solution would have been to have asked me if I wanted another half of a potatoe, I know it sounds funny, but communication is vital to any issue no matter how small. If he had simply asked around to find someone who wanted another half of potatoe or only a half of potatoe, it wouldn't have gone to waste. The breakdown of the system comes with the breakdown of communication. If there is not communication with the student asking for smaller servings, or the student seeing who might want the potatoe instead of simply assuming that its just half of a potatoe the process becomes repeated many more times. If everyone who only wanted half of a potatoe takes a whole potatoe and throws out the rest that creates a new problem; waste.

    Asside from the fact that the farming of potatoes normally involves irrigation and all the pesticides and chemicals introduced to the environment durring production, the current systems of delivery and then the inevitable waste create huge environmental problems. From the start raising potatoes means the use of irrigation in the majority of potatoes producing fields. Irrigation is a good way of increasing crop production in lands that would ordinarily be hard to grow potatoes. This introductionof irrigation create displacement problems. The water used in irrigation has to come from somewere, where is it comming from? Often times it comes from a nearby stream or pond. The problem then extends into the stream or pond, the reduction of water in this ecosystem then affects the life within the water that relies on certain conditions in the water. Ignoring this effect for now, I'll move on to the topic of once the water is removed, Where does it go? Inevitably the water is brought to a field and then sprayed onto the ground around the crop. In order to create higher yeilds, pesticides are used, these pesticides are sometimes added in with the water. regardless of how the pesticides get to the plants, the pesticed is then in the water that comes off of the land through watershed. This water then eventually makes its way into another body of water, but this time its polluted. This polluted water then destroys that ecosystem and will affect all of the other microsystems connected to that ecosystem. Ignoring the rest of the implications caused by this I will move onto the harvesting. In the majority of the farming techniques I have read and learned about, the farmers use tractors and heavy equipment to make the harvest more efficient. These tractors throw unknown amounts of harmful Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, and many other chemicals into the atmosphere. Some of this is tranfered right into the very food that they are harvesting, but the rest is thrown into the air around the farm. The potatoes are then processed and the dirt is cleaned off of them. They are then packaged and thrown on a truck. The truck then has to travel numerous miles (adding to the COx, and NOx added to the envionment) to get to a distribution plant. Then from this plant, assuming it goes only through one distributor, the potatoes go to a store on another truck (more harmful chemicals). They then sit in a store and someone buys them (adding more harmful chemicals from their transportation home). The entire process from a seedling to the plate creates inumberable environmental bads. Then if the person doesn't eat the whole potatoe, it then adds to the massive amounts of waste created by humans. The problem just keeps moving outwards.

    My problem as I said, isn't really with the potatoe. My problem is the lack of knowledge throughout our society and the externalization of problems by the majority of people. I think just about everyone can agree to the fact that Carbon emmisions and other harmful chemicals into the air is something that we should all be worried about. The disconnect that people claim ignorance on is then not knowing how many harmful chemicals that one potatoe has put into the environment to get to your plate. Then when they refuse to eat the whole thing all of those chemcials that were released and will inevitably harm the environment have been realsed in vain. People seem to think of the lesser whole when they think about problems in our society. They see what they do and don't think about the greater whole; the fact that a million others are doing the exact same thing doesn't cross thier minds.

    I suppose my purpose in all this is to ask the question: Do people really think about how much impact they truly have on the environment by all the small things they do in a day, such as eating only half of a potatoe? I'm curius how deep people think about the problems presented by the current systems of delivery and waste that are present throughout the wester world.