THE INFORMATION We actually have less-not more-information today. * . I ■3 i l l l l l 111 I By IMPLO Wes Jackson hough conventional wisdom holds that we are in the midst of an information explosion, more careful consideration must surely convince us that the opposite is true. Think of all that has happened to the world since 1935. Few can dispute, for instance, that there is less biological "information" today. Widespread extinction at the rate of one thousand species a year or so, especially in the tropics, coupled with the genetic uniformity of crops raised from seeds developed for specific traits, represents an undeniable loss of biological information. Species extinction and genetic narrowing of the major crops aside, the loss of cultural information due to the de population of our rural areas is far greater than all the information accumulated by science and technology in the same period. Farm families who practiced the traditions associated with planting,‘tending, harvesting, and storing the produce of the agricultural landscape gathered information, much of it unconsciously, from the time they were infants: in the farm household, in the farm community, and in the barns and fields. They heard and told stories about relatives and community members who did something funny or were caught in some kind of tragedy. From these stories they learned basic lessons of agronomy. But there was more. There was the information carried by a farmer who looked to the sky and then to the blowing trees or grasses and made a quick decision as to whether or not to make two more rounds before quitting to do chores. Much of that information has already disappeared and continues to disappear as farmers leave the land. It is the kind of information that has been hard won over the millennia, from the time agriculture began. It is valuable because much of it is the kind of information we need now if we are to replace our current industrialized farming methods—with their dangerous and expensive reliance on chemicals and fossil fuels—with a more sustainable kind of agriculture that uses sunshine and other natural processes to grow food. A friend of mine, a distinguished professor in a major university, is terribly alarmed about species extinction in the tropics. He is a leader in the fight to save rain forests everywhere. As a person who has joined the fight to preserve the biota of the planet, he gives numerous talks each year about the problems of overpopulation, resource depletion, and pollu28 Clinton St. Quarterly— Winter, 1988-89
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