TED Talks, Michael Pollan gives a plant's-eye view

Michael Pollan gives a plant's-eye view

It's a simple idea about nature and I want to say a word for nature because we haven't talked that much about it the last couple days. I want to say a word for the soil and the bees and the plants and the animals. And tell you about a tool, a very simple tool that I have found. Although it's really nothing more than a literary conceit -- it's not a technology -- it's very powerful for, I think, changing our relationship to the natural world and to the other species on whom we depend. And that tool is, very simply, as Chris suggested, looking at us and the world from the plants' or the animals' point of view. It's not my idea, other people have hit on it, but I've tried to take it to some new places. Let me tell you where I got it.

Like a lot of my ideas, like a lot of the tools I use, I found it in the garden. I'm a very devoted gardener. And there was a day about seven years ago, I was planting potatoes. It was the first week of May. This was New England, when the apple trees are just vibrating with bloom. They're just white clouds above. I was here, planting my chunks, cutting up potatoes and planting it. And the bees were working on this tree. Bumblebees, just making this thing vibrate. And one of the things I really like about gardening is that it doesn't take all your concentration.

You really can't get hurt. It's not like woodworking. And you can -- you have plenty of kind of mental space for speculation. And the question I asked myself that afternoon in the garden was -- working alongside that bumblebee -- was: What did I and that bumblebee have in common? How was our role in this garden similar and different? And I realized we actually had quite a bit in common. Both of us were disseminating the genes of one species and not another. And both of us, probably, if I can imagine the bee's point of view, thought we were calling the shots. I had decided what kind of potato I wanted to plant. I had picked my Yukon Gold or Yellow Finn, or whatever it was. And I had summoned those genes from a seed catalog across the country, brought it, and I was planting it. And that bee, no doubt, assumed that it had decided, I'm going for that apple tree, I'm going for that blossom, I'm going to get the nectar and I'm going to leave. We have a grammar that suggests that's who we are, that we are sovereign subjects in nature, the bee as well as me.

I plant the potatoes, I weed the garden, I domesticate the species. But that day, it occurred to me, what if that grammar is nothing more than a self-serving conceit? Because of course, the bee thinks he's in charge, or she's in charge. And -- but we know better. We know that what's going on between the bee and that flower is that bee has been cleverly manipulated by that flower. And when I say manipulated, I'm talking about in a Darwinian sense, right? I mean it has evolved a very specific set of traits -- color, scent, flavor, pattern -- that has lured that bee in. And the bee has been cleverly fooled into taking the nectar, and also picking up some powder on its leg, and going off to the next blossom. The bee is not calling the shots. And I realized then, I wasn't either. I had been seduced by that potato, and not another, into planting its -- into spreading its genes, giving it a little bit more habitat.

And that's when I got the idea, which was, well, what would it be -- what would happen If we kind of looked at us from this point of view of these other species who are working on us? And agriculture suddenly appeared to me not as an invention, not as a human technology, but as a co-evolutionary development in which a group of very clever species, mostly edible grasses, had exploited us, figured out how to get us to basically deforest the world. The competition of grasses, right? And suddenly everything looked different. And suddenly mowing the lawn that day was a completely different experience. I had thought always and, in fact, had written this in my first book -- this was a book about gardening -- that lawns were nature under culture's boot. That they were totalitarian landscapes. And that when we mowed them we were cruelly suppressing the species and never letting it set seed, or die, or have sex. And that's what the lawn was. But then I realized, "No, this is exactly what the grasses want us to do. I'm a dupe. I'm a dupe of the lawns, whose goal in life is to out-compete the trees, who it competes with -- who they compete with for sunlight." And so by getting us to mow the lawn, we keep the trees from coming back, which in New England happens very, very quickly. So I started looking at things this way, and wrote a whole book about it called "The Botany of Desire. And I realized that in the same way you can look at a flower and deduce all sorts of interesting things about the taste and the desires of bees, that they like sweetness, and they like this color and not that color, that they like symmetry. what could we find out about ourselves by doing the same thing? That a certain kind of potato, a certain kind of drug, a sativa-indica-cannabis cross has something to say about us. And that -- wouldn't this be kind of an interesting way to look at the world? Now, the test of any idea -- I said it was a literary conceit -- is what does it get us?

And when you're talking about nature, which is really my subject as a writer, how -- does it meet the Aldo Leopold test? Which is, does it make us better citizens of the biotic community? Get us to do things that leads to the support and perpetuation of the biota, rather than its destruction? And I would submit that this idea does this. So let me go through what you gain when you look at the world this way, besides, you know, entertaining insights about human desire. As an intellectual matter, looking at the world from other species' points of view helps us deal with this weird anomaly, which is -- and this is in the realm of intellectual history -- which is that we have this Darwinian revolution 150 years ago -- Ugh. Mini-me -- we have this intellectual, this Darwinian revolution in which, thanks to Darwin, we figured out we are just one species among many. Evolution is working on us the same way it's working on all the others. We are acted upon as well as acting. We are really in the fiber, the fabric of life. But the weird thing is, we don't -- we have not absorbed this lesson 150 years later. None of us really believes this. We are still Cartesians -- the children of Descartes -- who believe that subjectivity, consciousness, sets us apart. That the world is divided into subjects and objects. That there is nature on one side, culture on another. As soon as you start seeing things from the plant's point of view or the animal's point of view, you realize that the real literary conceit is that. Is this -- the idea that nature is opposed to culture. The idea that consciousness is everything. And that's another very important thing it does. Looking at the world from other species' points of view is a cure for the disease of human self-importance.

You suddenly realize that consciousness, which we value and we consider the, you know, the crown of -- the crowning achievement of nature, human consciousness is really just another set of tools for getting along in the world. And it's kind of natural that we would think it was the best tool. But, you know, as -- there's a comedian who said, "Well, who's telling me that consciousness is so good and so important? Well, consciousness." So when you look at the plants, you realize that they're other tools, and they're just as interesting. I'll give you two examples, also from the garden.

Lima beans. You know what a lima bean does when it's attacked by spider mites? It releases this volatile chemical that goes out into the world and summons another species of mite that comes in and attacks the spider mite, defending the lima bean. So what plants have, while we have consciousness, tool making, language, they have biochemistry. And they have perfected that to a degree far beyond what we can imagine. And their complexity, their sophistication, is something to really marvel at. And I think it's really the scandal of the Human Genome Project. You know, we went into it thinking, 40 or 50,000 human genes. And we came out with only 23,000. Just to give you grounds for comparison, rice: 35,000 genes. So who's the more sophisticated species? Well, we're all equally sophisticated. We've been evolving -- evolving just as long, just along different paths. So, cure for self-importance, way to sort of make us feel the Darwinian idea. And that's really what I do as a writer, as a storyteller, is try to make people kind of feel what we know and tell stories that actually make us -- help us think ecologically. Now, the other use of this is practical.

And I'm going to talk -- I'm going to take you to a farm right now. Because I used this idea to develop my understanding of the food system and what I learned, in fact, is that we are all, now, being manipulated by corn. And the talk you heard about ethanol earlier today, to me, is the final triumph of corn over good sense. (Laughter) It is part of -- (Applause) corn's scheme for world domination. (Laughter) And you will see the amount of corn planted this year will be up dramatically from last year, and there will be that much more habitat, because we've decided ethanol is going to help us. So -- but let me -- so it helped me understand industrial agriculture, which of course is a Cartesian system.

It's based on this idea that we bend other species to our will, and that we are in charge and that we create these factories, and we have these technological inputs, and we get the food out of it, or the fuel, or whatever we want. Let me take you to a very different kind of farm. This is a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

I went looking for a farm where these ideas about looking at things from the species' point of view are actually implemented. And I found it in a man, the farmer's name is Joel Salatin, and I spent a week as an apprentice on his farm. And I took away from this some of the most hopeful news about our relationship to nature that I've ever come across in 25 years of writing about nature. And that is this. The farm is called Polyface. Which means -- the idea is he's got six different species of animals, as well as some plants, growing in this very elaborate symbiotic arrangement. It's permaculture, those of you who know a little bit about this, such that the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the turkeys and the -- the -- what else, what else does he have? All the six different species -- rabbits, actually -- are all performing ecological services for one another, such that the manure of one is the lunch for the other and they take care of pests for one another. And I can't -- it's a very elaborate and beautiful dance but I'm just going to give you a close-up on one piece of it. And that is the relationship between his cattle and his chickens, his laying hens. And I'll show you how, if you take this approach, what you get, OK? And this is a lot more than growing food, as you'll see. This is a different way to think about nature, and a way to get away from the zero-sum notion that -- the Cartesian idea that either nature's winning or we're winning and that, for us to get what we want, nature is diminished. So one day, cattle, in a pen.

The only technology involved here is this cheap electric fencing, relatively new, hooked to a car battery. Even I could carry a quarter-acre paddock, set it up in 15 minutes. Cows graze one day. They move, OK? They graze everything down -- intensive grazing. He waits three days. And then we towed in something called the eggmobile. The eggmobile is a very rickety contraption. It looks like a prairie schooner made out of boards, but it houses 350 chickens. He tows this into the paddock three days later and opens the gangplank, turns them down and 350 hens come streaming down the gangplank -- clucking, gossiping, as chickens will. And they make a beeline for the cow patties. And what they're doing is very interesting.

They're digging through the cow patties for the maggots, the grubs, the larvae of flies. And the reason he's waited three days is because he knows that on the fourth day or the fifth day, those larvae will hatch, and they'll have a huge fly problem. But he waits that long to grow them as big and juicy and tasty as he can because they are the chickens' favorite form of protein. So the chickens do their kind of little breakdance, and they're pushing around the manure to get at the grubs, and in the process, they're spreading the manure out. Very useful. Second ecosystem service. And third, while they're in this paddock, they are, of course, defecating madly and their very nitrogenous manure is fertilizing this field. They then move out to the next one, and in the course of just a few weeks the grass just enters this blaze of growth. And within four or five weeks, he can do it again. He can graze again, he can cut, he can bring in another species, like the lambs, or he can make hay for the winter. Now, I want you to just look really close up onto what's happened there.

So it's a very productive system. And what I need to tell you is that on 100 acres he gets 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork, 25,000 dozen eggs, 20,000 broilers, 1,000 turkeys, 1,000 rabbits -- an immense amount of food. You know, you hear, "Can organic feed the world?

Well, look how much food you can produce on 100 acres if you do this kind of -- again, give each species what it wants. Let it realize its desires, its physiological distinctiveness. Put that in play. But look at it from the point of view of the grass, now.

What happens to the grass when you do this? When a ruminant grazes grass, the grass is cut from this height to this height. And it immediately does something very interesting. Any one of you who gardens knows that there is something called the root-shoot ratio. And plants need to keep the root mass in some rough balance with the leaf mass to be happy. So when they lose a lot of leaf mass, they shed roots. They kind of cauterize them and the roots die. And the species in the soil go to work, basically chewing through those roots, decomposing them -- the earthworms, the fungi, the bacteria -- and the result is new soil. This is how soil is created. It's created from the bottom up. This is how the prairies were built, the relationship between bison and grasses. And what I realized when I understood this -- and if you ask Joel Salatin what he is, he'll tell you he's not a chicken farmer, he's not a sheep farmer, he's not a cattle rancher, he's a grass farmer, because grass is really the keystone species of such a system -- is that if you think about it, this completely contradicts the tragic idea of nature we hold in our heads, which is that for us to get what we want, nature is diminished. More for us, less for nature. Here, all this food comes off this farm, and at the end of the season there is actually more soil, more fertility and more biodiversity. It's a remarkably hopeful thing to do.

That's what's so exciting about this perspective. When we really begin to feel Darwin's insights in our bones, the things we can do with nothing more than these ideas are something to be very hopeful about. Thank you very much.

Michael Pollan gives a plant's-eye view |Pollan||||| |Pollan||||| Michael Pollan betrachtet die Pflanzen aus ihrer Sicht Ο Michael Pollan δίνει την άποψη του φυτού Michael Pollan ofrece una visión vegetal マイケル・ポーランが植物の目線で語る Michael Pollan przedstawia roślinny punkt widzenia Michael Pollan dá-nos uma visão da planta 迈克尔-波伦从植物的角度看问题

It’s a simple idea about nature and I want to say a word for nature because we haven’t talked that much about it the last couple days. それは自然についての簡単な考えであり、私はここ数日間それについてあまり話していないので、私は自然について言葉を言いたいです。 그것은 자연에 대한 간단한 생각이며 지난 며칠 동안 그것에 대해 많이 이야기하지 않았기 때문에 자연에 대한 말을하고 싶습니다. I want to say a word for the soil and the bees and the plants and the animals. 土壌とミツバチ、植物と動物を一言言いたい。 And tell you about a tool, a very simple tool that I have found. Although it’s really nothing more than a literary conceit -- it’s not a technology -- it’s very powerful for, I think, changing our relationship to the natural world and to the other species on whom we depend. |||||||littéraire|artifice|||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||Einbildung|||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bien que ce ne soit vraiment rien de plus qu'une conception littéraire -- ce n'est pas une technologie -- c'est très puissant pour, je pense, changer notre relation au monde naturel et aux autres espèces dont nous dépendons. 그것은 실제로 문학에 대한 자만심 일 뿐이지 만 기술이 아닙니다. 자연 세계와 우리가 의존하는 다른 종들과의 관계를 변화시키는 것은 매우 강력합니다. And that tool is, very simply, as Chris suggested, looking at us and the world from the plants' or the animals' point of view. Et cet outil est, très simplement, comme Chris l'a suggéré, de nous regarder, nous et le monde, du point de vue des plantes ou des animaux. 그리고 그 도구는 매우 간단합니다. 크리스가 제안한대로 식물과 동물의 관점에서 우리와 세상을 바라 보았습니다. It’s not my idea, other people have hit on it, but I’ve tried to take it to some new places. Ce n'est pas mon idée, d'autres y ont pensé, mais j'ai essayé de l'amener à de nouveaux horizons. Let me tell you where I got it. 내가 어디 있는지 말해 줄께.

Like a lot of my ideas, like a lot of the tools I use, I found it in the garden. 내가 사용하는 많은 도구와 마찬가지로 많은 아이디어와 마찬가지로 정원에서 찾았습니다. I’m a very devoted gardener. And there was a day about seven years ago, I was planting potatoes. 그리고 약 7 년 전, 감자를 심고있었습니다. It was the first week of May. This was New England, when the apple trees are just vibrating with bloom. ||Nouvelle|||||||||| C'était la Nouvelle-Angleterre, quand les pommiers vibrent de fleurs. 사과 나무가 꽃이 만발한 뉴 잉글랜드였습니다. 这是新英格兰，当时苹果树正盛开着。 They’re just white clouds above. Ce sont juste des nuages blancs au-dessus. 그들은 단지 위의 흰 구름입니다. 它们只是上面的白云。 I was here, planting my chunks, cutting up potatoes and planting it. J'étais ici, plantant mes morceaux, coupant des pommes de terre et les plantant. 我在这里种植土豆，切好土豆然后种植。 And the bees were working on this tree. Bumblebees, just making this thing vibrate. 범블비, 그냥이 일을 진동하게 만든다. And one of the things I really like about gardening is that it doesn’t take all your concentration. 그리고 제가 정원 가꾸기에 대해 정말로 좋아하는 것 중 하나는 그것이 당신의 모든 집중을 차지하지 않는다는 것입니다.

You really can’t get hurt. It’s not like woodworking. |||travail du bois |||Holzarbeiten And you can -- you have plenty of kind of mental space for speculation. 그리고 당신은 투기를위한 정신 공간을 충분히 가질 수 있습니다. И вы можете — у вас достаточно места в уме для спекуляций. 而且，您可以-有足够的心理思考空间。 And the question I asked myself that afternoon in the garden was -- working alongside that bumblebee -- was: What did I and that bumblebee have in common? |||||||||||||||bourdon|||||||||| 그리고 그날 오후에 정원에서 오후 내내 물어 보았던 질문은 - 그 꿀벌과 함께 일하는 것이 었습니다 : 나는 ble벌이 공통적으로 무엇을 가지고 있었습니까? How was our role in this garden similar and different? 이 정원에서 우리의 역할은 어떻게 비슷하고 다른가요? 我们在这个花园中的角色有何异同？ And I realized we actually had quite a bit in common. 그리고 저는 우리가 실제로 공통점이 있음을 깨달았습니다. 我意识到我们实际上有很多共同点。 Both of us were disseminating the genes of one species and not another. ||||verbreiten|||||||| 우리 둘다 한 종의 유전자를 보급하고 다른 종은 보급하지 않았습니다. 我们俩都在传播一种物种而不是另一种的基因。 And both of us, probably, if I can imagine the bee’s point of view, thought we were calling the shots. ||||||||||de l'abeille||||||||| ||||||||||Biene||||||||| Et nous deux, probablement, si je peux imaginer le point de vue de l'abeille, pensions que nous étions aux commandes. 그리고 우리 둘 다 아마 벌의 견해를 상상할 수 있다면, 우리가 총을 부른다고 생각했습니다. E nós dois, provavelmente, se posso imaginar o ponto de vista da abelha, pensávamos que estávamos dando as cartas. 而且，如果我能想象站在蜜蜂的角度，我们俩可能都认为我们在发号施令。 I had decided what kind of potato I wanted to plant. J'avais décidé quel type de pomme de terre je voulais planter. 나는 내가 심고 싶은 감자의 종류를 결정했다. I had picked my Yukon Gold or Yellow Finn, or whatever it was. J'avais choisi ma Yukon Gold ou ma Yellow Finn, ou peu importe ce que c'était. 나는 유콘 골드 나 옐로우 핀을 골랐다. And I had summoned those genes from a seed catalog across the country, brought it, and I was planting it. Et j'avais convoqué ces gènes d'un catalogue de semences à travers le pays, les ai apportés et je les plantais. И я вызвал эти гены из каталога семян по всей стране, принес его, и я сажал его. 我从全国各地的种子目录中召集了这些基因，将其带到了我所要种植的地方。 And that bee, no doubt, assumed that it had decided, I’m going for that apple tree, I’m going for that blossom, I’m going to get the nectar and I’m going to leave. ||||||||||||||||||||Blüte||||||||||| Et cette abeille, sans doute, a supposé qu'elle avait décidé, je vais vers cet arbre fruitier, je vise cette fleur, je vais prendre le nectar et je vais m'en aller. 그 벌은 의심의 여지없이 결정했습니다. 나는 그 사과 나무로 간다. 나는 그 꽃을 위해 간다. 나는 꿀을 얻고 나는 떠날 것이다. И эта пчела, без сомнения, предположила, что она решила: я иду за этой яблоней, я иду за этим цветком, я собираюсь взять нектар и я собираюсь уйти. We have a grammar that suggests that’s who we are, that we are sovereign subjects in nature, the bee as well as me. Nous avons une grammaire qui suggère que c'est qui nous sommes, que nous sommes des sujets souverains dans la nature, l'abeille autant que moi. 우리는 그것이 우리가 누구인지, 우리가 자연의 주권 과목, 나뿐만 아니라 벌이라는 문법을 가지고 있습니다. У нас есть грамматика, которая говорит о том, кто мы есть, что мы суверенные субъекты в природе, как пчела, так и я. 我们有一个语法暗示我们是谁，我们是自然界中的主要主体，蜜蜂与我一样。

I plant the potatoes, I weed the garden, I domesticate the species. |||||||||domestique|| 我种植土豆，我给花园除草，我驯化这个物种。 But that day, it occurred to me, what if that grammar is nothing more than a self-serving conceit? Mais ce jour-là, il m'est venu à l'esprit, que se passerait-il si cette grammaire n'était rien d'autre qu'une vanité intéressée ? 但是那天，发生在我身上，如果那个语法只不过是一种自私的自负呢？ Because of course, the bee thinks he’s in charge, or she’s in charge. Parce que bien sûr, l'abeille pense qu'elle est en charge, ou qu'il est en charge. 물론 꿀벌은 자신이 담당하고 있다고 생각하거나 책임감을 가지고 있습니다. And -- but we know better. Et -- mais nous savons mieux. We know that what’s going on between the bee and that flower is that bee has been cleverly manipulated by that flower. Nous savons que ce qui se passe entre l'abeille et cette fleur, c'est que l'abeille a été habilement manipulée par cette fleur. 우리는 벌과 그 꽃 사이에 벌어지고있는 일이 벌이 그 꽃에 의해 영리하게 조작되었다는 것을 알고 있습니다. 我们知道蜜蜂和那朵花之间发生的事情是蜜蜂被那朵花巧妙地操纵了。 And when I say manipulated, I’m talking about in a Darwinian sense, right? ||||||||||darwinien|| ||||||||||darwinistisch|| Et quand je dis manipulée, je parle dans un sens darwinien, n'est-ce pas ? 그리고 내가 조작 된 것을 말할 때, 저는 다윈주의적인 의미에서 이야기하고 있습니다, 그렇죠? I mean it has evolved a very specific set of traits -- color, scent, flavor, pattern -- that has lured that bee in. |||||||||||||||||attiré||| ||||||||||Eigenschaften|||||||gelockt||| Je veux dire qu'elle a évolué vers un ensemble très spécifique de traits -- couleur, parfum, saveur, motif -- qui a attiré cette abeille. 나는 색깔, 향기, 풍미, 패턴 등 매우 특이한 특성을 진화 시켰습니다. 그것은 그 벌을 유혹했습니다. 我的意思是它进化出了一套非常特殊的特征——颜色、气味、味道、图案——来吸引蜜蜂。 And the bee has been cleverly fooled into taking the nectar, and also picking up some powder on its leg, and going off to the next blossom. 그리고 벌은 독창적으로 속여서 감로를 복용하고, 다리에 약간의 분말을 집어 들고 다음 꽃으로가 버립니다. 蜜蜂被聪明地愚弄了，采集了花蜜，并在腿上沾上了一些粉末，然后飞向下一朵花。 The bee is not calling the shots. 꿀벌은 총소리를 내고 있지 않습니다. And I realized then, I wasn’t either. 그리고 나는 그때 깨달았습니다. I had been seduced by that potato, and not another, into planting its -- into spreading its genes, giving it a little bit more habitat. 나는 그 감자에 의해서 유혹 당했고 다른 것들은 유인되지 않았다. 유전자를 퍼뜨려 조금 더 많은 서식지를 주었다. 我被那个土豆（而不是另一个）吸引住了-种植它-传播它的基因，给它更多的栖息地。

And that’s when I got the idea, which was, well, what would it be -- what would happen If we kind of looked at us from this point of view of these other species who are working on us? Et c'est à ce moment-là que j'ai eu l'idée, qui était, eh bien, que serait-il -- que se passerait-il si nous nous regardions du point de vue de ces autres espèces qui travaillent sur nous ? 那时我才有了主意，那将是什么，如果我们从正在研究我们的其他其他物种的角度来看待我们，会发生什么呢？ And agriculture suddenly appeared to me not as an invention, not as a human technology, but as a co-evolutionary development in which a group of very clever species, mostly edible grasses, had exploited us, figured out how to get us to basically deforest the world. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||exploiter|| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||essbare|||||||||||||abholzen|| Et l'agriculture m'est soudainement apparue non pas comme une invention, non pas comme une technologie humaine, mais comme un développement coévolutif dans lequel un groupe d'espèces très intelligentes, principalement des graminées comestibles, nous avait exploités, avait découvert comment nous amener à défricher essentiellement le monde. 在我看来，农业突然不是一种发明，不是一种人类技术，而是一种共同进化的发展，其中一群非常聪明的物种（主要是可食用的草）已经剥削了我们，并弄清楚了如何使我们从根本上砍伐森林世界。 The competition of grasses, right? La compétition des graminées, n'est-ce pas ? 草类的比拼吧？ And suddenly everything looked different. 突然间，一切都变得不一样了。 And suddenly mowing the lawn that day was a completely different experience. 突然间，那天修剪草坪是一次完全不同的体验。 I had thought always and, in fact, had written this in my first book -- this was a book about gardening -- that lawns were nature under culture’s boot. 我一直以为，事实上，我已经在第一本书（这是一本关于园艺的书）中写了这本书，说草坪是文化引导下的自然。 That they were totalitarian landscapes. Qu'elles étaient des paysages totalitaires. 他们是极权主义的风景。 And that when we mowed them we were cruelly suppressing the species and never letting it set seed, or die, or have sex. ||||mähte||||grausam|unterdrücken||||||||||||| Et que lorsque nous les tondions, nous supprimions cruellement les espèces et ne leur permettions jamais de produire des graines, de mourir ou d'avoir des relations sexuelles. 当我们给它们割草时，我们是在残酷地压制这个物种，从不让它定下种子，死亡或做爱。 And that’s what the lawn was. Et c'est ce qu'était la pelouse. 这就是草坪。 But then I realized, "No, this is exactly what the grasses want us to do. I’m a dupe. I’m a dupe of the lawns, whose goal in life is to out-compete the trees, who it competes with -- who they compete with for sunlight." ||||||||||||||||||konkurriert||||||| أنا خدعة من المروج ، هدفها في الحياة هو الخروج من منافسة الأشجار ، التي تنافسها - الذين يتنافسون مع أشعة الشمس. And so by getting us to mow the lawn, we keep the trees from coming back, which in New England happens very, very quickly. ||||||mähen||||||||||||||||| وهكذا عن طريق حملنا على قطع العشب ، نحتفظ بالأشجار من العودة ، وهو ما يحدث في نيو إنغلاند بسرعة كبيرة جدًا. So I started looking at things this way, and wrote a whole book about it called "The Botany of Desire. And I realized that in the same way you can look at a flower and deduce all sorts of interesting things about the taste and the desires of bees, that they like sweetness, and they like this color and not that color, that they like symmetry. 我意识到，就像你可以通过观察一朵花推断出有关蜜蜂的味道和欲望的各种有趣的事情一样，它们喜欢甜味，喜欢这种颜色而不是那种颜色，它们喜欢对称。 what could we find out about ourselves by doing the same thing? 通过做同样的事情，我们能从中发现什么？ That a certain kind of potato, a certain kind of drug, a sativa-indica-cannabis cross has something to say about us. |||||||||||||indica|||||||| ||||||||||||Sativa|zeigt|Cannabis||||||| أن نوعًا معينًا من البطاطس ، نوعًا معينًا من المخدرات ، صليب حشيشة - إنديكا - القنب لديه شيء يقوله عنا. Qu'une certaine sorte de pomme de terre, un certain type de drogue, un croisement de sativa-indica-cannabis a quelque chose à dire sur nous. 某种马铃薯，某种药物，苜蓿，印度大麻和大麻杂交对我们有话要说。 And that -- wouldn’t this be kind of an interesting way to look at the world? Et que - ne serait-ce pas une manière plutôt intéressante de voir le monde ? Now, the test of any idea -- I said it was a literary conceit -- is what does it get us? ||||||||||||Einfall|||||| Maintenant, le test de toute idée - j'ai dit que c'était une prétention littéraire - est ce qu'elle nous apporte ? さて、どんなアイデアのテスト-私はそれが文学的なうぬぼれであると言いました-それは私たちに何をもたらしますか？现在，任何想法的考验-我说这是一种文学自负-它能为我们带来什么？

And when you’re talking about nature, which is really my subject as a writer, how -- does it meet the Aldo Leopold test? |||||||||||||||||||Aldo|| |||||||||||||||||||Aldo Leopold|Leopold| 当您谈论自然时，这实际上是我作为作家的主题，它如何满足奥尔多·利奥波德（Aldo Leopold）的考验？ Which is, does it make us better citizens of the biotic community? ||||||||||biotique| ||||||||||lebensgemeinschaftlichen| 就是说，这是否使我们成为生物界的更好公民？ Get us to do things that leads to the support and perpetuation of the biota, rather than its destruction? ||||||||||||||biote|||| |||||||||||Fortdauer|||Lebensgemeinschaft|||| Заставить нас делать то, что ведет к поддержке и увековечению биоты, а не к ее уничтожению? 让我们做能够导致生物群的支持和永存而不是对其破坏的事情？ And I would submit that this idea does this. 我想这个想法就是这样做的。 So let me go through what you gain when you look at the world this way, besides, you know, entertaining insights about human desire. |||||||||||||||||||unterhaltsame|||| 因此，让我审视您以这种方式看待世界时所获得的收获，此外，您还可以获得对人类欲望的深刻见解。 As an intellectual matter, looking at the world from other species' points of view helps us deal with this weird anomaly, which is -- and this is in the realm of intellectual history -- which is that we have this Darwinian revolution 150 years ago -- Ugh. ||||||||||||||||||||Anomalie||||||||||||||||||||||Ächz 作为智力问题，从其他物种的角度看待世界有助于我们应对这种怪异的异常现象，这是-属于知识史的领域-这就是我们150年前的达尔文革命-gh Mini-me -- we have this intellectual, this Darwinian revolution in which, thanks to Darwin, we figured out we are just one species among many. 小我-我们有这种知识分子，这是达尔文式的革命，由于达尔文的缘故，我们发现我们只是众多物种中的一种。 Evolution is working on us the same way it’s working on all the others. We are acted upon as well as acting. 我们既有行动，也有行动。 We are really in the fiber, the fabric of life. Nous sommes vraiment dans la fibre, le tissu de la vie. 我们真正地处于生命之源，纤维。 But the weird thing is, we don’t -- we have not absorbed this lesson 150 years later. Mais ce qui est étrange, c'est que nous ne -- nous n'avons pas intégré cette leçon 150 ans plus tard. None of us really believes this. Aucun de nous n'y croit vraiment. We are still Cartesians -- the children of Descartes -- who believe that subjectivity, consciousness, sets us apart. |||cartésiens|||||||||||| |||Kartesianer||||||||Subjektivität|Bewusstsein||| 我们仍然是笛卡尔的笛卡尔之子，他们相信主观性，意识使我们与众不同。 That the world is divided into subjects and objects. That there is nature on one side, culture on another. As soon as you start seeing things from the plant’s point of view or the animal’s point of view, you realize that the real literary conceit is that. 从植物的角度或动物的角度开始看事物，您就会意识到真正的文学观念就是这样。 Is this -- the idea that nature is opposed to culture. 这就是自然反对文化的想法。 The idea that consciousness is everything. And that’s another very important thing it does. 这是它做的另一非常重要的事情。 Looking at the world from other species' points of view is a cure for the disease of human self-importance.

You suddenly realize that consciousness, which we value and we consider the, you know, the crown of -- the crowning achievement of nature, human consciousness is really just another set of tools for getting along in the world. |||||||||||||||couronne||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||höchstes Gut|||||||||||||||||| Vous réalisez soudainement que la conscience, que nous valorisons et que nous considérons comme, vous savez, la couronne -- l'accomplissement ultime de la nature, la conscience humaine est en réalité juste un autre ensemble d'outils pour s'en sortir dans le monde. 您突然意识到，意识是我们重视和考虑的，您知道，这是自然最重要的成就的冠冕堂皇，人类意识实际上只是世界上相处的另一套工具。 And it’s kind of natural that we would think it was the best tool. Y es natural que creamos que es la mejor herramienta. Et il est un peu naturel que nous pensions que c'était le meilleur outil. 我们认为这是最好的工具是很自然的。 But, you know, as -- there’s a comedian who said, "Well, who’s telling me that consciousness is so good and so important? Mais, vous savez, comme -- il y a un humoriste qui a dit : "Eh bien, qui me dit que la conscience est si bonne et si importante ?" 但是，您知道，有-一位喜剧演员说：“好吧，谁告诉我意识是如此的重要而重要？ Well, consciousness." So when you look at the plants, you realize that they’re other tools, and they’re just as interesting. I’ll give you two examples, also from the garden.

Lima beans. Lima| Lima-Bohnen| You know what a lima bean does when it’s attacked by spider mites? ||||lima|||||||| Sais-tu ce que fait un haricot lima lorsqu'il est attaqué par des acariens ? 您知道利马豆被蜘蛛螨侵袭时会做什么吗？ It releases this volatile chemical that goes out into the world and summons another species of mite that comes in and attacks the spider mite, defending the lima bean. ||||||||||||||||Milbe|||||||||||| Il libère ce produit chimique volatile qui sort dans le monde et appelle une autre espèce d'acarien qui vient et attaque l'acarien, défendant ainsi le haricot lima. So what plants have, while we have consciousness, tool making, language, they have biochemistry. |||||||||||||Biochemie Donc ce que les plantes ont, tandis que nous avons la conscience, la fabrication d'outils, le langage, elles ont la biochimie. And they have perfected that to a degree far beyond what we can imagine. And their complexity, their sophistication, is something to really marvel at. 它们的复杂性，复杂性令人惊叹不已。 And I think it’s really the scandal of the Human Genome Project. 我认为这确实是人类基因组计划的丑闻。 You know, we went into it thinking, 40 or 50,000 human genes. Vous savez, nous avons commencé en pensant à 40 ou 50 000 gènes humains. 你知道，我们曾经考虑过 40,000 或 50,000 个人类基因。 And we came out with only 23,000. Et nous en sommes sortis avec seulement 23 000. 但我们最终只得到了 23,000 人。 Just to give you grounds for comparison, rice: 35,000 genes. Juste pour vous donner un point de comparaison, le riz : 35 000 gènes. 只是为了给你提供一个比较的依据，大米：35,000 个基因。 So who’s the more sophisticated species? Well, we’re all equally sophisticated. We’ve been evolving -- evolving just as long, just along different paths. So, cure for self-importance, way to sort of make us feel the Darwinian idea. 因此，治愈自我重要性的方法可以使我们感受到达尔文主义的想法。 And that’s really what I do as a writer, as a storyteller, is try to make people kind of feel what we know and tell stories that actually make us -- help us think ecologically. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||écologiquement Now, the other use of this is practical.

And I’m going to talk -- I’m going to take you to a farm right now. Because I used this idea to develop my understanding of the food system and what I learned, in fact, is that we are all, now, being manipulated by corn. Parce que j'ai utilisé cette idée pour développer ma compréhension du système alimentaire et ce que j'ai appris, en fait, c'est que nous sommes tous, maintenant, manipulés par le maïs. And the talk you heard about ethanol earlier today, to me, is the final triumph of corn over good sense. ||||||éthanol||||||||||||| Et le discours que vous avez entendu sur l'éthanol plus tôt aujourd'hui, pour moi, est le triomphe final du maïs sur le bon sens. 对我来说，今天早些时候您听到的有关乙醇的谈话是玉米在理性上的最终胜利。 (Laughter) It is part of -- (Applause) corn’s scheme for world domination. ||||||le plan de maïs|||| ||||||Mais|||| (Rires) C'est une partie du plan du maïs pour la domination mondiale. （笑声）这是——（掌声）玉米称霸世界的计划的一部分。 (Laughter) And you will see the amount of corn planted this year will be up dramatically from last year, and there will be that much more habitat, because we’ve decided ethanol is going to help us. （众笑）您会发现，今年播种的玉米数量将比去年大幅增加，而且会有更多的栖息地，因为我们已经确定乙醇将帮助我们。 So -- but let me -- so it helped me understand industrial agriculture, which of course is a Cartesian system. ||||||||||||||||cartésien| ||||||||||||||||kartesisch|

It’s based on this idea that we bend other species to our will, and that we are in charge and that we create these factories, and we have these technological inputs, and we get the food out of it, or the fuel, or whatever we want. C'est basé sur cette idée que nous plions d'autres espèces à notre volonté, et que nous sommes en charge et que nous créons ces usines, et que nous avons ces intrants technologiques, et que nous obtenons la nourriture, ou le carburant, ou ce que nous voulons. Let me take you to a very different kind of farm. Laissez-moi vous emmener dans un type de ferme très différent. This is a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. ||||||Shenandoah-Tal||| Ceci est une ferme dans la vallée de Shenandoah en Virginie. 这是弗吉尼亚雪兰多山谷的一个农场。

I went looking for a farm where these ideas about looking at things from the species' point of view are actually implemented. And I found it in a man, the farmer’s name is Joel Salatin, and I spent a week as an apprentice on his farm. ||||||||||||Salatin||||||||||| ||||||||||||Salatin||||||||||| And I took away from this some of the most hopeful news about our relationship to nature that I’ve ever come across in 25 years of writing about nature. 我摆脱了这25年间我撰写的有关自然的最令人振奋的新闻，这是我与自然的关系。 And that is this. The farm is called Polyface. ||||Polyface ||||Polyface Which means -- the idea is he’s got six different species of animals, as well as some plants, growing in this very elaborate symbiotic arrangement. ||||||||||||||||||||||symbiotique| ||||||||||||||||||||||symbiotisch| 这意味着-他的想法是，他有六种不同的动物以及一些植物，以这种非常复杂的共生关系生长。 It’s permaculture, those of you who know a little bit about this, such that the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the turkeys and the -- the -- what else, what else does he have? |permaculture||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |Permakultur||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| All the six different species -- rabbits, actually -- are all performing ecological services for one another, such that the manure of one is the lunch for the other and they take care of pests for one another. ||||||||||||||||||Mist||||||||||||||Schädlinge||| Les six espèces différentes - des lapins, en fait - remplissent toutes des services écologiques les unes pour les autres, de sorte que le fumier de l'un est le déjeuner de l'autre et elles s'occupent des ravageurs les unes pour les autres. 六种不同的物种-实际上是兔子-彼此都在为生态服务，因此一种肥料是另一种的午餐，它们可以互相照顾害虫。 And I can’t -- it’s a very elaborate and beautiful dance but I’m just going to give you a close-up on one piece of it. Et je ne peux pas - c'est une danse très élaborée et belle mais je vais juste vous donner un gros plan sur un morceau de celle-ci. E eu não posso - é uma dança muito elaborada e bonita, mas eu vou dar a vocês um close em uma peça dela. And that is the relationship between his cattle and his chickens, his laying hens. |||||||||||||Legehennen Et c'est la relation entre ses bovins et ses poules, ses poules pondeuses. 那就是他的牛和他的鸡，他的产蛋鸡之间的关系。 And I’ll show you how, if you take this approach, what you get, OK? Et je vais te montrer comment, si tu prends cette approche, ce que tu obtiens, d'accord ? And this is a lot more than growing food, as you’ll see. Et c'est beaucoup plus que de faire pousser de la nourriture, comme tu le verras. 正如你们将看到的，这不仅仅是种植粮食。 This is a different way to think about nature, and a way to get away from the zero-sum notion that -- the Cartesian idea that either nature’s winning or we’re winning and that, for us to get what we want, nature is diminished. C'est une manière différente de penser à la nature, et un moyen de s'éloigner de la notion à somme nulle -- l'idée cartésienne selon laquelle soit la nature gagne, soit nous gagnons et que, pour obtenir ce que nous voulons, la nature est diminuée. Esta é uma maneira diferente de pensar sobre a natureza, e uma maneira de fugir da noção de soma zero de que - a ideia cartesiana de que ou a natureza está vencendo ou estamos vencendo e que, para conseguirmos o que queremos, a natureza está diminuído. So one day, cattle, in a pen. 所以有一天，牛，用笔。

The only technology involved here is this cheap electric fencing, relatively new, hooked to a car battery. La seule technologie impliquée ici est cette clôture électrique bon marché, relativement nouvelle, reliée à une batterie de voiture. 这里涉及的唯一技术是这种便宜的电子围栏，相对较新，可以挂在汽车电池上。 Even I could carry a quarter-acre paddock, set it up in 15 minutes. |||||||préau||||| |||||||Weidefläche||||| Même moi, je pourrais transporter un paddock d'un quart d'acre, l'installer en 15 minutes. Até eu poderia carregar um paddock de um quarto de acre, configurá-lo em 15 minutos. 甚至我也可以搬运四分之一英亩的围场，在 15 分钟内将其布置好。 Cows graze one day. Les vaches paissent un jour. 奶牛放牧一天。 They move, OK? They graze everything down -- intensive grazing. 他们放牧一切-密集放牧。 He waits three days. And then we towed in something called the eggmobile. ||||||||eggmobile |||geschleppt|||||Eiermobil ثم جرنا في شيء يسمى بيضة. 然后我们拖着一种叫做“蛋车”的东西。 The eggmobile is a very rickety contraption. |eggmobile||||| ||||||Gerät It looks like a prairie schooner made out of boards, but it houses 350 chickens. |||||schooner|||||||| |||||Prairie-Schoner|||||||| On dirait un chariot de prairie fait de planches, mais il abrite 350 poules. 它看起来像是用木板制成的大篷车，但可容纳350只鸡。 He tows this into the paddock three days later and opens the gangplank, turns them down and 350 hens come streaming down the gangplank -- clucking, gossiping, as chickens will. |traîne|||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||Schiffsplanke|||||||||||gackern|plaudern||| Il le remorque dans le paddock trois jours plus tard et ouvre la rampe, les laisse descendre et 350 poules descendent en cascade de la rampe -- caquetant, devisant, comme le font les poules. And they make a beeline for the cow patties. ||||||||bouses ||||geradewegs|||| Et elles se dirigent droit vers les crottes de vache. 他们为牛小馅饼做了一条直线。 And what they’re doing is very interesting.

They’re digging through the cow patties for the maggots, the grubs, the larvae of flies. ||||vache||||||||larves|| ||||||||Maden||Maden|||| Ils fouillent dans les bouses de vache à la recherche des asticots, des larves, des larvae de mouches. 他们在挖牛肉饼，寻找，the，苍蝇的幼虫。 And the reason he’s waited three days is because he knows that on the fourth day or the fifth day, those larvae will hatch, and they’ll have a huge fly problem. |||||||||||||||||||||larves||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||schlüpfen||||||| Et la raison pour laquelle il a attendu trois jours, c'est qu'il sait qu'au quatrième ou au cinquième jour, ces larves vont éclore, et ils auront un énorme problème de mouches. But he waits that long to grow them as big and juicy and tasty as he can because they are the chickens' favorite form of protein. Mais il attend aussi longtemps pour les faire grandir aussi gros, juteux et savoureux que possible, car c'est la forme de protéine préférée des poules. So the chickens do their kind of little breakdance, and they’re pushing around the manure to get at the grubs, and in the process, they’re spreading the manure out. ||||||||danse du ventre|||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||Breakdance|||||||||||||||||||| Very useful. Second ecosystem service. And third, while they’re in this paddock, they are, of course, defecating madly and their very nitrogenous manure is fertilizing this field. |||||||||||||||||||fertilise|| ||||||||||||||||stickstoffhaltig|||düngend|| И в-третьих, пока они находятся в этом паддоке, они, конечно, безумно безумно безумно, и их очень азотный навоз удобряет эту область. They then move out to the next one, and in the course of just a few weeks the grass just enters this blaze of growth. Ils passent ensuite au suivant, et au cours de quelques semaines, l'herbe entre dans cette flambée de croissance. 然后，他们搬到下一个，在短短几周内，草就进入了这种生长的火焰。 And within four or five weeks, he can do it again. Et en quatre ou cinq semaines, il peut le refaire. He can graze again, he can cut, he can bring in another species, like the lambs, or he can make hay for the winter. Il peut paître à nouveau, il peut tondre, il peut introduire une autre espèce, comme les agneaux, ou il peut faire du foin pour l'hiver. Он может снова пастись, он может резать, он может принести другой вид, как ягнят, или он может сделать сено на зиму. Now, I want you to just look really close up onto what’s happened there.

So it’s a very productive system. 因此，这是一个非常高效的系统。 And what I need to tell you is that on 100 acres he gets 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork, 25,000 dozen eggs, 20,000 broilers, 1,000 turkeys, 1,000 rabbits -- an immense amount of food. |||||||||||||||||||||poulets||||||| You know, you hear, "Can organic feed the world?

Well, look how much food you can produce on 100 acres if you do this kind of -- again, give each species what it wants. Let it realize its desires, its physiological distinctiveness. |||||||Distinctheit Put that in play. But look at it from the point of view of the grass, now.

What happens to the grass when you do this? When a ruminant grazes grass, the grass is cut from this height to this height. |||pâture||||||||||| ||Wiederkäuer|weidet||||||||||| And it immediately does something very interesting. Any one of you who gardens knows that there is something called the root-shoot ratio. Quiconque parmi vous qui jardine sait qu'il existe quelque chose appelé le ratio racine-tige. Любой из вас, кто знает, что есть что-то, называемое коэффициентом корневой стрельбы. 你们中的任何一个从事园艺的人都知道有一种叫做根茎比率的东西。 And plants need to keep the root mass in some rough balance with the leaf mass to be happy. Et les plantes ont besoin de maintenir la masse racinaire dans un certain équilibre approximatif avec la masse foliaire pour être heureuses. И растениям нужно держать корневую массу в некотором грубом балансе, чтобы масса листьев была счастлива. 而且植物需要使根的质量与叶的质量保持一定的平衡，才能幸福。 So when they lose a lot of leaf mass, they shed roots. Ainsi, lorsqu'elles perdent beaucoup de masse foliaire, elles expulsent des racines. 因此，当它们失去大量叶子时，它们就会生根。 They kind of cauterize them and the roots die. |||cautérisent||||| |||kauterisieren||||| 他们会灼痛他们，而根却死了。 And the species in the soil go to work, basically chewing through those roots, decomposing them -- the earthworms, the fungi, the bacteria -- and the result is new soil. ||||||||||||||les décomposant||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||Regenwürmer|||||||||| This is how soil is created. It’s created from the bottom up. This is how the prairies were built, the relationship between bison and grasses. ||||||||||bison|| And what I realized when I understood this -- and if you ask Joel Salatin what he is, he’ll tell you he’s not a chicken farmer, he’s not a sheep farmer, he’s not a cattle rancher, he’s a grass farmer, because grass is really the keystone species of such a system -- is that if you think about it, this completely contradicts the tragic idea of nature we hold in our heads, which is that for us to get what we want, nature is diminished. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||contredit||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||widerspricht||||||||||||||||||||||| More for us, less for nature. Here, all this food comes off this farm, and at the end of the season there is actually more soil, more fertility and more biodiversity. It’s a remarkably hopeful thing to do.

There are a lot of farmers doing this today. This is well beyond organic agriculture, which is still a Cartesian system, more or less. And what it tells you is that if you begin to take account of other species, take account of the soil, that even with, with nothing more than this perspectival idea -- because there is no technology involved here except for those fences, which could be, you know, they’re so cheap they could be all over Africa in no time -- that you can, we can take the food we need from the Earth, and actually heal the Earth in the process. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||perspective|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||perspektivisch|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 它告诉您的是，如果您开始考虑其他物种，那么就考虑土壤，即使考虑到这种透视的想法也无济于事–因为这里除了栅栏之外没有其他技术，因为它们很便宜，所以它们很快就会遍及整个非洲-您可以，我们可以从地球上获取我们需要的食物，并在此过程中切实治愈地球。 This is a way to reanimate the world. |||||réanimer|| |||||wiederbeleben||

That’s what’s so exciting about this perspective. When we really begin to feel Darwin’s insights in our bones, the things we can do with nothing more than these ideas are something to be very hopeful about. Когда мы действительно начинаем ощущать дарвиновские идеи в наших костях, то, что мы можем сделать только с этими идеями, - это то, о чем можно очень надеяться. 当我们真正开始感受到达尔文对我们骨子里的见识时，除了这些想法外，我们所能做的事情是充满希望的事情。 Thank you very much.