Peanuts and Pond Scum

… be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?
26 Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value then they?
… 28 And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31 Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(Matthew 6:25-31)

We humans are perverse. God says clearly he has provided amply for us, and yet we cannot accept this. Instead we seek for less useful things, only because they are rare. We prefer impractical gold to useful iron, mostly only because gold is hard to get. We prefer lobster to potatoes, though potatoes surely have more flavour; mostly because lobster is harder to get. When it was common, we threw it on the fields as manure. For our potatoes.

Especially the continual fretting about the world coming to an end, though manmade pollution, or overconsumption, or overpopulation, is of a piece with this sort of greedy consumerism in the end. We need to relax and trust God.

It is indeed time to consider the lilies of the field. It follows, from the truth that there is a God, that there must be ample food, clothing, shelter and fuel right under our noses, if we cared to look.

Consider, then, the lilies. Or not lilies, exactly; in Canada, our fields and lawns are covered instead with dandelions. And we hate them, because they are common. But really, no plant could be more completely useful. No part of the dandelion is without its use.

They are, to begin with, quite beautiful flowers; as pretty as any we cultivate. Children know all about their play potential: you can make bracelets, chains, all sorts of things from them. Rub them under your best friend’s chin, and you find out if she’s in love. A little later in the summer, you get to blow the seeds away.

For adults, the flowers make a wine remarkably like champagne; but rather less expensive. The leaves are great in salads, or cooked like spinach. The roots, roasted, make a drink like coffee. It has more beta carotene than carrots, and is loaded with potassium. And, of course, it makes great honey. The milk is said to soothe stings and sores; the tea to be good for diabetics.

And yet we go to great lengths to rid ourselves of it. God forbid we should have this golden treasure in our front yard.

We can, I think, extend this principle everywhere: whatever is most common and least commonly valued is probably the most useful thing available. The stone that is rejected is to become the cornerstone. The principle is itself, not incidentally, another proof of the existence of God.

I thought this again recently when I saw a short piece on algae—you know, pond scum. Not something we’re terribly fond of. We all, you may recall, stopped using phosphates because it encouraged the stuff. It seems to bloom and blossom at the drop of—actually, at a drop of anything. Here at our college, workmen laboriously empty all the fountains about once a month and clean out all the algae.

But guess what? Algae naturally suck up about ten percent of all the CO2 Canada produces every year. If global warming is real, simply encouraging more algae growth would in fact be far more effective than the Kyoto Accord. Let’s use more phosphates!

But the story gets even more interesting. Algae are perfectly edible. Spirulina, one variety, is fully seventy percent protein—more than any other known food. And it is a complete source of all the vitamins and minerals a body needs, including four times more vitamin B12 than beef liver.

The cheapest conceivable food, in other words, is plainly better for us than the most expensive.

Since the earth includes far more water than land, algae represent a truly vast, almost untapped, food resource. Vaster than all the other foods we eat today. Remember, algae are in the very basement of the food chain. Each time we move a step up that chain, we reduce the food value available to us by about ninety percent: moving down multiplies it by ten each step. Algae is at least two steps down from most meat.

So there is surely enough algae to feed the world, and feed it a complete diet. Technically, an area of cultivation only about half the size of the state of Indiana would feed the world handsomely.

With biotechnology, algae may soon become yet more useful. It is a simple microorganism, and it reproduces quickly. So it is ideal for bioengineering. It seems likely algae could be fairly easily engineered to produce vast amounts of hydrogen, methane, or other fuels, replacing fossil oil. No more energy crises. Conversely, they could be engineered to devour oil slicks and other pollutants—turning them into food or usable fuel in the process.

I suspect scarcity is always a human construct. We need to start looking at nature with eyes opened by God. George Washington Carver, knowing that poor Southern blacks had land only good enough for peanuts, which grow on sandy soil and do not require many nutrients, locked himself in a laboratory and prayed to God, “Please, Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?” He quickly came up with three hundred uses.

And we haven’t even looked yet at the birds of the air…