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doi:10.1094/CFW-52-5-0239 |
VIEW ARTICLE Surviving Chaos D. Best. Cereal Foods World 52(5):239. Why do some survive, while others don’t? This is the question posed by adventurer and National Geographic discoverer Laurence Gonzales in his book Deep Survival (1). In his chapter “The Sand Pile Effect,” Gonzales chronicles how small missteps, false assumptions, and miscalculations conspire with unforeseen circumstances to turn a routine and diligently planned climb up a “beginner” mountain into a multi-fatality tragedy. Gonzales equates such events to physical “systems.” Each incremental safety measure adopted by the climbers served to increase the potential energy of the system. The energy level mounted until it reached a critical point where small, unforeseen (chaotic) natural events conspired to shift the system’s energy from potential into kinetic energy with disastrous consequences. What ensued could apply equally well to food plants, regulatory bodies, agriculture, and national economies. Countries, economies, agricultures, companies, universities, and research projects all represent systems that require high levels of organization to function. It is a very human impulse to want to squeeze “error” out of our systems, and civilization could not have organized itself without increasing degrees of control on human behavior and the environment. In our own world of cereal foods, we try to impose stringent controls on everything from DNA profiling to packaging specifications to personal hygiene to help guarantee a safe, reliable, consistent, nutritious, and credible food supply. Is too much control a recipe for disaster?
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