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Posted by: Natureboy 1 year, 7 months ago
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Natureboy1 year, 7 months ago
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"This is the problem scientists are trying to solve."
Unfortunately, they are arrogantly trying to solve it with their own technology instead of observing and learning from mother nature.
Nothing goes south like a genetic monoculture, and nothing is less natural. We should be encouraging genetic diversity, and encouraging farmers to cultivate a diversity of crops.
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tkyrchncs1 year, 7 months ago
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Every loaf of bread is a monoculture of yeast, every corn field is a monoculture, the cattle and pigs that need ear tags to be told one from another virtually the same. We only cultivate the plants and animals we want, and we select for the traits in those that we want, and we have been doing this for thousands of years. The only difference here is that rather than wait for mutations or coincidence of traits is that we are inserting the desired traits directly. What a bunch of alarmists. We cannot go back to a hunter-gatherer type of existence with our population. I am all for plants that resist disease and insects, and pigs that can produce human clotting factor, and I want a cat that glows in the dark. Sheesh, stable your oxen, boys and girls, and move into the 21st century.
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Natureboy1 year, 7 months ago
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Back to biology 101.
If you were to examine a conventionally cultivated field of corn, you would find astonishing genetic diversity, diversity which is eliminated by genetically uniform Monsanto GMO crops. This genetic diversity allows for evolution and adaptation - a pest or blight may wipe out some of the corn, but the survivors will likely be resistant.
Genetic monocultures don't have that going on. What kills some will likely kill all, resulting not in partial crop losses but rather catastrophic crop failures.
Beyond that, growing vast areas of one crop is not smart. Plants grow naturally in ecosystems in which diverse species play complimentary roles. Growing one crop, year after year, depletes the soil and makes necessary the use of a host of petroleum derived pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
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tkyrchncs1 year, 7 months ago
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If you look at any field of any grain planted by a farmer in the last hundred years or so you are looking at a genetic monoculture, whether the farmer bought or saved seed. The varieties we use in agriculture are, and have been for a long time, nearly genetically identical, within the variety. There is virtually no diversity plant to plant in any relatively modern grain field, unless it was introduced diversity for hybrid-producing purposes. Back to AG 101. Blights are almost uniformly infective in any given field, or almost non-infective. Almost, because there are rare genetic events. Compared to a natural wild population, grain fields might as well be the same individual. (except there is no wild population of corn) As to the ecology of it, you're preaching to the choir. My bachelor's degree is a double major biology and art.
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