this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Showerthoughts
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There was a scifi novel in the olden days that had exactly that scenario: A fast spreading disease that first took out rice, which lead to mass starvation and politicla unrest in Asia. This was countered by sending food from the US and Europe, depleting their reserves. Then, the next year, the virus (or whatever) made the jump over to all members of the oryzee family, i.e. all cereals, worldwide. No wheat, no barley, no maize - all dead except a few plants kept safe in secure labs.
Yeah that's totally unrealistic, in a biodiversity ecosystem, the varus shouldn't be able to propagate wildly, I mean, for that to happen you would have to have planted vast areas of monoculture crops, all with the same or similar genetic traits, without many buffer zones, and a depleted soil full of biologically inert chemical fertilisers, devoid of a healthy and resilient soil microbiome... oh.. oh no...
Fun fact, this is happening with Bananas. The only way they can contain it is by annihilating entire fields.
True, but all bananas are clones and have almost no genetic diversity and are all susceptible to the same diseases.
So are many of our food cash crops.