this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
626 points (98.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26690 readers
2147 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics.


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Monocultures in Agribusiness. One 'public secret' many outside of the industry might not be aware of is the prevalence of monocultures in crop farming. Vast expanses of land planted with the exact same genetic line of a crop. While this makes farming operations easier and often more profitable in the short term, it's a ticking time bomb for pests and diseases. One well-adapted pathogen could wipe out an entire crop species in an area (look up citrus greening in Florida), because there's no genetic diversity to halt its spread. But hey, it keeps the costs down...until there's no food to eat.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh boy, Potato Famine 2: This Time Everyone Starves! is gonna be "exciting."

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This happened with bananas, and is still happening. It basically wiped out the most popular kind of banana globally decades ago, and it never recovered.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Apparently that wiped out species is the one that you slip on for comedic purposes in cartoons.

Also, the banana aroma in sweets is an incredibly accurate representation of what that strain tasted like.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

and is still happening.

Don't just brush past this. A new strain of Panama Disease now infects Cavandish, the current strain of bananas. It's spread across the globe now, even to Colombia where most bananas are harvested.

The closest replacement will be plantains. No other strain can be reliably mass harvested for global demand.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The new banana sucks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This is happening now to a strain of oranges in Florida as well