10-07-2013, 09:59 AM
Bullwinkle:
I agree with you on the mono-crop issue. Trading a less productive but highly diverse stock of food crops for a single crop, almost no matter how productive, has a huge downside that we won't see until it comes crashing down on us. On a related note it has been decades since I really benefited from either seat-belts or insurance. Could it be I wasted that money?
I consider that "solving" the worlds hunger problems through creation of ever more productive crops to be a double edged sword. It is what mankind has done for millenia although I don't think that it ever really kept pace with natural population growth until today. I am skeptical that science can continue to pull rabbits out of a hat indefinitely and on cue as they are needed. When that time comes we won't have the needed magic bullet AND we won't have the wide selection of old strains being widely cultivated, some of which have always been there in the past to save at least some of us.
I agree with you on the mono-crop issue. Trading a less productive but highly diverse stock of food crops for a single crop, almost no matter how productive, has a huge downside that we won't see until it comes crashing down on us. On a related note it has been decades since I really benefited from either seat-belts or insurance. Could it be I wasted that money?
I consider that "solving" the worlds hunger problems through creation of ever more productive crops to be a double edged sword. It is what mankind has done for millenia although I don't think that it ever really kept pace with natural population growth until today. I am skeptical that science can continue to pull rabbits out of a hat indefinitely and on cue as they are needed. When that time comes we won't have the needed magic bullet AND we won't have the wide selection of old strains being widely cultivated, some of which have always been there in the past to save at least some of us.