this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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[–] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 57 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.

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 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.

[–] ccunix@lemmy.world 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.

[–] droans@lemmy.world 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.

[–] Comment105@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

The new banana sucks.

[–] jdsquared@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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