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Two related thoughts: - A potential European famine won't happen because the lacking quantities of food will be imported, to the detriment of all with less pur

Two related thoughts: - A potential European famine won't happen because the lacking quantities of food will be imported, to the detriment of all with less purchasing power and no sufficient own production (read Africa) - Is there some principle similar to "financial diversification" applied in Agriculture to obtain a Portfolio with low risk? I could imagine to use some "genome distance" instead of asset correlation.

ratacat 10y ago
It's called genetic diversity. Look at traditional methods of potatoe farming in Peru and the Andes. They breed thousands of varieties. Look up some pictures, it's crazy. Our modern method of high input, high petroleum leveraged mono cropping is highly susceptible to blight.
- shawn-butler 10y ago
  First, mono-cropping generally refers to single crop, year-on-year. It does not mean single, variety/hybrid as you suggest. Second, your assertion regarding agriculture in the US just doesn't really match reality. USDA data[0] in 2014 indicated that only 16 percent of corn, 14 percent of spring wheat and 6 percent of soybean acreage is continuously planted with one crop over a three-year period. More recent data is available feel free to validate it for yourself. Duo-cropping or a 3-crop rotation is the norm. [0]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/crop-livestock-practices/soil-tillage-and-crop-rotation.aspx#.U1_tG_ldWSo https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/cr...
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
    Isn't that consistent with a system of 'corn A / corn A / soybean B / repeat'?
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    You’re missing the point. Nearly all the corn grown and sold in the USA is a few varieties, and one goal of industrial agriculture is perfect uniformity of output. If you go look at Mexican peasant farms from 50+ years ago (and going back millennia), you’ll see corn of every conceivable size and color, differing broadly from region to region, and locally matched to each particular micro-climate. Same story for all crops grown traditionally in their regions of origin, which usually have thousands of varieties with diverse traits. Whether they are planted continuously, or rotated with other crops, etc., doesn’t change the fundamental lack of genetic diversity in our modern industrial agriculture system.
    - searine 10y ago
      > If you go look at Mexican peasant farms from 50+ years ago The goal of modern agriculture shouldn't be to produce like peasants. Their output was low, product homogenous, and crop was prone to catastrophic failure. All very bad things. >e the fundamental lack of genetic diversity in our modern industrial agriculture system. Diversity is a renewable resource. Even despite that, there already exists an incredible library of diversity breeders use to create yearly hybrid crops. The reason only a few types are planted each year is because they are optimized for that season. Stop assuming modern farmers don't know what they are doing, and stop leaning on an authenticity bias of yesteryear.
      - jacobolus 10y ago
        I never said modern farmers don’t know what they’re doing. They’re very good at maximizing revenue (via crop uniformity and yield, marketable plant attributes, intense land use, efficient distribution, maximizing government subsidies, etc...) while minimizing input costs (especially labor). This has been fantastic at reducing the number of people required to work in agriculture, and at producing more food than ever before on the same amount of land. It’s fair to say that our current world population would be entirely unsustainable without industrial agriculture. There are big systemic risks and unaccounted external costs though (to farms and ranches, to the local environment, to people living nearby, and to the planet), in e.g. using water from aquifers at above-replacement rate; topsoil erosion at faster than replacement rate; large-scale use of a tiny number of plant varieties; widespread use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers which run off into local waterways; promoting crops with less nutritional value because they have improved size or durability or prettier appearance; feeding animals large quantities of antibiotics and potentially breeding resistant bacteria; et cetera. (P.S. we owe an awful lot to hundreds of generations of Mexican peasant farmers. Corn, tomatoes, squash, pinto beans, chilies, avocados, chocolate, tobacco, ... they ate a substantially healthier diet than most people in Europe at the time and supported larger cities and higher population density, despite the lack of draft animals.)
        searine 10y ago
- Qantourisc 10y ago
  On the bright side, your potatoes would be less boring, because of more diversity on your plate. Now variety might not be enough though: many humans, but we still had plaques.
Gustomaximus 10y ago
> A potential European famine won't happen because the lacking quantities of food will be imported, to the detriment of all with less purchasing power I can't believe that in today's connected world this would happen to the determent of other nations. Sure 150 years ago in Ireland type scenario but these days if a local populace was starving the government would shut borders on food. No democratic government would stay in power otherwise and I doubt a dictatorship could either. It's a different world. That said purchasing power would be used by wealthy nations to buy any excess. But also I feel like in the scenario from the book there would be very limited excess so it's a stretch to claim there would be no European famine as you can't expect there to be excess food from any nation. Grass overs a hell of a lot of food production directly and also indirectly in things like meat production.
- latch 10y ago
  What? This is basic supply and demand. The supply goes down, the demand stays the same (in fact, demand grows because of panic), so prices rise. Rich countries continue to eat, poor countries starve. What does democracy in, say, the Philippines have to do with the fact that an exporter (of which there are now less of) can sell to England for $0.20/pound or sell to the Philippines for $0.10/pound? Consider the 2008 rice crisis which wasn't caused by a shortage of rice (1). You also see this when staple foods suddenly become trendy (2) (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_global_rice_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_global_rice_crisis (2) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans...

ratacat 10y ago

It's called genetic diversity. Look at traditional methods of potatoe farming in Peru and the Andes. They breed thousands of varieties. Look up some pictures, it's crazy. Our modern method of high input, high petroleum leveraged mono cropping is highly susceptible to blight.

shawn-butler 10y ago
First, mono-cropping generally refers to single crop, year-on-year. It does not mean single, variety/hybrid as you suggest. Second, your assertion regarding agriculture in the US just doesn't really match reality. USDA data[0] in 2014 indicated that only 16 percent of corn, 14 percent of spring wheat and 6 percent of soybean acreage is continuously planted with one crop over a three-year period. More recent data is available feel free to validate it for yourself. Duo-cropping or a 3-crop rotation is the norm. [0]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/crop-livestock-practices/soil-tillage-and-crop-rotation.aspx#.U1_tG_ldWSo https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/cr...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Isn't that consistent with a system of 'corn A / corn A / soybean B / repeat'?
- jacobolus 10y ago
  You’re missing the point. Nearly all the corn grown and sold in the USA is a few varieties, and one goal of industrial agriculture is perfect uniformity of output. If you go look at Mexican peasant farms from 50+ years ago (and going back millennia), you’ll see corn of every conceivable size and color, differing broadly from region to region, and locally matched to each particular micro-climate. Same story for all crops grown traditionally in their regions of origin, which usually have thousands of varieties with diverse traits. Whether they are planted continuously, or rotated with other crops, etc., doesn’t change the fundamental lack of genetic diversity in our modern industrial agriculture system.
  - searine 10y ago
    > If you go look at Mexican peasant farms from 50+ years ago The goal of modern agriculture shouldn't be to produce like peasants. Their output was low, product homogenous, and crop was prone to catastrophic failure. All very bad things. >e the fundamental lack of genetic diversity in our modern industrial agriculture system. Diversity is a renewable resource. Even despite that, there already exists an incredible library of diversity breeders use to create yearly hybrid crops. The reason only a few types are planted each year is because they are optimized for that season. Stop assuming modern farmers don't know what they are doing, and stop leaning on an authenticity bias of yesteryear.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      I never said modern farmers don’t know what they’re doing. They’re very good at maximizing revenue (via crop uniformity and yield, marketable plant attributes, intense land use, efficient distribution, maximizing government subsidies, etc...) while minimizing input costs (especially labor). This has been fantastic at reducing the number of people required to work in agriculture, and at producing more food than ever before on the same amount of land. It’s fair to say that our current world population would be entirely unsustainable without industrial agriculture. There are big systemic risks and unaccounted external costs though (to farms and ranches, to the local environment, to people living nearby, and to the planet), in e.g. using water from aquifers at above-replacement rate; topsoil erosion at faster than replacement rate; large-scale use of a tiny number of plant varieties; widespread use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers which run off into local waterways; promoting crops with less nutritional value because they have improved size or durability or prettier appearance; feeding animals large quantities of antibiotics and potentially breeding resistant bacteria; et cetera. (P.S. we owe an awful lot to hundreds of generations of Mexican peasant farmers. Corn, tomatoes, squash, pinto beans, chilies, avocados, chocolate, tobacco, ... they ate a substantially healthier diet than most people in Europe at the time and supported larger cities and higher population density, despite the lack of draft animals.)
      - searine 10y ago
Qantourisc 10y ago
On the bright side, your potatoes would be less boring, because of more diversity on your plate. Now variety might not be enough though: many humans, but we still had plaques.

Gustomaximus 10y ago

> A potential European famine won't happen because the lacking quantities of food will be imported, to the detriment of all with less purchasing power I can't believe that in today's connected world this would happen to the determent of other nations. Sure 150 years ago in Ireland type scenario but these days if a local populace was starving the government would shut borders on food. No democratic government would stay in power otherwise and I doubt a dictatorship could either. It's a different world. That said purchasing power would be used by wealthy nations to buy any excess. But also I feel like in the scenario from the book there would be very limited excess so it's a stretch to claim there would be no European famine as you can't expect there to be excess food from any nation. Grass overs a hell of a lot of food production directly and also indirectly in things like meat production.

latch 10y ago
What? This is basic supply and demand. The supply goes down, the demand stays the same (in fact, demand grows because of panic), so prices rise. Rich countries continue to eat, poor countries starve. What does democracy in, say, the Philippines have to do with the fact that an exporter (of which there are now less of) can sell to England for $0.20/pound or sell to the Philippines for $0.10/pound? Consider the 2008 rice crisis which wasn't caused by a shortage of rice (1). You also see this when staple foods suddenly become trendy (2) (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_global_rice_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_global_rice_crisis (2) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans...