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I'm not sure climate change bears more blame than agricultural systems that incentivize monocultures fragile in the face of external stresses. Climate change is

by blix 7y ago

I'm not sure climate change bears more blame than agricultural systems that incentivize monocultures fragile in the face of external stresses. Climate change is only one such stress. Crop diseases are as old as agriculture. And really, agricultural collapse is quite separate from ecosystem collapse; agriculture is many ways defined by the intentional absence of ecosystem.

throwaway5752 7y ago
Just going by the wikipedia entry for X. fastidiosa, but "Symptoms of X. fastidiosa diseases worsen during hot, dry periods in the summer: lack of water and maximum demand from a full canopy of leaves combined with symptoms due to disease stress infected plants to a breaking point. Cold winters can limit the spread of the disease;[8] as occurs in California, but not in regions with milder winters such as Brazil." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa#Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa#Environment) It sounds like this could definitely be related to climate change. I'm sure monoculture agriculture doesn't help, but (based on quick searching) olive trees don't fruit in a commercially viable way until they are 7+ years old and don't reach peak yield until they are 70 years old. If it was purely a monoculture issue, I'd question why it didn't happen sooner given the lead time necessary to increase production.
- briandear 7y ago
  Yet in 1956 a devastating freeze destroyed the French olive oil industry. So perhaps an argument could be made that if there was more global warming in 1956, the industry would be more robust. We can play the “climate change causes everything bad” game for pretty much anything, but we’d be intellectually dishonest if we denied that climate change could actually have benefits.
  - jchw 7y ago
    This logic feels somewhere along the lines of death as a cure for cancer.
- blix 7y ago
  I don't think it's necesarily one or the other. Climate change is a stressor, and monoculture makes crops less reseilient to stress. Crops undergo massive failures relatively frequently. Bananas are headed towards their second extinction this half-century. As stresses perhaps become more acute due to a rapidly changing climate and environment, this lack of resliliency may prove quite harmful, more so than the damage that can be reliably attributed to any individual stressor.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    I don't know, I actually don't know enough about olive farming practices to know if monoculture is a factor? I assume this is a factor and you are correct. I did find a Nature article about it https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45365-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45365-y that was pretty useful. Seems to suggest it was a factor and may expand the effected range, but it is also an introduced disease and doesn't require climate change to impact large parts of the Mediterranean coast. edit: You may be interested to know bananas didn't go extinct, per se. Mass market US bananas are propagated clones. We have bred the seeds out of bananas (with rare exceptions), so most large scale agricultural plants are tissue culture or cutting clones. The mass market variety was the Gros Michel/Big Mike, which you can still buy online easily. Panama Rust is adapting to the Cavendish, which was resistant when it became the new US mass market variety after the Cavendish. Greater availability of other varieties would be great. Neither of those are the best bananas out there (Nam Wah, Pisang Raja, and Blue Java are all great).
    - blix 7y ago
      Thanks for the paper :) This seems ominious for olives at large, and points to globalization as a larger culprit than climate change. Global trade seems even less likely to disappear than fossile fuels. The history of bananas is quite interesting, and the future looks to be as well. While it did fall short of true extinction, I'm hopeful we can learn from past mistakes. Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to try one of the other cultivars someday.

by blix 7y ago

throwaway5752 7y ago

Just going by the wikipedia entry for X. fastidiosa, but "Symptoms of X. fastidiosa diseases worsen during hot, dry periods in the summer: lack of water and maximum demand from a full canopy of leaves combined with symptoms due to disease stress infected plants to a breaking point. Cold winters can limit the spread of the disease;[8] as occurs in California, but not in regions with milder winters such as Brazil." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa#Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa#Environment) It sounds like this could definitely be related to climate change. I'm sure monoculture agriculture doesn't help, but (based on quick searching) olive trees don't fruit in a commercially viable way until they are 7+ years old and don't reach peak yield until they are 70 years old. If it was purely a monoculture issue, I'd question why it didn't happen sooner given the lead time necessary to increase production.

briandear 7y ago
Yet in 1956 a devastating freeze destroyed the French olive oil industry. So perhaps an argument could be made that if there was more global warming in 1956, the industry would be more robust. We can play the “climate change causes everything bad” game for pretty much anything, but we’d be intellectually dishonest if we denied that climate change could actually have benefits.
- jchw 7y ago
  This logic feels somewhere along the lines of death as a cure for cancer.
blix 7y ago
I don't think it's necesarily one or the other. Climate change is a stressor, and monoculture makes crops less reseilient to stress. Crops undergo massive failures relatively frequently. Bananas are headed towards their second extinction this half-century. As stresses perhaps become more acute due to a rapidly changing climate and environment, this lack of resliliency may prove quite harmful, more so than the damage that can be reliably attributed to any individual stressor.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  I don't know, I actually don't know enough about olive farming practices to know if monoculture is a factor? I assume this is a factor and you are correct. I did find a Nature article about it https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45365-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45365-y that was pretty useful. Seems to suggest it was a factor and may expand the effected range, but it is also an introduced disease and doesn't require climate change to impact large parts of the Mediterranean coast. edit: You may be interested to know bananas didn't go extinct, per se. Mass market US bananas are propagated clones. We have bred the seeds out of bananas (with rare exceptions), so most large scale agricultural plants are tissue culture or cutting clones. The mass market variety was the Gros Michel/Big Mike, which you can still buy online easily. Panama Rust is adapting to the Cavendish, which was resistant when it became the new US mass market variety after the Cavendish. Greater availability of other varieties would be great. Neither of those are the best bananas out there (Nam Wah, Pisang Raja, and Blue Java are all great).
  - blix 7y ago
    Thanks for the paper :) This seems ominious for olives at large, and points to globalization as a larger culprit than climate change. Global trade seems even less likely to disappear than fossile fuels. The history of bananas is quite interesting, and the future looks to be as well. While it did fall short of true extinction, I'm hopeful we can learn from past mistakes. Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to try one of the other cultivars someday.