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Comment on A disease that makes crops inedible would be so much worse than any pandemic

There was a scifi novel in the olden days that had exactly that scenario: A fast spreading disease that first took out rice, which lead to mass starvation and politicla unrest in Asia. This was countered by sending food from the US and Europe, depleting their reserves. Then, the next year, the virus (or whatever) made the jump over to all members of the oryzee family, i.e. all cereals, worldwide. No wheat, no barley, no maize - all dead except a few plants kept safe in secure labs.

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Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah that’s totally unrealistic, in a biodiversity ecosystem, the varus shouldn’t be able to propagate wildly, I mean, for that to happen you would have to have planted vast areas of monoculture crops, all with the same or similar genetic traits, without many buffer zones, and a depleted soil full of biologically inert chemical fertilisers, devoid of a healthy and resilient soil microbiome… oh… oh no…

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- Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fun fact, this is happening with Bananas. The only way they can contain it is by annihilating entire fields.
  
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  - Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Fun! Fun, fun, fun. Fun.
    
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    moistclump@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Cool cool cool cool cool. Cool.
    
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  - aegis_sum@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    True, but all bananas are clones and have almost no genetic diversity and are all susceptible to the same diseases.
    
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    Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So are many of our food cash crops.
    
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- Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Keep in mind that the book is so old, I cannot even find it online. It was published in a “Classic Science Fiction” edition when I was a kid.
  
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  - Palerider@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I believe the book you are talking about is "The Death Of Grass’.
    
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    jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Figured that would be Nancy Reagan’s autobiography.
    
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  - Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Brand new idea, you say? Let me get my writing fingers on.
    
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Bonehead@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Isn't this also the basic plot of Interstellar?

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- BURN@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is. The corn is all dying and is so monogenetic that it is all susceptible to the same diseases.
  
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- Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No idea. Never seen it.
  
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
interstellar music

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- Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That I’ve listened to, it is a great organ piece.
  
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Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In the movie Interstellar there’s a blight that is destroying all of the crops across the world.

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