Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Regardless of what is natural or has occurred before, reduction of biodiversity is dangerous to our own safety as a species - monocultures are more easily wiped out. If there were a terrible cow virus, we might be thankful to have emus around for example. Edit: and far more pertinent, particularly in the American Midwest, is our reliance on large quantities of single strains of corn...


Hopefully our seed vaults, and cataloging DNA of species before they die off, will let us re-introduce biodiversity into our agriculture.

Of course, I doubt we will attempt to do so until after the first monoculture collapse, but that is a (relativly) short term catastraphy.


Dessert bananas aren't a super important food, but the first monoculture collapse arguably already happened:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: