And has been since every 6 months since 2008. Probably even before then, but hn.alogolia.com doesn't go back further.
There's always money in the banana story.
The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
81–90 of 193 posts
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that, but it's not like the body isn't accustomed to a wide range of food inputs. We know what chemical structures are deeply harmful to the body and what are digestible; assuming GMO variants are not totally different from the original we can rely on heuristics to determine their toxicity, can't we? It seems a little silly to outright dismiss GMO foods as long as they do not deviate too far from their parents
>We know what chemical structures are deeply harmful to the body and what are digestible No we don't, we only really start looking at new kinds of toxins when they start affecting us. GMO have one or many gene flipped, as a result many things are affected at once but genetic engineers/companies will look at optimising what interests them and ignoring the rest of the effect for the sake of cost cutting/simplification/…
> selective breeding takes a lot of time and for the species that we eat today we've had hundreds to thousands of years to observe if it harms us or not
Pardon my ignorance, but how is this different from GMO? Sure, it took a while to get to that particular cultivar with selective breeding, but at some point we got there and started to scale up the production. Where's the guarantee that the last few mutations before scaling up were not harmful on the very long term? It's not that they ran long experimental trials before marketing the tangelo...
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#83Bananas are the prime cautionary tale against monoculture. The number of native breeds which are now gone for the sake of promotion of one particular breed leads to less resilience against disease and pests. Just in my corner of India, there are various varieties. [1] However, in the U.S., the only variety you often get to see is the insipid Cavendish, whose only merit seems to be shelf-life. If you travel in the tro…
I currently live in Vietnam, but was recently traveling around Laos by motorbike. The bananas there are almost inedible... they taste awful. I found it fascinating how different they were compared with Vietnamese bananas. That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationali…
That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationalist news.
"I can't see the problem with my own eyes so I don't think there's a problem." is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to climate denial and anti-vaxx nonsense. Unless you've spent a lot of time and effort understanding the banana industry you simply aren't qualified to make that judgement.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#84> Other scientists—most notably, James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia—are testing genetically modified disease-resistant Cavendish bananas, but public acceptance of GMOs could prove a significant obstacle to their widespread adoption. This is the problem right here. The lack of science education. A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO", i…
It's easy to consider those that have different perspectives as plain disinformed, stupid, "uneducated" or anything along those lines but I would request you to be careful with that judgement. There are plenty of informed people who disagree with GMO for various reasons.
I'm open too but careful regarding GMO. It's clear the agricultural practices used in the US and China and in particular by the corporate giants are totally unsustainable and exploitative, often catching farmers in unexpected dependencies to buy new seeds or fertilizer/insecticide products each year. Not to speak of the monoculture, the negative impact on overall flora and fauna, etc. Often.the GMO crops are rather sensitive to specific conditions, leading to more such monocultures and the adaptation of agricultural lands to their specific cultivation (eliminating everything else in the process).
As much as you like to think you're scientific, science should be careful and jumping on every new plant that comes from a lab (no matter how promising) is not scientific but rather each plant should be field tested for several generations. Elwr don't understand genetics well. It's simply a lie to think we know the effects - we don't know what inserting genes from one plant into another does in the long term. Specifically, CRISPR & co are very imprecise and pretty much a matter of lucky shots, i.e. they normally insert much more than the intended genes. Moreover natural processes continue, so you get those plants pollinating other non-GMO strains. It's not like a website you can shut off - you introduce something into the environment and there's no way back.
See e.g. insect apocalypse and the nightmares Monsanto and it's likes have brought to smallholder farmers across the globe (promised big harvests but the seeds are castrated so that the farmers have to buy new ones each year), or the patent (!) lawsuits against farmers that have fields adjacent to GMO crops.
I would consider myself pro GMO, but only under the right conditions. There are plenty of other ways forward than just GMO - and we should try and use each path with care, not bet just on what is easiest. Moving away from the monocultures that caused these issues to begin with - rather than to go all in on mass-monoculture of new GMO crops - is a better way forward.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I currently live in Vietnam, but was recently traveling around Laos by motorbike. The bananas there are almost inedible... they taste awful. I found it fascinating how different they were compared with Vietnamese bananas. That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationali…
That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationalist news. "I can't see the problem with my own eyes so I don't think there's a problem." is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to climate denial and anti-vaxx nonsense. Unless you've spent a lot of time and effort unde…
Wow, that is a stretch to loop my thinking in with both of those movements. I am not even close to that nonsense.
Of course I'm no expert, but this whole banana disappearance story has been going on for many years, yet we still have bananas. There is not even close to a shortage of bananas. It reminds me of the Helium is running out stories.
Let me also remind you that the story is talking about a specific strain and my comment was clearly not about that strain.
I could also say... unless you've driven 8500km all over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and seen first hand the millions of banana trees, your thinking might be constrained to some one sitting behind a keyboard.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationalist news. "I can't see the problem with my own eyes so I don't think there's a problem." is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to climate denial and anti-vaxx nonsense. Unless you've spent a lot of time and effort unde…
Wow, that is a stretch to loop my thinking in with both of those movements. I am not even close to that nonsense. Of course I'm no expert, but this whole banana disappearance story has been going on for many years, yet we still have bananas. There is not even close to a shortage of bananas. It reminds me of the Helium is running out stories. Let me also remind you that the story is talking about a specific strain and…
> Let me also remind you that the story is talking about a specific strain and my comment was clearly not about that strain.
Since TR4 has reportedly been present in Southeast Asia for quite a while, sighting a ton of TR4-vulnerable bananas growing there would be evidence that the story is sensationalized.
But if the bananas you saw are TR4-resistant, your anecdote isn't really relevant at all.
In that case, or if you don't know which case it is, you really can't justifiably say that the article is sensationalized.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationalist news. "I can't see the problem with my own eyes so I don't think there's a problem." is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to climate denial and anti-vaxx nonsense. Unless you've spent a lot of time and effort unde…
Wow, that is a stretch to loop my thinking in with both of those movements. I am not even close to that nonsense. Of course I'm no expert, but this whole banana disappearance story has been going on for many years, yet we still have bananas. There is not even close to a shortage of bananas. It reminds me of the Helium is running out stories. Let me also remind you that the story is talking about a specific strain and…
There is not even close to a shortage of bananas.
IANABE (I am not a banana expert) but I know that no one suggested there is a shortage right now. What's threatened is the world's supply of Cavendish bananas which is what every Western country imports. Prior to that everyone ate Gros Michel bananas, but practically all plantations growing that particular crop were wiped out in the space of 30 years by Panama Disease. Cavendish was the response - it was Panama Disease resistant, but about 15 years ago the disease started attacking Cavendish crops. The concern is that this means we're a decade or two away from losing Cavendish and we don't have a suitable replacement (because, as people have said in this thread, other bananas aren't as tasty to Western palettes).
To post "Nah, there's no problem" shows you don't quite understand that problem, and to cite that you've seen a few big banana plantations as evidence that the problem isn't a real one just compounds the issue.
If Panama Disease mutates to attack the plantations you saw they could all be gone in a decade. That's how virulent the disease is. It is a problem.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I currently live in Vietnam, but was recently traveling around Laos by motorbike. The bananas there are almost inedible... they taste awful. I found it fascinating how different they were compared with Vietnamese bananas. That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationali…
That said, I saw huge fields of farmed trees literally everywhere there (as well as in VN). I don't think they are in any real danger of disappearing like these articles say. It is very sensationalist news. "I can't see the problem with my own eyes so I don't think there's a problem." is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to climate denial and anti-vaxx nonsense. Unless you've spent a lot of time and effort unde…
This is a very hostile comment that also does not contribute much to the discussion. The person you are responding to was making the case that in countries outside the traditional view of these media outlets, the alternative breeds are doing fine. That's a case worth making, because it counters the almost propagandist view of the world you will get from your couch reading western media outlets.
If you have a quality rebuttal of this point that would be a second issue, but comparing this human being who took the time to respond to you with a logically consistent argument an anti-vaxxer just because you can't see it right now is not healthy discourse.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * A banana modified in a lab and one that is bred through selective breeding are both "GMO"* Not really. The difference is that selective breeding takes a lot of time and for the species that we eat today we've had hundreds to thousands of years to observe if it harms us or not. When new drugs or foods get approved for consumption, the tests being made are for how our body affect the eaten food, and the assessment…
I get that, but it's not like the body isn't accustomed to a wide range of food inputs. We know what chemical structures are deeply harmful to the body and what are digestible; assuming GMO variants are not totally different from the original we can rely on heuristics to determine their toxicity, can't we? It seems a little silly to outright dismiss GMO foods as long as they do not deviate too far from their parents
You are making a case that is worth making and valuable, however:
> We know what chemical structures are deeply harmful to the body and what are digestible
Implying that nutrition is by and large a solved problem instead of a hugely moving target that is upended every ten years for knowledge of a completely different direction is very incorrect and harms the rest of that you are saying by proximity. Nutrition is not solved. We know what things will kill you for sure (and generally how fast), but things that kill you very slowly or that might very subtly be good for you are hard to measure and therefore not well documented.
Re: The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one thing people are worried about is simply unintended consequences. Humans have always had confidence of mastery over nature and more often than not we screw it up.
I think people are using irrational thought processes to come to nonsensical conclusions. The anti-GMO business is feeling over reason.
Saying that you don't trust a scientist with only a tenuous grasp (because that is all we have) of what nutrition is or should be (and what things might be harmful over 10-30 years) to make grand and sweeping changes to how an organism works is not feeling over reason. It is a different form of risk-management, one that you might not agree with (and that's fine).