Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

longnow.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 127 posts

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#31

Post by Nzen »

evan_ wrote: post #26
damnesian wrote: post #17

A conclusion I reached while reading this article that I can't shake is Adolf Hitler was more forward-thinking, and compassionate, in a way, than Vladimir Putin.

[flagged]

To salvage this sow's ear: damnesian referred to the framing story of this article. Namely, that the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine threatened the world supply of wheat in general and specifically destroyed the Plant Genetic Resources Bank in Kharkiv. Grescoe contrasts this with the World War 2 invasion, which spared the research facility.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#32

Post by lm28469 »

schoen wrote: post #28
greetings wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wowa, something I have experience with. I've harvested 25lbs of wheat berries from a boulevard in my city. I then threshed, winnowed it myself. I still have some of the flour and berries left and use it to make bread. I did my threshing using a lawn mower on a big tarp. This actually worked fairly well. Were I to do it again I would probably want a more repeatable setup. Ive seen some good strategies on youtube. The…

How did that boulevard end up planted with edible wheat?

I'd be more worried about how polluted it is

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#35

Post by citruscomputing »

karaterobot wrote: post #22

If there are hundreds of thousands of plant varieties in that massive seed bank in Svalbard, and only 150 plants are cultivated for consumption today, how the heck is eating a more diverse range of plants supposed to replace seed banks? Is it that everyone on earth is going to eat 1000x more plants than we do now, or is it that there will be 1000x more farms, each making 1/1000th as much money? I know the author is n…

If I understand correctly, it's that everyone will still eat < 100 plants, but they'll be different ones from everyone else. Maybe every grocery store won't have the exact same kinds of squash in it. Maybe we'll have more region-specific crops! The example given about olive trees is illustrative, I think.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#37

Post by aeternum »

karaterobot wrote: post #22

If there are hundreds of thousands of plant varieties in that massive seed bank in Svalbard, and only 150 plants are cultivated for consumption today, how the heck is eating a more diverse range of plants supposed to replace seed banks? Is it that everyone on earth is going to eat 1000x more plants than we do now, or is it that there will be 1000x more farms, each making 1/1000th as much money? I know the author is n…

My idea can't be wrong, it's the world that must change.

That about summarizes these types of articles. Solutions that do not require the world to change its behavior should be favored. Perhaps we could launch seed containers into low orbits such that they automatically and safely return to earth centuries in the future just in case.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#38

Post by 0xTJ »

just_1_comment wrote: post #36

Why are the years in this article preceded by a zero? For example instead of writing the year as 2011 it’s written as 02011.

From the homepage of the site:

> The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking.

Seems that it's adding a zero to make you think of the future, and thinking over long periods of time. Looking at scales of thousands of years instead of tens or even hundreds.

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#39

Post by sratner »

just_1_comment wrote: post #36

Why are the years in this article preceded by a zero? For example instead of writing the year as 2011 it’s written as 02011.

It's a Long Now thing - emphasizing that they are thinking/talking about problems on millennia timescales. They also did the 10000yr clock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food

#40

Post by aeternum »

just_1_comment wrote: post #36

Why are the years in this article preceded by a zero? For example instead of writing the year as 2011 it’s written as 02011.

To subtly imply that the articles are of such sublime quality that they will still be referenced in 10,000 years.
Post reply on HN