Okay, I’ll eat it. I am sure it will be all flavorful and delicious. But how do I get it, to eat?
For most HN readers, the practical answer is to go to a farmer's market and pay $20 for a bag of weird-looking heirloom tomatoes.
Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
41–50 of 127 posts
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#42If 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…
I want my own small farm, but I think that I want to make food instead of money. It's a different proposition, I suppose.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#43Home gardeners seem like a pretty good option here. For more regular vegetables, this is already a thing that exists with seed libraries and exchanges, and programs that preserve heirloom varietals and sell the seeds to gardeners. Buying these seeds is basically just a way to help pay for the continued cultivation by the breeder (unfortunately, unless you really know what you are doing and are quite careful, preservi…
> are a dead-end genetically
Is this on purpose or a technical limitation?
Can we create a new plant that (1) tastes good (2) is not a genetic dead end (3) is easily spread to other farms by squirrels and birds (4) low maintainence, and put an end to this DRM?
I mean it would be kind of nice if there existed a forest full of food that nobody had to maintain.
> they are paying to support the continued cultivation of those varieties
The plants are living beings, if they are allowed to behave like living beings without being crippled, perhaps the varieties will continue to exist naturally without said support.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#44How far are we from just saving the genetic code digitally and then synthesizing the seeds by arranging a sequence of amino acids to instantiate viable nucleotides? Is this still science fiction?
I wonder what would be achieved first: genetic synthesis or matter replication.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#45Home gardeners seem like a pretty good option here. For more regular vegetables, this is already a thing that exists with seed libraries and exchanges, and programs that preserve heirloom varietals and sell the seeds to gardeners. Buying these seeds is basically just a way to help pay for the continued cultivation by the breeder (unfortunately, unless you really know what you are doing and are quite careful, preservi…
> are a dead-end genetically Is this on purpose or a technical limitation? Can we create a new plant that (1) tastes good (2) is not a genetic dead end (3) is easily spread to other farms by squirrels and birds (4) low maintainence, and put an end to this DRM? I mean it would be kind of nice if there existed a forest full of food that nobody had to maintain. > they are paying to support the continued cultivation of t…
> The plants are living beings, if they are allowed to behave like living beings without being crippled, perhaps the varieties will continue to exist naturally without said support.
Alas, there are too many humans for that. So, either you support the plants, or one of us has to give - plants or humans. Humans aren't known for giving in, which means slim odds for unsupported plants.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seeds are more than just a program. They are more an embryo than a cell.
You're making a distinction without a difference there.
Seeds are much more than single cells. Embryos are much more than single cells.
The comparison is apt, and highlights a relevant difference.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#47If 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…
I want my own small farm, but I think that I want to make food instead of money. It's a different proposition, I suppose.
This is likely not an answer. Small-scale sustenance farming is not enough to support humanity at scale. (Without ag-industry methods, we're about 4 billion people past the planets carrying capacity)
Also, if that small farm is something you dream about, I strongly suggest actually working on a farm for a while. It is surprisingly not fun. I know "I'm gonna have a farm" is a popular escapist things for many folks in tech - it is for me as well, the fantasy is great :) It's just good to know what that actually means, and then deciding if you really want to do that. (For me, it means I have three plants on my balcony to keep the dream, and skip the full experience because I know I wouldn't enjoy it)
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Long Now Foundation's mission is "Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now." The leading zero is a way to trigger people to think about the next 10,000 years.
Interesting, thanks! I'd never heard of The Long Now Foundation before.
Interesting. Gets you wondering what else you might not have heard of.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seeds are more than just a program. They are more an embryo than a cell.
You're making a distinction without a difference there.
No, it's not. Seeds and even embryos are to DNA what a running piece of software (and especially, a Lisp/Smalltalk image) is to its source code: the latter stores only a fraction of the former.
And then consider that life is always built by other life, there is no bootstrapping from source code happening. Compare with Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust", and realize that the most important bits about life may not even be encoded in the DNA, but rather in the runtime state that's passed "out of band" from generation to generation.
Re: Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
#50Why 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.
Some people seem to think its a long way to the chemists, but thats peanuts to space.