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

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

#81

Post by tastyfreeze »

greetings wrote: post #24
MostlyStable wrote: post #12

Home 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…

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…

There are open design plans for homestead scale hand fed threshing and winnowing/seed cleaning machines. Put them in series. Sheeves of wheat in one end, clean grain on the other. Well worth the time to build if you are cleaning that quantity of grain.

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

#82

Post by _yb2s »

groby_b wrote: post #47
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Farming is easy and pays $$$$: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ysxzCoiu2gQ

Actually, I love farm work. I grew up in the country and did quite a bit of farm work when I was younger. It felt great to be outdoors, and not have the constant massive stress I now have as a knowledge worker with ADHD. But it pays poorly and is hard on your body.

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

#83

Post by tastyfreeze »

MostlyStable wrote: post #52
dheera wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I meant dead end in the sense that their genes aren't going anywhere. 90+% of home gardeners don't save seeds, and the few that do are almost certainly not preserving the strains they think they are since, most gardeners grow multiple varieties at the same time that are all getting cross pollinated. It was not meant to imply anything about the viability of the strain they are growing, many of which are fantastic heir…

I keep and grow as much seed as possible. It is the only way to adapt plants to your local environment and farming methods and needs. I get plants that are much easier to grow, then breed for taste or other features. Thats how the heirlooms were created.

If you are growing grains and harvesting by hand eat the seeds from shorter plants. Taller plants are easier to handle. And give more straw for animal bedding. Taller grains have been mostly bred out of the seed stock. Machines are more efficient on shorter plants.

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

#84

Post by timschmidt »

karaterobot wrote: post #55
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'm saying is, he's either proposing that every farm grows 1000x as many types of plants as they do today, or that a massive number of small farms (let us say 100 times as many as exist today) each grow a huge variety of plants (let's say 10 times as many types as they do today). But, crucially, these small farms could not grow the plants they chose to grow, instead they would have to grow an assortment of diver…

> or that a massive number of small farms (let us say 100 times as many as exist today) each grow a huge variety of plants (let's say 10 times as many types as they do today).

It's called a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nursery and many specialized in native and obscure cultivars.

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

#85

Post by meristohm »

wolverine876 wrote: post #65
aeternum wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way the world is today, that's the result of earlier people who changed it. Almost everything we have, from religion to politics to technology to morality to language to culture, etc. etc., all comes from people who intentionally changed things. Compare us to our ancestors 10,000 years ago, nomads emerging from the Paleolithic with only stone tools, no writing, etc. Reactionary perspectives - the hot trend of the…

> Compare us to our ancestors 10,000 years ago, nomads emerging from the Paleolithic with only stone tools, no writing, etc.

Aren't we still those people? Aren't stone tools, and tools made of wood, bone, and other plant & animal parts, enough? They don't require smelting (though I wouldn't be surprised if someone(s) 10,000 years ago got curious about the metal bits in their fire and traced it back to iron deposits in the sediment stuck to the wood gathered from a dry riverbed), and are far less environmentally damaging than a lot of the stuff we make these days.

Numerous other animals make and use tools, and plenty others don't seem to, and they get by okay- a meaningful life can be lived without the technological trappings we've cocooned ourselves in.

I take neither this phone nor reading and writing for granted; it's all wonderful and unnecessary technology. Who needs to read & write when you are part of a tight-knit, mutually-supportive community with a rich oral tradition going back millennia?

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

#87

Post by waynecochran »

greenie_beans wrote: post #79
waynecochran wrote: post #4

How 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?

seems like we should use the levers we have rather than hope for a moon shoot

Certainly. I am just curious if this is even a possibility in this century.

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

#88

Post by genewitch »

MostlyStable wrote: post #52
dheera wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I meant dead end in the sense that their genes aren't going anywhere. 90+% of home gardeners don't save seeds, and the few that do are almost certainly not preserving the strains they think they are since, most gardeners grow multiple varieties at the same time that are all getting cross pollinated. It was not meant to imply anything about the viability of the strain they are growing, many of which are fantastic heir…

even if they do get cross pollinated, if the seeds grow, who cares?

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

#89

Post by thriftwy »

> Russian shells hit the Plant Genetic Resources Bank in Kharkiv. Founded in 01908, the gene bank preserved the seeds of 160,000 varieties of crops and plant seeds

Founded by Russian Empire, propped forward by the USSR.

Both of these entities see so much undeserved slander from Ukrainian state and the whole world, so that neither deserve to inherit it.

Have your own Mickey Mouse Decolonial seed bank, use that one.

Same story with Syria which was purposefully destroyed by the US/EU. They didn't dislodge Assad but they did loot and then lose the seed bank.

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

#90

Post by kubb »

thriftwy wrote: post #89

> Russian shells hit the Plant Genetic Resources Bank in Kharkiv. Founded in 01908, the gene bank preserved the seeds of 160,000 varieties of crops and plant seeds Founded by Russian Empire, propped forward by the USSR. Both of these entities see so much undeserved slander from Ukrainian state and the whole world, so that neither deserve to inherit it. Have your own Mickey Mouse Decolonial seed bank, use that one. Sa…

This is some next level muddled thinking, does the Russian propaganda talk about “slander” and former territories of the empire “deserving” to be destroyed for not wanting to be an imperial province anymore?
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