What is a well known 'public secret' in the industry you work in that the majority of outsiders are unaware of?
What is a well known 'public secret' in the industry you work in that the majority of outsiders are unaware of?
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Monocultures in Agribusiness. One 'public secret' many outside of the industry might not be aware of is the prevalence of monocultures in crop farming. Vast expanses of land planted with the exact same genetic line of a crop. While this makes farming operations easier and often more profitable in the short term, it's a ticking time bomb for pests and diseases. One well-adapted pathogen could wipe out an entire crop species in an area (look up citrus greening in Florida), because there's no genetic diversity to halt its spread. But hey, it keeps the costs down...until there's no food to eat.
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This happened with bananas, and is still happening. It basically wiped out the most popular kind of banana globally decades ago, and it never recovered.
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Apparently that wiped out species is the one that you slip on for comedic purposes in cartoons.
Also, the banana aroma in sweets is an incredibly accurate representation of what that strain tasted like.
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and is still happening.
Don't just brush past this. A new strain of Panama Disease now infects Cavandish, the current strain of bananas. It's spread across the globe now, even to Colombia where most bananas are harvested.
The closest replacement will be plantains. No other strain can be reliably mass harvested for global demand.
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The new banana sucks.
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This is happening now to a strain of oranges in Florida as well
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Oh boy, Potato Famine 2: This Time Everyone Starves! is gonna be "exciting."
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Calm down Cletus
You are not going to die because your french fries only come in large, not XL now.
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Yeah, it would be trivial if the Midwest was completely fucked over by a blight.
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661 comments