The ever increasing trend toward agricultural monocultures is perhaps the single biggest environmental threat that we face. By genetically engineering seeds in an attempt to create disease and pest resistant super-breeds and preventing farmers from collecting and saving seeds we limiting the natural course of evolution of plants and artificially limiting variety.
The problem is that the bugs and diseases we are trying to fight continue to evolve and become resistant to our attempts at countermeasures. No matter how hard humans try, we can never anticipate every eventuality.
Without a variety of breeds, monocultures inevitably succumb to something we couldn't anticipate. We need to acknowledge that while tremendous strides in nutrition and human health have been made through science over the past century, we shouldn't be so egotistical as to assume that we can solve everything. In some cases we should let nature takes it course and that includes letting different breeds of plants and animals flourish so that we can hedge against the threats to our food supply.
Reshared post from +Full Circle
This infographic shows a reduction of produce variety in the last century as a direct result of big businesses (i.e. Monsanto) controlling the world seed supply. It's time to change our food system!!
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I agree, Sam. That's why I am working on a startup (+Urbsly) that will solve part of that problem, by making a wider range of varieties accessible to growers (focusing on home gardeners to start).
+Michael Bernstein we try to do our part too by supporting local farmers growing heritage varieties of vegetables and meat. We have a share in a local farmer's meat CSA and he raises numerous heritage breeds of chickens, goats, pigs and ducks.