
Can Crops’ Wild Relatives Save Troubled Agriculture? - onychomys
https://daily.jstor.org/can-crops-wild-relatives-save-troubled-agriculture/
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tengbretson
> Troubled Agriculture?

Is there some global famine going on that I somehow missed?

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abgfm
Yes, there is troubled agriculture about, with many issues about to implode.

Over-used pesticides (Glyphosate, etc) or insecticides (e.g. neonicotin-based)
which became systemic, heavily used (x times volumes of usage vs 20 yrs ago)
and which in light of new research have either shown that produce side efects
in environment or end-'consumer', i.e. humans or had side effect of
'developing' super-x (super-weeds, etc) which are no longer affected by
initial substances, forcing agriculture producers to use even stronger
substances (e.g. Dicamba).

Many of such systemic substances have started to be forbidden in civilized
countries (see EU trends of banning some of them).

On top of which there is the black-swan called climate-change which with its
sydtemic complexity has potential to produce systemic crop failures.

In not too long distant future farmers will have to assume an agriculture
hard-reset (in terms of inputs) which will assume high double-digit Y-o-Y
decrease in outputs/production.

My 2 cents.

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tengbretson
Not to mention peak oil, which is going to make mechanized agriculture
financially impossible.

Plus acid raid, which is going to cause continued crop loss every year.

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ropiwqefjnpoa
Great, more crossing-breeding with untested species we aren't used to
ingesting. I wonder what weird and wonderful food allergies we'll be able to
enjoy now?

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infecto
Is there any evidence that this has created food allergies?

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ropiwqefjnpoa
Gluten sensitivity comes to mind:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573730/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573730/)

The study finds that gluten consumption hasn't increased over the past few
decades and that a culprit is more likely "wheat genetics"

Anecdotally, I don't know if you know many genuinely GF people, but the ones I
know have all said that they can eat bread while in European countries, but
have bad reactions back home.

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windexh8er
There are two types of industrialized wheat. Dwarf and semi-dwarf. Compared to
ancient wheats like eikorn we're probably now realizing how bad these are
impacting health. Diabetes, celiac, etc. There are, at least, studies focusing
on it now [0].

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5397290/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5397290/)

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hanniabu
Possibly, but seed sellers put farmers into a corner and essentially force
them to use their proprietary seeds. So as with everything else wrong in the
world, good ol' capitalism wins again.

