Mycelium is very important to agriculture. Every plant has different threats, but I'll use apple trees because I have those. Phytophthora rot is referred to as a fungus but actually is not. Apple scab can be mitigated with a biological control (read: natural predator) and apple rust is solved by proper spacing away from conifers (don't plant an apple orchard within 4-5 miles of a juniper forest) or simply removing galls from affected cedars. Unlike Phytophthora, both of those are a certain kind of fungus which has a different relationship with its host than mycelium does.
Somewhat non-sequitur, we also grow mushrooms. Throwing spent mushroom cakes into my worm bin is an actual super power in composting. It breaks large things down that the worms won't go after so that they're small enough that the worms do go after them.
Ah right, I was thinking of fungal-dominant soil and compost, but wasn’t thinking of fungal disease above ground.
Growing mushrooms is one of those things that’s been on my list forever, but I never get around to setting anything up. What system do you use for your mushrooms?
Rad, I’ll check it out! Btw since you’re into worms, you should come join the community at https://community.wormpeople.com. New folks are always welcome and everybody is very nice and knowledgeable.
Actually, the cause of the potato blight, P. infestans, wasn't a fungus at all, but actually a stramenopile, a group of microorganisms less related to us than fungi are. It was thought to be a fungus at the time because it forms strands that look like mold hyphae, but that's just convergent evolution.
As a gardener, fungal diseases probably cost the most each year in plant loss. They are very difficult to eradicate once established and fungal spores are microscopic and very good at spreading. I’ve had years of 100% loss on tomato’s, peppers, and apple trees, all from tiny fungi.
I grow mushrooms as a hobby and in that context my number one enemy is trichoderma, the green mold. This is because trichoderma is parasitic on other fungi, i.e. it doesn't colonize the substrates that I grow my fungi on, it directly colonizes (eats) the fungal threads (mycelium) thereby killing it off before it has a chance to "fruit" (produce mushrooms).
This is how I initially learned that trichoderma is used as a natural "fungicide". In your specific case it might be interesting to investigate this in more detail, e.g. you can "inoculate" your soil with copious amounts of trichoderma to fight off other fungi.
Monocultures have a multiplying effect on this, and if you really want to avoid problems you also have to worry about closely related plants.
If you avoid monocropping cherries by mixing four different stone fruits, you don’t achieve much. And apples are rosaceae, as are many many other plants, and a lot of pathogens can hop between them.
And every common garden invertebrate loves to nom on fabaceae.
Humans have the capacity to reason, and the ability to obtain all essential nutrients on an entirely plant-based diet if they simply make the decision to do so. If one is in a survival situation where one must eat meat to survive, then that’s one thing. But by and large, people do not need to eat meat. They choose to. To assert otherwise is dishonest.
> Humans [can] obtain all essential nutrients on an entirely plant-based diet
You need supplementation on a vegan diet for a reason. Entirely plant-based diets are not nutritionally complete. Even with proper supplementation, bioavailability is extremely low in plants compared to animal foods.
It is okay to be a vegan for your own moral reasons, but to push it on others as it being an intelligence choice (it is not) is to be inconsiderate of one's fellow human beings and their long-term health.
I’m not saying it’s an intelligence choice in that you’re stupid if you eat meat. I’m saying that it is possible to have a nutritionally complete diet without including meat, and that that is a decision that we can make as humans.
Your sources don’t even refute this. Yes, supplementation for things like B12 and omegas are required. We eat a variety of fortified foods in the modern age anyway and supplementation is trivial. Yes, you need to eat a diverse range of foods to obtain a balance of essential nutrients. That doesn’t mean you cannot maintain long term health on a vegan diet.
Vegan diets are not nutritionally complete, even with supplements.
The sources do refute your point; I can tell that you have not read them, as you ignored addressing the part of my comment about bioavailability (which two of these sources mention).
Second comment following up on my other one. Your own links undermine your own argument.
From your second source:
> Carefully constructed vegan diets could provide adequate amounts of all six priority micronutrients for the general population, except vitamin B12, which would need to be consumed through fortified foods or supplements.
Further, the opening paragraph of your third link undermines your entire argument as well
> Diets that limit the consumption of animal source food to very low levels require careful fortification or supplementation, and the inclusion of specific nutrient-dense plants. If these cautionary measures are neglected, vegetarian and, especially, vegan populations risk to suffer from deficiencies in some key animal source food-associated nutrients."
It specifically says that vegan populations risk deficiencies when not including nutrient-dense foods and fortification/supplementation. It specifically does not say that full nutrition is impossible without animal products.
Event the title implicitly supports my argument: "Not all (micro)nutrients are easily obtained from plants." Emphasis on "easily."
The word "cannot" only appears alongside B12. The phrase "does not" doesn't appear alongside any nutrients intake. And the word "impossible" doesn't show up at all.
Are you sure that you read the articles you're claiming that I did not read?
I did look at your sources. They describe lower bioavailability and nutrient density, and have advisements for supplementation and a diverse diet. Low density and bioavailability does not mean non-existent. Low bioavailability does not mean not at all bioavailable. Can you point to a specific line that says it is impossible to obtain a nutrient in sufficient quantities on a vegan diet, even with supplementation? The third link seems to be the most related to your point, but I don’t think it says what you’re arguing, from what I can see. I’m sorry to say that the links are long and I going to need you to point me to lines that support your thesis.
You said, "But by and large, people do not need to eat meat" so I must conclude that plants are just dummy food put in nature by God for humans to eat (divine intervention)
When you say vegan stuff like that, you should be more precise: people do not need to eat meat to survive. Survival and good health are on the opposite end of the spectrum.
> so I must conclude that plants are just dummy food put in nature by God for humans to eat (divine intervention)
Honestly no idea what you’re talking about, here.
> When you say vegan stuff like that, you should be more precise: people do not need to eat meat to survive. Survival and good health are on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I needn’t be more precise. Meat is not required for survival or for good health. Exception being if one’s situation demands eating meat. For somebody reading/commenting on HN, eating meat is almost certainly a decision, not a requirement of any sort.
I’ve deep-dived into regenerative farming practices over the past six months, and commercial herbicides scare the hell out of me. These things are basically developed to very effectively kill non-grass, broadleaf plants. Unfortunately, that covers much of what we like to grow to eat, like tomatoes, potatoes, and legumes. Hence why the article mentions that GMO soybeans and cotton were developed to be resistant to this particular herbicide, and why it’s so devastating to crops.
And it’s scary how effective these things are. Aminopyralids (glyphosates, like grazon or roundup) can affect plants at concentrations of 1 part per billion (ppb), and apparently soil tests generally only test down to 5 ppb. So you could have contaminated soil or materials and have no idea, even if you ran a test. So the only real way to know is to test plant some peas or something to see whether they show signs of contamination. And hope that you have tested a representative sample.
These chemicals apparently mess with the stacking behavior of plant cells. So as the plant grows larger, the stems and leaves become more and more twisted and curled due to the cells not stacking properly. At least, that’s my understanding of how aminopyralids work, but it sounds like the chemical in this article may work similarly.
What’s worse is that some classes of herbicides (like aminopyralids) are persistant. They’re like the PFAs of herbicides. So if a farmer sprays their hay field with grazon to kill weeds, and then another person feeds that hay to some cows, horses, goats, rabbits, or whatever, the manure is basically poison; concentrated herbicides. If it’s applied to soil where crops are meant to grow, that soil will be contaminated for years. So one of nature’s greatest soil ammendments turns into a plague. The stories I’ve heard of persistent herbicide contamination are heartbreaking. Basically the only way to fix it is to grow vigorous grasses for several years to leech the poisons, and throw that grass into the landfill (because it’s contaminated too).
Be careful when you purchase manure, hay, and straw for your gardens, folks.
Not only that, but it's also fairly potent, allowing you to pass variables from one request to another, transform response, inject .env vars etc.
If all of your team is using Jetbrains products, you can also add the http files to the version control so everyone could have the requests ready to use.
True. Almost all non-western music also has functional harmony though. The notable exceptions are things like Indian classical music and things like gamelan (which have static modal harmony).
