Weak foods leave empty plates
The modern food industry likes consistency. Modern food and agricultural corporations operate on a huge scale, and that's where consistency matters. When it comes to the crops and animals that we eat, consistency means the variety gets the short straw — instead of growing multiple varieties of potatoes, for example, the industry relies on one or two primary strains. The few strains that are grown are susceptible to certain kinds of disease, and the results can be disastrous.
The Irish Potato Famine was caused by a disease called potato blight that swept through Ireland's farms, hitting the single strain of potatoes grown by most farmers. Up until the 1960s, the most popular banana in the world ate was the Gros Michel. It was all but wiped out by a fungal disease when we were forced to switch to the Cavendish.
It could happen again with a lot of different foods, and we don't need to lose a crop or animal for it to be lost to an outbreak. The Gros Michel didn't completely disappear, but it was wiped out enough for it to no longer be a commercially viable food. Here are six foods that we could conceivably lose in a disease outbreak. (Text: Shea Gunther)
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Comments
After reading such articles it is getting really scary to eat this or that type of food.))))
Caltanissetta
...we'll most likely not understand the trouble we're in until its way too late. Like the other poster said, wheat would probably be the worst food to lose.....but corn or barley would interrupt our food system as well...
Genetically Modified Organisms (AKA: freaky food!) will not help us to ward off these mass "extinctions" should a virus or fungi wipe out a large portion of these foods that we depend on as consumers...
I am most concerned about the wheat, as that is a food that people actually "DEPEND" on, in the third world it is often wheat or starvation. Those of us in the developed countries that have the luxury of choosing whatever food we wish from whatever far off corner of the globe happens to.... More
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Will the growing presence of GMO seeds in farmlands across the U.S. add to the problem, hastening these potential losses?
This is one subject that has been on my mind since I was a kid. I grew up on a farm that was organic before the term became commercialized.
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