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ToxicSlurpee posted:tl;dr of it is that corn is massively, massively subsidized in America to the point where it's so cheap it's literally impossible to actually profit off of the corn itself. I think you may be confused.
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Dec 20, 2014 04:57
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Powercrazy posted:A good example is my 'favorite' crop and darling of middle America, Corn. Corn has some of the highest subsidies and is an incredibly thirsty crop, and yet it's grown in the great plains, which are pretty arid all things considered. Why are we growing corn instead of any other crop? uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, corn grows really well when it's not irrigated, that's why we grow it on the great plains. It just happens to yield 2-3 times as much when you irrigate it. Like it's literally just a big grass plant and that's pretty much what's known for growing on the great plains, what are the crops we're not growing on the great plains that we totally should? I'm convinced half the posters in this thread haven't even seen a plant in their lives.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:15
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We grow a ton of wheat on the great plains. Soybeans too. And lots of other things. My family alone grows probably 40% corn(~2000 acres) and 40% soybeans rotating every year, 20% wheat, and a field or two of sunflowers as a second crop after wheat. And a field of alfalfa. We used to grow a lot of sorghum but the corn varieties have been improved so much in the last 10-15 years that it's not more dependable to grow sorghum over corn so we don't. Sorghum is still fairly common in the area though. We're on the edge of the Ogallala aquifer so only like 20% of our land is irrigated, if that. my kinda ape fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 22:13
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tsa posted:Science. We are on a cusp of a revolution in genetics- it doesn't get much press but the achievements made in the last decade in the field have been astounding. At any rate I'm not convinced at all this is actually a problem, or that it would be difficult to fix if it did become one. Agreed. Breeders are constantly working to increase disease resistance and a big part of that is to introduce genes from wild relatives. A big thing they drill into your head in plant pathology and other ag classes is that a plant breeder's work is never done. There's no such thing as a perfect cultivar. You can make something that's extremely resistant to every known disease and next year a new or mutated pathogen will pop up that's great at killing it so you always have to keep improving them. It's just evolution. The bright side is we have varieties that are far better than ever before and the pace of improvement has picked up dramatically. The USDA also does a lot of work with disease control and containment. When something new pops up they study it and help farmers do their best to contain it so it doesn't spread and quickly become a huge problem.
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Mar 19, 2015 23:00
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Effectronica posted:If you're coding for resistance to a parasite or pathogen that attacks this cluster of species, they presumably have some way to survive it, which you can look for without knowing the exact mechanism. On the other hand, ripping out genes from widely different organisms requires a much greater understanding of what they will do in order to make them effective. So preserving biodiversity is good at the very least because it provides an easier way to do things than assembling smut resistance in corn out of first principles. Correct Effectronica posted:So in other words, the way is to have what is effectively a biodiverse set of crops, which is what I was saying was being overlooked. Glad to know that people are working on that. We could certainly do better biodiversity wise but I would say the likelihood of a disastrous plant plague wiping out an entire crop nationwide is essentially zero. A big part of it is that plant pathogens tend to be spread much more slowly than human or animal diseases simply because plants are immobile. If something is really nasty the USDA sets up quarantines on infected fields to prevent its spread. On the other hand once an area is infected it's often difficult or impossible to remove the pathogen and some can live for decades in the soil without a host. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/downloads/PPQ-Strategic-Plan-2019.pdf http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wps/portal/aphis/ourfocus/planthealth my kinda ape fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 04:42
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