Book Review: Never Out of Season

[osprey_archer]

I’d like to be able to whole-heartedly recommend Rob Dunn’s Never Out of Season: Why Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future, because I think it’s got an important and thought-provoking message; certainly in my post-apocalyptic imaginings I had not spent much time contemplating the possibility of a vast

Comments

[sovay]

Naturally, human beings learned nothing from this, and instead of diversifying have spent the last century narrowing down the crops we grow to the few highest-producing varieties of just a few plants.

I still can't believe that after the catastrophic collapse of the Gros Michel banana monoculture we replaced it wholesale with the equally susceptible Cavendish monoculture and are now, I am shocked, shocked to report, facing the sweeping loss of the Cavendish to another variant of Panama disease. It's not like there aren't other kinds of banana! Plantains are delicious! This literally isn't rocket science!

[osprey_archer]

RIGHT, THOUGH? "We just lost all our genetically identical clone bananas to a gruesome banana disease. Let's.... replace them with another type of genetically identical clone bananas! What could possibly go wrong??"

It occurs to me that taking advantage of this flaw would be a really good way to destroy swathes of clone troopers in Star Wars, too. Maybe that's why the Empire replacement moved away from clones by the time The Force Awakens rolled around.

[sovay]

It occurs to me that taking advantage of this flaw would be a really good way to destroy swathes of clone troopers in Star Wars, too.

That's is a horrifying but hilarious theory. Thank you.