re: Many food and agricultural varieties going "extinct"?

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Foods in the US do not go 'extinct.' Even if they are not currently grown anywhere their germ plasm is stored in seed banks. Periodically, the seeds are taken out and planted in lab conditions and new seeds harvested and put back in storage.

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Only those who have a license or patent to do so, can hold seeds.

One thing I know is the corn we got from the Indians is so far gone I don't think it can be found anywhere.

Everything I've read has lead me to believe it's not the same variety but a copy.

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Posted by Mike da Tigah Everything I've read has lead me to believe it's not the same variety but a copy.

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every seed is a copy man.

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What I meant is that the old variety was lost, and this a recreation of the original, but not the same variety.

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Again, not sure what you mean by "recreation of the original". We're talking about genes here: there is no difference between "original" and "recreation of the original". If the DNA is the same, it's the same variety, regardless of whether you can document a clear chain of planting back to the Hidatsa or Mandan or Cherokee (pick your corn planting N American tribe). Old things get forgotten, people use different names for the same thing, but genes don't care what they're called.

It either is the same (genetically) or it isn't.

My great grandfather operated what was the big general merchandise store in Thibodaux a century ago. His name is still on the building. Every thing that could be bought with cash was in the store and that included groceries fresh and canned.

I think I found the hippy in this thread

do you also not vaccinate your children hippy

have we talked about GMOs?


:OMG:

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One thing I know is the corn we got from the Indians is so far gone I don't think it can be found anywhere.

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True. That's because the seed banks were only created about 100 years ago. Indian corn is waaay older than that.

BTW, Indians didn't plant corn in rows. They bunched them into little 'islands' each stalk surrounded by some beans. The bean sprouts surrounding the corn stalk deterred deer from eating the corn. The deer couldn't stand the smell of beans. I guess it gave them gas.

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Don't bother. He can't admit when he is wrong

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I'm not though.

The notion that we've outgrown our ability to produce quality food is simply false. I can go on and on, but I'll only attempt to make a few points.

1.) Only 2-3% of US farmland is growing fruits and vegetables; and about 60% is growing commodity crops. Much of the later is animal feed, which is a poor substitute for ruminants. It would be more efficient to simply let grazing animals graze, instead of using a ton of synthetic nitrogen to fertilize commodity crops and then shipping them to feed lots.

2.) Quality farmland and pasture is being used, increasingly, to build Mcmansions.

3.) Who even attempts to grown food anymore? Sadly few people. Instead, people obsess over lawns and flower beds. If the average household just planted some lettuce, etc think of how far we could stretch the food supply. As recent as WW2 a great deal of produce was produced in home/community gardens. Now we have huge sections of quality land producing nothing. This was once considered a sin in America, akin to draft-dodging.

There are a ton of options to produce enough quality food. But when we accept the premise that we are supposed to rely on mass agriculture produced 1000's of miles away, we create our own fate.

Rant ended. TLDR.