5-15-06 Soylent Yellow

Today, I ran across this article...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025513.200-maize-in-global-gene-bank-crisis.html

...which, outrageously, will never see the light of day in the mainstream media because of all the crap going down in Washington lately. It's about the failure of at least half the world-wide seed stocks of corn to germinate this year because of mis-handling prior to being put into storage.

Two days ago, on the same site....

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19025513.700-a-future-with-no-bananas.html

...another disaster is described as looming for bananas.

The biodiversity of food crops is just taken for granted. We think, well, the ordinary banana MUST be so rife across this planet that there could never be a problem that would cause a shortage that anyone should ever be concerned about for very long. These things just GROW NATURALLY, for goodness' sake!

Well, not any more.

The international agri-businesses that have turned the small farmer into an extinct species tends to centralize things, and this centralization has brought us to this point where entire strains of vegetables and fruits, hybridized over the years for the most sought after qualities, can easily be completely wiped out if the centralized areas of storage or production have a problem. In the case of the corn, decades of hybridization and work have now been completely lost with the current seed stocks failing to germinate. Whole strains of different varieties no longer exist on this planet because of this one mistake in handling prior to storage!

It's a ghastly development.