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Plants Could Go It Alone


Still Waters

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The global decline in pollinators -- both wild and domesticated -- has scientists wondering if plants will adapt or die -- and the fate of a lot of our food hangs in the balance.

Some plant scientists now propose that many flowering plants could rapidly evolve strategies to avoid sinking with the pollinators, including self pollination and building tighter bonds with those pollinators that are still around.

http://news.discover...lone-130528.htm

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I hope they can with bee's dying off but I doubt many will make the transition.

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Well apparently smaller plants may evolve quickest of all but I'm not sure wether this bodes well for plant life or not.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130521121424.htm

Soylent Green anybody.

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:no: :no: :no:
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What will happen is the more evolved plants will die off and be replaced by the less evolved who tend to be more wind pollinated. Grasses and conifers. Also ferns and mosses which propagate by spores will take advantage and fill some of the gaps left by the fruit bearing plants. The plant life of the world will be similar to the early days of life on earth, how this will affect the animal life, including us, well, I have a feeling we'll find out soon enough.

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I hope they can with bee's dying off but I doubt many will make the transition.

That's one way to get rid of killer bees.

Bees are being poisoned. All we have to do is quit poisoning them. Of course, that's not the whole story: it includes mites and viruses, too. But nicotine-based insecticides are a major part of the problem and banning them MIGHT be enough. We got along fine without nicotine-based insecticides. There's no reason we can't do so again.

Native North American bees don't seem to be affected. We still have them as pollinators, but they aren't as effective with crops and they're not honey-producers.

Doug

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It's a very basic problem: add something that wasn't there to begin with to farming, dont observe the side-effects well enough, and then the results hit you. It's not so bad if only a smaller part of farmers do it, but the more farmers do it, the bigger the problem.

My solution? Encourage farmers to use different methods. Variety in food production, both in the products as with the methods as well, has a better chance of giving enough yield if the unexpected happens, than if most farmers would use the same setup. I've been very much against GMO and artificials but because of this they might have their place too. To what extent, is the real question. To this great extent that you have to worry about so basic links in plant life disappearing, no. When you try new methods in food production, be it GMO or a new poison, it ought to be tested in a small to moderate scale, not in whole countries.

The whole farming industry needs a change, to have a very basic and very important form of protection to the things that have fed us before we got all technical. Those things can still give us lots of good stuff so we ought to protect them better.

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Yeah, this could result in a significat problem I would pressume, if we do not find a way to stop the decline in pollinators.

I have no suggestions off-hand, but I am fairly certain that scientists are working hard on this issue.

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The net result would certainly be a less varied food supply, with wind-pollinated grasses (corn, wheat, rice, rye, etcetera) becoming dominant as the price of hand pollinated vegetables and fruits soars, and their availability diminishes.

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A big problem with the decline of pollinators is due to the increased use of seed pesticides. Many of these contaminate the adult plant to protect them from insects. At first glance this looks like a good thing but it kills good insects as well as the bad. Ideally this sort of pest control would only attack the harmful insects. That would take the development of viruses or bacteria that are species specific. Hmmm... bioengineering is still frowned upon.

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