From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sun Nov 05 2000 - 16:28:31 MST
On Sun, 5 Nov 2000, Barbara Lamar wrote:
> And the fact that so many people seem to believe that one MUST use toxic
> pesticides in order to grow food indicates that the possibilities are NOT
> generally appreciated, even among people on this list.
Food? How very 20th century.
A lot of people right now couldn't care less about agribots (hopefully, of
the gastrobot variety), they're having trouble keeping their rice bowls
full. To feed them on the short run does indeed currently require
pesticide use. (Yes, it takes toll on biodiversity, kills the soil, floods
the biosphere with nasty metabolites).
We rich Westerners might see a brief period of advanced agricultural
automation, which is rapidly superseded by fully synthetic food production
and then no food production at all, when we leave biology behind. It is
interesting to see how salmonellosis and BSE pushes semisynthetic protein
foods forwards, I'd like to see the trend continue.
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