In 1845, Belgian farmers discovered, too late, that a load of seed potatoes they had bought from America was contaminated with Phytophthora infestans, a Mexican fungus that had recently spread northwards. The blight caused by P. infestans rapidly spread from Belgium all over the continent, triggering the European potato famine. In Ireland, 1 million people out of a population of 8 million died of starvation and its side-effects, and another million emigrated. Social, economic and political reasons help explain why the country was so badly affected, but the main cause was that a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food.
The Irish famine is a stark lesson in what happens when monoculture goes wrong, and why the resilience biodiversity brings is important to agriculture. But as we celebrate International Biodiversity Day, the outlook is not very encouraging. Around 12% of birds, 25% of mammals, and at least 32% of amphibians are threatened with extinction over the next century. Humans may have increased the rate of global extinctions by up to 1000 times the “natural” rate typical of Earth’s long-term history.
See full Article: http://oecdinsights.org/2013/05/22/why-biodiversity-matters/
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