SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Smart land-use planning could ease the conflict between agricultural production and nature conservation. A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Münster integrated global datasets on the geographical distributions and ecological requirements of thousands of animal species with detailed information on the production of the world’s major agricultural crops. The results were published in Global Change Biology.
Increasing agricultural production usually leads to various negative side effects in agricultural landscapes, such as local decline in wildlife and loss of ecosystem functions. But what would happen if agricultural growth would be focused on areas of the world where only a few animal species would be affected?
The researchers evaluated how far global biodiversity loss could be minimized by such planning. They found that 88 percent of the biodiversity that is expected to be lost under future agricultural intensification could be avoided if global land use was spatially optimized.
“However, global optimization implies that species-rich countries, mainly in the tropics, would be more responsible for safeguarding the world’s natural resources – at the expense of their own production opportunities and economic development,” says lead author Lukas Egli of Göttingen University and UFZ.
This applies mainly to countries that are highly dependent on agriculture. “Unless such conflicting national interests can be somehow accommodated in international sustainability policies, global cooperation seems unlikely and might generate new socioeconomic dependencies.”
Lukas Egli et al. Winners and losers of national and global efforts to reconcile agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation. Global Change Biology 2018. Doi: 10.1111/gcb.14076.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday March 12 2018, @12:20AM (2 children)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn#Uses [wikipedia.org]
Somehow several thousand generations of humans failed to notice they were poison.
Or maybe they just roasted them just like the roasted poisonous cashews.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 12 2018, @02:31AM (1 child)
Did you notice that they ground the acorns up into flour and then boiled the flour?
In that way it's rather like how they make tapioca, but tapioca is bland, where acorns are reputed to be quite bitter even after processing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 12 2018, @02:43AM
Yeah, I did notice that your link didn't say anything about how the acorns were processed before they were eaten. But since you ignored that I said that "Even after processing, acorns are ..." I figured it was only fair to ignore the information on your link. Now if you'd linked to a better source I wouldn't feel that way, but really, that was a link wasn't even appropriate for 4th graders researching their geography essay.
Yes, it's true that AFTER PROCESSING American Indians used to eat acorns during the hungry season. But they didn't do it without first processing them to remove the poisons (I think mainly tannic acid, but I'm not sure), and even then they quickly adopted alternatives, because even after they got used to the taste they didn't really like it.
P.S.: Here's a much better link: https://honest-food.net/how-to-eat-acorns/ [honest-food.net] but, perhaps it's the variety of oak in this area, that's a lot more favorable than the reports I've heard from local people. And this area has a lot of "natural food" faddists.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.