In view of RFK Jr’s recently expressed hope that more of America’s farmers adopt woo-woo “biodynamic agriculture,” it’s worth reading Mike Solana’s article in Pirate Wires on yet another gift that “Mother” Nature has bestowed upon us, the Asian citrus psyllid, “an invasive pest” that over the years has inflicted terrible damage on Florida’s orange growers (the orange itself originated in Asia):

Florida orange farmers sold just a little more than 12 million boxes of fruit over the last year, a dramatic, unthinkable decline from 150 million boxes back in the early 2000s, or over 200 million boxes at the state’s peak in the 1970s.

The citrus psyllid is not solely to blame for this decline, but it is the main culprit. If anything, Solana underestimates the speed of the decline (in the late 1990s Florida’s production reached 240 million boxes).

Solana explains that, as their name suggests, these particular psyllids (there are many variants) feed on citrus leaves and spread a bacterial infection known as “citrus greening”:

Once infected, fruit born[e] by the tree becomes misshapen and bitter. For two decades now, farmers have tried and failed to stop it in a number of ways, including insecticides, tree removal, the introduction of predatory pests (a tiny little wasp called tamarixia radiata), hybridizing trees and genetically modifying trees in service of making them more resistant to greening, nutrient supplements to boost tree immunity, and antibiotic treatments — which did find some limited success, but also raised a host of other issues. There has recently, just this year, been a bit of limited success in the creation of citrus greening resistant orange tree varieties, which is not to say new trees that are immune, but a little more robust.

However elusive a solution to this problem may be, it will not be found within the magical thinking of biodynamic agriculture, but, sooner or later, through the application of science, “unnatural” perhaps (whatever that means), but typically pretty effective.

Solana then takes the discussion in an even bleaker direction, with implications far beyond oranges:

Right after World War II, the United States researched multiple forms of “anti-crop” biological weapons, not only including specific funguses (many of them more colloquially referred to as “rusts”) targeting various cereals, but bombs capable of delivering the blights, before spearheading and signing the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union all have a history experimenting on anti-crop technology, with the former Soviet Union apparently leading the charge from the 1920s through the 1990s, employing tens of thousands of personnel and building the largest stockpile of biological weapons in history. . . .

The threat of agricultural warfare — which is an existential risk — therefore exists, even if it isn’t present. This means, in addition to focusing on diseases we’re aware of, we need to be working on a system capable of responding rapidly to new invasive threats.

I think there is like a zero percent chance the CCP isn’t secretly working on this stuff, and if China invades Taiwan, I think there is a very good chance we suddenly come down with a bunch of weird wheat infections. . . .

As Solana writes, food for thought . . .