Bill Gates recently gave $27 million to fight a new form of wheat rust. Why? Given global wheat shortages, the prospect that the ug99 strain of the fungus could wipe out Africa's wheat crop, and spread worldwide, has focused minds. Take a look:
In the first half of the 20th century, wheat rust destroyed hundreds of millions of bushels in Canada and the United States, two of the world's biggest food producers. But the world population has tripled since 1950. Now, with four billion additional people to feed, wheat rust is on the march again and resistant strains bred to defeat it are no longer immune.A strain named Ug99 emerged in Africa in 1999. Despite containment efforts, winds carried spores to the bread baskets of the Middle East. It is now poised to infect prime wheat growing regions in Europe, Ukraine, Russia, India and Pakistan.
Should even one major wheat producer have a crop failure, the effect on the world's ability to feed itself would be immense, which explains why crash programs to develop new rust resistant strains are now underway.
However, if Ug99 spreads swiftly, devastating crops before science can breed resistant strains, already grave food security problems will expand. So this isn't simply a distant problem for poor nations, it looms over rich ones like Canada and the United States, too.
On Sunday, Britain's Observer newspaper reported World Bank president Robert Zoellick's blunt warning to the world's richest countries that a potential planetary catastrophe is unfolding with frightening speed.
This, from Norman Borlaug, the agronomist who is father of the Green Revolution, explains why the emerging wheat rust crisis is so urgent. And New Scientist reported in March:
A wheat disease that could destroy most of the world's main wheat crops could strike south Asia's vast wheat fields two years earlier than research had suggested, leaving millions to starve. The fungus, called Ug99, has spread from Africa to Iran, and may already be in Pakistan. If so, this is extremely bad news, as Pakistan is not only critically reliant on its wheat crop, it is also the gateway to the Asian breadbasket, including the vital Punjab region.Scientists met this week in Syria to decide on emergency measures to track Ug99's progress. They hope to slow its spread by spraying fungicide or even stopping farmers from planting wheat in the spores' path. The only real remedy will be new wheat varieties that resist Ug99, and they may not be ready for five years. The fungus has just pulled ahead in the race.
Mike Huckabee was the only presidential candidate who discussed the national security implications of food availability. Isn't it about time we started talking about a federal food policy in these terms?
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This goes back to a previous post of mine. "Government", whether U.S. or World (i.e. U.N.) seems to be finding more and more ways to get its paws on food supplies. They use subsidies to small farmers, corporate tax breaks and a policy of favoritism for Monsanto and other large agri-biz type farms and NAIS which I have mentioned here more than once(beating a dead horse, so to speak).
Once the wheat crop crashes, if it does, the government can easily begin a rationing program dependant on some type of I.D. (see: why I did not vote for Huckabee in the primary, above). For consumer safety, small farms can be taken over. Most people would not even care, they are so far removed from any idea how the food supply system works in this country.
In our area, one commercial fruit farmer already wants to outlaw allowing anyone but a licensed fruit grower to raise "stone fruits" like peaches, plum etc. You can't really blame him, there is some disease going around, spread by insects, I think. And it has been done before. Currents were illegal in New Hampshire at one time, I believe, because they were a host plant for white pine blister disease (I think). But how much more regulation can we put on people who just want to grow their own food.
Awhile back, the Wall St. Journal had an article about wheat prices in Africa. Seems that the sale of wheat has been very lucrative, especially when it has involved convincing Africans not to eat their native cassava-flour dishes, or to stop cultivating cassava at all.
Some of this makes me wonder how much of a boon agriculture has really been for the world. People in Northern Europe/Scandinavia were the last Europeans to adopt agriculture, and even in the 19th century, bread there was more of a treat for Christmas (like cake) rather than a staple of the diet. Given that wheat is related to allergies, as well as refined flour products being linked to diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc., perhaps the whole issue needs a new perspective.
In northern parts of Europe, people cultivated oats and barley, and ate the grains whole (i.e. boiled oat porridge.) It may be that a *return* to truly traditional diets based on local, and a wide variety of "heritage" locally produced foods, is a way out of this mess.
"Just exactly whom do people expect to solve this problem? Government?" - Steve
In other words, In Whom Do Wheat Rust? The ag world is poised for spiritual mutation, as the millennial grip of monoseedism gives way to polytransatlanticsubstantiation, the better to convert fat into mussel.
Barring some sort of *Deus ex Wheatena*, the world seems poised to chart a Wheat Rust Belt that will make of its unleavened forebear-of-the-factories namesake seem like a mere scrub-job for Brillo' my dreams...
The Food Shortage Problem is the next big step in the Global Warming Crisis
What exactly is happening.
1. In 2007 - 2008 Summer in Africa, there was a 70% to 100% loss in wheat due to a fungus on the crops. This huge loss in wheat has left the African people and their animals starving and moving in a mass exodus to the cities. South Africa had riots over the super inflation of the cost of wheat and other foods. New York Times, New Strain of Wheat Rust Appears in Africa: Reuters lobal Wheat Loss: African Agriculture, Agricultural Practices causing Global Loss of Top Soil: News International, World Wheat Production in Peril from Stem Rust Outbreak in East Africa: Beliefnet,
2. In 2007 Iran had lost 50% of it's crop due to wheat rust. This is a huge loss for the farmers and the worlds food supply of wheat in this region.
3. In the Summer of 2007 the North Pole's Arctic Ocean turned into what is called Pancake ice, small pieces of ice that may be as large as a state or as small as your yard. The Arctic Ice Cap is normally a single unit of ice that prevents it from being flushed out of the Arctic Ocean. But in 2007 the smaller pancake ice allowed the ice to be flushed out of the Arctic Ocean taking with it the algae and plankton that grows under it. Because of this loss in algae and plankton, the Krill, a shrimp like creature, had no food and it is now claimed that 80% of the Krill have died. The Krill are the major food source for seals, whales, salmon and other sea life in the Arctic Regions. There was one article that was titled, "Salmon $40 per pound." Have you ever watched the program, "The Deadliest Catch." Well, the deadliest catch is the fishing expedition that brings back no fish.
4. In the costal waters of France, 2008, they are having an 80% to 100% loss of oysters due to a herpes like virus. This is causing a food shortage right now, but they are saying the real food shortage will come two years from now. Already it is bad enough that many restaurants are closing because a lick of oysters. If this is happening in France, as the report states, other Mediterranean states are having the same problem.
5. CCD, Colony Collapse Disaster, or CDC Complete Colony Desertion, of our bees have been costing American fruit farmers billions of dollars in crop loss over the last several years. This dollar loss represents the reduction of fruit being produced. The bees are dying due to an intestinal virus killing complete bee colonies. NewScientist Paralyzing Virus a Suspect in Disappearing Bees, UK Telegraph Government Figures Show Decline of UK Bees, The Sydney Morning Herald Eerie Saga of the Vanishing Bees, The Milford Daily News Honeybee Deaths Still on the Rise,
6. Ethanol is using anywhere from 10% to 20% of American corn for the production of this alternate fuel source. In some countries, there is a 50% usage of their crops to be sold as fuel, reducing the amount of food for our worlds ever growing population. In some countries the rice prices have inflated to more than 600% making the Dollar a day wage not enough to feed their families.
7. The ground water levels are going lower and lower as in the Ogallala Aquifer. The Ogallala Aquifer covers parts of Wyoming, most of Nebraska, down into Kansas, Oklahoma, and into Texas which in size makes the Great Lakes look like a pond in comparison. The problem is that these states have been heavily pumping water from this aquifer, very heavily, for about thirty years now. A recent article talked about an irrigation manufacturing company, making seven thousand of these huge water sprayers a year. The water in this now 80% gone leaving only 20%. The replenishment rate is mush lower than years earlier due to lower rainfalls and thinner snow caps. In less than five years these states will not be producing crops due to lack of water. Water Encyclopedia Ogallala Aquifer, Wikipedia Encyclopedia Ogallala Aquifer, Choices Magazine Ogallala Aquifer, USDA Ogallala Aquifer, USGS Newsroom Water Level Changes in the High Plains Aquifer, Environmental Defense Fund, Planned and active ethanol plants in the Ogallala Aquifer.
8. Midwestern U.S. Floods destroyed more than nine million acres of farm land. In the summer of 2008 tremendous rains, called the five hundred year flood, has destroyed huge sections of farm land. One of the suspects in this five hundred year flood were the fires in California creating condensation nuclei for rain droplets to form, just like seeding a cloud. This resulted in a huge loss of crops in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois.
9. Glacial Melt. Many of the rivers around the world are fed by glaciers. Glaciers store the water from snow in the winter to be used to feed the rivers in the summer. In the Tibetan Plateau, over the past ten years, the glaciers are two thirds gone. These glaciers feed the huge Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in China which are used to irrigate the rice fields for the 1.4 billion population. these same glaciers, on the other side of the Tibetan Plateau, feed the rivers flowing into the one billion plus population of India. When these glaciers are gone, the food supply is gone and billions of people will have nothing to eat. This is happening all over the world. One glacier that I climbed in Longyearbyen Norway was two thousand feet thick in 2005. In 2006 the glacier was gone.
10. Dead zones in the oceans. These dead zones are caused by pollution of various types flowing from the mouths of rivers emptying into the ocean. For example the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico and there is a two hundred mile dead zone as a result. The source of the pollution was traced to the use of tiles so farmers can drain and make more land usable for farming. The herbicides, insecticides, and mainly the fertilizers that are used to enhance the growth of the crops are causing algae to grow around the mouth of the Mississippi depleting the oxygen content of the water and causing the fish and shellfish to die. The tiles also reduce the amount of ground water and subterranean aquifers are drying up as mentioned with the Ogallala Aquifer.
11. Rising sea levels are now invading lowlands with salt and brackish water preventing many plants from growing. This is happening in the southern United States, Bangladesh. and in many parts of southeast Asia. As the glaciers and surface ice melts, the sea level rises. As the polar ice melts, the oceans have a tendency to raise in temperature and also rise in volume. This is a cycle that Global Warming is causing and if we don't immediately do something to stop it, we don't have a chance.
Step by step and in an ever increasing rate, we are losing our life giving sources of food that we need to feed the ever growing population of planet earth. We are sucking everything out of the ground and from under the ground and putting it into the air and oceans. We are seeing the effects of Global Warming and Global Climate Change right now and we need to act NOW! With man's influence in the temperatures of the earth, combined with the natural temperature cycles and all in coincidence of the increase of other pollutants, increase in population, destruction of carbon storage mechanisms, wars, political unrest, social pollution, and the increase in the intensity of solar storms, we are going to have a very rough ride on a soon to be sinking ship, the spaceship Earth.
Article by C. Jeff Dyrek, Webmaster,YellowAirpane.com, U.S. Navy Veteran, Arctic Explorer and North Pole Expedition Leader.
Would like to know if the spraying of fungicides has an effect on this rust ie stobeleriens(Amistar)as this is a new fungicide ,and should not have ressistance build up as yet.
Thank You
Nigel Wood
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