BAD news is a journalist’s bread and butter, a fact that is regularly pointed out by those who blame television, newspapers and magazines for filling their world with stories and pictures of doom and gloom. It is heartening, then, when the doom-mongering pays off and has a positive effect on people’s lives.
Almost a year ago we reported on how a virulent strain of fungus was threatening the wheat harvests on which billions of people depend for survival (91av, 7 April 2007, p 6). We now understand that the article alerted the Chinese leadership to the peril and that it has launched an emergency research programme to develop strains of wheat resistant to the disease. This is just the kind of result all journalists hope for.
Unfortunately we must also report the bad news that goes along with this story. The fungus, known as Ug99, is set to strike the wheat fields of south Asia even earlier than had been feared. It may already have reached Pakistan, gateway to the breadbasket of Asia. Unless we develop new varieties of wheat that do not succumb to Ug99, it will threaten most of the world’s wheat crops and push prices even higher than they already are (see “Killer wheat disease threatens starvation for millions”).
Advertisement
For those of us living in well-off industrialised countries, the prospect of a global food crisis may sound far-fetched. It is easy to take food production for granted when supermarket shelves are always filled. Yet growing enough for more than 6 billion people – especially when we are so bad at dividing it up fairly – is no trivial business.
The threats to modern agriculture are myriad. Think of the bluetongue virus threatening Europe’s livestock, or the H5N1 bird flu still ravaging chicken farms across Asia. Over the past year, food prices have risen dramatically – for several reasons. Drought has caused poor harvests; there has been a growth in demand for corn as a source for biofuels; the price of the oil needed in the growing and processing of food has soared; and demand for food has risen, thanks to a burgeoning population and increasing prosperity.
Growing food has always been a struggle, and it is only thanks to modern agricultural research that most people now have enough to eat. Today we need that research more than ever. The growing demand for meat can only add to the strain on grain supplies, as livestock need to eat too. Crop diseases and insect pests are constantly evolving and adapting to the genetic and chemical weapons we use to keep them at bay. Agricultural researchers respond by constantly refining methods of disease and pest control, but it is a challenge to keep up.
We need to work faster. The cheap solutions to the problems we face have been exhausted, and as a result the effort put into agricultural research and development is achieving ever more meagre returns. in Washington DC estimates that every unit of harvested crop costs two-thirds more in R&D than it did 20 years ago.
The story of Ug99 typifies this struggle. Famine used to be endemic in India. It has been virtually eliminated largely because researchers discovered genes in wheat that gave it resistance to its most deadly disease, a fungus called stem rust, and used them to develop rust-resistant strains. It was only a matter of time before a stem rust emerged that got around those defences – and now it has, in the form of Ug99. It is no exaggeration to say that billions of people depend on our finding new kinds of resistance to head it off.
“It was only a matter of time before a strain of the fungus emerged that could get around wheat’s defences”
One might have hoped the enormity of this impending crisis would prompt western governments to invest in finding a solution. No chance. Funding for research into ways of dealing with Ug99 is slow, and it’s the same story for agricultural research across the board. According to IFPRI, when the rich countries no longer felt threatened by famine they simply stopped funding research into maintaining and boosting yields of staple crops. These days most agricultural R&D is done by private companies, whose interests are not primarily feeding the masses.
This needs to change fast. The recent hike in food prices should have alerted us all to what is going on, and hopefully will inspire governments to a new research effort aimed at tackling the threats to food production. If dark stories about what could happen if we don’t get our act together spur people to act, watch this space for more of them.