Good News or Bad News?
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MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Genetic resistance bred into wheat crops 40 years
ago has begun to break down, resurrecting the threat of crop plagues
not seen since the last major outbreak in the United States in the
1950s, a nonprofit wheat group said Thursday.
A new, mutated form of the stem-rust fungus -- a disease that virtually
disappeared from the face of the Earth after destroying as much as half
of wheat yields decades ago -- reappeared several weeks ago at an
experimental farm in the rainy highlands of Uganda.
The reappearance of the wind-borne spores, which corrode the plants'
stems, threatens a genetic fix introduced during the ``Green
Revolution'' in the late 1950s and early 1960s, scientists from the
Mexico City-based International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center
said. The nonprofit group discovered the fungus.
They made the announcement as U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman
prepared to unveil the U.S. Plan for Food Security on Friday, and said
they plan to ask U.S. aid officials to help fund an emergency
monitoring and research program.
``The resurgence of stem rust in Uganda is alarming because it signals
the breakdown of a resistance gene that protects wheat in many
countries,'' said Timothy Reeves, the center's director.
Most affected would be eastern and southern Africa, where many crops
depend solely on the sr-31 resistance gene.
But the sr-2 gene complex, used throughout much of the rest of the
world and which is still able to prevent the fungus, may not work as
effectively against the mutated spores.
The last major outbreak, which occurred in the United States in the
mid-1950s, destroyed up to 50 percent of wheat crops on many U.S.
farms.
Reeves said research is needed using new biotechnology methods, like
molecular marking, to understand the sr-2 resistance and possibly
develop more defenses against crop diseases like stem rust, leaf rust
and yellow rust.
One thing is sure: The spores won't stay on the African savanna where
they first appeared. ``It'll move,'' Reeves said. ``It will travel.''
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The above news report is a lot more serious than Y2K in my opinion,
but i doubt many people give it much notice. We assume that a
solution will be found and probably it will. This is just one
problem out of hundreds that threaten us. The fact that we become
more vulnerable each year is almost never discussed.
Higher population densities eventually cause problems in nature
and we are not an exception. Disease spreads easier and new
diseases are generated with more frequency. The food systems
become more specialized and we utilize fewer crops. The transportation
depends on oil that will soon be gone. As we become more specialized
we create more places where problems can hit us. A small diversified
farm, town, community would not have most of these problems.
Two partial answers to these problems are bioregionalism and
diversity. Was either of these ideas considered by the above
news report? How about in the newspaper? How about
anywhere?
I now read with more frequency the statement that a crisis is what
we need to wake up the human race. Some are saying we should join
the greed-and-exploit group to help create this crisis. They would
look at these reports and call it good news. Not me, that type of
thinking scares me.
A small difference in philosophy can make a big difference in
daily life.
jeff
