Rust in the bread basket

http://www.economist.com/node/16481593?story_id=16481593

by roundsquare • 16 years ago

59 17 16 years ago

greenlblue2• 16 years ago

I guess it's time to buy some Monsanto stock.

Roboprog• 16 years ago

Diversify your investments, er, crops, I guess. Monoculture is risky, whether its Windows, or wheat. Predators and parasites will find a way to get at things eventually, no matter.

bh423• 16 years ago

Indeed. However, keep in mind the green revolution always has had the PR of high yield & low risk.

People who point out that it is in fact high yield & high risk, tend to be accused of being anti-progress luddites.

Retric2• 16 years ago

It traded higher individual risk for higher systemic risk.

There are ways to deal with systemic risk. I think the best defense is to simply stockpile 2+ years of food for every person in the US by saving a portion of the increased yield.

billswift• 16 years ago

It did not increase the risk. At worst, if the article is entirely accurate, we will simply be returning to where we would otherwise be anyway.

orangecat• 16 years ago

You aren't a luddite if you identify potential risks that we should be aware of. You are a luddite if you insist that any potential risk means we should reject the plan, even when it's a clear improvement over the status quo and you have no better alternative.

pragmatic• 16 years ago

How is this hacker news?

bosch• 16 years ago

Quite simply they'll have to 'hack' together a cure or a solution to this obviously potentially big problem.

codingthewheel2• 16 years ago

Is this a terrorism vector?

Could infection of the 5 largest wheat-producing countries be done maliciously? If the disease is fungal in nature, what's to stop Joe Terrorist from hopping over to mainland USA or AUS and injecting a few dozen crops, and letting it spread from there over the next 5 years? Can anybody speak to this?

hga• 16 years ago

Yes, but not an existential danger.

Sure, it could be done, perhaps pretty trivially (from the article it sounds like you'd have to do it when the climate is wet enough), but the US dependence on wheat is more ... say cultural than essential. We produce a lot of other grains, e.g. in my home area of SW Missouri in addition to wheat we produce a lot of dent corn and "milo" (grain sorghum), the latter two for animal fodder. Elsewhere there's a lot of rice grown (e.g. my mom grew up on a Louisiana long grain rice farm).

We've always had the option of "gearing down" and shifting some of the grain from animals to people. Nowadays with something like 1/3 of our corn crop going to ethanol fuel production we're in great shape, at least in terms of being able to provide everyone enough calories.

I hope you like cornbread ^_^.

Seriously, go to this page: http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=5...

Select the US, Production Quantity, year(s) and the grains you're interested in and you'll see as of 2008 that we produced 4.5 times as much corn as we did wheat.

codingthewheel2• 16 years ago

Thanks. Just the sort of info I was looking for. +1

MaysonL• 16 years ago

Obligatory classic SF reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass (quite a good novel, IIRC, although it's been a few decades).

Rust in the bread basket

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