Famine Fears
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A stem rust blight threatens 80% of the world’s wheat harvest and is raising new fears of famine and exorbitant prices. The blight, named Ug99 after its discovery in Uganda in 1999, has overcome most of the stem rust resistance genes bred into modern wheat varieties during recent decades. North America’s wheat crops, with their focus on high yield varieties, could be particularly vulnerable to this airborn fungus. The world’s scientists are racing to find resistant replacement wheat varieties. Read more from the Ottawa Citizen
The solution may lie in the risk management strategies practiced by small scale farmers in remote parts of the planet for thousands of years: the use and safeguarding of diverse seed varieties that can mitigate such disasters. There is precedent
- In the 1980’s the North American beer industry was threatened due to a devastating barley blight. The solution was found on a small Ethiopian farm, in the genetic material of an ancient barley seed variety that had been carefully stewarded for centuries.
- In the Irish potato famine of the 1800s, 2 million people starved to death because the potato harvest was wiped out by a blight. The Irish had grown only two varieties of fleshy white potatoes, unaware of the resilient and adaptive powers of biodiversity.
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USC Canada
was founded by
Dr Lotta Hitschmanova in 1945. Our award-winning Seeds of Survival program promotes vibrant family farms, strong rural communities, and healthy ecosystems around the world.
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