Just in case you thought Paul Ehrlich was wrong

Remember the Irish Potato Famine? Prescient prophet Al Gore wrote all about it in "Earth in the Balance" -- and Paul Ehrlich predicted that eventually increasing population of the Earth would lead to food shortages and famines. Agricultural yields increased much higher than Ehrlich expected, forestalling this, but not preventing it. The problem that no one wants to think about is disease -- not us, stupid, but agricultural disease. That's what caused the Irish potato problem and that's why we have the Boston Celtics and Notre Dame. Which is bad enough. But now there's something out there that could cause lots of farmers significant problems.

This is a Washington Post article. If you don't get it, you don't get it (meaning you might need a free online registration to read it). By the way, if we don't start paying for these things, there won't be any newspapers left to read them in. And then we'll have to pay bloggers to write good things like this, because very few people make actual money blogging, and good journalists don't blog. Yet. Well, Andy Revkin does, and I'd pay for HIS stuff. Anyway:

In the Wheat Fields of Kenya, a Budding Epidemic

It's about a new and virulent form of stem rust. According to the article, once stem rust hits a field of wheat, it becomes a field of grass. No wheat kernels worth harvesting. Apparently, the right combo of climate, er, weather conditions can give stem rust the push it needs to become a problem.

If it stays cold in the winter, the fungal spores don't survive (as noted in the end of the article). So clearly there must be a border zone where they barely survive. So it if gets warmer (as it's doing, skeptics), then the border zone moves north and threatens currently safe wheat crops.

Here's where Ehrlich (and Gore) come in. Gore noted (as have others) the danger of monoculture; one bug gets fond of a particular strain that's widely used, and given the right conditions, the entire now-susceptible strain gets eradicated. Ehrlich now is noting the dangers of climate change -- exactly what stem rust is looking for, the right combination of climate conditions (and also note that this stem rust appears to be a genetic recombinant, more virulent than past versions due to indiscriminant and promiscuous gene sharing). And that's what appears to be happening -- the wheat that was bred to resist stem rust isn't resisting it because the rust has evolutionarily figured out a way past the wheat's resistance mechanism. (OK, Mr. Crichton, tip of the hat -- "Life finds a way".) So here I'll quote the article very briefly:

Coming on the heels of grain scarcity and food riots last year, the budding epidemic exposes the fragility of the food supply in poor countries. It is also a reminder of how vulnerable the ever-growing global population is to the pathogens that inevitably surface somewhere on the planet.

Now, it might not happen. The amazing agricultural scientists might figure out a way to defeat this new brand of stem rust before it makes serious hay of a lot of wheat. But we are clearly in a neck-and-neck race, dependent on high-yield agriculture to keep a lot of people barely fed. If we fall behind in this race, even a little, a lot of people will die of starvation and malnutrition. The growing human population combined with our exploration of the limits of high-yield agriculture is a dangerous game.

And there's more, back to the fish - tomorrow. That picture isn't pretty either.

I'm going to have to do another babe post. Well, the Oscars are Sunday; there might be a pretty dress on the runway.