The Image above is corn growing in Zimbabwe.

There was a scholarly article published late last year by Dr. Robert Paarlberg entitled “The Ethics of Modern Agriculture.”  I would encourage anyone concerned about both the environment and about feeding people to read it.  It raises some important questions about the ethics of even well intentioned anti-technology activism.

Paarlberg is a professor at Wellesley and also an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.  He has no ties to agricultural interests or technology companies, but he has spent a lot of time thinking about the ethics of opposition to technologies that could help feed the poor people of the world.  His book “Starved for Science” is a detailed review of how the precautionary principle thinking of the rich countries (particularly in Europe) has largely kept agricultural technologies out of Africa including ones that would help feed poor people there.

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I’m doing a series of posts about why wheat has been an orphan crop.  Today I want to talk about UG99 Stem Rust.

In 1999 a new strain of Stem Rust, a severe wheat disease, emerged in Uganda.  It was named UG99, and since then it has spread to other wheat growing areas in Africa and Asia but is expected to spread further.  It is a serious threat to the global human food supply because it causes severe yield losses.

There have been many great articles, blog postings and websites about this important plant disease, so today I will talk about how I think this situation will play out.

I’ll wager that the worst potential from this disease will NOT actually occur. This is not a casual wager - the health or even survival of millions of poor people around the world is at stake.  Some of my wheat breeder friends might not like me to say this (because they legitimately need more funding), but my bet is is still that the breeders will prevail against all odds (and get little credit for it).

I base that qualified optimism on having seen what a remarkable group of scientists called “plant breeders” have been able to achieve in the past.  I’m even more encouraged knowing that they have access to some new tools based on biotechnology.

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Last month, Canada, the United States, and Australia announced unprecedented plans to join forces and commercialize genetically-engineered wheat, saying that biotechnology was crucial to the future of the wheat industry. The National Farmers Union of Canada, however, immediately refuted the tri-country claim, pointing out “the overwhelming majority of farmers in Canada are still opposed to the introduction of genetically-modified wheat.”

On June 1, fifteen organizations across Canada, the United States and Australia publicly confirmed that opposition with the release of “A Definitive Global Rejection of Genetically Engineered Wheat“, a powerful document speaking out against biotech wheat.

But the battle against GM wheat is not a simple one, nor is it restrained to select countries.

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This is nothing new. The company’s glufosinate-resistant LL62 genetically modified rice isn’t commercially grown, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t already entered the global food supply.

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This national leading Catholic hospital system is now leading the nation in more ways than one.

CHW has made the decision to use food suppliers who have agreed to seek out alternatives to foods made with genetically engineered (GE) ingredients or cloned animals.

Included in CHW’s new food policy is GE sugar beets, which just recently have been introduced into the nation’s food supply, as well as meat and dairy products from cloned animals, which the FDA has decided to allow.

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The Challenge: Find biofuel crops that are “pro-poor.”

One Answer: Crops that can be grown with limited resources by small-scale farmers, can be converted to biofuel with existing cheap technology, and can simultaneously provide food, fuel, and livestock feed.

In my last post I discussed how agriculture could regain its rightful place as the keystone of civilization due to the rise of biofuels over the next 30 years or so. But, in what seems a ridiculously colossal conundrum, hundreds of millions of impoverished people worldwide could face starvation due to competition of fuel land with food land.

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In a wide-ranging session on Tuesday dealing with global biofuel, food security and poverty issues, there was plenty for the presenters to disagree about — but the one thing they could all concur on was that the biofuel genie is out of the bottle and he’s here to stay.

Several times during the session the presenters highlighted the fact that biofuels have finally brought an inherent value to agriculture that was previously missing. This, more than anything else, is why biofuels are not going to go away. Up to now, the lack of agricultural value has caused a deep deficiency in the level of funding and investment that governments worldwide have provided for their agricultural security and infrastructure.

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