Green Options » wheat

Gene Banks to Preserve World’s Crops from Climate Change

Michael Ricciardi — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:12:21 +0000

Design of the Svalbard seed vault as of early 2007

In 1992, the Global Biodiversity Convention (GBC) was adopted in Rio de Janeiro, and which placed the biodiversity issue center stage–calling for the world-wide preservation of biodiversity and its equitable and sustainable use. The convention was established in response to both the increasing rate of plant extinction (through habitat loss), fears by poorer nations of “biopiracy”, and the increasing agricultural use of land for high-value crops, to the exclusion of lesser-value ones–a practice that diminishes crop biodiversity. These lesser-value crops are typically grown by independent and small farms in less economically advanced countries. Many of these so-called “orphan crops” risk becoming extinct. Further, many species of plant or tree that fall outside the conventional definition of agriculture–such as the sea-water tolerant mangrove tree–are being ignored, to the possible peril of future agriculture.

Recent warming trends pose the greatest threat to preserving global “agrobiodiversity” due to its predicted alterations in temperature, precipitation, and sea level (thus the intrusion of saline water into fresh water ecosystems). Also, computer models show that global warming will increase the frequency and duration of flood and drought cycles. To protect civilization’s long-term food supply (and to protect against the social chaos of food shortages from consequent crop failures) from these potentially calamitous effects, scientists and agricultural policy experts, in cooperation with various governments, have begun establishing cryogenic gene banks to preserve the seeds of various, valuable crops for future agricultural use. The most notable example of this is the International Rice Research institute (IRRI) in the Philippines which stores over 100,000 strains of rice.

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An Agricultural Scientist’s Food Supply Worries Part 2: Vomitoxin

Steve Savage — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:51:36 +0000

I need to be very careful in what I say about this topic because it would be easy to scare people beyond what is rational. I could also also easily make enemies in the Wheat industry which is about the last thing I’d like to do. I’m going to try to hit the right balance, but it is risky.

Mycotoxins

Most people don’t know that Mycotoxins are a very real issue in our food supply. These are nasty, natural chemicals that are produced by certain fungi that infect crops. This is not something new. In Medieval times there was a wide-spread neurological disorder called “Ergotism.” It was caused by mycotoxins in the rye crop produced by a disease called “ergot.” The poor people who lived off of rye, rather than wheat, were disproportionately effected.

Mycotoxins are still an issue today. 2009 has been a particularly bad year for a toxin called “vomitoxin” in wheat, barley and pasta wheat. Its not a secret, but unless you read the farm press or trade news, you would never know. Sometime do a Google News search for “vomitoxin.” If there is rain when these grains are flowering, they can become infected with a fungus called Fusarium graminierum. The disease starts by reducing the farmer’s yields, but it can also produce a toxin in the remaining grain called deoxynivalenol (more commonly called DON toxin). The trade term, “vomitoxin,” comes from the physical response that animals have if they are fed too much of this contaminated grain (which is obviously not pretty).

Celebrating the Life of a Scientist that “Fed the World”

Steve Savage — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:25:15 +0000

Dr. Norman Borlaug passed away this weekend at 95. He left behind an amazing legacy of contribution to humanity. It is likely that he saved more human lives than any other person in history. He did it by developing far more productive wheat than had ever been grown. His “short stature” wheat had shorter, thicker stems so that it could hold bigger heads of grain that would otherwise “lodge” (collapse over on to the ground where it can’t be harvested). It was also resistant to the devastating wheat disease called “Stem Rust.” This wheat ended up feeding millions of people around the world, particularly in Pakistan and India in the 1960s. Borlaug’s breakthrough was a key part of the “Green Revolution” and it did much to address the hunger and poverty issues of the time. For this, and his life-time of additional work Bourlag recieved the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Metal . Only Martin Luther King, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa have received all of these commendations. He was also awarded the National Medal of Science and a host of other awards from around the world. There is an excellent article about the life and career of this remarkable man in the Des Moines Register.

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Why Wheat is an “Orphan Crop:” Conclusion

Steve Savage — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:14:50 +0000

The chart above shows the historical average yields for wheat and corn in the US. Note that until the 1930s the relative yields of the crops were similar and were not changing. After that time yields of both crops began to rise steadily, but corn yields have grown at a much faster pace. What explains this difference?

There are several interacting factors behind this, and they work together to create the “orphan” status of wheat as a crop. Corn is a hybrid crop which enhances its yield and the ease of increasing its yield through breeding. Wheat is harder to hybridize so it isn’t practical except for extremely high yielding wheat areas like Northern Europe. Instead, US wheat is largely a “saved seed crop” meaning that the grower can simply save back some of the grain and replant it rather than needing to buy new hybrid seed each year. That system is workable, particularly if the grower periodically buys some “certified seed” to have a purer stand and to take advantage of breeding improvements. The down-side of a “saved seed crop” is that there is not a very big private seed industry to invest in the crop. Most of the breeding is done by University and USDA breeder supported by tax dollars and there is a small private industry as well. As I said in the previous post, these breeders have done a remarkable job with the resources they have, but in an increasingly ag-unaware society, that support is never generous.

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Why Wheat Has Been an “Orphan Crop” and Why it Matters

Steve Savage — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:50:37 +0000

I read an article today about a major shortfall in the Kenyan wheat harvest that will drive the need for major imports to meet food needs. There were three major factors behind this disappointing harvest. Tight credit and high energy prices kept some growers from even planting. The rains were not well timed to achieve good yields. Also a new strain of a very serious wheat disease, UG99 Stem Rust, further reduced yields.

This news has nudged me to write a series of posts about wheat because as a crop, it has a lot more problems than one bad harvest in Kenya. The Kenya example just stands as an example of the vulnerability of this extremely important world food crop-a crop that is really an “orphan” in today’s agricultural scene.

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Celiac Disease - The Ultimate Gluten Free Experience

John Chappell — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:25:50 +0000

Celiac Disease is one of the most common, undiagnosed genetic disorders with an estimated 1 in 133 people, or 2 million people, afflicted with the disease in the United States alone (figures cited from here and here). Persons of Irish, English, and other Anglo backgrounds tend to be more prone to the disease than those of other ethnic backgrounds.

This disease is not a food allergy, but an auto-immune disorder that people do not grow out of over time. The results of this disorder vary widely by individual, and can range from mild to severe, even requiring hospitalization.

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Rethinking Food Production for a World of Eight Billion

Earth Policy Institute — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:15:39 +0000

by Lester R. Brown

In April 2005, the World Food Programme and the Chinese government jointly announced that food aid shipments to China would stop at the end of the year. For a country where a generation ago hundreds of millions of people were chronically hungry, this was a landmark achievement. Not only has China ended its dependence on food aid, but almost overnight it has become the world’s third largest food aid donor.

As noted in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the key to China’s success was the economic reforms in 1978 that dismantled its system of agricultural collectives, known as production teams, and replaced them with family farms. In each village, the land was allocated among families, giving them long-term leases on their piece of land. The move harnessed the energy and ingenuity of China’s rural population, raising the grain harvest by half from 1977 to 1986. With its fast-expanding economy raising incomes, with population growth slowing, and with the grain harvest climbing, China eradicated most of its hunger in less than a decade—in fact, it eradicated more hunger in a shorter period of time than any country in history.

While hunger has been disappearing in China, it has been spreading throughout much of the developing world, notably sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Indian subcontinent. As a result, the number of people in developing countries who are hungry has increased from a recent historical low of 800 million in 1996 to over 1 billion today. Part of this recent rise can be attributed to higher food prices and the global economic crisis. In the absence of strong leadership, the number of hungry people in the world will rise even further, with children suffering the most.

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Wheatless Wednesday: 6 Reasons to Reject Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready Wheat

Gina Munsey — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:57:45 +0000

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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Wheatless Wednesday: 6 Alternatives to 87,000 Slices of Bread

Gina Munsey — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:40:20 +0000

Over the course of a lifetime, the average American consumes over 87,000 slices of bread. Yes, you read that correctly — eighty seven thousand. That’s more than a loaf per week per person, not counting the additional 5,000 hot dog buns and 12,000 hamburger buns each American devours in his or her life.

All that wheat calculates out to a lifetime grand total of 21,947 loaves and buns. The National Geographic Society’s Human Footprint project has illustrated this shocking bread obsession in a stunning visual (see the video clip below). In the words of my little brother, who is no stranger to wheatless ways, “That is a totally nasty amount of bread.”

There’s no argument that bread is an American staple. Amber waves of grain are, after all, an American icon. But we can’t live by bread alone. So what are some wheatless alternatives?

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Food Policy Friday: United States, Australia, and Canada Announce Joint Efforts to Develop Genetically Modified Wheat

Gina Munsey — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:27:19 +0000

We’ve talked a lot about genetically modified crops here at Eat. Drink. Better — the ongoing battle in the EU over Monsanto’s MON-810 maize, Obama’s refusal to halt genetic engineering in the US sugar-beet industry, and the politics behind it all.

But one frankenfood we haven’t discussed is wheat. Why? Well, mainly because it doesn’t exist. There simply aren’t any commercially-available strains of genetically modified wheat available.

The United States, Canada, and Australia want to change that. In an unprecedented joint statement released yesterday, top wheat organizations from the three countries announced that they intend to “work toward the goal of synchronized commercialization of biotech traits in our wheat crops…we believe it is in all of our best interests to introduce biotech wheat varieties in a coordinated fashion.”

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Fungal Plague Could Threaten Global Wheat Supply

Kay Sexton — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:28:41 +0000

In Kenya there’s a quiet disaster happening, and it’s reaching epidemic proportions. Stem rust, a wheat destroying fungal infestation that was ‘wiped out’ in the West half a century ago, has resurfaced in Africa and already transmitted its fatal pathogen as far as Iran.

So far, agronomists are unable to control its spread and have no clear line on the only alternative treatment method: finding resistant varieties of wheat and breeding them – fast.

The destructive potential of stem rust follows on actual food riots in Mexico and Africa in 2008, and lays bare how fragile the food supply is in poorer nations. It should also make us stop and think about the way our own staple foods could be vulnerable – if this stem rust travels as far as America and Europe, where monoculture is almost universal, and if our wheat varieties are susceptible, there could be no bread. Not expensive bread, or rationed bread. Simply - no bread.

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Food vs. Fuel: Corn Prices Plummet, Why No Grocery Relief?

Nick Chambers — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:30:59 +0000

In a new report, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) says the events of recent months clearly indicate that production of corn ethanol is not a major driving factor behind the continued high food prices at the supermarket.

In the report, “Will the Plunge in Grain Prices Mean Lower Food Prices at the Supermarket?,” the RFA points out that, while prices for agricultural staple commodities such as corn, wheat, and soybeans have all plummeted by about 50% in the last half year, food prices at the grocery store have remained highly elevated. At the same time, ethanol production has dramatically increased.

When the above factors are taken together, the link between grocery store food prices and corn ethanol production becomes dubious. Not only that, and also somewhat unintuitively, it seems that the diversion of relatively large portions of the US corn crop to ethanol production has very little effect on even the market price of corn.

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Switzerland Places Ban on the Humiliation of Plants

Meg Hamill — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:48:38 +0000

A new amended law in Switzerland protects the dignity of vegetation.

A law protecting the dignity of plants? Laugh if you will. I’m down on my knees in respect and awe. At last the Western World is realizing the dire importance of taking other species into account.

Recently, the Swiss Parliament asked a panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians to determine the meaning of dignity when it pertains to plants.

Lo and Behold, the team published a treatise on “the moral consideration of plants for their own sake.” The treatise established that vegetation has innate value and that it is morally wrong to partake in activities such as the “decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason.”

Over a decade ago, an amendment was added to the Swiss constitution in order to defend the dignity of all creatures — including vegetation — against unwanted repercussions of genetic engineering. The amendment was turned into law and is known as the Gene Technology Act. However the law itself didn’t say anything specific about plants, until recently, when the law was amended to include them.

The obvious question at hand: how does this new ruling affect the production of genetically modified organisms?

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Eco-Libris: Can Wheat Straw Replace Trees as a Source of Paper?

Raz Godelnik — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:33:15 +0000

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on August 30.

Today I read a very interesting article at by Rod Edwards (”Paper from Wheat, not Wood“), who reports from Canada about exciting developments in what seems as a very eco-friendly alternative to trees as the source of paper: wheat.

No, it’s not the case of corn here where a food crop is transferred into (what some think is) an alternative “green” product. We’re talking here about pure agricultural waste - wheat straw.

The issue comes up following the printing of the Canadian National Geographic magazine’s June issue, which was printed using 20% wheat straw. The rest of the paper was made of 40% post-consumer recycled paper and 40% virgin paper.

Well, the wheat straw pulp was imported from China (because straw-pulping facilities have yet to be retrofitted in Canada), and that’s not that eco-friendly, but the point was definitely made in terms of feasibility and quality of this alternative. And the potential is huge, as we can learn from the Canadian printer Dollco, which was part of this effort and explains in its news release what could be the impact of using wheat straw for printing paper in Canada:

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Melting Glaciers Mean Grain and Water Shortages

Gavin Hudson — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:27:46 +0000

In a press conference on Thursday, Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, shared his concern that greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere will lead to grain and water shortages in India and China as well as rising grain prices in the United States.

“The world has never faced such a massively predictable potential reduction in grain harvest as we are now looking at with the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau,” said Mr. Brown. “Keep in mind, this is not based off of a climate model with somewhat theoretical projections. This analysis is based on what is already happening–on a trend that’s very well established in both India and in China.”

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