New wheat disease threatens Europe’s crops

[david-given]

If ever you feel that your day is too cheerful, go read John Christopher's The Death Of Grass; it'll sort you right out.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/941731.The_Death_of_Grass

In it, a rice virus mutates and wipes out all grass crops in Asia and Europe --- rice, wheat, barley, oats, you name it.

tl:dr: it doesn't go well.

[lightsighter]

To be fair, as someone with Celiac disease, living in that world might be a little easier for me than living in present day America (minus the obvious implications for the end of society as we know it).

[orf]

Really really great book, not particularly long but very engrossing (and pretty depressing!)

[cpeterso]

A film was made of the book in 1970: No Blade of Grass.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066154/

[TheOtherHobbes]

+ 1 - excellent, but incredibly depressing book, from a writer who's often overlooked.

[WalterBright]

My copy of it is entitled "No Blade of Grass".

[briantakita]

Another reason to use polycultures & a more ecosystemic approach (restoration agriculture) to growing food, custom to each region. There's disease resistance by design & the ecosystem is improved.

Small scale farming also focuses the population on improving the biosphere, whereas the technosphere has dominated our cultural attention.

[dmichulke]

Two related thoughts:

- A potential European famine won't happen because the lacking quantities of food will be imported, to the detriment of all with less purchasing power and no sufficient own production (read Africa)

- Is there some principle similar to "financial diversification" applied in Agriculture to obtain a Portfolio with low risk? I could imagine to use some "genome distance" instead of asset correlation.

[ratacat]

It's called genetic diversity. Look at traditional methods of potatoe farming in Peru and the Andes. They breed thousands of varieties. Look up some pictures, it's crazy. Our modern method of high input, high petroleum leveraged mono cropping is highly susceptible to blight.

[Gustomaximus]

> A potential European famine won't happen because the lacking quantities of food will be imported, to the detriment of all with less purchasing power

I can't believe that in today's connected world this would happen to the determent of other nations. Sure 150 years ago in Ireland type scenario but these days if a local populace was starving the government would shut borders on food. No democratic government would stay in power otherwise and I doubt a dictatorship could either. It's a different world.

That said purchasing power would be used by wealthy nations to buy any excess. But also I feel like in the scenario from the book there would be very limited excess so it's a stretch to claim there would be no European famine as you can't expect there to be excess food from any nation. Grass overs a hell of a lot of food production directly and also indirectly in things like meat production.

[halotrope]

Hopefully this is not the beginning of another science-fiction plot turning reality. From what I can tell we are quite a few years away from the technology of 'Interstellar'

[rubber_duck]

If we had interstellar level of tech we could synthesize aminos, carbs and fats more efficiently than we can with agriculture. We could probably do it right now with processing simple organisms like algae or what not if push came to shove - with enough R&D $ spent, but all forms of agriculture get subsidized enough that it doesn't even let alternative competition come up.

I'm not saying agricultural disasters can't have very negative impacts on society (especially less developed countries that have to bid for same food as developed countries on global market) but such sci-fi plots are rather unconvincing.

[syntheticnature]

Given that plague's... unusual biochemistry (lives off Nitrogen instead of Oxygen how?) I'm less worried about that than us merely running 5 years behind on Car Wars' timeline:

https://sites.google.com/site/arpscarwars/Home/car-wars-time...

[intrasight]

A good sci-fi adaptation of this is T"he Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi

[krona]

It's a similar situation with the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium.

Even if the technology did exist, it would be banned in ~50% of the EU under GMO and 'new food' legislation.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

This isn't really a "new" disease, but a new variety of Puccinia graminis.

One thing about P.graminis that's useful for us is that it overwinters on barberry, where it does the sexual stage of its lifecycle, so if you can get rid of the barberry you can slow down the rust's evolution significantly. Here's a page about the eradication efforts in 20th century US: https://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/Pages/Bar...

[stevefeinstein]

While I'm sure this is was too simplistic. Seems like it they can produce less wheat, then maybe people will eat less wheat, and possibly the reduced carbs will make them healthier. Win/win!