The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)

SchroedingersCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 519

Myanmar's rice paddies have been drowned in salt water from the storm surges. Salt is not generally a good thing to put onto farmland. It will probably be years before these paddies are producing rice again, if ever. Mother Nature is just getting warmed up. Twisted Evil

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yesplease · Fission Joined: Oct 03, 2006 Posts: 2078

Jack · Dark Lord Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 4970

fletch_961 · Tar Sands Joined: Jan 31, 2008 Posts: 84

sparky · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 09, 2007 Posts: 119

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On Ug99

from ICARDA
http://www.icarda.cgiar.org/News/2008/20Mar08/20Mar08.htm

( * ) my comment

[ "We all know that Ug99 is capable of causing enormous losses to wheat production (* 70% reported in Kenya )........
...unless
it is controlled through deployment of wheat varieties with durable rust resistance ( * and lower yield ), and other means ( * massive use of fungicides ) to combat the spread of disease. ......
........the race ( *genetic haplogroup ) has now arrived in Iran, a country with 6 million hectares of wheat.
The pathogen is certainly moving quicker than originally anticipated. (* two years faster for jumping to Iran ) as had been predicted based on the knowledge of earlier movements of Yellow Rust. "We have the conviction that Ug99 will spread beyond Iran faster
and may take additional pathways ( * air travel , Beijing Olympic games , ten of thousand of soldiers next door in Irak going home to the mid-west ). With the long distance travel of rust spores,
it is only a matter of time until Ug99 spreads further ..... he cautioned. It is certainly a serious threat to global food security.]

Ug 99 is to yellow rust what the influenza epidemic of 1918 was to a head cold ,
resistant race of wheat exist as a few bags in research stations , once selected it will have to be grown to 20.000 ~ 30.000 tons of seed
that would take a few years !
It still could turn out to be a fizzer , but the danger is real , present and growing .

P.S. If on believe in the natural way , death by starvation of 90% of a specie must be accepted as a re-balancing exercise....
There is no inherent " Right to stay alive " it happen because of good management of one's environment and population
6.6 billions people is an accident waiting to happen , the world will be fine ,

..... its people who are in trouble .

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dorlomin · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Aug 05, 2007 Posts: 1001

What are the practicalities of wheat farmers moving to potatos, corn, sorgum and other staples? i.e. is UG99 not something that some can avoid by simply not relying on wheat? Is this not an inversion of the Irish famine where the wheat would grow but not the spuds?

FoolYap

Newfie · Last edited by Newfie on Thu May 08, 2008 6:00 pm; edited 2 times in total

Cur said:

"If you do not know what it is that you are dealing with than you do not know how to approach it, tactically or strategically.

You only know you are sick. To know how to treat it we need to know if it is a virus, bacteria or an injury.

We have a food crisis, if I might over-simplify, it looks something like this:

Too many people + using food for luxuries for the rich = starving people

Now I see two parts of the equation that we could attack in order to break the equation of hunger...

but I must also confess that I think the cause is lost and that even if we win some battles against hunger, we will loose the war. So one picks there battles, battles that they can win, battles that mean something, even if we loose the war.

I've chosen my battles, this does not mean that I do not mourn the loss of the war only that I am determined to bring my platoon through the defeat of the cause.

An accident of fate has me born into a time, faced with choices that I do not like. That I do not like them does not free me from the obligation to make them.

The globe's war against hunger is lost. My war, however, is not."

Well said Cur.
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Jupidu

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1406

Jupidu,
Exactly. We have chosen to swim in the shallow end of the gene pool where food crops are concerned. Not good at all.
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wisconsin_cur

Fishman

Sorry Jupidu, no flu vaccines until after 1931. They were using horse serum back in 1918. Cyclical influenza epidemics happen regardless of nutritional status, nutrition plays some however as the Black death (plague) of the 1300s was definitely worsened by nutritional problems.

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2083 Location: Arkansas

Wisconsin,

I agree with your analogy, but I think its even more limited than that - we're not platoon leaders, we're nothing but a bunch of squad leaders. The immediate family is usually about squad size. Its all one can plan for and around. A squad has to be highly mobile and adaptive to constantly changing conditions. Although like you, my home is my castle, my last bastion of defense, the buck stops here, you know what I'm saying.

wisconsin_cur

GeoJAP

This is related to the hurricane in Myanmar and how it will affect rice production there. This is a Nasa image which shows the state before and immediately after the storm. I would be surprised if they get rice production started any time soon in the affected areas. And all this was cause by only a category 3 hurricane/typhoon.

Note the amount of sediment in the water in the 'after' picture.