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Newly Discovered Fungus Threatens World Wheat Crop
RickRussellTX writes "The UN reports that a variety of the rust fungus originally detected in Uganda in 1999 has already spread as far north as Iran, threatening wheat production across its range. The fungus infects wheat stems and affects 80% of wheat varieties, putting crops at risk and threatening the food sources for billions of people across central Asia. Although scientists believe they can develop resistant hybrids, the fungus is moving much faster than anticipated and resistant hybrids may still be years away. Meanwhile, national governments in the path of the fungus are telling folks that there is nothing to worry about."
What's the definition of "central Asia"? Is there really "billions of people" there?
Monsanto will be happy to sell them to you, it won't cost much at all, really...
The question isn't whether we need to send John Madden in with some Boom! Fast Actin' Tinactin!, but can we eat this new fungus?
Some fungi are delicious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066154/
i'm so sick of being told of what i need to be afraid of. no wonder the world is full of pill popping zombies, i just wish these people would fuck off with their end of the world nonesense.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
are moaning about wheat production and asia sucking up production capacity at the moment as well. How ironic would it be after all the billions spent on security if we suffer catastrophic population denudation due to the simple fact we can't feed ourselves. Go mother nature, lets have some balance restored.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_smut
uh... never mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think it's too soon to worry about a rust that only eats wheat. If you look here: www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/triticale.html You will see that there is a Wheat form that people have been using for a long time and with no problems. They might be complaining that beer production might go down!
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
I wish the article would have mentioned how related the African and Asian wheat strains were to European and American strains. Since US corn crops are about 85% genetically similar doesn't make the situation in the US good at all. If it does hit the US pretty hard we may be seeing wheat coming from Mexico most likely.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
There's a fungus amongus!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Work is being done to protect crops, but Norman Borlaug says "This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction." Oh yes, and you can say goodbye to cheap white bread.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
As for the over-medicated culture we live in, that's still about not caring. If people cared, they wouldn't avoid. If they didn't avoid, they wouldn't need over-medicating. Avoiding by apathy or by drugs is the same thing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hey, since when does a loaf of bread cost $15? Or a pack of ramen cost $4.99?
or..
"This is the FBI. You're under arrest for posessing ergot or ergot-derived chemicals!"
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Eat your vegetables. Seriously.
I have been waiting for this day since I was diagnosed with C(o)eliac Disease ;) (well, it feeds half the world anyway)
Now everyone has to use rice flour!
jdb2
Why shouldn't governments run on the basis of faith lie when the truth is too much to bear?
And I'm not just talking theocracies. What else would we expect to hear in the US, except yet another chorus after the catastrophe hits saying "No one could have anticipated [this catastrophe people had warned would happen would happen]"?
Anyone else remember Katrina, 9/11/2001, the mortgage collapse, Iraq?
--
make install -not war
There's a lot of money to be made in genetically modifying crops wether to make them resistant to drought, fungus, insects, increase yields, etc.
Governments -not private industry- should join together and create a solution wether it is to truly isolate the crops (e.g. Mad Cow) which is really hard with wind and insects. The better solution would be to do joint research in combating the fungus and/or creating a genetic modification.
The last thing we need is for private companies to be the first to create a "solution". We've already seen what companies like Mosanto has done in Canada by winning its case as I recall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser).
Prices of wheat have already risen this year as farmers are growing corn for ethanol so at least in North America we really need to protect our existing crops in an economic way. I'd really hate to see wheat being imported from China. Governments (hopefully) won't patent a genetic modification whereas if a private company is involved - who knows what the price of wheat will cost in the future!
You have one serious foot fetish.
This reminds me of the novel /Dust/ by Charles Pellegrino. See
http://www.sfsite.com/05b/dust33.htm for a pretty good review.
ISBN-10: 0380787423
ISBN-13: 978-0380787425
http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Charles-R-Pellegrino/dp/0380787423/
slashdottagsshorterthanhaikunewartform
There is no resistance to it. Not a single person has survived exposure to the virus. The few supposed exceptions turned out not to be. The body cannot adjust to it. HIV is a polymorphic virus that mutates almost every replication. There is no evolutionary pressure to be resistant to it, because there is no survival rate. Same as there's no build-up in antibiotic-resistant bacteria when medication is taken correctly and appropriately. Resistant people in Africa or anywhere else is a nice fiction but should be left in Neuromancer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Gotta love it. Monsanto to the rescue!!!
Actually, I hope they don't. One of the worst foods we humans have gotten hooked on has been processed wheat...and that's just about the only way we can buy it. In any case, there are plenty of substitutes... some things just as bad... a few are actually worse.
there was a point in the cyberpunk timeline that said most of the north american wheat crops were devastated by an unknown virus of some sort
wish i could find an online copy of the timeline...
still always trips me out when science fiction predicts//feeds wordward to these sort of things
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Of course hemp comes up! Hemp does everything! With it, you can make rope, clothes, food, furnature, computer chips, gold, planets, the One Ring, you name it, hemp can do it!
Q: I've heard hemp mills are awfully loud.
A: They run as quiet as a cloud.
Q: What if, perchance, hemp plastics should bend?
A: Not on your life, my stoner friend.
Q: What about us doped-up slobs?
A: You'll be given cushy jobs!
Q: The ring came off my pudding can!
A: Use a hemp one, my good man.
Q: Were you sent here by the devil?
A: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
You see, America, hemp's your only choice. Put down your bongs and raise your voice!
That was either the start of something bad or the end of something stupid.
I hear buzz growing about amaranth as a grain contender. Better protein, restores soil nutrients, etc.
Wow, I know /. can be a little slow with news articles but this adds a whole new meaning to 'old news' ;)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
But now it doesn't seem implausible to me that this could be some Monsanto creation designed to sell their soon-to-be-announced new fungus-resistant wheat.
expandfairuse.org
Fungi!! (Fun-guy)!!
That's one of the inherent evils of the commodity markets: "counting your chickens before they hatch".
Oh right, the bees that pollinate corn are dying, too. What's plan C?
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
I wonder... what has become of
- Africanized Bees
- The bird flu
- Anthrax
- Foot-and-mouth disease
- deadly, mutated flu from asia
- the banana fungus that will kill all banana supply
- deadly escalators
- that truck full of explosives on his way to germany
- shark attacks in holiday paradises
- streets running red with blood
- weapons of mass destruction
I am so sick of being told, what will kill me within the next 2 months!
Every year in summer there is another deadly threat approaching...
I can't hear it anymore!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Which is a mistake because not even evil people think of themselves as such. You're right in that there is absolutely no reason that anyone in the world should be thirsty, hungry, or suffering from just about anything we have forgotten about as a life threatening illness in America. It's money though. The driving need to have something extra, to raising yourself that much further above your fellow man, is the only reason people are dying of the things you bemoan.
So what then is the moral, the wisdom from this fact? World of Warcraft imitates life. The richest people, and the people who make the game suck for the rest of us, are the assholes that have nothing better to do than to get more money and beat us down with their god damn twink corporations. Fuck the twinks.
Um, isn't this more or less how the movie Red Dawn began?
do I have the unnerving feeling that RoundUp-ready wheat is resistant to this fungus?
Now
- population is at 6 billion and growing fast.
- pollution levels are enormous; china is well beyond what the entire world had in the 50's.
- the strain on FRESH CLEAN water is well beyond our abilities to handle it (and about to get worse due to GW).
No, we are LONG past the time when America COULD have handled things. As to tyrants "prefering" to starve their pop, that is not even close. I seriously doubt that anybody CHOOSES to starve their population. They are just incompetent idiots who are being backed by either EU, America or China and kept in power because of that (and yes, various countries EU still quietly backs various bad nations).I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I believe that far too many nations have done far too little to control their populations. All of Asia, Africa, and Latin America are growing quickly. The west is actually shrinking except for immigration. Some of the monster problems remain that groups like Mormons and Catholics are pushing against population control. They are literally hoping to grow their growth (that is why the catholic church desperately NEEDS a pope from South America, rather than EU; all of the clergy there wants controls; hopefully that happens when the ex-nazi is gone). And the two nation that MUST put on stricter controls is China and India. Both govs are afraid to do so, so push emigration as a way to lower their population. That will make things worse, not better. As it is, those that immigrate from those nations are not the average populace, but their best and brightest; the very ppl that they need there. Mother nature is about to teach the world a lesson, regardless of what we want. Is he hoping for famine? I doubt that he wants things to be that cruel. But even a number of DOD studies show that this is coming.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
W. is pushing for corn to be used for fuel. So we are going to get a double whammy. Corn and wheat being taken off them food market. It would appear that living may get a LOT more expensive.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nothing better than a (patented) genetically homogeneous worldwide host to infect.
Fun times ahead
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Come on, this is wheat. Who cares about that in Asia? People eat rice 3x a day there.
If you want to see some fast-spreading fungus that destroys food and threatens to wipe out humanity, go look into my fridge.
So, someone has been experimenting again and decided to try it in Africa (again)? ;)
http://www.globalrust.org/ For those who want to keep track of rust development. Also see http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/content/full/18/1/1 for some more technical details.
I'm placing my bet on 'Monsanto developed the fungus'. I wonder how long before they'll release a miracle fungicide...
-1 not first post
Bubonic plague is transported in the body in a similar way to HIV. There is a recessive gene that provides immunity, so you can be born flat-out immune to aids. It works by changing the shape of white blood cells.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
it was like eating gravel
hopefully american food processors can turn it into a sweet mushy goo, like most of the food i'm comfortable with
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, I'm off to make a broth with some nice pearl barley. I'll throw in a few kernals of maize for colour, and I'll serve it with a nice hunk of rye bread. For desert, I think I'll have a nice oat flapjack.
The wheat monoculture thing was never really my bag.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Calling Capt. Kirk! Tribble infestation!
Don't tell Greenpeace! They'll declare these resistant hybrids as 'evil' and claim these 'frankenfoods' will destroy all humanity!
Not like they haven't before....
Apparentlybiottech == Montsanto under any circumstance.
Read the book.
Potato bread. Unless this rust thing hits potato crops too.
Corn is practically worthless, still, even with all the ethanol production we have now. Wheat, on the other hand, is worth a fortune right now. If it was as simple as just picking a crop and growing it, you'd be crazy to even touch corn right now. Unfortunately it's not that simple.
shark attacks are at an all time lower throughout the world. That is most likely due to most sharks being endangered, but your comments applies in certain areas. In particular, off of Florida's west coast.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Newly discovered 9 years ago. I guess "newly" doesn't mean what it once did.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I try not to think of all the ways that we could die off. Like climate change, asteroid impact, wars over resources be it energy reserves or fresh drinking water, the problems with living a police state, and the bee death. Now I have to worry about our food resources being threated by disease as well at least until lunch.
Remember, a while back some one was wanting to build a farming sky scraper? A couple of events like this that we survive at our current tech level, will be enough to get us to play around with that concept.
I'm assuming our farmers and the government are doing everything possible to prevent farm diseases from invading as a routine measure. The only way to be really sure is to have all the food grown where we could control all the air and materials that come into contact with the farm products. In theory, we could grow any type of plant even if it was highly likely to get the disease simply because the normal disease vectors would never come into contact with our farming sky scraper or underground farms, or under ocean farms or orbital farms.
Hemparail!
Hemparail!
Hemparailllllllll!!!!!
Hempa!-Doh!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Yeah hemp has no fucking use whatsoever. Anyone who thinks we should be growing it for any of its (supposedly non psychoactive) many uses is obviously smoking drugs all day and taking suppositories of laundry detergent.
It's a fantastic staple! Go Europe!
But come on rice or potatoes.... let's mix up our staple!
This discussion is mostly irrelevant because long before this can become an issue to worry about those same crops will be wiped out by Global Warming. The debate is over. Global warming is the only issue that should be addressed until we get Global Temperature back under mans control.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
I'll stop making fun of the "Hemp is a wonder crop" folks as soon as they start advocating for, say, kenaf (a largely superior fiber), or when 95% of the hemp advocacy sites online don't have words like "marijuana" in the URL.
That was either the start of something bad or the end of something stupid.
I think its the monorail song - from the Music Man style guy.
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono... D'oh!
Kenaf certainly has it's uses. So does hemp. Look here, for example. Marijuana consumption should be legalized, too.
splice in the thc making dna into kenaf and they'll start promoting kenaf too they are after all Related plants... and hemp is widely used already in china, while kenaf is just starting to be really looked at...
it would be more useful to know what effects kenaf has on the hydrosphere, compared to 'trees' and if parts of the kenaf plant can be burned to produce the paper, the way the bark is burned to produce paper from wood..
they say kenaf uses little water, and grows fast, but that doesn't give specifics on long term effects on the hydrosphere of using kenaf instead of trees... many crops ruin the hydrosphere, causing water to run off, and evaporating little rainfall back into the atmosphere..
kenaf looks almost as tall as a sapling tree, so perhaps it's an eco-friendly crop, but it would be better to have hard science than speculation. well it does use 'safer' bleaching agents than wood, and having less potable water, is better than polluted water. very interesting, most paper mills can be converted to kenaf, and makes 'superior news print' because it's whiter than paper, i wonder how well it recycles.. another troubling thing people forget to mention.
ah well, it uses about 1/10th the land paper production needs, and we can always use trees for something else. like bio-renewable energy
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
You get my point, though, don't you? The overwhelming majority of those touting hemp *virtually never* tout any other great fibers. Their sole reason they are concerned with hemp is made obvious by the sites where you see the advocacy, everywhere from "stopthedrugwar.org" to "nirvana-shop.co.uk" to "drugwarfacts.org" to "druglibrary.org" and so on. These people aren't into hemp because they've long had some sort of affection for quality fibers. Their sole interest is to try and show that the government went overboard with the drug war as part of a move to try and get the drug war repealed.
Hemp is not some magical crop. It has many uses, but they're often way overstated, and other crops, like kenaf, are superior in most respects. It's just another crop, one that could be useful, but has unfortunately gotten caught up in politics. Yet every time the topic comes up, you get these druggies who treat it like it's the Second Coming of Christ, and then act all taken aback when you point out that it's not exactly the best choice in most applications. Even some very common products today are superior than their hemp equivalents -- for example, plain 'old manila rope, made from a type of banana leaf. Just as strong, but doesn't rot nearly as easily as hemp rope does (hemp rope is particularly insidious when it comes to rot, as it tends to rot from the inside out and wick water along so that the whole rope can rot). Or take the other "miracle" thing often mentioned, hemp oil. Yes, it also has many uses. It's also not a very thermally stable oil, and is somewhat prone to going rancid.
Can you see how one can get sick of the politics-driven promotion of hemp as a cure-all?
That was either the start of something bad or the end of something stupid.
Yeah, yeah I get your point :) Hemp oil is a very nutritious [PDF] oil, though. It has all the essential amino acids and so is a complete protein - great for vegetarians like moi. 30% of the RDA of Vitamin E in a table spoon, plus it's low in saturated fat and high in "good" fats/Omega-3,6,9. It has other benefits as well (no, nothing psychotropic). It lasts 2-3 months refrigerated. (Much longer than say walnut oil, but not as long as vegetable oil.) Plus, oils with a low burning point have many uses, such as gently sautéing vegetables or fish, and in salad dressing. Obviously you wouldn't want to deep fry with it or extra virgin olive oil, but I for one am glad there are so many different flavors and uses of the diverse oils we have. I really wish hemp oil was cheaper though - it's a great way to add more nutrition to your diet (i.e. legalize ganja already dammit).
Does this story sound an awful like the back story to that old game, Car Wars? Didn't it start with a grain blight? Theo
I'm kind of flattered, Twitter - did you really create a sockpuppet account with a name suspiciously like mine so you could troll in my honour?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
The dollar is down. The Fed keeps printing more dollars and lowering interest rates even more. So, naturally you can't purchase the same amount of wheat for the same price any more. Of course, SOME of this is a result of high demand for wheat globally and low inventories, but 90% of the price is the Dollar Economics, not the Wheat Economics. So, while the wheat farmer "cleans up" this year by selling his wheat for $10 instead of $5, next year he'll have to buy gas for $6.00/gallon.. Agriculture is a classic bubble market. Food demand is fairly inelastic, but prices can wildly vary. Couple that with the relatively unsophisticated (economically) producers and you have a market ripe for a bubble. The farmers will just go and blow all that money on new overpriced Ford Pickups, mostly Chineese tractors and the rest they'll invest in stocks, just in time for the Wall Street people to finally cash out. The economists like them to suffer because they #1 will always have enough food (won't starve) and they have a place to stay (won't freeze) and if they get behind on the mortgage, Con-agra or Monsanto is there to buy them out and turn them into sharecroppers.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Meanwhile, national governments in the path of the fungus are telling folks that there is nothing to worry about.
Naturally. The people at the top never have to worry about food. They do, however, have to contend with angry hordes of starving people who have nothing to lose.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm curious: Are you sick of the tactics that you think are being used or are you sick of the attempts to advocate against the War on Drugs? Both? Neither?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I meant exactly what I said -- no hidden meaning. I'm sick of the politics-driven promotion of hemp as a cure-all. Which would be Option #1 in your question. For the record, I oppose the drug war.
That was either the start of something bad or the end of something stupid.
LIES. Blatant Lies! Most governments subsidized their farmers into buy the Genetically Modified Hybrids that are sold by large corporations like Pioneer. The only catch though is you can't plant seeds from these GM hybrids. They made it illegal to. Laws that seem to be pandering to the organic health freaks, but are really just written by the seed lobbyist. So now farmers have to buy seed, and the only seed on the market is GM hybrid seed that you can't save seeds and grow from. Nature is the only defense against mold, disease, locust, and worms. Having thousands of varieties of the same plant insures survival. Irish potatoe famine comes to my mind.
Eviscerate the Proletariat!
I honestly don't know enough about hemp to know if it's truly as useful as it's proponents claim. The little bit I have read suggests that it would be more useful for soil replenishment than anything else and that some of the industrial uses may be better met with other products. Regardless of it's merits though, I think that it's pretty stupid to outlaw/regulate it. Even if you agree with a policy of marijuana prohibition, why should a potentially useful product suffer as a result? Especially when most industrial strains have little to no psychoactive potential. Especially when most of the rest of the world is using it and a marketplace exists for it -- a marketplace that we've decided to exclude ourselves from.
FWIW, I also don't think the pro-legalization crowd is solely at fault here. They might be exaggerating their claims of how useful hemp could be but consider the propaganda put out in support of the War on Drugs. Claims like marijuana "supports terrorism" are a lot more harmful to constructive dialog than anything I've heard come out of the pro-legalization and/or pro-hemp crowd.
For the record, I oppose the drug war.I'm honestly not sure how I feel about prohibition of hard drugs. I do think prohibition of marijuana is a foolish policy though. It's a plant that makes you lazy and dumb. It's clearly less harmful than tobacco and likely (all things considered) less harmful than alcohol. The worst thing you can say about marijuana is that it saps your motivation. Not a good thing (especially if badly abused) but hardly something worth shredding our civil liberties over.
Legalize it and treat it the same as alcohol. If individuals abuse it than let them suffer the consequences at work or in school -- the same as happens if people abuse alcohol.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...unless you like eating wheat.