The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore

Author:Al Gore [Gore, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Political Science, Social Science, Sociology, Business & Economics, Globalization, Development, Business Development
ISBN: 9780679644309
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

MUTATING PLANT DISEASES

In any case, new versions of plant diseases are causing problems for farmers all over the world. In 1999, a new mutated variety of an old fungal disease known as stem rust began attacking wheat fields in Uganda. Spores from the African fields were carried on the wind first to neighboring Kenya, then across the Red Sea to Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula, and from there to Iran. Plant scientists are concerned that it will continue spreading in Africa, Asia, and perhaps beyond. Two scientific experts on the disease, Peter Njao and Ruth Wanyera, expressed concern in 2012 that it could potentially destroy 80 percent of all known wheat varieties. Although this wheat rust was believed to be reduced to a minor threat a half century ago, the new mutation has made it deadlier than ever.

Similarly, cassava (also known as tapioca, manioc, and yucca), the third-largest plant-based source of calories for people (after rice and wheat), is consumed mostly in Africa, South America, and Asia. It developed a new mutation in East Africa in 2005, and since then, according to Claude Fauquet, who is the director of cassava research at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, “There has been explosive, pandemic-style spread.… The speed is just unprecedented, and the farmers are really desperate.” Some experts have compared this outbreak to the potato blight in Ireland in the 1840s, which was linked in part to Ireland’s heavy reliance on a monocultured potato strain from the Andes.

Sixty percent of the U.S. corn crop was destroyed in 1970 by a new variety of Southern corn leaf blight, demonstrating clearly, in the words of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “that a genetically uniform crop base is a disaster waiting to happen.” The UCS notes that “U.S. agriculture rests on a narrow genetic base. At the beginning of the 1990s, only six varieties of corn accounted for 46 percent of the crop, nine varieties of wheat made up half of the wheat crop, and two types of peas made up 96 percent of the pea crop. Reflecting the global success of fast food in the age of Earth Inc., more than half the world’s potato acreage is now planted with one variety of potato: the Russet Burbank favored by McDonald’s.”

Although most of the debate over genetically modified plants has focused on crops for food and animal feed, there has been surprisingly little discussion about the robust global work under way to genetically modify trees, including poplar and eucalyptus. Some scientists have expressed concern that the greater height of trees means that the genetically modified varieties will send their pollen into a much wider surrounding area than plants like soybeans, corn, and cotton.

China is already growing an estimated thousands of hectares of poplar trees genetically modified to make the Bt toxin in its leaves in order to protect them against insect infestations. Biotech companies are trying to introduce modified eucalyptus trees in the U.S. and Brazil. Scientists argue that in addition

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