In the face of continuing rapid population growth, coupled with uncertain energy supplies, less water, no new land to expand into, and climate change, breeding new crop varieties will be vital to meet the world's future food needs.

"When it comes to food, the most underappreciated, undervalued-and the most potent-tool we have to address all of these crises lies in the crops themselves, in the natural diversity that exists within each crop," said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

"There are more than 30,000 unique varieties of corn and 200,000 distinct types of wheat for example. This diversity is a treasure trove of traits that can be used by plant breeders and farmers to breed new crop varieties that are heat, insect and disease-resistant, drought-tolerant and climate-ready."

Fowler spoke before the World Food Prize 2008 Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines. Senators McGovern and Dole have been awarded this year's prize for a program which has fed over 22 million children in 41 countries and also significantly boosted school attendance.

The award of the prize highlights the moral imperative of feeding the hungry, but it is not just for their moral vision that they have been chosen for this award, it is also for their political leadership.

"If we are to achieve the goal of ending world hunger, we need the vision to identify threats before they become crises, and the political leadership to take timely action," said Maggie Catley-Carlson, Chair of the Global Crop Diversity Trust Executive Board.

"One of the achievements of the Senators was to have built a broad non-partisan consensus for anti-hunger programs. We need to build on that leadership to ensure that the foundation of our food supply is safe."

The biological foundation of agriculture - crop diversity - is being lost, both in the US and abroad. At the end of the 1800s, 7,000 named apple varieties were grown in the United States. Now, 6,800 of those are extinct.

Around the world, crop diversity collections-or genebanks-with unique collections have been destroyed in the last few years by war and natural disaster, including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines. (Abu Ghraib used to be more famous for its genebank than its prison.)

Other collections are losing their seeds every day due to poor management and unreliable funding. Genebanks in many developing countries are often unaware of what is stored on their shelves, nor whether that seed is alive or dead, effectively dismantling humanity's defense in the face of growing threats.

"Providing the next crop variety is just as important as providing the next meal," said Fowler. "It's easy to view hunger only on a short timescale. Miss the next four meals, and that spells trouble. By comparison, 2030, for example, seems a long way away. But if we think in crop breeding cycles, 2030 is just two cycles away. And we know that the climate will pose real dangers to food production by 2030."

The answer to many crop woes in the US, for example, may be found in an obscure variety cultivated, or even growing wild in Asia, Africa, South America or the Middle East. US agriculture needs the genetic resources of collections of crop diversity around the world to combat pests and diseases and to adapt to environmental changes, said Fowler.

"International cooperation is essential. No country is self-sufficient in crop diversity. Even a country such as the US, with one of the worlds best genebanks and for which corn is the most important crop, has only five percent of globally-held corn samples," said Fowler. "Energy independence may be a realistic objective, but crop diversity independence is impossible."

Fortunately, there is no need for any country to be independent in crop diversity - the Global Crop Diversity Trust will ensure that crop diversity is safely conserved and available to all. The Trust is undertaking a massive effort to search crop collections-from Israel to Nigeria-for the traits that could arm the agriculture of the future against the impact of these changes.

With the government of Norway, the Trust opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, dubbed the "doomsday seed vault" in the Arctic Circle, which serves a backup collection for this effort to search, save, and use today's crop diversity collections.

Diversity is being lost, but it can be conserved easily, according to the Trust. The costs are totally insignificant compared to the benefits - the entire biological foundation of agriculture could be conserved, forever, for the cost of one Boeing 747.

"But confronting crisis starts with the political will to make long-term investments before the crisis itself makes those investments politically palatable," said Fowler.

"Conserving crop diversity is the logical first step, a prerequisite for solving the food crisis and ensuring that agriculture copes with climate change and other crises. It is painfully evident that short-term thinking has led to long-term problems that will not be solved with more short-term thinking."

A few short decades from now, agricultural crops will face entirely new growing environments, according to climate change researchers. In many countries, the coldest growing seasons of the future will be hotter than the hottest ever recorded in the past. The 11 hottest years on record have all occurred in the past 13 years.

"Should we assume rice, wheat and corn varieties will continue to feed us in environmental conditions they have never experienced?" asked Fowler. "They won't. If today's corn varieties are still in the field in southern Africa two decades from now, production will drop by 30 per cent because of climate change, and we will watch babies starve to death on television due to our own lack of foresight and preparedness."

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
Global Crop Diversity Trust
Farming Today - Suppliers and Technology

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News