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waiting for Ug99

cesare said:
The last proper* UK panic buying I remember was sugar in the 70s. Apart from petrol.

*more than a rumour
Click to expand...
although there's been a mention on the radio (today programme a couple of days ago) of the poor harvests leading to higher food prices, this doesn't seem to have reached many people's attention yet.

people especially reliant on formerly cheap staples like rice or pasta or bread will be particularly hard hit.
 
stem rust, of a different sort, in the united states:
Researchers seek to understand stem rust spread
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
ADDY, Wash. -- This is the biggest year for stem rust in more than a decade, a wheat pathologist says.
The outbreak is due to the late planting of spring barley and wheat and late season rain, which primarily impacted the Palouse and other areas of eastern Washington state, USDA Agricultural Research Service plant pathologist Xianming Chen said.
Stem rust prefers high temperatures, occurs in the later growing stages and needs an alternate host, the common barberry. It causes large rust pustules, which can cause 100 percent yield loss if severe.
Chen estimated a .5 percent yield-loss average in fields this year, although some hot spots, roughly half an acre in size, may see yield losses of up to 40 percent.
Stripe rust, a different species, is more likely in cooler weather and does not require another host plant.
The Northwest stem rust strain is not Ug99, the global strain garnering international attention because of its devastating effects in southern Africa. That strain has yet to show up in the U.S.
Stem rust overwinters on the wheat and blows onto the barberry in the spring, Washington State University Extension agronomist Diana Roberts said. It reproduces, then blows back onto the wheat, Roberts said.
When the rust returns to the wheat field, it goes through another phase capable of blowing hundreds of miles.
"The new, genetically different race can do a lot of late-season infection," Roberts said. "That's our concern about the Pacific Northwest being a nursery for new races of stem rust. Those new races can then blow to the Midwest."
Chen said researchers and breeders are gathering samples to send to USDA ARS colleagues in Minnesota to identify the races and compare them with Ug99. There are more races in the Pacific Northwest because of the barberry plant in the region, he said.
The increase in stem rust is due to barberry regrowth. The resurgence began in 2007, Roberts said, when several Stevens County producers lost virtually their total barley crop.
Doug Falstad farms in Addy, Wash,, about 58 miles north of Spokane. He has a six-acre spring barley field that's got some rust, but will still produce a good crop. It's better than previous years, when his fields had so much rust the crop was destroyed.
"It hit at the right time," Falstad said, noting his kernels were already heading. "If the stem rust would have come in two weeks sooner, this would have been wiped out."
It's unlikely the federal government will fund a barberry eradication program, Roberts said.
"We believe it's going to fall back onto the land owner to do the eradication," she said.
Chen recommended planting wheat and barley varieties that are resistant to stem rust. Spring wheat and barley should be planted as early as possible, he said.
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http://www.capitalpress.com/newest/mw-Stem-rust-update-082212-art
 
Pickman's model said:
although there's been a mention on the radio (today programme a couple of days ago) of the poor harvests leading to higher food prices, this doesn't seem to have reached many people's attention yet.

people especially reliant on formerly cheap staples like rice or pasta or bread will be particularly hard hit.
Click to expand...
Yep, also a feature on breakfast TV last week. Strange that it seems lowkey.

I just found a news article about the drought in the US, also where Ug99 was/wasn't a factor. I closed the tab though :facepalm:
 
this from a few hours ago in the guardian
Flying into Des Moines, the corn fields look surprisingly green. America's midwest produces half the world's corn and Iowa its largest harvest, yet amid the worst drought in living memory all the untrained eye can see is the occasional brown mark, like a cigarette burn on the baize of a pool table.
But appearances can be deceptive.
In Boone, Iowa, 30 miles away from the state capital, traffic backs up for miles bringing 200,000 people to Farm Progress, the US's largest agricultural show one. Here, all the talk is of the drought.
Pam Johnson, first vice-president of the National Corn Growers Association, says she can't remember one as bad as this in her 40 years of farming. "My parents say you have to go back to the 1930s for anything comparable," she says. In June, her farm in northern Iowa got an inch and a half of rain. "We usually get that a week. In July we got seven-tenths of an inch, for the month." Rain may be coming soon, thanks to hurricane Isaac, but it's too late for America's corn crop.
The US planted 97m acres of corn for this year's crop – the most since 1937. If everything had gone according to plan, this year's harvest would have produced a new record, at close to 15bn bushels of corn (a bushel is 24 million metric tonnes). It's too early to say what the final tally will be, but the US department of agriculture has slashed its forecast to 10.8bn. Dan Basse, president of AgResources, an independent agriculture analyst, says that figure is likely to come down. "We've lost 4bn bushels of corn. That's the largest loss in history, and we could lose another," he says. The USDA has declared counties in 38 states to be "disaster areas". About 72% of cattle areas are experiencing drought.
Corn prices are at record highs, suggesting corn producers might be among the few winners in this situation. But many sold their crop before the drought swept the country, and those with corn to sell now have less of it.
Nevertheless, the price hike has set corn producers against livestock farmers and by the end of the year food prices will rise. The spike in food prices is unlikely to be enough to ruffle US consumers. Basse says the people likely to feel it most are the 1.7bn people across the world who get by on $2 a day. "They are the ones who will really suffer," he says. In 2008 drought-driven food price rises led to unrest in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Things could have been a lot worse this year, says Johnson. She says bio-tech and agricultural innovations have allowed corn to produce even during this record drought. Those still greenish fields are only green thanks to bio-engineered corn, she says. "If we were using the seeds my parents had used, we would really be in trouble. Those plants would all have fallen over" she says.
But for the livestock industry, it's not enough. Jeff Erb, a Boone county cattleman who farms a few miles from the show, says he has not witnessed a summer this dry since 1985. "And that was nowhere near as bad," he says. "Temperatures were pushing a hundred for nine, 10 days after another. The creeks are dry, the pastures been gone since June.
"A lot of guys have been using their winter supplies this summer."
Corn costs are $8 a bushel – double what he paid last year. A large round bail of hay costs $150-$160 – also double last year's price. And while his costs have soared, there's little chance cattle farmers will be able to put their prices up. "We have no control at all," he says.
Erb says there's no point in blaming corn producers. Others are less sanguine. At the show there are dark words about "profiteers" and "speculators" but no one wants to attack their fellow farmers on the record. In private, they are lobbying hard. Arkansas congressman Steve Womack is leading a charge to repeal a law that requires 10% of the US's gasoline supply to come from corn-based ethanol – a law that swallows up to 40% of the country's annual corn production. "If something isn't done – and done fast – food prices will soar," he said in a recent statement. In the 2008 drought it was Cuba's Fidel Castro leading the charge against America's use of food for fuel.
Johnson says this summer is an "aberration". In the long run she believes ethanol is a good bet and will mean cheaper fuel for Americans, something that worries them more than small rises in food prices. But the pressures are mounting. Richer consumers in China and other developing nations are eating more corn-fed meat, and the ethanol subsidy isn't going anywhere, especially in an election year when so much is riding on corn-fuelled swing states like Iowa.
Even corn farmers seem to have had enough. A recent survey by Farm Futures magazine found farmers planning to cut the land they will set aside for corn next spring. Willie Vogt, editorial director of Farm Progress, which organises the giant show, says the big issue now is what happens next. Last year was tough on livestock farmers. This year is tougher still. With supplies dwindling for livestock farmers, there is little room for error. "We don't need to be too worried about agriculture this year," he says. "But if we have another drought next year, you better get a gun."
Click to expand...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/30/iowa-corn-crop-drought-farmers-prices

by the way, another reason the guardian's going to shit is they don't know of what they witter. a fucking bushel is NOT 24 million metric tonnes, despite what they might think.
 
cynicaleconomy said:
So the world isn't about to end, right?
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well...
So potentially, winds can take the disease across the Mediterranean?

Yes, from Egypt the most likely path would be eastward into Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey – all those areas. But if the disease gets established there, it could circulate around the Mediterranean, helped by winds or human migration. We could potentially see a much wider dispersal. We’ve got it in Africa, north to south. We’ve also got Yemen and Iran as confirmed.

Stem rust has really re-emerged as a disease of concern. We’re looking at big, important wheat-producing areas that are extremely susceptible, and the rust races we have now are much worse than in the past because they have overcome many resistance genes. And a lot of those genes were used widely throughout the world.
Click to expand...
Wheat Researcher Says Stem-Rust Disease Is Spreading
 
Deadly new wheat disease threatens Europe’s crops
Researchers caution that stem rust may have returned to world’s largest wheat-producing region.
02 February 2017
Last year, the stem rust destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of crops in Sicily. What’s particularly troubling, the researchers say, is that GRRC tests suggest the pathogen can infect dozens of laboratory-grown strains of wheat, including hardy varieties that are usually highly resistant to disease. The team is now studying whether commercial crops are just as susceptible.

Adding further concern, the centres say that two new strains of another wheat disease, yellow rust, have been spotted over large areas for the first time — one in Europe and North Africa, and the other in East Africa and Central Asia. The potential effects of the yellow-rust fungi aren’t yet clear, but the pathogens seem to be closely related to virulent strains that have previously caused epidemics in North America and Afghanistan.
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We are also 'waiting' on xylella fastidiosa - the olive tree killing bacterial pathogen (and potentially many, many other garden plants). Dismal times.
 
bump

The next pandemic could hit global crop supplies
As plant diseases spread across continents, greater scrutiny is needed
The World Ahead | Science in 2024 https://archive.is/srsDM
A plant pandemic could tip the world towards mass hunger. In 2024, that looks ever more likely. Most farmers rely on monocultures, which are efficient but vulnerable. If one plant is infected, the whole crop can be lost. Some diseases thrive in rain, spelling trouble for countries like India as monsoons become more erratic. Global warming also increases the range of pathogens, by enabling them to survive in hitherto hostile regions.
Click to expand...
...
The best way to stop diseases, so far, has been to genetically engineer resistant crops. Scientists at the John Innes Centre, a plant-science institute in Britain, found two genes that confer resistance to wheat blast. Crops bred with those are safe. But the fungus will, in time, evolve to overcome them.
Click to expand...
 
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