Our Daily Bread

And we think that food prices are high now? And the United Nations is warning of the stress that under-developed countries are experiencing given the global down-turn and the rising price of food? And we're informed that refugees' plight requiring attention from the developed world to ensure that mass starvation doesn't overtake good intentions means that more funding will be required to deliver basic food to those masses?

The most basic, elemental and fundamental type of food, bread, may soon become unavailable to larger segments of society than ever before. Simply due to scarcity. Unless food scientists, chemists and biologists somehow discover a fail-proof way of ensuring that crop-destructive fungi don't destroy our ability to provision ourselves with the wheat the world needs. It's like the worst-case scenario of limiting ourselves to mono-crops.

Where, with heritage types of fruits and vegetables having been whittled down in importance to certain single crops and specialized crops that have been genetically altered to make them more impervious to insect predation and infestations, suddenly have the potential to fatally succumb to another of nature's unpredictable scourges. And without diversity, other crops that might be impervious to that ravaging scourge, we're left without any.

Now, news of an air-borne fungus named Ug99 that has begun to devastate wheat crops in eastern Africa, on its way into the Middle East and Central Asia. It has, thus far, proven unstoppable. A destructive fungus that begins as a 'rust' presence on the stem of plants and saps the life-cycle, destroying the properties that make wheat able to mature to a human-digestible form of food.

Scientists are genuinely worried that without a breakthrough enabling them to successfully combat the onslaught of the fungus, it will make its way to the wheat-fecund, breadbasket regions of North America, Russia and China. The United Nations has identified Ug99 as "a major threat" to world food security. This stem rust disease is proving to be universally devastating.

Fungus spores attach to the stalk of a wheat plant emitting a reddish-brown rust colour pustule that grows, taking over the plant's nutrient and water system for its own growth, instead of enabling the plant to mature to become a human-edible grain. The problem of 'rust' is not new, but this is a new strain, one that is expected to mutate enabling it to attack all wheat types; spring, winter and durum.

Traditionally food scientists have taken to developing new wheat strains when new rust-causing fungi develop by introducing resistant genes into wheat plants. The process, however, can take a dozen years to develop new pest-resistant wheat variants. And the spread of this Ug99 rust has advanced exponentially, to the point where scientists don't have the leisure of time.

"Resource-poor farmers are particularly vulnerable to wheat-stem disease, which has the potential to wipe out entire crops", according to the director of agricultural development for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has set up the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University.

According to the executive director of the Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission there is little or no research money poured into wheat. "This is one of the concerns that a lot of grower groups have. Cereals haven't had research dollars spent on them because there's more of an attractive pull into corn and soybeans, just because of the return on investment."

It's been left to governments to fund research in North America, to develop new wheat strains. Here's hoping governments become sufficiently infused with the sense of urgency that food scientists are themselves reeling under. Much depends on it.