Millions face hunger as deadly fungus decimates global banana crop

[dipsydoodle]

Scientists have warned that the world’s banana crop, worth £26 billion and a crucial part of the diet of more than 400 million people, is facing “disaster” from virulent diseases immune to pesticides or other forms of control.

Alarm at the most potent threat – a fungus known as Panama disease tropical race 4 (TR4) – has risen dramatically after it was announced in recent weeks that it has jumped from South-east Asia, where it has already devastated export crops, to Mozambique and Jordan.

A United Nations agency told The Independent that the spread of TR4 represents an “expanded threat to global banana production”. Experts said there is a risk that the fungus, for which there is currently no effective treatment, has also already made the leap to the world’s most important banana growing areas in Latin America, where the disease threatens to destroy vast plantations of the Cavendish variety. The variety accounts for 95 per cent of the bananas shipped to export markets including the United Kingdom, in a trade worth £5.4bn.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will warn in the coming days that the presence of TR4 in the Middle East and Africa means “virtually all export banana plantations” are vulnerable unless its spread can be stopped and new resistant strains developed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/bananageddon-millions-face-hunger-as-deadly-fungus-decimates-global-banana-crop-9239464.html

[WinkyDink]

1. What color horse is this one now?

[Enthusiast]

3. I do not understand.

I'm slow this AM.

[bemildred]

5. This would be the black one, I think. nt

[Enthusiast]

2. Like the Irish potato famine, this banana fungus illustrates the value of genetic diversity.

Relying on mono-cultures sets a dangerous precedent. From trees to grain crops, the ability of a species to adapt to threats often becomes the greatest asset.

[bemildred]

6. +1. Classic example, just a matter of time.

Industrial food production is not sustainable.

[Enthusiast]

7. We are a drought away from worldwide catastrophe.

Or a blight away.

[bemildred]

8. Oh I think we are there. We have food riots now. All over the world.

And it's all business as usual still. People are moving to sustainable methods at the bottom, but it's all about the money at the top, so it's not going to get better soon.

[Cirque du So-What]

9. They never learn

and by 'they,' I mean Big Ag, who surely know the risks, yet persist in practices doomed to failure - probably because it'd affect the next quarter's bottom line to diversify.

[fasttense]

13. They brought us the huge Dust storms during the 1st RepubliCON Great Depression too

Many people don't realize that the new huge plows used on farms were NOT small farmers who purchased big equipment to make money in the 1920s and 30s. It was conglomerates, trust funds, corporations and suitcase farmers that bought up farmland to make a quick buck. When commodities prices fell, these groups just abandon the land leaving it plowed, naked and exposed.

It wasn't the small farmer who didn't know how to farm in the prairies that caused the dust bowl, it was speculators and Big Ag plowing up everything in sight then abandoning the land the minute farming became difficult.

But the story we are all told is that the small farmer planted more and more, exposing more and more land to topsoil blow off because they just didn't know any better. I imagine a few real farmers did that but it wasn't the majority. But even though most small farmers knew how to farm and did it in an ecologically sound manner, the big suitcase farmers ruined everyone's land when they created the dust storms. Just like it's Big Ag who is going to create yet another dust bowl and Ag chemical corporations who are going to ruin the non-GMO lands remaining.

[struggle4progress]

17. The edible bananas have vestigal seeds, so monoculture is inevitable

A few discovered mutations are cultivated for consumption

Mostly banana species look something like this, with big hard seeds

[Laelth]

4. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[roseBudd]

10. Yet some liberals excorciate our biotechnology scientists with death threats

And cheer crop stomping in the Phillipines

[cprise]

11. Don't recall biotechs ever trying to stop monoculture

In fact they promote it to the hilt.

So your post seems oddly off-topic.

[roseBudd]

15. Plant pathogens proceed monoculture. Plant pests proceed monoculture.

Monoculture serves first world consumers.

And allows farmers to make a living, as opposed to subsistence.

It isn't a scientist's job to do away with monoculture. It isn't a scientists job to tell farmers how to condeuct their business.

Biotechnology saved the papaya.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/vandals_hack_down_hawaiis_genetically_modified_papaya_trees/

Biotechnology hopefully will save the orange.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/12/usda-steps-up-citrus-greening-fight-that-ultimately-may-require-a-gmo-fix/#.U0BW6ahdWPM

We should all hope that biotechnology wins the race to save the banana given how many people who aren't first worlders will be effected.

http://www.scidev.net/global/biotechnology/news/gm-banana-resistant-to-fungus-shows-promise-1.html

[bananas]

18. Risk Expert Nassim Taleb: GMOs Could Destroy the Global Ecosystem

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101689073

Taleb and his 2 co-authors write in a new draft paper:

<snip>

For nature, the “ruin” is ecocide: an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet.

<snip>

Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs fall squarely under (the precautionary principle, i.e. the rule that we should err on the side of caution if something is really dangerous) not because of the harm to the consumer because of their systemic risk on the system.

<snip>

What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global. I do not wish to pay—or have my descendants pay—for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there—our non-naive version—simply because we would only discover errors after considerable and irreversible environmental damage.

<snip>

Calling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor—indeed warped—understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management.

<snip>

[bananas]

19. "It isn't a scientists job to tell farmers how to conduct their business." - Bullshit!

That reveals an irresponsible and dangerous lack of ethics.

Scientists are human beings, and they have the same ethical responsibilities as every other human being.

Scientists in every other field have embraced their ethical responsibilities.

The idea that bioscientists are superhumans above ethical responsibility is delusional.

[bemildred]

12. This has nothing to do with biotech crops, and yet it is true they invite this sort of problem too.

[roseBudd]

14. First world ideology

Biotechnology scientists saved the Papaya

Biotechnology scientists have a solution to VAD which is endemic in huge swaths of Africa, Asia and Central and S. America

"Scientists are particularly concerned about the impact of TR4 across the developing world, where an estimated 410 million people rely on the fruit for up to a third of their daily calories."...

The Panama fungus is just one of several diseases which also threaten banana production, in particular among smallholders and subsistence farmers.

Black sigatoka, another fungus to have spread from Asia, has decimated production in parts of the Caribbean since it arrived in the 1990s, reducing exports by 90 to 100 per cent in five countries.

READ MORE: WHERE SEEDS OF THE FUTURE ARE GROWN

Researchers say they are struggling to secure funding to discover new banana varieties or develop disease-resistant GM strains.

Professor Randy Ploetz, of the University of Florida, said: “The Jordan and Mozambique TR4 outbreaks are alarming but have helped increase awareness about this problem.”

[MisterP]

16. actually this isn't the first time!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel

[bananas]

20. Save my people!

Bananas and plantains are people too!