ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A21 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL RAEBURN
AS THEY harvested their crops this fall, many U.S. corn farmers discovered a tragic consequence of the government's failure to conserve and use its biological riches. A devastating disease called gray leaf spot had spread across Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, contributing to a dramatic drop in this year's corn harvest.
Crop analysts had warned that this was the worst epidemic to strike corn in decades. Michael Hinebaugh, a crop scout in Pine Knoll Shores, N.C., who has crisscrossed the Midwest every summer for the past 25 years, said, ``This is a very dangerous situation. We don't have enough corn to meet the demand.''
Paul Prentice, the president of Farm Sector Economics, a consulting firm in Colorado Springs, warned that ``we may be in for a disaster of biblical proportions in terms of feed corn.'' In midsummer, Purdue University researchers searched Indiana for gray leaf spot. They found it in every cornfield they looked at.
The epidemic is coming at the worst possible time. U.S. stocks of feed corn - one of the principal sources of food for poultry and beef - are the lowest they have been in 20 years.
``Stocks are so incredibly tight that the slightest decrease in supply is going to produce a tremendous increase in price,'' Prentice told me. Consumers will feel the effects in a few months, as the shortage leads to rising prices for animal feed and, in turn, an increase in the price of corn-fed meat and poultry at the supermarket.
In early November, the Agriculture Department reported that the nation's corn crop was down 27 percent from last year. Authorities trying to explain the drop are debating the relative contributions of gray leaf spot and bad weather. However that debate is resolved, the important point is this: The weather couldn't be helped, but the epidemic could have been prevented.
The outbreak of gray leaf spot disease is only one manifestation of a problem that is dangerously weakening American agriculture. Potatoes are being ravaged by the same disease that killed a million people in Ireland 150 years ago. Some potato growers have lost up to 50 percent of their crop. All of our crops are at risk to similar epidemics.
These preventable epidemics are the direct consequence of the striking uniformity of American crops. Farmers pushing for ever-larger harvests have narrowed their plantings to fewer and fewer high-yielding crop varieties. The millions of corn plants just harvested in the Midwest were nearly as alike as identical twins - alike in size, shape, color and, sadly, in vulnerability to gray leaf spot. Potatoes likewise are uniform in susceptibility to the fungus that caused the Irish potato famine.
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson understood the danger this posed. Both collected seeds during their diplomatic trips abroad. Among Franklin's discoveries was something he called Chinese caravances, now called soybeans. Jefferson risked the death penalty to smuggle rice out of Italy for the benefit of farmers in South Carolina.
The collection they began has swollen to more than 400,000 seed samples, stored in seed banks around the country. These are some of the biological riches that could be used to broaden the agricultural gene pool and prevent future epidemics.
Unfortunately, these are resources the government has failed to protect. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service, which is charged with the stewardship of the seed collection, has been hamstrung by budgets that don't give it enough money to do the job. As a result, thousands of seed samples in the collection are withering and dying. Many are from plants that have become extinct in the wild. When the seeds disappear, any disease-resistance genes they carry are gone forever.
The outlook for preservation of biological resources outside the seed banks is no better. The Agriculture Department has determined that at least 37 of the 250 species listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act carry genetic traits potentially useful in crop breeding or horticulture. Yet it has had no funds to rescue them.
This year for the first time, the few dedicated Agriculture Department scientists who understand the problem of genetic uniformity persuaded the White House to seek a token $1 million to upgrade seed collections and to replant and regenerate deteriorating seed samples.
Early this summer, as gray leaf spot was slowly, invisibly working its way into the nation's corn crop, the measure was killed in the House.
Paul Raeburn covers agriculture and the environment.
The Washington Post
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