“A simple loaf of bread could become a luxury”

Want a good scare for your Monday morning? I’ve been watching this news item slowly rise to the media surface across the last few years. It’s about a stem fungus dubbed “Ug99” that is decimating grain crops by the acres and (so far) has proven unstoppable. Unsettling stuff. From Wired:

Ug99 is storming east, working its way through Africa and the Middle East and threatening India and China. More than a billion lives are at stake. “It’s an absolute game-changer,” says Brian Steffenson, a cereal-disease expert at the University of Minnesota who travels to Njoro regularly to observe the enemy in the wild. “The pathogen takes out pretty much everything we have.”

…

What’s more, Ug99 could easily make the transoceanic leap to the United States. All it would take is for a single spore, barely bigger than a red blood cell, to latch onto the shirt of an oblivious traveler. The toll from that would be ruinous; the US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 40 million acres of wheat would be at serious risk if Ug99 came to these shores, where the grain is the third most valuable crop, trailing only corn and soybeans. The economic loss might easily exceed $10 billion; a simple loaf of bread could become a luxury. “If this stuff gets into the Western Hemisphere,” Steffenson says, “God help us.”

Indeed.

Pray for the scientists working on this looming crisis, and have your finances in an order where you will be able to help when calls for famine relief begin in the next few years.