A Global Famine? The Twin Crises of the Agricultural World
9th June 2016
A Global Famine? The Twin Crises of the Agricultural World
The Financial Times, 4th March 2035
The “Archaeobiome” is the latest buzzword in scientific study. But is it something the rest of us should be more worried about?
So far, the threat’s been fairly low-key. The locust armadillo, a tiny shelled animal about an inch and a half long – although apparently they’re getting larger – was first spotted in Nigerian maize fields four years ago. It’s now seen in six different Sub-Saharan African nations and in a stripe right across South America. So far, they’ve been a nuisance more than anything, but their numbers have grown every summer, and projections of this summer’s brood aren’t hopeful.
Which wouldn’t be too alarming on its own if it wasn’t due to meet the spread, from America’s Mid-West and parts of Europe’s Mediterranean farming regions, of a new strain of colonising fungus. Savanomycetes coccinea, a fast-growing red bloom that chokes out other plant life and – most alarmingly – apparently lives on plastics and petrochemicals, has so far been susceptible to regular pesticides, but it’s reportedly adapting quickly, and a few crops have already come up short the past year or two.
So agribusiness has taken hits before – the loss of the Gros Michel cultivar of bananas in the 1950s comes to mind – and survived. Is this any different? Well, with President Fredericks reportedly in closed talks with the WTO and World Bank on an undisclosed matter, betting money says this is likely to be a volatile market – and a real threat to economic and political stability – in coming years.
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Want to know more? Check out Extinction Biome: Invasion