Fungal Threat to Region’s Food Security
By Land, Thomas
A NEW AND VIRULENT agricultural fungus, previously found in Yemen and East Africa, has invaded major wheat growing areas of the Middle East. The infestation has put Iran on high alert along with several other important cereal producing countries close by, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The disaster is unfolding at a time of mounting global agricultural shortages and the lowest global grain stockpiles recorded for decades. Within the Middle East, a dozen countries are facing deteriorating agricultural emergencies.
A timely Middle East regional conference in March, organised by the United Nations in Cairo, projected a bleak near-term future for the farming industry of the region. Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has called for increased public investment, financed from the current rise in hydrocarbon revenues, to confront the trend.
The fungus, called UG99 (Puccinia graminis), is capable of travelling long distances and destroying entire wheat fields very fast. Its detection in Iran is described by the FAO as “very worrisome” because, explains a scientific spokesperson, “as much as 80% of all wheat varieties planted in the Middle East are susceptible” to the disease.
Shivaji Pandey, director of the Plant Production and Protection Division of the Rome-based organisation, adds: “The fungus is spreading rapidly. It could seriously lower wheat production in the Middle East. The affected countries and the international community must bring the disease under control to reduce the risk facing a region already hit by high food prices.”
Iran alone has 6m hectares under wheat. The fungus has been detected in the Broujerd and Hamedan areas in the west of the country. Its presence was confirmed by immediate laboratory tests. Iran is urgently assembling research capacity to create fungus- resistant wheat varieties. Work to combat wheat rusts involves the development of clean seeds and resistant plant varieties. Assistance for this and the essential upgrading of contingency plans and the national plant breeding and protection services in affected countries is channelled by the FAO from several global research institutions.
An urgently arranged workshop at Aleppo, Syria, on standardising collaboration of work against the disease brought together some 50 scientists during March. They represented many national and international agricultural research organisations in Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen and elsewhere.
The emergency has hit Afghanistan and its neighbours very hard after last year’s reduced cereal harvests there. Exceptionally low winter temperatures this year have already caused serious crop as well as livestock losses in the region.
The price of wheat, the main staple of Afghanistan, has now reached well above its average levels. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has already appealed for emergency food aid worth $77m for 2.5m destitute people in the country, whose average food bills have increased from 11% of their household income to over 45% in just one year.
The UG99 fungus has struck the Middle East at a time of a global food crisis. Early prospects point to a promise of rising world cereal production in 2008 – but international prices of most cereals remain at record high levels and some are still on the increase, according to the FAO in its current Crop Prospects and Food Situation report.
It says global food stocks have reached a historic low level while market demand is relentlessly rising. Average wheat prices this year are a staggering 83% up from a year earlier. The prices of such staples as wheat, corn and rice have risen by 50% in just the past six months.
And the situation is exacerbated through export bans and food price controls imposed by many governments, distorting market conditions, observed the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) at a specialist conference in London. A discussion paper issued by the bank argues that the most effective way of promoting increased food yields would be investment in the entire agricultural value chain.
Another paper published by the FAO at the same conference concluded that the crisis called for bold initiatives in the release of “massive investment” in agricultural “handling, storage and transportation infrastructures. Financial resources will have to be mobilised from both the public and private sectors”.
Specialists blame the food price crisis on a disastrous current coincidence of conditions including rising fuel, transport and fertiliser prices, population growth and devastating weather events linked to climate change, such as droughts, floods and storms cutting crop yields.
The UN World Food Programme responsible for feeding 73m people worldwide (including 3m in Darfur) is facing a $500m shortfall to cover the rising cost of food and transport. It may have to introduce severe rationing this year.
THE MIDDLE East is acting with urgency to combat the UG99 fungus emergency which is threatening to blight the region’s wheat crops
The fungus has struck the Middle East at a time of a global food crisis, with international prices of most cereals at record high levels and some still on the increase
How the Middle East is taking action in wake of the fungus alert
* Saudi Arabia announced plans to increase the price of wheat sold on local markets by up to 30% from April.
* Turkey has slashed import duties of wheat from 130% to 8%, maize from 130% to 35% and barley from 100% to nil.
* Jordan has increased wheat purchases in world markets in order to raise national stocks to half the country’s annual consumption level.
* Morocco has cut wheat import tariffs to a record low level, and the government is considering proposals for the privatisation of soft-wheat imports and the introduction of state subsidies for importers.
* Egypt has increased food subsidies and concluded a trade accord with Kazakhstan for the import of 1m tons of wheat this year at preferential prices.
* Libya is currently negotiating a deal with Ukraine to invest in wheat production in a 100,000-hectare area of the traditional breadbasket region of Eastern Europe.
Elsewhere, several recently communist-administered European republics are holding discussions with the EBRD, an institution dedicated to economic transition in the former Soviet lands, exploring incentives to expand wheat production there.
The FAO director-general projected a grim picture of the future of Middle East agriculture at the organisation’s 29th regional conference in Cairo. Diouf said the region is facing food insecurity, land degradation, water scarcity and animal diseases as well as high food import bills. He suggested that increased revenues from hydrocarbon exports could provide an excellent opportunity to improve the prospects of the region by boosting public investment in food production.
He declared: “Investment in agriculture, from both domestic and external sources, remains low in most countries of the region. It is crucial that governments forge ambitious policies to raise agriculture’s share of total expenditures.
“It would be desirable for the countries of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which contribute 17% of total regional aid to the farming sector, to increase their support by allocating more funds to agriculture.”
He counted some 13 countries in the region currently facing major emergencies, caused by natural disasters, conflicts and trans- boundary animal diseases such as avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease. And he described the political conflicts leading to major food shortages in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine and Lebanon as serious grounds for concern.
FAO statistics show that hunger and under-nourishment are spreading throughout the Middle East. The organisation reckons that between 1990/92 and 2002/04, the prevalence of hunger increased from 13% to 15% of the population, while the total number of undernourished people in the 32 countries attending the Cairo conference increased by 33m to 104m.
Copyright International Communications May 2008
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