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Natural Disasters- Plant Diseases

© Bob Ewing

This has been a hectic week. I'm getting ready for the sustainable community development conference I am helping to organize this weekend here in Thunder Bay. One of the motivations behind our decision to hold this regional conference was a sense that we needed, as a region, to move towards self-sufficency and as a step towards this goal, to develop work that would not drain our natural resources but ensure that they were able to renew themselves and be available for future generations. There are a number of last minute details that need our attention but everything is almost done. I'm looking forward to Saturday afternoon when the event ends and we can bask in the afterglow of another succesful venture. This is a beginning step but a big one.

My attention has been focused on a number of the issues that have been raised in recent Y2K discussions. Food security is a major concern. If we have to import the majority of our food then we are at the mercy of the human and natural disasters that can and do threaten the supply.

It isn't only technological disasters that can pose a threat to our food supply system. There are a number of natural ones that can cause considerable grief and hardship.

Floods can devastate a farm, damaging livestock, crops and buildings. Over the next few weeks, I'll be taking a closer look at natural disasters and their consequences and some possible causes.

This week the spotlight is on plant diseases. Plant diseases such as viruses can wipe out an entire crop. The possibilities increase when the farm turns into a factory and begins to practice monoculture and loses the biological diversity that can prevent total loss. Diversity offers protection from infection because not all members of the same plant family are susceptible to the same diseases.

Aphids can spread a virus through a monocrop but if the farm practises mixed cropping, the loss could be minimized. The Irish potato famine is an extreme example of what can happen when an economy depends upon one product, in this case, potatoes. Late blight destroyed the potato crop, rendering hundreds of thousands homeless and throwing millons into starvation. While monocropping is a central issue here, the situation is more complex and may also be related to land ownership.

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