Author documents fight to preserve food production
By Janet Kubat Willette
jkubat@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 03/18/2010 10:40 AM
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MINNEAPOLIS — Not a word about food or agriculture was mentioned in the presidential debates in fall 2008, Susan Dworkin recalls.
People are interested, Dworkin said, but somebody just has to reach out to them and tell them the story.
Dworkin, the author of "The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World's Harvest," was in the Twin Cities last week to discuss her new book.
The book tells the story of 60 years in the life of agriculture, including the history around it, Dworkin said. It tells how Minnesota became the epicenter of the fight to protect the world's wheat.
Brownton native E.C. Stackman, a University of Minnesota professor for 40 years, dedicated his life to conquering rust. He trained a new type of plant scientist who was a farmer, world-traveler and multi-lingual.
Stackman recruited Norman Borlaug, an Iowa farm boy, to attend the U of M. Borlaug in turn mentored Bent Skovmand, a Danish graduate of the U of M's MAST program. Skovmand became a wheat breeder and the crop's best gene banker. He trained hundreds of scientists.
Dworkin became interested in Skovmand after reading about him in Time and the New York Times in the 1990s. She read about the seed banks he started and came to understand them as the key to food security.
In the book, she writes that Skovmand often said "if the seeds disappear, so could your food. So could you."
Seed banks, Dworkin said, are a vital link between science and the field. Without seed banks, there is only the crop in the field, there is no genetic history. When a disease comes along, breeders can go back to the seed bank and start rebreeding to find resistant genes, she said.
That's what scientists are doing now in an effort to beat Ug99, a new strain of rust that threatens the world's wheat supply. The rust was first seen in a Uganda wheat field in 1998. It was first analyzed in 1999. It is named for where it was first seen and when it was first analyzed.
The rust is spreading through Asia. Dworkin is convinced it will soon be in India and Pakistan, where 20 percent of the world's wheat is grown.
Scientists are working to breed resistant varieties, she said. In countries like the United States, France or the Ukraine, farmers will and can afford to spray fungicide for rust. In India and Pakistan, farmers don't have enough money to apply fungicide.
That's why resistant varieties are vital. The only lab in the United States that is allowed to handle Ug99 is at the U of M, Dworkin said.
She toured the lab when she was in town and described it as fascinating.
Dworkin worked at USDA briefly after graduating from college and said the stint changed her life.
"I wrote this book for urban people like myself, but also for farmers," Dworkin said.
She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts.
Many in the United States don't understand why is it vital that the rest of the world not starve, Dworkin said. If a deadly wheat disease destroys 20 percent of the world's wheat, people will go hungry. The hungry will move into the next country and there will be mayhem, terror and war. Look no further than Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya for examples, she said. It's not good, charitable behavior to feed the rest of the world, it's a political necessity to keep the world from war.
Dworkin sees The Viking in the Wheat Field as her attempt to communicate the importance of seed banks, agriculture and food to people in the United States.
"I believe that we have to communicate the importance of closing the gap between rural and urban people of this country," she said.
People in New York City have to be on the side of the farmers, Dworkin said. The civic conversation around agriculture isn't broad enough. Policy makers will make the decisions in secret unless the public is informed.
Dworkin is optimistic a leader will emerge in the footsteps of Borlaug and Skovmand.
"When there's a need for leadership, people will come along," she said.
But to a great degree, Dworkin said, it's up to those who care to nurture the next Norman Borlaug or Bent Skovmand.