Report: Basic Grains "Dangerously Vulnerable"

Remember when food news was a fun jousting match between nutrition and gluttony? Eggs are bad! Eggs are great! Drink more milk! No, not that milk!

With the world facing grain shortages, cyclones devastating rice crops, global warming threatening the fertility of long-time farming regions and middle class Americans hoarding big bags of grain at big box stores, what else could go wrong?

A lot, according to WWF, the global environmental group.

Basic food crops – wheat, barley, rice, etc. – are "dangerously vulnerable."

Why? Mainly because wild varieties of grains, along with those grown in remote areas but not for commercial gain, are increasingly rare. Habitat destruction (56% of wild wheat habitat in the Fertile Crescent is gone) and disease (black stem rust is spreading through Africa and the Middle East) are main culprits.

“Our basic food plants have always been vulnerable to attack from new strains of disease or pests and the result is often mass hunger and starvation, as anyone who remembers their school history of the Irish Potato Famine will know,” said Liza Higgins-Zogib, Manager of People and Conservation at WWF International.

“In more recent times we have avoided similar collapses in the production when disease strikes essential foodstuffs like wheat by developing new commercial varieties from naturally resistant wild relatives,” she added. "Unfortunately the natural habitat of most of the wild or traditional descendents of our modern food plants is without legal and physical protection, leaving them at risk.”

Eat your Wheaties … while you can. (Cue ominous music.)

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