The Next Great Plague Could Destroy Humanity | Hint: It Starts With The Food

2017-11-17 | Jack Griffin and CJ Friedman

In 1347, the plague known as The Black Death began and killed 50% of Europe's population.

1665, the Great Plague of London killed 25% of the city's population.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic broke out and killed more people than WW1, affecting populations in every corner of the world. Estimates range from 50-100 million deaths.

1956, the Asian Flu broke out and killed over 2 million people.

The HIV/AIDs pandemic began in 1960 and has killed over 35 million people.

Now, we face an even greater threat.

Many scientists believe the next plague that could kill billions of people will find roots in the current food system. This is a largely unrecognized risk to the general population. Consider the scenario from this angle: with a human plague, a person could escape the infected area and remain relatively safe. But with a plague that affects the food supply, there is no place to hide. Every person on the planet and all of the animals we eat will be affected by starvation.

Think about the ramifications: What would happen if 50-75% of the global food supply died? By the time we replant everything, the damage will already be done. 

That is the risk the current agricultural system is running with how things operate today.

In the past 100 years, 94% of the world's edible seed varieties have vanished. 

We are not fear mongering here. What would happen if 94% of the fish varieties humans eat went extinct? There would be panic all over the world. That has happened to the world's seed varieties. This post is an attempt to educate the public regarding the dangers of the global agricultural system.

Simply stated, a lack of biodiversity in any living system increases the system's risk of spreading a deadly pathogen.

Currently, 75% of the world's food comes from only 12 plants and 5 animal species. This lack of biodiversity dramatically increases the susceptibility to widespread disease, and could result in colossal famine that affects billions of people, and would put companies like Monsanto in control of the fate of human existence.

To help combat this growing issue, Metropolis Farms is planning a robust seed bank propagated by our indoor farming systems to grow, save, store, and distribute diverse seeds to local farmers.

In our continuing exploration of the failing food system, this post will discuss the most important resource available to humans (besides water): SEEDS.

Across all species, especially plant-life, genetic diversity is the safeguard against evolving forms of viruses, bugs, and disease. Low levels of biodiversity are dangerous because as pathogens are introduced to the system, the pathogens encounter less resistance to spreading than they do in diverse systems. As we will explore, outbreaks of disease, invasions of insects, and climatic anomalies have caused many wholesale crop failures in the past, and are causing massive crop failures today.

To begin, looking at history can give us an understanding of this risk the agricultural system is running.

The Irish Potato Famine

Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland's population fell by ~25% due to the poverty-stricken population being heavily dependent on one crop for sustenance.

The Great Famine, more commonly known as the Irish Potato Famine, occurred because a significant amount of Ireland's population lived on one variety of one crop: the lumper potato. Due to the lack of crop diversity, entire fields of potatoes were susceptible to a disease called Phytophthora Infestens, aka potato blight. This disease soon spread across most of the potato crops not only in Ireland, but all over Europe.

Ireland experienced widespread famine because their diet was reliant on the one crop that was susceptible to this disease. The rest of Europe was okay, despite losing massive amounts of potato crops, because their diet was more diversified. Due to Ireland's situation, 1 in 8 Irishmen and women totaling 1,000,000 people died of starvation or starvation related diseases. Another 1 in 8 emigrated to escape the famine. In total, Ireland's population fell by roughly 25%.

A large portion of Ireland's population were reliant on one crop for many economic and political reasons which are similar to the diet trends here in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The moral of the story, however, is that being dependent on a small variety of crops increases the risk of one disease wiping out a population's food source.

Implication's today's food system

Today, the world is vulnerable to experiencing the potato famine on a planetary scale due to a reduction in agricultural biodiversity.

The global dependence on so few crops for a majority of the population's sustenance is replicating the same system that led to the Irish Potato Famine. Only   this time, rather than affecting 1 country, due to globalized specialization, a disease can wipe out crops that affect everyone on earth.

The current food system has valued short-sighted mass production of low quality crops at the expense of long-term survivability, biodiversity, and soil quality. In addition to rapidly destroying the topsoil and causing desertification, the proliferation of massive monocultures poses a serious threat to long-term food security. 

Considering 70% of agricultural crops are grown for livestock and not for humans, this potential problem will not only affect the vegetables we eat, but also the meat, dairy, eggs, and other products that are staples in today's average diet.

Farmers are the backbone of this country. 

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds." 

- Thomas Jefferson

And for a long time, this sentiment held true throughout government. In 1862, the USDA was established and at the start, it devoted at least one-third of its budget to collecting and distributing seeds to farmers across the country. By 1900, over 1 billion seed packages had been sent out to this country's farmers. Furthermore, farmers were encouraged to breed, propagate, and strengthen their own plants and seed banks, resulting in strong localized seed banks in which farmers could depend on themselves or their neighbors for next year's plantings.

However, in 1883, the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) was founded, recognizing the potential profits that could be made off seeds instead of a free program for all farmers. After 40 years of lobbying by ASTA, Congress eliminated the USDA seed distribution program in 1924 and paved the way for the seed industry as we know it today.

At the time, there were thousands of seed companies and farmers were able to save seeds from their existing crops to establish their own sustainability. 

Today, 10 companies control 73% of the global seed market. The top 6 control 68% of the market and new mergers could lower that number down to 4 companies. Think about that. 4 companies could control the world's food supply. 

Henry Kissinger once said: "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." Research has shown that US strategy has deliberately destroyed local family farming in the US and abroad and led to 95% of all grain reserves in the world being controlled by 6 multinational agribusiness chemical corporations.  

How did we get here? 

To keep this post from becoming a book, this is a quick synopsis:

• After the USDA seed distribution program ended in 1924, seed companies began to emerge and create hybrid seeds that promised more crop yields.

• These hybrid seeds had recessive gene characteristics that disabled farmers from saving the crop's seeds for the next year's plantings. This made farmers more dependent on purchasing seeds annually. 

• In 1930, the Plant Patent Act (PPA) was signed, thus allowing patents for unique plant varieties. For the first time in human-history, companies could legally own the rights to plants. Although, it's important to note the original PPA did not allow a patent right to plants propagated by seeds, so farmers could still attempt to save seeds for future harvests without violating patents. This would eventually change.

• Over the next decades, seed companies focused on selling a smaller subset of seeds.

• In 1980, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, a landmark Supreme Court case granted the first patent on life. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that living organisms could be patented. This opened the floodgates for companies like Monsanto, and soon over 1,800 patents for genetic material and plants were submitted to the US Patent & Trademark Office. 

• Seed companies slowly became biochemical companies and genetically engineered (GE) seeds, commonly known as GMOs, started to emerge. 

Now, seeds have been engineered to withstand the effects of herbicides so farmers can simply spray their fields with chemical poisons to kill weeds and not their crops. One of the problems is the same company that sells the seeds is also selling the chemicals. This is giving unprecedented amounts of power to companies like Monsanto.

Under this seed industry consolidation, big farmers are now more dependent than ever on these companies, and are forced to purchase seeds and the chemicals annually. Additionally, this consolidation has led to the massive reduction in crop biodiversity on commercial farms.

 This short-sighted approach to agriculture - focusing on massive yields with the least amount of work - has led to specialization rather than diversification. Another consequence of this system is food is no longer grown for people.Food is grown for trucks. In fact, 30-45% of the cost of food is tied to trucking and distributing food over a 3,000+ mile supply chain. 

In review: crop specialization leads to monocultures. Monocultures lead to susceptibility of disease. 

For example, rather than soil regenerative farming practices seen onpermaculture farms, one mega farm will solely focus on growing one crop of corn or wheat or cotton, etc, over acres and acres of land, to maximize planting, maintenance, and harvesting production. Farmers are doing this because the current economics of outdoor farming are not in favor of a diversified field. This agricultural practice is already leading to the collapse of major crops.

In 2016, an article in The Guardian reported that Florida grown oranges 

are already experiencing unfixable collapse. Per the article, "The orange crop devastation began in 2005 when a bacterium that causes huanglongbing - better known as citrus greening or HLB disease - was found in southern Florida. Since then, the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny flying insect which transmits the disease, has been blown across Florida by various hurricanes... Farmers have spent more than $100m on research into ways to combat the disease, but so far scientists are stumped. 'Farmers are giving up on oranges altogether,' said Judith Ganes, president of the commodities research firm J Ganes Consulting. 'Normally after a freeze or hurricane [which both kill lots of trees], the growers would replant 100% of their plants. But the disease has been spread all over... and made it totally uncontrollable. Farmers are giving up and turning to other crops or turning land over to housing.'" (As a sidenote: this is happening all over the country. Farmers are giving up on agriculture and are becoming land developers for urban sprawl.)

A quick google search will show that coffee beans, bananas, and coconuts are expected to experience some form of collapse within this century due to the monocropping practices.

Imagine what will happen if a superbug wipes out wheat or corn. These major crops, who's source is likely 1 of 6 companies, are a major factor in the global economy and extend well beyond the food they provide for people. 70% of the crops are actually designated to feed livestock. So additionally, meat, energy sources, and other industries will be vastly affected by such an event. And we the people will suffer as a result.

What's the solution?

As is often the solution when facing problems created by the current food system: the world needs more local farms and local farmers that grow diverse crops. People everywhere need to be more conscious of where their food is coming from, how it is grown, and the practices that are being utilized to ensure long-term food security. 

In that light, Metropolis Farms is working with the City of Philadelphia to start an educational farming institute in Fairmount Park, the largest landscaped urban park in the world. In addition to providing training and educational opportunities related to farming, we are planning the creation of a seed bank to help preserve precious varieties of fruits and vegetables that face extinction.

A seed bank stores seeds to preserve genetic diversity. There are seed banks all over the world, but not nearly enough to combat the problem outlined above. In addition to storing seeds, anyone involved with a seed bank needs to continuously germinate seeds, grow crops, and produce more seeds. A current limitation most seed bankers face is a limited growing season in which to propagate their seed collection.

By developing a robust seed bank in conjunction with indoor farming, we can save more seeds annually due to our capability of year-round indoor vertical farming. After creating a seed bank, we will be a point for seed access to local farmers and gardeners who want a diversified farm. Part of Metropolis Farms' mission is to democratize our technology to make local farming accessible to anyone. With the plans of creating this seed bank, we plan to democratize the ability to grow a diverse set of crops for local farmers everywhere. We hope others join this mission and start seed banks as well. 

A rise in seed banks will hopefully correspond with a rise in local farming, in turn creating a new food economy in which fruits and vegetables will be grown for people, and not trucks. 

To learn more about this topic, we recommend viewing the powerful documentary Seed: The Untold Story.