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Corn Disease
Panics Stock Market,
U.S. President
[Source:
Un-Safe
Science Web Site]
Synopsis:
In 1970 the epidemic spread across the US from south to north as the
season progressed. The spread of the disease was published in
newspapers. As the seriousness became more obvious, the stock market
panicked, farmers saw their profits lost, and President Nixon attempted
to quell the panic. For a time it seemed that the 1971 crop would also
be destroyed.
Subsequent
investigation showed that the sensitivity of the gene had been reported
8 years earlier
but no effort had been made to avoid the epidemic. A mere statement that
the 1970 epidemic destroyed 15% of the US corn crop will leave readers
thinking "so what." This chapter, copied from the book by Jack
Doyle, provides a "feel" for the real havoc the epidemic
caused. Doyle emphasizes that a single
gene introduced to increase corporate profits was responsible. I am
making the history of the epidemic, together with Doyle's 1985 prediction
of potential for disaster, easily available to the public. The gene
which devastated the US corn crop was confined to only the single corn
species. Today, only 15 years after Doyle's prediction, scientists of
the Monsanto transnational corporation have placed a single new,
artificial gene
in many critical plants such as corn, soybeans, cotton, etc. to enhance
the company profit. They are prepared to release this same gene in
wheat. It is only a matter of time until a new disease develops which
will attack all the different species containing that gene. The result
will be world starvation. You, the
public, must decide whether to stop Monsanto and other aggressive US
capitalists from placing millions of lives, including those of you
and your family, at risk. You can do this by demanding your
government bring the multinational corporations under control.
ALTERED
HARVEST: Agriculture, Genetics, and the Fate of the World's Food Supply
by Jack Doyle
Viking
Press, 1985 ISBN0-670-11524-X
Book copy supplied by Dr. Jane Rissler, Union of Concerned Scientists,
editor of The
Gene Exchange
Chapter
1: IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
The
corn fell victim to the epidemic because of a quirk in the technology
. . . -National Academy of Sciences, 1972
In the
summer of 1968, when the nation was preoccupied with the Vietnam War,
the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy,
and a divisive presidential election campaign, the first signs of
trouble went almost unnoticed. Out in the heartland, on a few isolated
seed farms in Illinois and Iowa, a mysterious disease was producing
"ear rot" on corn plants. At the time, scientists thought the
strange disease might be a combination of two familiar diseases called
"yellow leaf blight" and "charcoal rot," but they
were wrong. Yet only a tiny amount of hybrid corn seed was lost to the
new disease that summer, so no alarms were sounded. Whatever it was, the
new malady was probably a freak occurrence that would most likely die
off over the winter. Diseases like that were one of the
"normal" consequences of doing business with nature.
But in
1969, a few farmers and scientists noticed the same problem recurring in
Midwestern seed fields and hybrid corn test plots.. One account noted:
"In the late summer and early fall of 1969, a few corn fields in
southern Iowa began behaving erratically. Ears rotted inside husks.
Stalks fell to the ground. Shortly, the same thing happened in isolated
fields in Illinois and Indiana." This same scientist noticed that
only certain hybrid corn varieties were susceptible to the disease. In
Florida, too, a few seedsmen found that hybrid corn varieties growing
there were particularly vulnerable. Yet there was no adequate scientific
explanation for the new disease. Scientists knew it was a fungus, but
they didn't know what kind or how it worked. In 1970,
the disease was first reported in February from southern Florida, near
Belle Glade. Between May 5 and May 20, heavy infestations were cited in
southern Alabama and Mississippi. By June 18, the disease covered the
entire state of Florida, lower Alabama, and most of Mississippi. The
lower third of Louisiana and coastal Texas were also infected. Reproducing
rapidly in the unusually warm and moist weather of 1970, its spores
carried on the wind, the new disease began moving northward toward a
full-scale invasion of America's vast corn empire. Later to be
identified as "race T" of the fungus Helminthosporium
maydis, it soon became known as the Southern Corn Leaf Blight. The new
fungus moved like wildfire through one corn field after another. In some
cases it would wipe out an entire stand of corn in ten days. Moisture
was a key factor; a thin film on leaves, stalks, or husks was all the
organism needed to gain entry to the plant. Within twenty-four hours it
would start making tan, spindle-shaped lesions about an inch long on
plant leaves, and in advanced form would attack the stalk, ear shank,
husk, kernels, and cob. In extreme infections, whole ears of corn would
fall to the ground and crumble at the touch. The
fungus moved swiftly through Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky, and by June
its airborne spores were headed straight for the nation's Corn Belt,
where 85 percent of all American corn is grown. By this time, however,
unsuspecting Corn Belt farmers had already planted their crops and were
largely unaware of the bitter harvest headed their way. The
fungus could begin reproducing within sixty hours of landing on a corn
plant-yielding a new generation of its own kind every ten days-and its
spores could survive temperatures of 20 degrees below zero and still
germinate, which meant they could linger in fields and plant remnants
through the winter. In some cases, the fungus could even penetrate corn
seed, causing it to fail or produce blighted seedlings. In its
wake, the Southern Corn Leaf Blight left ravaged corn fields with
withered plants, broken stalks, and malformed or completely rotten cobs
covered with a grayish powder. When farmers harvested what they could,
clouds of spores were thrown up into the air behind their combines,
spreading the disease even farther. In just
four months-from May to September 1970—the disease had spread as far
north as Minnesota and Wisconsin (it later entered Canada), and as far
west as Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle. The nation's corn farmers
were facing a full-blown crisis.
UNCERTAINTY,
CONFUSION and PANIC
The
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was caught completely off guard by
the blight. On August 1, 1970—a time when millions of acres of corn in
the Southeast had already been laid waste by the blight—agriculture
officials were confidently predicting a record 4.7-billion-bushel corn
crop. A week later, they began revising their estimates downward,
suggesting that the disease could cut the corn harvest by 10 percent.
On Sunday
morning, August 16, the Des Moines Register jolted the Midwest with the
banner headline CORN MARKET IN TURMOIL. That account reported steep
price rises in corn-futures trading on the Chicago Board of Trade the
previous Friday, fueled by Iowa State University reports that the new
blight had been found in Iowa. One Midwestern trading firm, which
normally did about half a million bushels in corn trading on a busy day,
did seven million bushels' worth that Friday. "Somebody's trying to
manipulate the corn market," said one Midwestern trader. "This
corn blight thing isn't that serious. Those southern states just don't
grow that much corn. Too many people are getting too excited about too
little." Nevertheless,
with the opening of business that Monday, panic gripped the commodity
and futures markets. Estimates that the blight might wipe out half the
nation's corn crop fueled frantic trading and speculation. At the
Chicago Board of Trade, the nation's largest commodities market, 193
million bushels of corn changed hands in one day, smashing a trading
record that had stood for 122 years. The Dow Jones index for commodity
futures hit 145.27, and had its highest one-day advance in nineteen
years. The future prices of corn, wheat, oats, and soybeans all jumped
to their allowable one-day limits. Trading in livestock also soared, as
prices for live hogs, cattle, and poultry rose in reaction to the
prospect of higher priced feed grains. Between August 17 and 20, the
corn blight boosted the future price of corn thirty cents a bushel-a
huge increase when measured in the millions of bushels traded. During
the frantic August trading, some speculators became wealthy overnight;
one corn trader made paper profits of $500,000 that month.*
*On the
afternoon of August 17, in an effort to slow speculation, the
directors of the Chicago Board of Trade met in special session and
immediately increased the margin requirement-the amount of cash a
trader had to have in his account when placing an order to buy or sell
a futures contract.
The August
rally in the commodities markets was sparked by newspaper accounts like
the report in the August 16 Des Moines Register. But officials at the
USDA weren't talking, knowing that any statement on the blight from the
department could affect the markets. The department's official crop
report was due on September 11. Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana,
chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, was quoted on the
commodity wires as saying that no more than 5 percent of the nation's
corn crop was affected. An unofficial figure of 4 percent was attributed
to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Clifford M. Hardin. One USDA
administrator, James U. Smith, then chief of the Farmers Home
Administration, was reprimanded for his agency's leaking a statement
about the blight to United Press International, and was told by
assistant secretary T. K. Cowden to inform his people, "to make no
statements that could be interpreted as a governmental figure regarding
the size of the corn crop." In Chicago, meanwhile, some traders
complained of misinformation and exaggeration by the media. "On
Sunday before the limit move," said Charles Mattey, who then headed
up Bache & Company's commodities department, "all the media had
the wrong numbers. The Georgia pathologists were talking about the seven
Southern states, not the entire country. Damage to eighty million
bushels instead of two and a half billion...." But in reality, the
blight had already far surpassed the eighty-million-bushel mark.
BLIGHT
IN THE CORN BELT
What
really panicked commodity traders and government officials was the
blight's penetration of the Corn Belt; just three Midwestern
states-Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa-accounted for half the nation's total
corn production. "There has always been blight in the South,"
said former Chicago Board of Trade Chairman William Mallers, "but
when you get [blight] in the Corn Belt, you're really talking." In
August 1970, Illinois Secretary of Agriculture John W. Lewis was
estimating that 25 percent of his state's corn crop was already lost to
the blight. Just one year earlier, Illinois had been the nation's top
corn producer, accounting for more than one-fifth of the crop. When the
first reports of the blight's severity hit the newspapers in mid-August,
the U.S. Congress was in its traditional summer recess, and political
reaction to the blight's damage and the rising prices caused by the
blight came in piecemeal fashion, mainly from farm-state congressmen and
senators at home in their states and districts. However, 1970 was an
election year, and while a few congressmen and senators made inquiries
of the USDA's action on the blight, with some calling for emergency farm
aid, no congressional hearings were ever held on why the blight
occurred. But the growing national scope of the problem, and its
potential for fueling food-price inflation, did come to the attention of
the White House.
In late
August 1970, the USDA began to acknowledge that there was a problem. By
August 23, Secretary of Agriculture Clifford M. Hardin had opened up the
government's corn reserves to help dampen speculation in the commodities
markets. On September 3, 1970, Hardin wrote a two-page brief for
President Richard Nixon on the corn-blight situation, saying that the
blight was not a new problem, but had become "economically
significant." The disease's new strength, Hardin explained, was the
result of "an unforeseen mutation." "Although
we are concerned about 1970 damage," wrote Hardin, "we feel
that . . . there is ample feed grain for livestock to carry us well into
the 1971 harvest period." Hardin also assured Nixon that many of
the earlier private reports which projected 1970 losses ranging from 10
to 50 percent of the crop "were exaggerated."*
*Later, in
December 1970, when the corn blight was seen as something more of a
potential political problem, USDA and White House officials organized
a Corn Blight Information Conference at which President Richard Nixon
spoke to a group of farmers assembled at USDA's research station in
Beltsville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. The purpose of
the meeting was to assure farm leaders that USDA was working on the
blight, and that the White House was concerned, too. In his speech,
Nixon talked about the recently passed farm bill and he praised the
American farmer. He also spoke briefly about the blight: "There
was a time," said the President, "I suppose not ten, maybe
not twenty-five years ago, when corn blight came, we might not have
had enough in storage to take up the slack, but beyond that, we might
not have developed the capability to deal with the problem.
"But now we not only have
the amount in storage to take up the gap, but we also, as I
understand, due to the enormous facilities of research and the brains
and the overtime and genius that has gone into it, we are finding an
answer to this problem.
"And that means that in the future
we will be able to deal with it more effectively. It means also we can
share this knowledge with other people throughout the world."
But for many
farmers who had already lost entire corn fields to the blight, such
figures were no exaggeration. And while major corn processors and other
corn-using industries moved quickly to protect their interests by
raising prices,*
*On
Wednesday, August 20, following the dramatic increases for corn and
other grain contracts in the futures markets, major food processors
began raising their prices for certain corn products. CPC
International, Inc., an industry leader in the corn-processing
business, announced immediate price increases for corn syrup and corn
starch-up 45 cents a hundredweight and 75 cents a hundredweight,
respectively. Other corn processors followed suit.
farmers
could not raise their prices. "We'll be lucky if we have enough
corn to pay our fertilizer bill," said 52-year-old Indiana farmer,
Melvin Pflug, after surveying his 600 acres of corn, about half of which
was devastated by the disease.
A BREAK
IN THE WEATHER
As
the official tally of the blight's nationwide toll remained unknown
through August 1970, farmers, traders, and USDA officials anxiously
looked on to September. Despite the growing and justified fears of
continued damage to the nation's corn crop, there was still one
favorable possibility: a break in the weather. "It may seem ironic
with all the technology at our command today, but everything now hinges
on the weather," said Dennis B. Sharpe, then an agricultural
economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. "If it is
fairly cool and dry over the next two weeks," Sharpe told Business
Week that August, "there is nothing to worry about. On the other
hand, if it rains and it is hot and humid, the fungus will spread quite
rapidly." On September 21, corn prices on the Chicago Board of
Trade dropped sharply on the basis of rumored USDA reports that
favorable weather in the Corn Belt could slow the spread of the blight.
However, humid weather in the first half of September intensified the
disease in the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, although
the weather did break in the northeast states and western Corn Belt,
sparing a huge portion of the crop. In other words, the nation was
lucky.*
*"lt.
should be recognized," wrote University of Illinois plant
pathologist A. L. Hooker in 1972, "that dry weather reduced
disease spread in the western Corn Belt and delayed northward spread
of the disease on the eastern seaboard. In addition, because of
favorable climatic conditions, northern states had above normal
yields. Without those two features, national disease losses could have
been greater than those estimated."
As it was,
the Southern Corn Leaf Blight devastated 15 percent of America's 1970
corn crop, reducing the average national corn yield from 83.9 to 71.7
bushels per acre, costing farmers about $1 billion in losses. Some
southern states lost more than 50 percent of their corn crop. In all,
more than 1.02 billion bushels of corn were lost in 1970. But the crisis
wasn't over.
THE
RIPPLE EFFECT
Although
the most immediate effects of the 1970 blight fell on the shoulders of
farmers, its ripple effect soon began to reach other parts of the
American economy. Small-town bankers and businessmen who had loaned
farmers money began to worry about repayment. Washington worried about
exports. At that time, the United States was exporting about 600 million
bushels of corn annually, and large quantities of corn were also fed to
cattle, poultry, and swine. Domestic food processors and distillers also
depended upon corn. If losses in the cornfields became severe, a
three-way tug-of war over existing supplies could ensue between food
processors, livestock feeders, and grain exporters.
Adding to
the reality of the disease itself were rumors that any blighted grain
would be toxic to humans and animals. Further questions emerged about
"secondary organisms" that might invade the grain, causing
still other kinds of toxic problems. In fact, pathologists at the
University of Illinois did discover "secondary
fungi"—capable of producing the potent poisons known as
aflatoxins—growing on blighted corn stalks, husks, and ears. But no
toxic effects were reported in livestock or humans. However,
it was learned that the blight itself could be transmitted in corn seed.
And that fed speculation that the blight was being exported to foreign
countries through American corn seed. By early 1971, the corn blight was
reported in Japan, the Philippines, Africa, and Latin America, and some
importers of corn seed, such as Australia and New Zealand, were
wondering if the problem didn't originate with American seed. Addressing
the question, Ramparts magazine, in a March 1971 editorial, wrote,
"There is considerable speculation as to whether through our
exports of diseased com…We are spreading the blight around the
world." At that time the United States was exporting some 46.8
million pounds of corn seed to all parts of the world, worth about $5
million annually. Yet proving that blight in other countries originated
in U.S. seed was difficult when the importing countries weren't looking
for it in the imported seed.
A
SHORTAGE OF SEED
One
concern about the blight that began to haunt USDA officials as early as
August 1970, was the question of an adequate supply of seed for 1971.
Practically all the nation's hybrid corn seed was then grown in the
Midwest, where the fungus was taking its toll. Some farmers and seedsmen
meeting in the South at that time were beginning to wonder if there
would be any corn seed available for 1971. "If this stuff spreads
to the Corn Belt," said Ed Komarek of Georgia's Greenwood Seed
Company, ". . . we just won't have any seed . . . I hate to think
of next year." Yet, D. D. Walker, President of the American Seed
Trade Association, meeting in Washington with Secretary Hardin on August
21, confidently predicted that there would be "ample seed corn
supplies for the 1971 crop." Farmers, however, weren't merely
concerned with an adequate supply of seed, but with an adequate supply
of disease-resistant seed. And that would take time.*
*Offers to
help produce new sources of corn seed came from some interesting
quarters. In an August 20 telegram to Secretary Hardin, for example,
Bernard Steinweg, senior vice-president of the Continental Grain
Company, one of the largest grain companies in the world, made the
USDA an offer of Argentine land and production assistance to help in
growing corn for seed. "Our affiliate company in Argentina, which
has a hybrid seed company subsidiary," cabled Steinweg, "is
willing to assist American hybrid seed corn companies in the
production of seed this winter. We not only have lined up acreage for
this purpose, we consider we have the technical ability to handle the
production in an efficient manner ...We would appreciate being able to
cooperate with you and any American seed companies not now aware of
our capabilities and interest."
More than a month later, after the USDA
had engaged the cooperation of the Mexican government in allowing
American seed companies to grow seed there, U.S. Assistant Secretary
of Agriculture Ned Bayley wrote in reply to Steinweg, "Your offer
has been brought to the attention of the U.S. seed trade. We could
not, however, find any firm that is able to take advantage of the
offer. We understand that it would be very difficult at this late date
to produce seed corn in Argentina for return to the U.S. for planting
next spring." In one sense, Bayley's reply to Continental was a
polite way of saying that American seed companies were not very
enthusiastic about one of the world's major grain corporations getting
into their business at a time of shortage.
Although
several American seed companies did produce new supplies of seed in
locations such as Mexico, Hawaii, and Argentina, there was a shortage of
disease-resistant corn seed as the 1971 planting season approached. By
spring there was only enough new seed to plant about 23 percent of the
nation's corn crop, and much of this seed was diverted to southern
states in an attempt to create a "buffer zone" to block the
expected northerly progression of the blight again in 1971.
Another
strategy seed companies used to stretch their limited supplies of corn
seed was to sell stocks of disease-susceptible seed in states where
drier and cooler conditions had stymied the blight's spread in 1970.
During 1971, susceptible corn seed was sold to farmers in western Corn
Belt states such as Nebraska, Kansas, and western Iowa, and northern
states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Meanwhile,
corn farmers in the Midwest were provided with "blends" of
seed-supposedly 50 percent resistant seed and 50 percent susceptible
seed. One Midwestern farmer who started spotting the blight on his corn
in June 1971, said of the 50/50 arrangement, "I can't find the 50
percent of the stalks that don't have blight."
*In at
least one case, a group of farmers in Iowa brought a class action suit
against some sixty seed companies which allegedly sold hybrid corn
seed to Iowa farmers in 1970 with prior knowledge that the seed was
susceptible to blight, and failed to warn the farmers of that
susceptibility. That suit, Lucas et al. v. Pioneer Inc., et al.
alleged that seed-company officials had knowledge of the disease
susceptibility of their hybrid corn seed "prior to 1969, and
perhaps as early as 1962." The suit also alleged that the
officials knew in February 1970 that the blight had reached epidemic
proportions in Florida and was moving north, but failed to warn
farmers of the potential disaster, even though many of the companies
had sold susceptible seed to Iowa farmers during 1970. Besides this,
the suit charged that seed-company officials did not instruct Iowa
farmers about any precautionary measures to protect themselves from
the impending disaster, though they knew of such measures. The farmers
sued for damages and losses of 100 million bushels of corn, then
valued at roughly $100 million. The suit, however, was not resolved
until the late 1970s, having been dismissed by the Iowa Supreme Court
as an improperly brought class action, after which it was refiled by
individuals in separate actions, with settlements of court costs
awarded to some farmers. Similar suits were also filed by farmers in
several other states, but their outcomes are either still in the
balance or otherwise undetermined.
Other
farmers complained of supply problems. "I've only got about 25
percent normal [blight-resistant] seed," reported Illinois farmer
Carl Thompson in May 1971, "and even that is more than some of my
neighbors have." A black market in resistant seed developed, with
some farmers paying two to three times the going market price. And in at
least one case, a truckload of resistant seed was hijacked.
The few
seed companies that managed to produce blight-resistant corn seed didn't
waste any time in raising their prices. For some reason, the Funk
Brothers Seed Company of Bloomington, Illinois, had noticed as early as
1968 that the popular corn hybrids were becoming increasingly vulnerable
to insects and some milder Midwestern strains of blight, and had
switched the company's seed production operations back to an older kind
of hybrid. By late 1970, when other seed companies were struggling to
come up with a plan to produce some new seed on an emergency basis, Funk
Brothers was sitting pretty. On October 12, 1970, the company announced
it would increase seed prices on its new hybrid by 17 percent, selling
its best blight resistant line at nearly thirty dollars per fifty-pound
bag. In 1969, for example, before the blight, the average U.S. price of
hybrid corn seed was $13.70 a bushel. Thereafter, the price of hybrid
corn seed continued to spiral upward due to the difficulty in producing
blight-resistant seed. By 1974, the average U.S. price had jumped to
twenty-five dollars a bushel, an 84 percent increase over pre-blight
prices.
CORN
BLIGHT PART II
As
farmers began planting their fields in the spring of 1971, no one knew
for sure what the prognosis for the corn blight would be that year.
"Hope is mixed with fear as we go into the 1971 corn growing
season," wrote Successful Farming editor Charles E. Sommers in
March 1971—"hope that the new southern corn leaf blight disease
epidemic won't hit again [and] fear that it probably will…few people
in the know are making predictions as to what to expect." In May
1971, George F. Sprague, a USDA scientist from Illinois who was
coordinating the fight against the blight, admitted "a considerable
degree of uncertainty and speculation" about its outcome in 1971.
"We shall have to wait for a final answer," he said.
The
prospect of rising food prices and food-based inflation caused by the
possibility of two successive years of blight began to surface in the
press. "Corn accounts for 70 percent of all grain fed to beef and
dairy cattle, hogs and poultry," commented U.S. News & World
Report in a May 1971 story. "If this year's crop is severely cut by
blight, there will inevitably be shortages—and soaring prices—in
beef, pork, milk, eggs and chicken." One Wall Street analyst
following the blight remarked later that year, "the biggest
question mark overhanging the near-term outlook for inflation does not
concern the steel-wage negotiations but the progress of the corn-leaf
blight." On May 2,
1971, in a nationally broadcast speech on agriculture, President Richard
Nixon ordered more money for research to fight the corn blight, noting
that the disease had created "major problems for corn
farmers." The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
and the U.S. Air Force had also been enlisted in the effort to monitor
the blight's progress using satellite and remote-sensing technologies. Generally
though, the infestations of 1971 were regarded as light compared with
the previous year. As in 1970, weather again was an important factor,
with a cool, dry spring slowing the blight's progress initially, and
somewhat drier summer conditions prevailing in the Corn Belt.
Nevertheless, the blight was still spotted in 581 counties in 28 states
by July, and in parts of the Midwest, some severe outbreaks were
reported. Overall, however, the nation sustained only minimal losses in
1971. By 1972 enough blight-resistant seed had been produced by seed
companies, and farmers throughout the country were adequately supplied.
The crisis was over
THE
AFTERMATH
The
corn blight epidemic of 1970-71 was not a crisis for most Americans at
the time. Although many were no doubt aware of it, few were directly
affected. Had the billion bushels of corn that were lost to the blight
been fed to cattle, they would have produced over 7 billion one-pound
steaks, or more than 30 billion quarter-pound hamburgers. And while some
food prices did rise slightly, corn on the cob, chicken, and hamburger
were still on the dinner table.
Corn
surpluses from previous years and substitutions of other grains helped
to ease the blight's impact. In fact, the nation's grain reserves
probably could have absorbed two very bad years of blight before things
would have become really tight. However, a few weeks of "blight
weather," coming in the late harvest weeks of 1970 and 1971, might
have put the nation to that test very quickly. As it was, man and
science won this round.*
*However,
as biologist H. Garrison Wilkes has pointed out, "Such a crop
failure in countries such as Guatemala or Kenya, where people obtain
half of their calories from corn, would have been disastrous."
By 1972,
American scientists and seedsmen were congratulating themselves for
their "heroic" actions, now reassured that the system worked
and could respond to an unforeseen disease in a relatively brief span of
time. However, beneath the self-congratulations and public confidence,
there were some reservations. Some plant pathologists were taken by
surprise by the strength of the Southern Corn Leaf Blight and the speed
with which it spread, and a few were privately shaken when they learned
why this new mutant strain of fungus spread so quickly. While
plant-disease epidemics had occurred in the United States before and
were a regular fact of life in agriculture, scientists discovered
something new about crop diseases in 1970; something they did not know
before this particular corn blight occurred.
At the
beginning of the epidemic, there was no defense against the Southern
Corn Leaf Blight because the new strain of fungus had found a
"genetic window" that made its infestation rapid and wide
spread. The genetic window in this case was a gene found in the
cytoplasm, the watery material that surrounds the cell nucleus and makes
up the bulk of most living cells. In terms of crop disease, that was a
new twist. Commenting
on that discovery in 1971, pathologist A. L. Hooker noted that it was
"most unusual" that the cytoplasm of corn plant cells played a
major role in determining the disease reaction, since in almost all
other diseases, genetic factors in the nucleus of the cell determined
disease resistance or susceptibility. Because of this, explained Hooker,
corn breeders and seedsmen had no reason to suspect that uniformity in
the corn crop would pose any problem. But it did. The
cytoplasm found common in most hybrid corn at that time was called
"Texas male-sterile cytoplasm," or "T-cytoplasm,"
after a Texas variety of corn in which it was discovered. For twenty
years preceding the blight, T-cytoplasm was used by plant breeders and
seed companies to simplify the process of hybrid corn seed production.
Male-sterile cytoplasm produced tassels on corn plants that bore
impotent pollen, which-in combination with a fertility-restoring gene in
the hybrid cross-enabled scientists to crossbreed and pollinate large
numbers of plants more easily. T-cytoplasm thus eliminated the
time-consuming, labor-intensive, and economically expensive step of hand
detasseling corn plants. It was a revolutionary invention in plant
breeding. But what scientists didn't know then about T-cytoplasm was
that it also carried a gene in the mitochondria (an organelle of the
cell that produces chemical energy for the cell) which enabled the new
strain of the corn blight fungus to do its damage. T-cytoplasm
was a man-made change in corn plants used to foster the quick and
profitable production of high-yielding, hybrid corn seed. It was a
change accomplished and advanced by science and commerce without full
knowledge of the potential consequences. (return)
The new strain of corn blight fungus, Helminthosporium maydis,
was a mutation perfectly keyed to a gene in that cytoplasm.*
*Interestingly,
two Philippine plant breeders had reported in the scientific
literature of 1962 and 1965 that they had observed Helminthososporium
maydis wreaking havoc on some of their hybrid corn lines as early as
1957. The inbred lines used to develop these hybrids were from the
United States, and contained T-cytoplasm. Yet in 1972, a study by the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) discounted these reports almost
casually, noting that in neither of the reports did the scientists
warn of a possible epidemic. Perhaps the Filipinos did not warn that
the fungus could be damaging to all varieties having T-cytoplasm, said
the NAS, "because scientists are disciplined to avoid
extrapolation. They probably reasoned, too, that they were working in
a tropical environment not at all typical of the world's major corn
lands.
In America, meanwhile, two
scientists, Donald Duvick of Pioneer Hi-Bred International (the
largest hybrid corn seed company in the United States) and A. L.
Hooker, a plant pathologist with the University of Illinois, did check
the Philippine report. Duvick reported in 1965 that to his knowledge,
no differences between T-cytoplasm and normal cytoplasm had been
reported or noted in the United States. Duvick charged the increased
susceptibility in the Philippines to a possible "secondary effect
of reduced plant vigor, accentuated by the Philippine
environment."
Hooker, who would later become one of
the authors of the NAS study reporting on the corn blight, tested
Illinois corn varieties to see if they were especially vulnerable to
H. maydis. In his tests, Hooker used the same inbred lines found
vulnerable in the Philippines, containing both normal and T-cytoplasm.
He and his colleagues tested these lines in 1963, but they did not use
"race T" of H. maydis, and so found no differences.
Therefore, the results of their tests were not published.
By September 1969, however, Hooker and
his colleagues had isolated some of the "race T" fungus from
an Illinois cornfield, and officially identified it as a new strain in
early 1970. Hooker's paper describing the new strain was not published
until August 1970, when he reported: "A majority of the acreage
of America's most valuable crop is now uniformly susceptible and
exposed to a pathogen capable of developing in [epidemic]
proportions."
When did the seed companies first know
of the new race T, and the fact that most of the hybrid seed they were
selling in 1970 would be highly susceptible to the new disease?
About a year later, in August 1971,
Hooker provided the following observation in a paper presented before
the American Society of Agronomy in New York: "Seed companies
were unaware of the potential susceptibility of hybrids containing
T-cytoplasm in the commercial crop in time to inform their customers
of the advantages of hybrids containing all or a portion of plants
with normal cytoplasm, or in time to make significant changes in their
seed production methods during the 1970 season."
At least 80
percent of the hybrid corn in America in 1970 contained T-cytoplasm,
which is why "race T" of Helminthosporium maydis
laid waste to 15 percent of the nation's corn crop. "The USA in
1970 had 46 million acres of corn with Texas male sterile
cytoplasm," wrote Iowa State University Pathologist J. Artie
Browning in 1972. "Such an extensive, homogenous acreage of
plants…is like a tinder-dry prairie waiting for a spark to ignite it.
Race T was the spark...."
The
official scientific response to the corn blight came in August 1972,
with the release of the National Academy of Sciences study Genetic
Vulnerability of Major Crops. The corn crop fell victim to the
epidemic," said the Academy's report, "because of a quirk in
the technology that had redesigned the corn plants of America until, in
one sense, they had become as alike as identical twins. Whatever made
one plant susceptible made them all susceptible." The Southern Corn
Leaf Blight, said the NAS study, was genetically based— key finding.*
*In a 1976
paper entitled "An Evaluation of Special Grant Research on
Southern Corn Leaf Blight," the USDA also acknowledged the
genetic uniformity in the nation's corn crop as one of the primary
causes of the 1970 Corn Leaf Blight. "In the [1960s], it became
clear that relatively few corn breeding parents were being used to
produce the bulk of American hybrid corn varieties," said the
report. "This narrowness of germplasm set the stage for potential
vulnerability to diseases, insects and other stresses. In early 1970,
environmental conditions in Southern and Northcentral corn producing
regions were favorable for easy disease establishment and spread among
vast plantings of highly uniform varieties. The [Southern Corn Leaf
Blight] epidemic became of national and international
significance."
Looking
beyond corn, the Academy also warned that most other crops were
"impressively uniform genetically and impressively
vulnerable." Moreover, the study added, "this uniformity
derives from powerful economic and legislative forces," such as
food company preferences for one kind of crop and government marketing
orders requiring specific kinds of fruits and vegetables. But despite
these warnings, not much has changed since 1972. Corn is less
vulnerable, but 43 percent of the nation's corn acreage is planted to
varieties derived from 6 inbred lines. Other crops are even more
vulnerable. And cytoplasmic breeding systems are still being used in a
number of crops, including corn.*
*For more
details on the issue of genetic uniformity in agriculture, see Chapter
10
What has
changed since 1970-72 is the emergence of something called
"biotechnology"-an all-powerful genetic technology that will
increasingly be at the center of agriculture and food production
worldwide. And at the hub of this new technology, more than was ever
imagined in 1970, is the gene.
GENES,
FOOD, & POWER
Unseen
by most of us, and familiar only to those who peer into the arcane world
of plant and animal cells, genes are the building blocks of our food
supply. They can determine everything from the protein content in a
slice of bread to how much milk a dairy cow produces. Genes, and the
configurations in which they occur inside plant and animal cells, hold
key instructions of growth that govern cell and organism; instructions
that determine the enzymes and biochemical reactions that build proteins
and other materials inside the organism, as well as governing its
interactions with the outside environment. By tinkering with genes,
these carefully choreographed instructions of growth and environmental
give-and-take can be altered, and through such changes, a nation's food
system can be altered for better or worse.
America's
food system—one of the largest, most productive, most sophisticated
such systems in the world today—is an incredibly far-reaching system,
permeating vast areas of modern society and every-day life. The business
of agriculture and its related industries account for approximately
one-fourth of the nation's gross national product. Agricultural exports
alone add more than $25 billion annually to the nation's
balance-of-trade ledger. In terms of employment, one out of every five
jobs in America involves the storing, transporting, processing, or
merchandising of farm commodities. In producing crops and livestock,
over one-half of the nation's land mass, roughly 1 billion acres, is
normally used for agricultural purposes. In any
given July, there are billions of corn plants growing in the rich and
warm soils of Illinois and Iowa; thousands of dairy cows roaming the
hillsides of Vermont and Wisconsin; and millions of chickens, hogs, and
turkeys being fattened from Maine to Missouri. Yet, underlying this huge
and continuous American empire of food production are genes; the
millions of genes carried in the cells of all plants and animals; genes
governing microbes in the soil, fungi m the wind, and insects on the
move-genes which are the ultimate foundation of all living things that
grow and move. To understand and control the function of these genes is
to wield whole systems of power. Even a single genetic alteration to one
crop line in one subpart of America's huge agricultural system can have
ramifications touching millions of people—alterations which are also
worth millions of dollars. Multiply such alterations many times over
throughout world agriculture, and there are innumerable revolutions made
possible; revolutions of food production and polity, and of fundamental
economics. In the
United States, large sums of capital have already been invested in the
agrigenetic revolution. New industries have formed and major corporate
realignments have occurred. The scientific establishment is poised for
change and politicians of all stripes are eager to help. For what is
happening "backstage" in America's food system today—in the
halls of government, in university laboratories, and in corporate
boardrooms—is the beginning of the genetic centralization of food
production. In one
sense, the new agrigenetic technologies will "transistorize"
the food-making process, reducing it to a compact set of genetic
components which will be, for the most part, out of public view and
increasingly held by governments and corporations. While this
technological reductionism is occurring, world
food needs, of course, will be expanding. The pie will be bigger, in
other words, as "chip- like" power accrues to those who own
food genes. In this situation, risks of all kinds will escalate. In food
production systems as we know them today, the variables
involved—technological, economic, and ecological—are numerous and
wide ranging. Mistakes, unforeseen consequences, and miscalculations
giving rise to damaged or failed harvests are not infrequent
occurrences. Add to this now the new dimensions of biotechnological
food-making—with its near instant ability to screen millions of cells
at a laboratory workbench, produce millions of specifically designed
microbes, or to leap species barriers in the making of new crops and
livestock—and the prospects for mistake or calamity swell
geometrically. Today, we
may be moving toward a high-tech, house-of-cards agriculture worldwide,
with genetic engineering at its base; a system in which one monkey
wrench or one unforeseen mutation can create enormous problems. Just as
the technology of hybrid corn production "went wrong" in 1970,
aiding the advance of the corn blight, the agricultural biotechnologies
of genes, microbes, and molecules might "go wrong" on a much
grander scale in the future. Despite what its proponents may claim for
it, this is not an invincible or fail-safe technology. (return) Yet
clearly, this technology does have the potential to be safely and
beneficially applied, improving food production, environmental quality,
and agricultural diversity in the process. But making sure that happens
could well be the challenge of the mid-1980s and beyond. |