
Devastating wheat fungus appears in Asia for first time - sachkris
http://www.nature.com/news/devastating-wheat-fungus-appears-in-asia-for-first-time-1.19820
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dbcooper
_Wheat_ fungus, not yeast fungus.

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hobs
Wheat Blast specifically.

I always worry about our monocultures because of things like (from the
article): 15k hectares destroyed to try and contain the outbreak, and some
sources claim that "Yield loss to this disease can be greater than 75% in
severely affected fields."[0] which seems to me that if this spreads across
Asia this could be a big problem.

[0][https://www.k-state.edu/wheatblast/about/](https://www.k-state.edu/wheatblast/about/)

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etatoby
It has begun.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass)

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goda90
Interesting premise. I wonder if civilization would collapse, or if we'd be
able to adapt our agriculture to more legumes and other vegetables quickly
enough to avoid mass starvation.

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maxerickson
The US plants more soy than wheat already so the adapting part would probably
go OK. The bigger question would be the math about calories (it probably works
out, meat production consumes a lot of calories).

I guess we could also plant lots of potatoes (which produce more calories/acre
than soy).

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TrevorJ
Topsoil erosion would be a massive problem.

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hga
That's something you start worrying about after you make sure no one is likely
to starve, it can most likely wait a couple of years.

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TrevorJ
Actually, it's something you worry about _now_ if you don't want people to
starve.

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hga
This discussion is in the context of a sudden failure of a variety of crops,
e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass)

In that context, for a couple or so of years you don't worry about soil
erosion, except to avoid a repeat of the Dust Bowl, you worry about people not
starving. Before AKA "now", and after the emergency period, yes, you worry
about it, as we do now.

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simonebrunozzi
Why does the article says "wheat fungus" but the HN title says "yeast fungus"
?

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badreader
LSD for the masses? :-)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
You're thinking of rye.

