Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
11.8
FOOD SECURITY
All countries must plan for food security, including plans for overcoming or dealing
with natural phenomena that interfere with food production and natural disasters.
Emergency preparedness is essential and must include plans and facilities for storage
of food for emergencies.
Ideally, the government of each country should have enough food in reserve to feed
the population for 12 months. This would be a worst-case scenario where no crops are
harvested during a single cropping year. A 12-month supply of essential food would
avoid starvation until the next (hopefully normal) harvest is collected. Only a few
countries actually have such reserves. Most depend on private traders to have grains
in storage to provide part of the national emergency food supply. As population
increases, demand for food increases, and traders will sell some of their stocks to
gain an immediate profit. The result is that many small countries have less than 2 to
3 months of grain in storage at any one time. Any interruption of the food supply
longer than 3 months will be a disaster.
11.8.1 Germplasm Banks
Germplasm banks are typically storage facilities for seed from every type of cultivated
plant, including variation within a single plant species. The seeds are stored under
controlled conditions, including humidity and temperature designed to prevent deterio-
ration of the genetic material. There are approximately 1400 germplasm banks in
various parts of the world. Any time a variation, natural or induced, of a plant is
found a sample of the plant and its seed is placed in the bank so that it will be available
when needed.
Germplasm banks are the source of genetic material needed to produce new
varieties capable of overcoming environmental constraints to crop production. Today
the emphasis is on transgenic engineering, which makes use of germplasm banks.
However, traditional breeding programs that produce hybrids or new pure strains of
crops also use material from germplasm banks.
The U.S. government maintains a network of germplasm banks of all types of
crops, even those not grown commercially in the United States. The main storage
facility is at Fort Collins, Colorado, with smaller cold-storage facilities in each
agricultural region of the country. Seeds must be regularly tested for viability and
replanted to maintain the collection.
Unfortunately, some germplasm banks are in countries with unstable political
situations. Amaranth is an essential grain for many poor farmers in the Horn of
Africa. During a drought, a local government was unable to protect an agricultural
experiment station. Looters broke into the germplasm bank and stole several hundred
cans of grain for food, destroying years of collection efforts.
To protect against this type of loss and even larger calamities the Norwegian
government is building a “doomsday vault” inside a mountain on the island of
Spitsbergen. It will hold samples of all seed held in all germplasm banks around
