Repeating melodies and song structures can be found in the music of virtually all cultures, a fact that has led those who ponder the origins of music to ponder the power of patterns and repetition. In poetry and in music, we have a feel for what is coming. We are drawn to anticipating it before it actually happens.

History may have its patterns, but there are no clearly set chorus lines as in music. History simply doesn’t repeat itself. However, as Mark Twain famously observed, “it does rhyme.” So, when new conditions in our world conjure up old familiar patterns – particularly those that have led to disaster in the past – we all sit up and take notice.

Such is the case now with some of us who remember the “World Food Crisis” of the early 1970s, and find ourselves watching eerily similar events unfold again, now.

Here’s the most important parallel:

Grain reserves are historically low. In the early 1970s they dropped precipitously to a third that of the early 1960s. In a context of stable or rising demand, low reserves mean that anything that affects supply (decreases in production, export embargoes, hoarding) immediately affects prices.

Stockpiles today have now returned to the abnormally low levels that set the stage for disaster in the 1970s. We have consumed more than we have produced for 6 of the last 7 years. Something will have to give. And someone.

Events begin to rhyme. If anything, however, the situation seems more precarious today, as if everything must go right if we are to avoid not just the rhyme but the repeat.

Population growth and affluence are leading to increased demand. Since the early 1970s, population has further increased by more than 55%. And that larger population is consuming 63% more meat per capita, putting huge pressure on grain supplies. One kilo of meat can require up to 7 kilos of grain to produce. It takes much more grain to feed affluent meat-eating people than people who consume grain directly.

Triggers – then

Every crisis needs a trigger to set it off. The crisis of the early 1970s had catalysts on both the supply and the demand side. Droughts in the Soviet Union, Australia, China, and Africa reduced production, for example.

Then the Humboldt Current off Peru shifted causing a collapse in the anchovy harvest. “So what?” you ask.

Well, the little fish were the prime ingredient in fishmeal used in animal feed. Meat producers shifted to soybeans distorting supply-demand in that crop and initiating a domino effect of rising prices across the board. Imagine - a little fish was able to light the fuse.

On the demand side – as the anchovy harvest was failing - the Soviet Union entered world markets with massive, and initially undetected purchases of grain to buttress their livestock industry and quell domestic political restlessness. By the time anyone noticed, the U.S.S.R. had gobbled up what grain was available on global markets. Everyone dug deep into their pockets and paid the higher prices, but in Africa the pockets were empty. Africans couldn’t buy their way out of the food shortages and food aid supplies were insufficient, themselves a victim of high prices.

The result? 300,000 people perished in Ethiopia alone. The Sahel was a disaster. We literally watched babies starve to death on TV.

Triggers – now

What might light the fuse this time? There are a number of possible catalysts.

Wheat-stem rust – first detected in Uganda in 1999 - has reached the Near East and is headed towards India. There is no resistance in the wheat varieties now in the fields. Dr. Norman Borlaug, agriculture’s only living Nobel Laureate, described the situation last week as a “looming catastrophe,” and explained “stem rust, the most feared of all wheat diseases, can turn a healthy crop of wheat into a tangled mass of stems that produce little or no grain”.  The disease could well decimate harvests, sending India and others into the global market big-time. Wheat trumps anchovies any day.

Similarly, China with its ample foreign reserves has the capacity to be a major buyer if need be. Ditto Russia again.

Then there’s rice. Exporting countries are systematically blocking exports, and Africa, which imports over half its rice supplies and is now the main buyer in international markets, is feeling the pinch. Food protests and riots are breaking out across the continent.

Climate events could provide another trigger in major producing countries, or in poor countries unable as in the 1970s to buy their way out of famine. Finally, there’s biofuels where more and more maize, for instance, is being diverted from bellies to BMWs.

More troubling, the context in which we may deal with each of these challenges has changed. Agriculture is facing profound threats associated with climate change, water shortages, energy constraints, and the accumulated effects of years of anemic investments in agricultural research. Yield increases in cereal grains have slowed. And then there’s the continuing battle with pests and diseases. Crop diversity conservation is no panacea for all of these woes, but it is a prerequisite for solving them and defusing potential triggers such as wheat stem rust.

The Trust is providing support to seed banks to screen collections to identify hidden traits – heat resistance, drought tolerance and disease resistance – that will enable crops to become “climate ready” and equipped to tackle new disease outbreaks such at that threatening wheat today.

Everything Must Change

Politicians are again invoking the 1970’s term “World Food Crisis.” Yet for all the similarities to the 1970s, there is an important difference between the two. For now at least. Widespread starvation has not yet become the unavoidable image on TV. But the current situation could easily worsen, teaching us yet again what suffering a real global food crisis can wreak.

With luck – that’s what it will take – we may dodge the bullet and avoid such a fate. But somewhere looming out there in the future, is another even more serious food crisis – unless we make the proper investments in agriculture, including ensuring the conservation of the diversity that will provide the essential tools for increasing production and adapting crops to new climates. Business-as-usual will lead straight to crisis. The warning signals are abundant.

Today, most of the factors that led to mass starvation 35 years ago have reappeared. We live on the brink. Everything is going to have to go right or we’re going over. We’re not talking now about feeding the world’s 800 million hungry; we’re just talking about helping them and many more from being pushed over the edge.

In The Leopard, a novel by Lampedusa published in the 1958, a character comments that “everything must change so that everything can remain the same.” Fifty years later, that’s exactly the way it is.

Falcon, Walter, and Peter Timmer. “Food: War on Hunger or New Cold War?” The Stanford Magazine (1974).

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened with much fanfare on 26 February, when 100 million seeds were placed inside. The media reaction was overwhelming – for the first time ever crop diversity featured in the headlines on television and in the papers in virtually every country in the world. Our website (www.croptrust.org) carries links to print media as well as streaming video from major TV networks. The most watched programme in America on Easter Sunday (CBS 60 Minutes) featured the Vault, and you can watch it here. But despite the massive media attention, it is important to remember that the Vault is just one small part of the Trust’s work – although as important as it is impressive, the Vault is simply the safety net of the global system for crop conservation we will help create.

Our Executive Board met for the third time, in Rome, devoting its meeting to an analysis of the Trust’s strategy and processes. Results of the meeting will soon be posted on the website. At a special ceremony during the meeting, with FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf also present, Japanese sculptor Mitsuaki Tanabe unveiled his extraordinary donation to the Trust – a 9-metre solid steel sculpture of a grain of wild rice. We are extremely grateful to him, and you can read more on www.croptrust.org.

We welcome Charlotte Lusty to the staff in the position of Scientist. Charlotte previously worked with Bioversity International, particularly with banana and plantain. A biographical sketch can be found on our website.