Nairobi, Kenya
June 30, 2009
USDA/FAS GAIN report KE 9020
Report highlights:
Scientists and researchers
have mobilized to develop wheat varieties resistant to Ug99
wheat-stem rust, a fungal disease reportedly capable of
completely devastating wheat crops wherever it is present.
Government wheat policies can also be altered in an attempt
at slowing the disease’s spread. However, in Kenya, where
the disease likely originated, the Government of Kenya (GOK)
appears to be setting the stage through its
agriculture-policy framework for continued, while
inadvertent, spread of Ug99.
General Information
Today, researchers and farmers in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia,
Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran know first-hand the destructive
effects of Kenya/Uganda-born Ug99. Scientists suggest that India
will be the next wheat-growing country to wither Ug99’s
destructive effects. Longer-term, Ug99 will certainly increase
the global cost of producing one of the most important food
grains on earth, and may decrease world wheat production as
well. Researchers are scrambling to develop Ug99-resistant wheat
varieties, but their work will likely take years before
resistant varieties can be developed. According to an article
written by Sharon Schmickle that appears in the Washington Post
and the Pulitzer Center, “eighty percent of Asian and African
wheat varieties are now susceptible, and so is barley, FAO
experts said. Scientists named the new menace Ug99 for its
discovery in Uganda in 1999. But they say it probably started
earlier in Kenya, where more wheat is grown…Unlike common rust
infestations, which reduce but do not wipe out yields, stem rust
can topple a whole field. "It can take everything," said Robert
McIntosh, former director of Australia's rust-control program.
"It is the most damaging of the rusts.”
http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=1350
This virulent black-rust race disease continues to spread from
Kenya with inadvertent assistance from the GOK, and while it may
be too late to stop the spread of Ug99, the GOK can slow its
progress and prevent its successor from evolving/mutating by
implementing consumer and environment-friendly agricultural
production and trade policies. Reportedly some Kenyan wheat
farmers have at times experienced 80 percent crop loss to this
virulent black-rust race, nonetheless they continue producing
wheat and stem-rust spores, because the GOK wheat import policy
imposes a 25 percent ad-valorem wheat import tariff that
increases domestic wheat prices by more than the added
production expenses related to producing wheat where the Ug99
stem rust thrives. And, the agronomic conditions in Kenya appear
to favor the mutation/birth of yet unnamed and unknown wheat
diseases if the GOK continues its production-distorting
policies.
Many prominent Kenyan Government and non-government officials
reportedly believe that Kenya, by the year 2030 or before,
should produce all of the food (including wheat) and fiber
consumed in Kenya. This notion/goal of growing all the food the
population of Kenya consumes ignores the Ug99 problem, and other
comparative environmental and economic disadvantages to growing
wheat in Kenya. It also fails to serve Kenyan wheat-product
consumers, who could benefit from lower prices if wheat
producers in better-suited wheat producing regions of the world
were granted tariff-free access to this market.
GOK agriculture-policy experts could seek policy alternatives to
wheat production that might include sorghum, millet, cassava,
etc., while “wheat efficient” producing regions could easily
meet Kenyan consumer wheat demand. Kenyans consume nearly one
million tons of wheat annually and domestic producers harvest
only about one-quarter of the total. Considering that Kenyan
wheat producers must begin spraying fungicides shortly after
wheat’s emergence to fight the ravages of Ug99, understanding
that the applied fungicides don’t kill the stem rust but merely
keep it sufficiently in check during the wheat-grain development
cycle to enable a harvest and that Kenya’s rust-favorable
climatic conditions and fungi-proliferating alternate host
populations provide the perfect environment for Ug99 and future
fungal diseases to flourish, it seems reasonable that the GOK
consider reducing its economic and environmental footprint by
eliminating its wheat production-distorting policies.
Eliminate this tariff-induced production distortion, and any
other production policy distortions (please see KE9019), and
local producers will likely reduce wheat production, diminishing
the Ug99 wind-born threat from this region. Fail to eliminate
the production-distorting policy and local producers will likely
continue to inadvertently propagate Ug99 and possibly, future,
not-yet-mutated/discovered wheat diseases. |
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