Australia Pistachio Disaster Hints at Agricultural Breakdown
The culprit was anthracnose, a fungal disease best-known for infecting mangoes. It raced through the industry, resulting in a harvest some 50 percent smaller than expected — and half of that was inedible.
What the disease means for the future of Australia’s pistachio farmers remains to be seen, but for the rest of the world it’s yet another cautionary example of fragility in modern agriculture.
“The wide cultivation of genetically uniform plant populations fosters rapid evolution among the pathogens,” said Scot Nelson, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii. “Because of this greed, new pathogens or newly reported host-pathogen combinations arise almost daily around the world.”
…..…in December 2010 and January of this year — Australia’s summertime — the country experienced torrential rainfalls unprecedented in the nation’s modern record-keeping history. Conditions were prime for an outbreak of moisture-loving pests, and anthracnose grows best in precisely those conditions.
Seemingly out of nowhere, it exploded. Farmer losses ranged from 40 to 100 percent.