New pests and diseases keep popping up to destroy poor farmers. Latest culprit, according to SciDev.net, is rough dwarf maize disease in Africa. Very little is known about the disease, but that hasn’t stopped claims that it “will threaten food security and the livelihoods of millions of people on the continent”. ((Could this be linked to claims that “there were no funds for the research and scientists trying to work on the diseases had to look for resources on their own”?))
We don’t actually like this never-ending parade of pests and diseases, but it does at least remind us that the best insurance is agricultural biodiversity, as a source of other foods and, ultimately, as a source of resistance.