Biosecurity poses a significant risk across the globe. In the UK diseases threaten humans, animals, birds and flora. There are precautions in place to mitigate the ones we know about.
The problem is the ones we don’t know about, have recently discovered or we did know about but the disease has mutated. Bananas come in the last category. In the 1950s the Gros Michel banana was the dominant strain and the principal export variety until it was struck by a fungus that wiped it out as a widely grown export. It was replaced by a variety resistant to Panama disease – the Cavendish banana, named after William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire. Now Panama disease has mutated and is infecting Cavendish bananas posing an economic threat in producing countries. It may effectively wipe out the Cavendish strain but in time a new disease resistant strain will be developed.
We have seen this before. In the second half of the 19th century phylloxera destroyed European vineyards. A few decades earlier a blight that had destroyed potato crops on the eastern seaboard of America came to Ireland with catastrophic consequences. This century Covid, M pox, avian flu, foot and mouth are just a few of the threats we have had to overcome. Our government has taken measures to mitigate these threats but in reality the best it can do is react swiftly as problems arise.
In the natural world we inadvertently import fatal diseases and predators that put paid to elm trees, and now are destroying box hedges and ash trees. Because trees and plants don’t have a vote we just have to wait for these pestilences to run their course and disease resistant strains introduced. Commercial growers are just as much at risk and just as helpless. MP Evans lists seventeen risk factors in the latest (2023) Annual Report. I think it’s worth listing them all, though we are only concerned with pests and disease today.
“1) Adverse weather. 2) Climate change. 3) Flood and water incursion. 4) Pests and disease. 5) Change in (palm oil) prices. 6) Exchange rate fluctuation. 7) Inflation. 8) Taxation. 9) Succession planning. 10) Environmental obligations. 11) Relationship with local populations. 12) Reporting obligations. 13) Indonesian regulatory environment. 14) International regulatory environment. 15) Bribery and corruption. 16) Land rights dispute. 17) Information security.”
I suspect the company would be blind-sided by a pest or disease that destroys oil palms; like the Cavendish banana, oil palms are a mono-culture. This is how they would combat such a catastrophe.
”The Group employs experienced agronomic managers in all its estates
and takes advice from external consultants when appropriate. Effective management is designed to identify issues when they occur, and to ensure that they do not become widespread. Senior staff remain up to date in latest agronomic practices.”
Well, that’s the best any of us can do whether we have a box plant in a pot on the patio or 60,000 hectares of oil palms in Indonesia.
Hi Christopher – interesting info.
Can a good word be put for world players like Kew and their international collaborators who proactively research and store seed of wild relatives of the world’s cash crops – as well as as much of the plant and fungal kingdom as they can practically manage. They also test for viability of the seeds that they store. This work is vital in reserving biodiversity so crucial to the combat of plant disease and pestilence throughout the world.
Re the MP Evans list quoted – it’s astonishing that it doesn’t seem to include biodiversity loss nor mention of the part played by the not inconsiderably large agro-chemical industry – including the use of GM crops and of pesticides