I would think that we will see multiple grain perennial varieties developed to mitigate against the risk of a blight overwhelming a single homogeneous species approach. It never pays to put your eggs all in one basket. But you bring up an interesting historical reference. A similar challenge happened with bananas and may happen to that fruit in the near future. The song, “Yes, We have no Bananas” is an historical artifact of a period of time when a blight destroyed the predominant variety. The banana we eat today are mainly two varieties, one called Cavendish and the other called Nain. Right now a number of fungi are beginning to impact these crops. I know that some will be upset but the answer to thwarting the fungi will probably be introducing genetic engineering to provide resistance. That means another GMO on grocery shelves.

The perennial proposition is very interesting, and also extremely complex. Implications are manifold. I’m thinking we should be very cautious before we implement basic starch food production with “engineered” perennials. If it proves out to be more profitable than annual tillage systems, then most of global agribusiness will rapidly convert to it, and all the traditional tillage technology and support industries will fall into disrepair. So far so good, but what happens if something like the great grape blight of the mid 1800s hits the newly established perennial starch plant’s roots?

The great grape blight, a fungal infection of perennial grapevine roots spread by billions of tiny aphids from the Americas, swept through Europe like the plague, millions of acres of vineyards with centuries-old vines were infected, and nearly every grapevine in France died. So did many centuries-old winemaking businesses, and thousands of the poorly nourished field worker’s children starved. The only solution was to dig-out and burn all the infected old world rootstock, replace it with new world rootstock, and then graft the old world vines onto the new world roots. Several years passed before wine production could be restored. The wine produced from the new world roots has a different character than the wine produced from the old world roots. Some of the old world rootstock and vines still exist today in the nation of Chili, from which very excellent vintages similar to ante-blight European wines are produced. A wonderfully beautiful, highly allegorical, somewhat bizarre, heart-wrenching, dramatic movie titled, “Heavenly Vintage,” accurately depicts the great grape blight epoch and is available on streaming Netflix.

A global civilization of some seven billion hominids could likely comfortably survive 4-5 years of serious wine shortages, but how would it fare with 4-5 years of serious starch shortages? Say the world plants 10% of its starch crops in engineered perennials, and then if the crops fail the world has to tighten its belt by only ten percent, which in most of the developed world might be a good idea anyway. The major problem would be if the 10% perennials turn out to be more profitable than the traditional tillage starches. The temptation to constantly increase the perennial percentage would prove irresistible.

Hi Steve, We forget that our agriculture choices have been dictated by history. A reliance on annual crops that really started with domestication of wheat grasses in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia soon migrated through the Mediterranean World and with the later dominance of Europe and the West became the defacto choice for staple crops. Similarly rice became the staple of East Asia largely driven by the dominance of Chinese culture in the region. These were cultural rather than science-based choices. Science, however, can serve to alter 10,000 years of poor decision making if we can create perennial strains of our common staples.