Major food security safeguard at risk
U.S. agency responsible for more than 600,000 genetic lines of more than 200 core food crops hit by Trump/Musk budget cuts. Loss of NPGS services could have devastating long-term costs.
Few things could be more important to the security of any nation than food. Without sufficient food supplies, entire populations are disrupted, dislocated, and potentially decimated. Since the COVID-19 pandemic took over the world in March 2020, hunger has exploded to historic levels. At one point, the number of people facing prolonged hunger conditions reached more than 900 million, globally.
By May 2022, 49 million people across 43 countries were “one step away from famine”, according to a briefing to the United Nations Security Council, by the U.N. Secretary-General. A joint news release two years later, from the European Union, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Internatioal Fund for Agriculture and Development, U.N. High Commission for Refugees, U.N. Children’s Fund, and the World Bank, reported:
According to the latest Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), nearly 282 million people in 59 countries and territories experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023 - a worldwide increase of 24 million from the previous year. This rise was due to the report’s increased coverage of food crisis contexts as well as a sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and Sudan.
Since 2020, the proportion of people facing acute food insecurity has remained persistently high at almost 22 percent of those assessed, significantly exceeding pre-COVID-19 levels.
Hunger is driven by many factors, including financial and economic trends, conflict and involuntary diplacement, climate disruption, and nature loss. The most potentially far-reaching, however, would be a major multiple crop failure, or the emergence of a crop pest affecting most or all common varieties of a staple food.
The National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was established in 1898 to study, improve, and sustain the plant species that form the foundation of the food system. As reported by two leading scientists in The New York Times:
Across its 22 stations nationwide, approximately 300 N.P.G.S. scientists maintain more than 600,000 genetic lines of more than 200 crop species. The collections of some crops, like wheat, are in the form of seeds. But others, like apples (2,664 lines), must be maintained as living plants in the open field. The scientists who care for them must follow strict requirements for sustaining genetic purity so they can provide healthy viable seeds or plants to the tens of thousands of researchers and others who request them each year…
The collections represent a towering achievement of foresight that food security depends on the availability of diverse plant genetic resources.
The NPGS is in the news for a shocking and unnecessary reason. Its staff and facilities were among the blind and ill-advised cuts being ordered by Donald Trump, through the “DOGE” advisory panel led by Elon Musk. There is no argument to be made that investment in the NPGS is not efficient or effective. NPGS science and seeds have saved millions of lives, raised hundreds of millions in revenue, and safeguarded billions of dollars in agricultural incomes, protecting and expanding key sectors.
Around the world, such services are vital to ensuring major food security threats can be addressed efficiently and effectively, to prevent the destabilization of food-growing regions and limit the risk of major hunger events and armed conflicts. Workers put on leave or dismissed by Trump and Musk have been temporarily reinstated by order of a federal court.
Services that produce incalculably more value than their relatively slim budgets cost are now, unthinkably, at risk. The costs could be devastating and could change the course of history in terrible ways.
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