Stem Rust and the Food Crisis

Norman Borlaug, the Nobel winner and father of the Green Revolution, has an op-ed in the NYTimes on the threat stem rust poses to wheat. Read the whole thing. I found this fact interesting:

From 1965 to 1985, the heyday of the Green Revolution, world production of cereal grains — wheat, rice, corn, barley and sorghum — nearly doubled, from 1 billion to 1.8 billion metric tons, and cereal prices dropped by 40 percent.