Remarkable but unnoticed

History will likely have a spot for the first year of Trump's presidency, the saga of Brexit and the astounding impact of crypto-currencies this year.   Two stories that have not had significant attention might yet prove to be far more important than any of that. 


First wheat. Stable crop  for much of the developed world.  All that bread, pastry, breakfast cereal  and cake depends on grain and primarily wheat.   The overwhelming majority of the crop is grown on huge farms in inner continental  climate regions  -the prairies of the USA, steppes of Russia, Ukraine and parts of Australia.  It is big business, big machinery highly mechanised and industrialised.  The pursuit of yield has driven  breeding of high yielding varieties, at least they are high yielding if conditions are right.



Breeding varieties  for a single trait means a few selected genes have been selected time and again, and a few other lost.  So when a pathogen pops up that seems to particularly attack the same genes, things start to look  ugly.  No problem - start breeding in resistant genes to the  pathogen.  And that is hat has been happening for many years with resistance to wheat rusts (a family of fungal diseases).   But then a new pathogen  strain overcomes the resistance you have bred into your high yielding wheat pops up?


It has happened. Since the 1990's UG99 has been slowly expanding its range, from East Africa  into Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It is estimated more than 85% of the world's wheat is susceptible because almost all high yield wheat varieties carry the  Sr35 gene which is where the vulnerability  lays.


Despite this vulnerability and the projected increasing  demands for wheat across the globe as population and per capita consumption rises , wheat prices are  almost at a decade low.  

A different perspective on similar data, but pricing in gold rather than dollars, and hence somewhat mitigating inflationary effects from fiat currency:

Of course there is no certainty about how wheat prices will play out in the future.  But over the next 5  to 10 years the odds look to be very much in favour of significant price rises, and that is going to be reflected in basic food costs.  And that will impact the poorest hardest.


Second on my very short list is something that happened just this month.  AlphaZero teaches itself champion playing The importance is not that it beat other game playing AI's.  It is that it taught itself  to do so very quickly .  This is arguably the first step to a generalised intelligence.  Games are no different from many other spheres of human activity.  As long as there are clear rules and an objective evaluation function  all sorts of situations ought to be  capable of being treated the same way.  It is a game changer in more ways that one.