Continued: Editorial: Cuts threaten a key food supply sentry

It's a crop scourge that merited mention in the Bible. Today, wheat rust is still feared for its ability to lay waste to waving fields of grain. Trillions of spores released by an infected crop can blanket a combine, rapidly turning John Deere-green to rust-red.

The University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus is home to a critical laboratory that is the grain equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's known as the Cereal Disease Laboratory. Its five research scientists and their staff are the world's early warning system for detecting and stopping the spread of rust, scab and other infectious diseases that can devastate cereal crops: wheat, oats and barley.

But the federal lab's important work may be curtailed by the current political maelstrom over "earmarks" -- projects tagged for specific funding in government budgets. In the hue and cry over pet projects and bridges to nowhere, an important point is sometimes lost. Some of these earmarks fund vital projects. This lab is one of them. A good chunk of its modest annual budget -- $309,000 out of $1.9 million -- comes from a congressional earmark intended to strengthen this U.S. Department of Agriculture facility.

The earmark has been renewed without controversy -- until now. To hold the line on expenditures, the presidential budget submitted to Congress in February took aim at millions of dollars' worth of earmarks. Unfortunately, an uninformed bureaucrat redlined the Cereal Disease Lab's $309,000. It's not a huge amount of money -- not enough to close the lab. But it will have a severe impact. "It will affect all of our programs,'' said Jim Kolmer, one of the lab's research scientists. "We will inevitably lose staff because most of the operating budget is salaries.''

Among those sounding the alarm about the lab are eminent scientist Norman Borlaug and the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers.

The timing of the cuts could not be worse. Already, consumption of grains for biofuels has sent food prices soaring and strained the world's production capacity. At the same time, a frightening new strain of wheat stem rust known as Ug99 has emerged. It has not yet been detected in the United States, but has ravaged crops in Africa and has spread to the Arabian peninsula. The high-yield North American wheat crop, particularly the hard red wheat raised in northwest Minnesota, is thought to have little or no resistance to Ug99. Wheat rust has caused famines throughout history. Borlaug is one of many experts who believe Ug99 poses one of the most serious threats to the world food supply in decades.

Scientists at the Cereal Disease Lab are on the frontlines in the fight against Ug99, monitoring its spread and helping breeders develop wheat resistant to it. At a time when the world's food supply is under siege, cutting this critical lab could have far-reaching, dangerous consequences. Restore the earmark. Better yet, find ways to permanently fund it. The lab's work is too important to leave it unprotected against politics.

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