The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist’s Struggle to Preserve the World’s Harvest
by Susan Dworkin. Walker & Company. 2009. 239 pages. $26.
The global food outlook is grim, says magazine writer and author Susan Dworkin in The Viking in the Wheat Field. She points out that, according to the United Nations, there will be 9 billion people on earth by 2050, and they will require a 75% increase in food supply. Meeting such an elevated feeding demand is a major challenge, since farmers have already cultivated most of the planet’s arable land. Worse still, much of the land that is available has lost its fertility due to overuse. What options remain besides destroying more forests?
One hope rests on making more-efficient use of existing crop land. Dworkin describes the lifetime work of Bent Skovmand, the late Norwegian horticultualist who spent his career developing biotechnology procedures for cross-breeding wheat plants to enhance their disease resistance, accelerate their growth, and exponentially increase their grain output. Dworkin’s account relates Skovmand’s many experiments in seed banks and their successful outcomes in Mexico, Turkey, and other locales.
In light of the much-publicized rises in food costs and shortages of water for farming, the story that Dworkin tells in The Viking in the Wheat Field is very compelling and very timely.
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