In risk management, we often study past failures to prevent future catastrophes. But what if one of historys greatest humanitarian disasters wasnt a closed case, but an ongoing threat to our modern global supply chains?
The Great Famine of 1845 in Ireland was triggered by a single pathogen that wiped out the countrys primary food source. That threat never vanished. Its modern iteration is a danger so significant it feels like something out of science fiction—a global blight akin to the one seen in the film Interstellar.
This isnt an exaggeration. That same pathogen family continues to cause billions of dollars in agricultural losses annually. It is just one actor in a much larger drama that costs the global economy hundreds of billion every year from plant diseases. These are not just farming issues; they are economic and humanitarian crises in the making, amplified by a changing climate.
I invite you to listen to the premiere episode of my new podcast, “The Root Cause: Unearthing Our Foods Future.”
In this brief, 3-minute episode, we quickly connect the dots. It is a short introduction to a much larger conversation on a risk that will affect us for decades.
