The Sword and Laser discussion

This pertinent article in Wired details the spread of an old fungus with a new mutation, and the catastrophic effects it could have on the world's food supply.

Sitting in my tower, I assume I'm immune to this kind of shortage, but these types of stories give me pause. There's a lot of fiction out there dealing with worldwide pandemics, but Bacigalupi's is the first novel I've read that deals with their equivalent in food, and despite its steampunkery it presents a very real way for civilization to fall. Short of a meteorite or drastic climate change, disease seems to be the one thing that could feasibly wipe a great majority of us out. Could we lock it down in time? Would we have a chance to stop it once it reached everywhere? Should we be stocking up on canned goods?

Yeah, this is one of the things that got me about the book: the implications of monoculture and terminator seeds a la Monsanto. It made the threat of all of that much more real. It makes me glad that people are in fact constructing seed banks and that farmers and gardeners continue to cultivate old, quirky varieties.