ARS International Partnerships Podcast
                 (Time: ~1 minute, 55 seconds)

Researchers across the globe are collaborating on food security starting by forming international partnerships, sharing data and working together in cutting-edge laboratories. 

Their tackling the good, the bad and the ugly of agricultural pests and molecular threats to everything from lentils in Nepal to chocolate and cacao, to cattle plagued by parasites in sub-Saharan Africa.

 Hi, I'm Chris Guy, with the Agricultural Research Service, ARS, chief scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

We live in a time of complex solutions and multiple challenges, an era of diminishing resources that will require nothing less than a global effort to feed and provide basic care for the planet's burgeoning population.   

For example, at far-lung laboratories in Pullman, Washington and Nairobi, Kenya, scientist are in the fifth year of research developing vaccines against tick-borne diseases and forging a durable partnership with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. 

Rift Valley fever, foot-and-mouth disease and East Coast fever are diseases that are similar enough that entomologists say the trio of cattle diseases could be battled with the same vaccines.

On the plant side, in recent years, another form of wheat stem rust called Ug99, a disease that threatens 80 percent of the planet's wheat and barley supply has appeared in parts of Africa.  Experts worry that the United States could be next.

In June 2011, the U.S. Agency for International Development cooperated with ARS in building a state-of-the-art greenhouse in at the Cereal Disease Laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota. Meanwhile the fungus, first found in Africa, already presents a threat in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  

ARS also is distributing wheat breeding lines, which have proven they can stand up to Ug99 in cooperative nurseries in Kenya and Ethiopia, and to scientists in 34 countries around the world.

These are just a few of the ways ARS is helping ensure the world can feed itself today and tomorrow.  That's our ARS podcast for today. Thanks for listening!