Is antibiotic resistance predictive of stagnic farm production?

So I know the title seems like a stretch.  How are antibiotics and farming even remotely connected and in reality they are not.  However there are correlations I see among both topics that I wanted to explore.

It all started when I was listening to a podcast (Raiolab) and  they were talking about the history of antibiotic resistance. It is a very interesting episode so take a listen:   RadioLab: Staph Retreat  We hear about antibiotic resistance all the time in the news.    MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) comes to minds as a particular nasty antibiotic resistance bacteria in our hospitals.   Lots of times the term "superbug" is is given to these emerging antibiotic resistant strains.  It is a real problem and so the first question to ask is why are there no more antibiotics coming on the market?

The first antibiotic was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming and was a drug we have all probably taken at one point or another.  I still remember the pink bubble gum flavored penicillin I took as a kid.  With Penicillin the antibiotic revolution was kick started and the media was eating it up.

http://www.nww2m.com/tag/penicillin/

Penicillin was just the first of many antibiotics that  really got going in the 50s and 60s.  At that point there were so many antibiotics coming out that it looked liked we might have an answer for any bacterial infection. The figure below shows the peak of development before development declines.

http://www.scidev.net/global/health/feature/antibiotic-resistance-frequently-asked-questions.html

The other part of the antibiotics story is resistance.  Lots of drugs were coming out, but resistance was developing FAST!  Take a look this figure.

https://agreatcomplexity.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/the-cost-of-resistance-our-current-models-of-antibiotic-research-and-development-are-unsustainable/

Penicillin is introduced in 1941 with some resistance in the 40s.  Streptomycin is introduced in 1944 and resistance comes within a couple years.  Methicillin was introduced in 1952 and resistance was seen in 1960.   This list goes on with the same general trend.  When an antibiotic is developed the bacteria are very good at developing resistance and many times that resistance came 1-3 years after release.    Since the onslaught of new antibiotics in the 50s and 60s, the number of antibiotics have dramatically declined.   There are numerous reasons for this, but as the figure above mentions one of the biggest is that it is not appealing for pharma companies to spend millions on a drug that once released will only be used for a couple years before resistance pops up.    From a business perspective you can't blame them because if they can spend money on a drug that stays on the market for 10-20 years then they can recoup their R&D costs and turn a profit.   However as humankind we all are now suffering from those decisions.  There are very few antibiotics in the R&D pipeline compared to the peak of the 50s and 60s.  We now are live in a world where less new antibiotics are being released and bacteria are continuing to find resistance to what we do have.   As more resistance pops up and antibiotic choices dwindle, I think pharma companies will have to jump back into more R&D. I would predict this move purely on the the model of supply and demand;  especially if these superbugs start causing more and more deaths.  

Now let's jump to agriculture.   I was reading an opinion piece in the New York Times and realized that just like pharma companies not putting money into antibiotic development, the government is not putting money into agricultural development.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opinion/we-need-a-new-green-revolution.html?ref=opinion&_r=2

So we went from 40% of American research towards agriculture in the 1940s to only 2% today.   Many other countries are also not contributing the needed R&D to keep yields going up.   If you go searching for yield gains for crops you will see increases.  However in many cases these increases are coming from private biotech or the fact we are just planting on more land!.

Examples of the impact of a private biotech trait on yield are seen in Bt and herbicides.



http://grist.org/food/why-gmos-do-matter-and-even-more-to-the-developing-world/

So while conventional breeding has shown a mostly linear progression of yield increase, there are points in history for several crops where we see what a GMO trait can do.  Of course we also have increases in yield because land use keeps going up as well.



http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131217/ncomms3918/full/ncomms3918.html

Look at how much land use has gone up in the last 10 years.  By using more land it is easy to mask the true issues we face.   Eventually the land will run out, but the population continues to grow exponentially.  The atricle for Nature sums up this point:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131217/ncomms3918/full/ncomms3918.html

Our yields are plateauing and there are many reasons for this including "poor investment in agricultural research and development."


This brings us full circle  back to antibiotics.  I think the antibiotic shortage is predictive of the food shortage problem.  We should use the lessons from antibiotics as a warning.  If we are not going to spend the money and resources towards agriculture then instead of "superbugs we will may have a "super shortage."  GMOs are part of the answer, but we have to remember that the private industry is a compliment to academia and government research.    They are spokes on a wheel and without all three working together progress is much slower.   Academia is at a low for grant money received for agricultural research.  .Hopefully the trends will change.  The major symptoms are hidden in both cases.  There are still just enough antibiotics out there to make things seem alright even with the emergence of superbugs here and there.  There is still land to use that makes overalls yields go up each and every year.   If everything is working then why spend money.  Remember that the pipelines for both antibiotics and new crops can take as long as 10-15 years to get a product on the market.   So just throwing money at a problem may have positive effects, but not immediately.

Keep the pressure on the increase research in our universities.  And keep supporting the biotech industries.  They are all part of the effort to help keep everyone fed.  Here is one of many graphics that show the demand for food production is inevitably going to go up.  The question is whether we can keep the yields on pace.

Twitter @Bayer4Crops