Global Collaboration to Tackle Agricultural Pests and Diseases 

As the United States approaches the halfway point of its 2026 G20 presidency, it should consider spearheading a collective effort that is both intensely practical and long overdue: an international approach to managing transboundary agricultural pest and disease outbreaks.

Agricultural pests and diseases impose enormous losses on global crop production, with cascading effects for food security, rural incomes, consumer prices, and natural resources. An international effort to accelerate detection and response can mitigate this age-old challenge.  

The numbers are staggering. Up to forty percent of global crop production is lost to pest and disease, costing the global economy $290 billion each year. Up to 20% of rice, wheat and corn is lost each year from insects alone. Each outbreak can be devastating. For example, a highly virulent strain of wheat rust (Ug99) was calculated to have had the potential to cost U.S. producers up to $11.6 billion over four years. A nationwide outbreak of foot and mouth disease among swine could cost the United States $20 billion in a single year.  

These losses represent the immense cost of remediation to producers and higher food costs for consumers. When affected crops or livestock are no longer saleable, they represent wasted input—labor, fuel, fertilizer, and land.  

And the losses are on track to deepen. Pests and diseases are increasingly mobile as the climate changes and trade and human travel provide increasing connectivity. For wheat, rice, and corn, yield loss to insects may increase up to 25% per degree Celsius of global warming, with the worst effects in the temperate zones where most grain is produced. Extreme weather increases risk as well; soybean rust arrived in the continental United States in 2004 on the back of a hurricane.  

Early detection and response mitigate the worst effects of an emerging pest or disease. Yet, existing international surveillance and response systems are under-resourced, fragmented, and leave major gaps. Responses are mostly national; where they are international, they are generally ad hoc and reactive—conducted through networks established to respond to a single, specific pest.  

This is a lost opportunity. To combat threats that spread at exponential rates across farms and borders, national systems cannot act alone or orchestrate a response only after an outbreak is underway.

The international community should act collectively to control major transboundary agricultural pest and disease outbreaks in key commodities by:  

• minimizing the time from emergence to detection and  

• rapidly developing and deploying control measures.  

A public, international, and technology-forward approach would offer substantial gains in efficiency and effectiveness in surveillance and response— with collective benefit for farmers, consumers, private industry, and the environment.

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