This quote was a very good lead in to the topic we were discussing this week which was on the biobusiness revolution involving agribiology, environmental life sciences and industrial biotechnology.These are acutally the technological developments that have been used and will continue to be needed to supplement the strategies needed to help increase food production in our world today. Also, through this topic, we saw how there was much technological improvement in methods of food production but due to inequitable food distribution, there continued to be world hunger.
Some of these technologies include having genetically modified food or a diversified farming system such as that of aquaculture, lab grown food and commercial vertical farms.
The lesson mainly centred on talking about how these strategies would be used to achieve more equitable food production and end world hunger.
World hunger is a topic that is particularly close to my heart because when I was 15 years old I was studying Geography when I read a sobering fact. That fact was that 8 children die every minute from world hunger.
I have often thought of the idea of charging people for food wastage in restaurants and for coming up with a scheme to enable restaurants to be able to donate their extra food at the end of the day to the poor people in their country which I raised in class.
I feel that such strategies can eventually become integrated with the rapidly developing technology in food production to ensure that there is also equitable food distribution.
Interesting Observations and Ideas
One interesting observation that prof brought up this week was that there are different colours of biotechnology.
Red-Biotechnology related to medicine
White-Biotechnology related to industrial processes
Grey-Biotechnology related to the environment
Green-Biotechnology related to agriculture
Blue-Biotechnology related to use of sea resources
I found that classifying them according to colours was rather unique because if you were to plot them on a graph or even a venn diagram, you would be able to see clearly where the areas overlapped and could plan accordingly. I have not heard of a colour system used in categories of technology before and perhaps this can be applied in the future to other technologies that focus on different scopes such that planning would be made much easier.
I also raised the idea in class that in poorer areas, each of the farmers should be self-sustaining and they could work on a simple system of barter trade in a common market with the rest of the self-sustaining farmers should they want something that they did not produce. This would ensure that they would be able to achieve at least a minimum standard of food security rather than having their food largely taken away by the authorities and not be able to have food to eat.
This was refuted by my classmate who suggested that the common market idea may not work out and the authorities may even introduce foreign imported goods into this common market to undercut the price of the produce sold by the farmers because they had the benefits of economies of scale. I felt that this was indeed an interesting perspective that I should take into account.
Key Takeaways
One of my key takeaways for this lesson would be that of the concept of food security.
Food Security is defined as a condition where all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
This was particularly relevant to me because I realised that hunger is not just limited to the complete lack of food. It also includes not having food that is nutritious enough to meet your dietary needs and this in a way is a form of hunger as well because it causes people to live less optimally than they could. This would cause them to have a lower standard of living and quality of life which, relating back to what we learnt a few weeks back is in contravention of the aim of the United Nations Millenium Development Goals which aims to help every person live their life to the fullest.
Hence, the equitable distribution of food should not just be aimed at ensuring that everyone has access to food but ensuring that they are educated on the different food requirements for healthy living such that they would be able to achieve food security.
Another of my key
takeaways from the lesson would be that of flash pyrolysis.
Flash pyrolysis is a
thermochemical decomposition of organic material at elevated temperatures in
the absence of oxygen (or any halogen).
This was actually
the process of how biomass could be converted into fuel. However this also led
on to the idea that currently due to the production of biofuel, there are
competing uses for land between food production and the production of biofuel.
In light of our burgeoning population, I feel that the limited land we have
should be used for food production and not to grow crops for biofuel. Other
more sustainable energy sources should be found instead of biofuels.
Issues for discussion
One issue that I felt could be discussed more in depth would be that of how expensive methods of food production even if they were more environmentally sustainable could be introduced in developing countries who would want the most cost-effective method of food production which may not necessarily be the most environmentally sustainable.
Another issue I felt could have been further discussed was that of how we would make genetically-modified food more acceptable to the market.
Responses to the Presentations
Eva brought up the idea of whether sustainable farming can really feed the world which I find was a question that was rather intriguing.
Sustainable farming as she explained in her presentation would be faming in a way that takes into account the nature of the land such as the natural fertility of the soil and capitalising on this to enable the soil to regenerate naturally. Also it could be having free range animals on the farm.
I would feel that sustainable farming would not yet be the best idea to feed the world currently as suddenly moving from the industrial farming that we are engaging in currently and drastically changing to that of sustainable farming would cause food production to slow down tremendously worsening the problem of world hunger.
However, continuing industrial farming in the long run is definitely harmful to the Earth and we do have to move towards sustainable farming.
Therefore, what I would suggest would be that the farmers could continue largely farming on industrial farming but the government could give them an incentive such as having subsidy on sustainably farmed produce and encourage the farmers to convert part of their production to sustainable production through incentives such as reduced land tax. This would allow a more gradual shift which would more able to ensure a high level of food production to be maintained which is environmentally conscious.
Personal Rating for the Session
I found this session very personally engaging because it was on a subject that was very close to my heart. I strongly support the Green and Blue revolutions which were aimed achieving greater food production for the world as a whole. I also support micro-financing of poor communities as this is definitely the boost that they will need to start a self-sustaining business that could in turn benefit their local community.
I feel that the technologies that we have learnt in this lesson will really go a long way in helping to improve food production methods by increasing the amount of food produced while taking into account the needs of the environment such that the food can be produced in a sustainable manner. I think however that much more can be done in the area of developing strategies to take this increase in food production and ensure that it will be equitably distributed.
Next week we will be moving onto Energy production which will be my group project topic. Having come across piezo electricity in my research, I am truly excited to see what else the field of technology related to energy production will have to offer.
I would rate this session an 8/10.
Cheers,
Amanda Tan
No comments:
Post a Comment