This session was probably the one which struck a chord with most of the people in class as food is something that is essential for all of us to survive. It also informed me that I am probably a "stick-in-the-mud" i.e. conservative person when it comes to new technologies. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as too many "pro" people just feed off each other's reassurances and can lead to horrible consequences. One such example was the 2008 global financial crisis, triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US. Too many smart people - in this case, number crucnhers - got together and designed credit default swaps and other opaque financial instruments that seemed to diversify away the risk involved with these loans. If they had listened to dissenting voices along the way and were not so driven by short term profits, maybe the results would not have been so devastating.
The Agricultural Revolution allowed us to feed the burgeoning global population. In fact, we apparently produce more than enough food to feed the whole world! Yet, every few seconds, some poor soul in the developing countries dies of hunger. The issue is evidently not one of production, but of distribution. If food can be distributed effectively to where it is needed, there wouldn't be such a problem.
It appears to me that one of the problems in the world today is the disconnect between related issues or between problems and their solutions. What do I mean by this? As with all questions, including those in the examination, it is crucial that the solution is suited to the question. Yet, many a time, this is not the case. I feel that part of the reason is the increasing specialization of our occupations and the world around us. This has prevented us from taking a broad picture approach to understanding the world's problems and solutions, instead we are fixated on a certain aspect. I would not deny that I am guilty of this at times.
An interesting perspective provided by an article I was reading this week pointed towards contraception being a better solution to global hunger issues. One of the reasons the author put across is the fact that in many developing countries, contraception is not easily available, leading to more children. With more mouths to feed and an unstable income, this leads to more hungry children and adults, which contributes to the global hunger problem. Her suggestion is that more money and energy should be invested in research on contraception for the developing countries to deal with this problem. Read her article for more information
("Notes from a Young American in Congo: Contraception" http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/notes-from-a-young-american-in-congo-contraception/
and "An Aside on Contraception"
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/an-aside-on-contraception/ )
That is the end of my "segway" into other issues this week. I shall move on to the discussion in class as well as other issues they bring up.
Farming Methods
A point brought up in class by Prof Shahi was the fact that traditional farming approaches would not enable us to feed the world. I agree that it might be the case, but an argument made by non-industrial farmers is that modern farming methods has led to a shrinking nutritional content of the food we eat today! (See http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ePJpGXQYNeoJ:www.space-age.com/nutri-farm.ppt+shrinking+nutritional+content+of+food.&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=sg) Alternative methods that hark back to Mother Nature's practices are preferred to up the nutritional content and feed the world with food of a higher nutritional content. The question is, are we looking for quantity or quality when it comes to food production?
GM Food
The other issue is that of Genetically-modified or GM food. I do not have that much opposition to GM fruits and vegetables as I think that tweaking with genes is something that Mother Nature does all the time. All the labs are doing is accelerating and de-randomizing the process. For fruits and vegetables, the issue is one of ethics as there are many profit-centred firms (e.g. Monsanto) that hold farmers hostage through their various schemes (e.g. the Terminator gene in crops). However, I do have an issue with GM meat, specifically, in vitro meat.
"Why the concern?", one might ask. Instinctively, there is something repulsive about eating meat grown in the lab. Apart from this "yuck!" factor, there are other underlying issues that make me disapprove very much of in-vitro meat. First, one of the arguments for in-vitro meat is that is prevents wastage as we only grow the parts of the animals that we eat. However, this does not take into consideration the by-products of the laboratory processes used to produce the meat (e.g. in the production of the nutrient solution, making the specialized equipment, monitoring systems etc). All these require equipment and expenditure of energy. Second, I find it inconceivable that one would argue that producing meat in the lab is the answer to the problem of food shortage. In the first place, the countries that need alternative sources of meat are those who cannot afford this technology. A more sustainable, and natural solution is for people to ration the amount of meat they eat. As much as possible, I hope frankenmeat will not be seen as the solution to the future. Call me narrow-minded, but I do not see myself eating it.
Algae biofuels
A technology which I find interesting, is the use of algae to create biofuels. Algae is one of the easiest things to grow and if the genes are properly tweaked, it can be used to clear up industrial waste as well. One idea I have for this is the use of algae to clean up industrial and chemical spills around the world. There are many areas where the dumping of waste has rendered the land inhospitable to humans. Using algae that has been modified to break down the waste would have a twin solution of providing biofuel as well as clearing up contaminated land. The problem of the need for specialized plants to process the algae into biofuel can be solved through the transportation of this algae to a centralized plant to be processed. Such algae would also have no need for special nutrient solutions to grow in as they draw their nutrients from the waste, thereby saving costs. The main costs for this would be the initial experimentation to create such algae.
That's the end of my rather long post for this week. Overall, I would give this session an 8/10. I do hope the class would participate more though. With each lesson, it seems like most of the class is just present in person, but not in mind. More participation would leave us with more interesting debates rather than only 2 opinions for each topic.
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