Food for us is meant to be savoured. Food for the poor is meant for survival. The Green revolution has brought forth life for people all around the world. That is in my opinion, however at different periods during the class, people have questioned this notion that the green revolution did really help the poor. Before talking this notion, I would like to first talk about what we learn during the lesson. In today’s session, Prof talked about 3 main areas, Agribiology, Environmental life sciences and industrial life sciences. We dwelled quite a bit on food, and the green revolution, feeding the poor etc, before moving into what we do with our waste, and using biotechonology to increase sustainability. One interesting innovation we talked about it was bioplastics.
The one thing I found most interesting in this lesson is about Monsanto’s GM food and the poor. Many things about it which those from India debated about, one such thing were them producing self-terminating grains. An interesting idea from the US government to stop cross contamination of the GM grains with other grains. However it seems like with such bad PR from Monsanto, the bad sigma of them doing this to earn money from the poor is on them. The strange thing about it is the idea of earning from the poor?! Is it worth it to earn from the poor? Like developing tropical drugs, it will take a long long time to cover R and D cost.
Quick takeaways from today’s lesson:
-BioBusiness is a huge industry.
-World’s population will stabilize at about 10 billion.
-Need Rural to get food, about 20 percent.
-Technology to turn desert ground to farming ground is out there.
-Fisheries and aquaculture combined with genetically modified fishes will get us cheaper sashimi, probably lead to the reduction of hunter gathering of wild fishes.
-Waste management has potential especially our current unsustainable usage of resources.
-Plastics made of algae may be coming to your homes as furniture.
-BioBusiness is a huge industry.
-World’s population will stabilize at about 10 billion.
-Need Rural to get food, about 20 percent.
-Technology to turn desert ground to farming ground is out there.
-Fisheries and aquaculture combined with genetically modified fishes will get us cheaper sashimi, probably lead to the reduction of hunter gathering of wild fishes.
-Waste management has potential especially our current unsustainable usage of resources.
-Plastics made of algae may be coming to your homes as furniture.
What I hope to see being discussed in the future is the potential to convert waste products into business opportunities. Where is the tipping point where using recycled materials is actually cheaper? If technology already exists, what infrastructure is needed to execute?
I will rate this class a 7/10. It reminds me not to be so wasteful to the earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment