P
eople tend to get hot under the collar at talk
of overpopulation and food production. By
2050, they say, we’ll have over 9 billion people on the planet. And how will we feed
them given that arable lands are diminishing and water supplies are growing ever scarce? While these facts
are disturbing, there are quite a number of advancements that are improving food production in a variety
of ingenious ways.
Hypothetically, we have enough food to feed the
world’s current population – we just have problems in
getting it to them. Distribution is bedevilled with difficulty in countries without democracy or free markets,
or those countries perpetually engaged in war or facing extreme poverty. However, as these situations continue and populations grow – the only way we are
going to overcome the numbers problem, is ultimately
through technology.
Precision agriculture
Farmers have been improving crops and livestock since
the beginning of agriculture. But soon something
called “precision agriculture” is set to be one of the
ten key breakthroughs – possibly within the next ten
years. With the development of greater use of satellites coupled with sophisticated ground instruments
and farm machinery – calculations can be made of the
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exact and appropriate amounts of seed, water, fertilizer needed to be applied meter by meter to every crop,
so that maximum efficiency in food production can be
achieved. All activities such as sowing, watering, fertilising and harvesting can all be computer-controlled,
including testing and monitoring the standard of the
soil – leading to greater and healthier yields with improved time factors. And all this will be made possible
through pinpoint assessments from satellites hung like
lanterns above the Earth. (The George Washington
University Forecast of Technology and Strategy).
Genome editing
Farms, already likened to factories by those opposed
to large commercial operations, are gearing to turn
out even more reliable products, immune from the
vagaries of nature. The mapping of every DNA strand
of all living things has given us the ability to control
both plants and animals in a way that we can expect
better health and faster turnaround of all produce.
Precise genetic manipulation, known as “genome editing”, makes it possible to change a crop or stock animal’s genome in fine detail, perhaps even to just a single genetic “letter” in its DNA strand.
This technology means that it is no longer necessary to
shift whole genes around, but just gently adjust, in
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/daviddisalvo/files/2011/11/DNA.jpg