Preamble: I am amazed by all the out-of-office replies that are bouncing back from my subscribers this week! Clearly, many of my regular readers have taken advantage of all the April public holidays, and gone on leave. I wish I were doing the same! Anyway, I mention that to explain why I’m falling down a bit of a GMO rabbit-hole. I wrote about GMOs yesterday, and why I think they’re our best option for food security (you should definitely check out the comments on that post – I think they’re great). While Googling around for yesterday’s post, I came across the infographic that I’m going to share here. It’s a bit out-of-scope for me – but sometimes, rabbit holes are inescapable.
I’m going to amend a list of alternatives for dealing with the general food security of 7 billion people:
- Starve;
- Claim more farmland to do less efficient farming using non-GMO crops;
- Plant GMO crops that produce higher yields on the existing farmland; or
- Improve our food distribution systems (and reduce wastage). Because we produce enough food to the feed the planet – just not all in the right places.
Of course, climate change is affecting existing agriculture as well: so we may have no choice but to re-define our farming processes.
But on the distribution and wastage front, genetically-modified foods may have a role to play here as well. For example, they could prolong the shelf-life of our fresh produce.
Next Gen GMOs
This, from Futurism.com:
Admittedly, I’m not sure that pink pineapples will help with food wastage. Non-browning apples, I understand. Pink pineapples? Those I just want to try.
Frankenfood: things to look forward to.
Rolling Alpha posts about finance, economics, and sometimes stuff that is only quite loosely related. Follow me on Twitter @RollingAlpha, or like my page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rollingalpha. Or both.
