Letters to the Editor
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9 billion people?
Sadly, I've become more and more convinced that one of the most dire needs throughout the world is a better way of managing our population growth. And not in the freaky 'Soylent Green is people' kind of way, but in the kind of way that lets a poor Bangali or Nigerian or Indonesian or anyone else decide how many children they want to have. We have the technology to make every additional mouth that needs to be fed one that is, if not planned, at least sustainable. One of the major consequences of both global warming and a burgeoning energy crisis is that we don't have the ability to grow our food production on the scale that is required for our current level of population growth. Lacking that ability, the alternatives are to slow our growth voluntarily, or face some very unpleasant natural checks on population as a result.
And nobody wants people starving to death that don't have to. I can't think that anyone would argue having two children that you're able to feed is better than having four and watching two of them die of malnutrition. I can't think any parent would voluntarily choose that life for themselves or for their children, if they knew what might be coming.
Goodness knows that convincing Westerners that there -isn't- the unending abundance that they've been taught exists their whole life is a Herculean task, but I don't see any alternative to trying.
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Importance of GM Technology
Food production is not the only driving force for GM technology. It will be essential if biofuels are to meet more than just a fraction of the transportation fuel demand. Current crops are not fast growing enough, and don't produce enough sugars and cellulose per acre of land. In meeting the energy challenges for the future more technology won't always be the best solution..., it will be the only solution.
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80 degrees Celsius is nothing
Boiling your wheat subjects it to 100 degrees Celsius. Bread is baked at over 180 degrees. I can't think of any cooking process which takes place at under 80 degrees.
So, upping the denaturation temperature by about 20 degrees is an interesting parlour trick and may point the way forward, but it doesn't do anything useful in the real world, in my opinion.
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Taking the "Gee!" out of Technology
"...they scoffed. Better to design for reuse, to work on life-cycles that do not result in landfill waste..."
Designing for reuse. Let me see. How do we achieve that? With high-powered computers and extremely low-waste manufacture driven by high-tech CAD/CAM systems, of course. No point designing something for "reuse" if it can't actually be reused. No point in "designing" anything if you're going to use lots more materials making it.
Technology 1 : Wishful thinking 0
Life-cycle mapping, including understanding how things break down and under what conditions and what effects those chemicals might have in combinations. OK. How's that done? With extremely high-powered statistical computation and very expensive machines tracking parts-per-billion interactions, of course.
Technology 2 : Wishful thinking 0
Dealing with existing landfill waste, and making existing critical infrastructure less polluting. Yes and yes. How do we achieve that, I wonder? With complex filter-chemistry, and sophisticated recycling technology, both inseperable from the high-tech world that enabled their creation.
Technology 3 : Wishful thinking, surprisingly, still 0
I'm waiting to hear what these "non technological" solutions are.
I'm not saying they don't exist! I'd just really love to even up the score a bit, is all.
Anyone?
This kinda reminds me of people going "off the grid" -- and relying on a high-tech natural gas frige, clever "plug together" low-voltage lighting systems, a solar panel, and a huge acid-battery array.
More power to 'em, I say, but they do know those things don't grow on trees, don't they? They're born in a factory which gets its metal from a mine, and its power from the grid just like everything else.
You don't get to be in a situation where you can diagnose the biosphere's ills without technology, and you don't get to fix the problem without technology either.
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Tech vs. no-tech isn't the debate here
It's food you can grow without permission versus food you are allowed to grow after you pay Monsanto. The goal of these companies is nothing less than absolute control of the world's food supply. They themselves say so, and why that doesn't generate more apprehension is beyond me.
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Malthus was just premature
And he was looking at food, not water.
Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution of the '70's doubled the production of grain but tripled the consumption of water. Every technological fix that lets us extend the exponential metastasis of the human population just means that there will be that many billions more humans dying when we finally find by blind experimentation the absolute limits of the carrying capacity of our little rock.
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What the frack is wrong with hemp seed?
The Chinese used to rely on eating hemp seed during famines, because hemp is drought tolerant and the germ contains a complete protein and has an optimal protein-fat-carb ratio and an optimal balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fats.
Why is everyone trying to make all these dumb human-contrived plants smarter, when we have the smartest, most incredible real natural plant in the world at our beck and call?
I guess people would rather starve than question American drug propaganda.
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A question that might be asked
Two things have been established beyond question by scientists working in the field of cannabinoid science:
1. The endocannabinoids synthesized by the human brain and immune system are able to identify and kill breast cancer cells.
2. The cannabis plant makes three plant cannabinoids that are able to do the same thing both in vitro and in vivo.
Hemp seed does not contain cannabinoids in any useful quantity, but there is the possibility that eating hemp seed might provide precursor nutrients that could bolster the endocannabinoid system.
Someone should be looking to see whether a diet rich in hemp seed leads to lower incidence of breast cancer.
But unfortunately, there is no global corporation that could profit from that, because hemp is not anyone's intellectual property.
So maybe we'll just have to live in ignorance and accept phytase-improved wheat as a consolation prize.
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Have you looked at Cambia?
Cambia is a Australian-based non-profit research org trying to "open source" agricultural biotechology. First is developing new molecular biology tools that get around the IP problems then making them available to researchers. Second is developing then making available useful crop strains. http://www.cambia.org/
However, you are right in that it begs the question: what is the non-tech solution. I don't have good numbers in front of me but it has been suggested that present agricultural production could feed the whole world but that the problem is the politics of trade and distribution. But even that gets complicated when the US sends corn to African countries but it is rejected socially because while the US grows and eats _yellow_ corn, most of the rest of the world grows and eats _white_ corn. Thus when US yellow corn arrives abroad, it is not palitable to the local diet plus has the stigma of being "foreign aid" (think "US Government surplus cheese bricks" to welfare families for a domestic parallel.)