This week’s lesson was a sequel to last week’s, which was on the biobusiness revolution. While last week’s lesson focused on the medical and healthcare industry, this week’s focused on agricultural biotechnology. Prof started the lesson with a quote of his own: “When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability”.
This is true in the sense that if we are able to constantly produce energy sources such as fuel and oil, we would no longer have to worry about what happens after we run out of these natural resources. However, in order for it to be truly sustainable, we have to ensure that we are able to grow the resources faster than we consume them. As mentioned in one of the earlier lessons, if everyone consumed at US’s rates, we would need 3-5 earths to support the entire world’s population. Not forgetting the rapidly increasing population. With the advancement of technology in the healthcare and medical sectors, the average life expectancy rate has increased, and the infant mortality rate has decreased. It is estimated that the world’s population would increase to about 10 billion people, from 7 billion as of today. With an increase in the number of people in the world, consumption rates would also increase, and limited resources get depleted at an even faster rate. Hence, although being able to grow the resources we need would allow us to achieve sustainability, I feel that it is more important to control our consumption, as well as find alternative resources in order to ultimately achieve sustainability.
Another point to note is whether we can effectively distribute these resources to all parts of the world, not just the wealthier and more advanced nations. Similarly to food, there is more than enough to satisfy the hungers of the entire world’s population, yet there are still many people in the poorer regions such as Africa who do not have enough to eat. In a way we do have enough resources, just that it is not distributed evenly among everyone. We look at those without sufficient resources and conclude that the world does not have enough when in actual fact we may actually have, just that it not properly and efficiently utilized. Hence, one of the solutions to this problem is to find ways to grow things faster, or produce more within a shorter period of time, which brings us to the topic of genetically modified foods.
GM foods came about in order to solve the problem of food shortage. For example, crops such as BT corn, golden rice and GM salmon have resulted in better and faster yields, and more nutritious food. However, some have labeled these as ‘Frankenfoods’ and many ethical and social issues have come up. There are concerns whether these GM food are safe for consumption and whether it poses a danger to animal, plant life and the environment, as these processes involve recombining plant and animal genes. Although it has been declared many times that there are presently no danger in consuming these GM foods, many are still protesting. In my opinion, I feel that people should learn to trust technology and the ones who are protesting are probably the ones who do not go to bed hungry. There are other issues with GM food, such as patenting and intellectual property rights.
As with the medical and healthcare biotechnology industry, patents and the protection of intellectual properties in the agriculture business have prevented poor farmers from using such technologies. Although farmers may be interested in employing these technologies in order to increase yield, they cannot do so as they cannot afford to economically. Unless big corporations are able to look at the bigger picture and not be only concerned with their selfish wants, the agricultural and biotechnology sector will not be able to advance as quickly as it could have been.
This week’s lesson has been very interesting and relevant to me and I would rate it an 8/10. Hopefully one day technological advances would allow food resources to be distributed equally to the poorer nations and that no one would ever have to go to bed hungry.
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