This is an example of techno-optimism gone mad. Genetic engineering is a failure. It has only been able to produce: IR= insect resistance ie the plant becomes a pesticide factory to kill insects that eat it or HT= herbicide tolerance meaning plants can be sprayed with weedkiller and not die.

The problem is that both plants and pests adapt and so stronger weedkillers need to be used. Currently there is an application from Dow AgroSciences Australia Limited for approval of a GM corn DAS-40278-9. It has been genetically modified to be tolerant to the herbicides 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and quizalofop-P-ethyl.

2-4-D was one of the ingredients of Agent Orange. GM is setting us onto a path where soon food will be too toxic to eat.

If you want to feed the world use nature. Planting acacia trees next to corn in Africa tripled yields. The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) can double yields. Via Campesina the world wide small farmers group shows that the world can be fed and the planet cooled by farming within natural limits.

The problem with out current food system is that it is designed to feed agribusiness profits and not people. People are squeezed off land for the benefit of big farmers who export grain for animal feed to wealthy countries. They end up in slums with no land and no money and no food. Half of food grown ends up wasted. There is no need for anyone to go hungry.

Well said lillian! There is sufficient food produced today to feed the world: the reason that so many human beings go to bed hungry every day or die because of malnutrition is the greed and indifference of the shareholders and exective managers of giant, vertically-intergrated, multi-national corporations and well-rewarded executive bureaucrats and "people's representatives" who are complicit in and profit from the pernicious mode of social production, distribution and exchange called Capitalism.

I agree that this is very optimistic, however the posts so far only show a fear of technological advances that they don't understand, as well as the usual bashing of big business and farming practices (herbicide use). These type of arguments are commonly used against things such as GM food, organ transplants and nuclear power, however, these arguments completely miss the point. Basically what the author is suggesting is that food can be produced synthetically from natural products (i.e. culture of plant and animal cells). This is not so unrealistic as researchers are now able to produce functional organs from stem cells in the lab for transplant into humans, so the production of corn, wheat or chicken breast is also possible. However cost is another factor, and I don't see this being viable without anything short of a mass extinction event.

PS. if you argue that we should leave it to nature, fine, go and pick your berries in the wilderness and see if you starve. Farming of any sort manipulates nature in the same way as GM. If you have a problem with GM you should also have a problem with selective breeding.

Heaven help us. Save us from the idiots.

There is probably no alternative to food fermented in a vat sometime in the near future. The idiot greenies & hopeless government will have made it impossible to earn a living growing real food, on farms. I wonder if they will keep a few farms working, to act as museums of the past.

Global warming, if we were lucky enough for it to be true, would open up vast tracts of northern land, now too cold, for agriculture, a true green revolution, if only that was what they wanted.

Sowat, the greatest killer by starvation was the socialists collective farming revolution, in the USSR, & China.

Without capitalists farming activity many millions more would have starved, as the free world would not have had the food to save them from their own stupidity.

Try some facts, rather than propaganda some time.

Great article and thank you Stezza for your comment.

lillian, I agree that there are issues with major agribusiness. But the last time I checked these companies were for-profit corporations. Sometimes they push certain products over others, it happens with everything from fast food to airlines etc. Buyer beware is key. Lack of transparency and corruption that may prevent proper access to information is a different issue and not limited to any one industry if news reports from the last decades are any indication.

Also, to show that not all "genetic engineering is a failure," as lillian puts it, take a look at the following: http://www.goldenrice.org/
This is one example (that's right, one of many) of how genetic engineering is being used to promote better health around the world. There are always two sides to every coin.

We have never been so lucky in the history of mankind, at least in developed countries. Yet you fail to mention that in some of those countries where people starve and live in slums the real cause is far more complex: power-hungry dictators, corruption, broken legal systems, violence etc. Granted some of the causes of these corrupt dictators etc may be linked to agribusiness, but there are other causes too.

A little long and from 2005, but I think it's a good read: http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/FA-subramanian0705.pdf

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/

*the reason that so many human beings go to bed hungry every day or die because of malnutrition is the greed and indifference of the shareholders and exective managers of giant, vertically-intergrated, multi-national corporations*

Not so, Sowat. The reason so many go to bed hungry, is that many of
their parents simply don't have access to family planning in the third world.

There are many political and religious reasons for this.

Even in the third world, sex is a normal and natural activity. We
humans enjoy it, that does not mean that we want to create more
children.

Stop blaming corporations for political and religious failure.

"the reason that so many human beings go to bed hungry every day or die because of malnutrition is the greed and indifference..."

of environmental activists responsible for shutting down food production on a massive scale in the most productive countries of the world, on the basis of a belief that nature has a value above human values - providing human sacrifices to Gaia.

Profit comes from the difference between the value that the consumers set on the uncombined factors of production, versus the value that they set on the finished product. In other words, it is a reflection of the *increase* in value that the capitalist has conferred on the factors of production, as judged by the consumers. The idea that profit is responsible for food shortage has the matter precisely backwards, and is culpable economic illiteracy.

The idiocy of socialists, in their new incarnation as greens, continues to believe in what an earthly paradise we will all enjoy, if only we can get rid of that evil private property, and all draw from the common storehouse, directed by the presumed wisdom and selflessness of the political elite. We need to understand that if these people are to have their way, the result will be the death by starvation of many hundreds of millions of people.

It is an utterly unproved assertion to say that catastrophic man-made global warming, dishonestly called "climate change", is reducing agricultural production. By far the biggest single cause of reducing agricultural production is the anti-human, anti-civilisation, anti-logical policies of the greens.

Yabby: "even in the third world, sex is a normal and natural activity. We humans enjoy it, that does not mean that we want to create more children.
Stop blaming corporations for political and religious failure."

Yabby once again you exhibit your pro corporation anti people views with the above gem "Stop blaming corporations for political and religious failure." Politicians and religions do not set the tempo and theme for life in the 21st century, the "money" does, the corporations you dismiss of any liability are a sheet load closer to all our woes than the six degrees of separation that link us all and the politicians are the corporations, enough of them end up on their boards post politics.

We have politicians that administer departments for all the major industry groups and I assure you they are not there as conduit to convey our concerns of corporate culpability to the money. They are there so corporate can tell government what they want, ensuring that negative legislation and impediments to their business are "fixed up" or changed.

About the bugger in the third world with eight kids, you have absolutely no factual understanding of the third world. Nuclear families do not work in the third world, even in an impoverished country the family unit survives because of the eight kids rather than in spite of it. The larger the family the more people going out and bringing income into the family home.

You are so predictable Yabby, it's shameless, have you ever considered giving public office a spin, you suit the mould, or mold, both are apt.

Columbia is a developing country and it's wonderful to see their scientists tackling food security head on with such a refreshing 'natural' approach to the basic building blocks of food - it's cellular structure. I'm sure in 50 years that healthy, low cost designer food will be main stream and thanks to the patents being held by organisations with high social responsibility we will see the best chance yet of meeting millenium goals of poverty reduction.

If some great gene mix foods come on line, we may have some of the most nutricious and delicious meals ever produced. Columbian gene food laboratories may develop startegic alliances with poor Columbian cocaine farmers and Afgahn poppy growers to switch to a much higher value crops that have high local and export value. Truely inspirational work.

*About the bugger in the third world with eight kids, you have absolutely no factual understanding of the third world.*

Not so Sonoflgoin, for the extensive research undertaken shows
that hundreds of millions of third world women would use contraception, if it was available and affordable. Politics
and religion prevents that happening.

If people have 8 kids, despite family planning being available, don't expect
the rest of us to feed them. Corporations have nothing to do
with it.

For those that think that high birth rates in the developing world are the fault of corporations, take a look at this PDF file (UN Policy Brief, first 4 pages): http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/UNPD_policybriefs/UNPD_policy_brief1.pdf

High birth rates, high infant mortality, high maternal mortality, low school enrolment, low family incomes, poor health systems, non-existent pension systems, low levels of education...they are all connected and guess what, one of the easiest forms to break this interconnectedness is the use of modern forms of contraception. Dealing with the other issues is considerably more complex, so when we go out to provide aid to the world we can take the easy route (contraception) or the hard route (everything else). By taking the easy route we can make inroads on the hard stuff.

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/

A timely article Lucia Atehortua but you present a system that I hope our human race will never need and at present only the wealthy or powerful could access it.

As someone whose life work has been spent thinking and doing something about feeding the World, I would need to be convinced that we will need industrial scale cellular food production systems inside another hundred years. If we need it any sooner, then catastrophe will have visited. Having said that though, it is equally important that the field be vigorously researched, so that we may be more ready for such a catastrophe. One can also add that if such a catastrophe strikes, someone will have the task of deciding who gets the food and who starves; will money – or weapons – decide!

I am quite content that we can feed a World population of 9 billion by 2030 but I have trouble with feeding 12 billion. Under a ‘medium’ growth scenario, UN studies predict around 9 billion at and beyond 2050. If a ‘high’ growth scenario applies, then population surges toward 30 billion and other strategies will be demanded, however, we will not know which model will emerge for about another 30 years.
I personally feel that the UN and all World Governments have ‘simply’ to agree to a two child policy, which would stop population growth in its tracks. That would be anathema to some cultures and religious groups - as well as to our economists - who cannot think in terms of steady state economics. They will have to!

At the Annual American Cattle Association dinner a few years ago, its organisers arranged that the ‘steak’ they ate was actually textured soy protein. The assembled mass of Cattlemen, and their wives, did not notice the difference - or realize they’d been conned! It was a salutary lesson. But that steak came from a plant protein (plus flavours), it was not derived from cellular systems as Lucia Atehortua presented in her article.

Continued next post

Continued . . .

Research into food production systems during long term space travel shows that they can produce at least 40 tonnes per hectare of wheat, compared with our 5 Tonne Club producers, who, you guessed it, produce just 5 tonnes per hectare (yields in the Saudi Arabian desert reach 10 tonnes per ha). We could do the same here by simply recycling the transpired water, and, like those space systems, use virtually NO water at all, since the peak crop water content of about 20 tonnes per tonne of wheat is recovered at crop maturity. Yes, of course we could do it – but at what cost? There is no problem feeding the World at all – it only takes money; we just need to decide how much we can pay. We’ll leave variety and standard of living to another day.

Cellular systems would need even more money than that simple ‘space’ exercise. I suspect that the cost of cellular systems will be several orders more costly than plant photosynthetic systems; the chlorophyll in green grass, green crops and green trees will be far cheaper for a long, long time. And those sources of chlorophyll will still be readily available during Global Warming.

The final issue, of course, is that of limiting inputs - like phosphorus, which cellular systems will still need. We have 300 years of phosphorus reserves available but its cost will escalate within say 50 or even 20 years. We can recover it from seawater or other plant and animal tissues - but at phenomenal cost – and again, of course, only the wealthy and powerful will get the food it facilitates.

Yes, please intensify research into cellular food production systems, just in case we need them. In the meantime, let’s strive toward more efficient agricultural systems, better distribution and less waste.

However, above all else, constrain World human family fecundity to two.