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« Who should pay for the environmental impact of farming? | Main | Integrated Farming Code »

September 06, 2008

Comments

westydexta

To some extent it may come to pass that agriculture is not the only method by which the world will be fed.
At the end of the day agriculture is a form of science and as such "science" may eventually lead us away from agriculture altogether in some areas of food production.
The type of thing I refer to is the mass production of proteins/carbohydrates via industrial chemical process. Surely the governments of third world countries are likely to be more open to the concept of cheap protein/carb production if it is "economically efficient" and has other benefits over traditional production such as reduced reliance on the weather.
Given our situation as an island nation with limited land resource and relatively high agricultural production costs c.f. BRIC countries, perhaps this technology isn't as far fetched as it might initially seem.

Louise Manning

I agree that we may have to revisit our definition of "food". They are already growing muscle fibres in the laboratory which could one day form a source of protein and if algae can be used to produce biofuels in theory they could be used to produce carbohydrate nutrients too. Individual countries I am sure will take a different ethical position as they have with GM and animal cloning, but this discussion will make an important contribution to the debate on how we provide sufficient nutrients for the projected 9.5 billion people in our global population.

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