"There is enough on this planet for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed."
This was a quote by Mahatma Gandhi, on food sustainability on earth. The rich has the money and accessibility to over consume, whereas those in poorer countries lack the ability to do so. Most would be grateful for just a bowl of plain rice, whereas people like us these days, are complaining about the quality of food. Should it be our time to complain when there are still people in some corners of the world facing starvation? I see people talking about this issue all the time, like during meal times when there is food wastage, someone would pipe up: "Finish your food, the children in Africa are starving." However, how much of these 'talks' are actually being transformed into action? This brings me to the point of today's topic. The biobusiness Revolution pertaining to agriculture. Last week we talked about the medical aspect of things, this week would be on agriculture. Biobusiness has impacted agriculture through genetically modified (GM) food, a.k.a genetically modified organisms (GMO). To me there are 2 sorts of GM food. One is the type that we're eating all the time, for example bread wheat is a hybrid of 3 genomes, which came about long before human started artificially modifying them. Another type would be what the scientists are trying to do these days, picking out the gene of a durian and putting it into a papaya for instance. I don't know exactly what kind of new GMO are they trying to put together, but I know for sure after today's class, that it is not widely welcomed yet.
From today's class, I learned that the biobusiness has different colour codes! Red biotechnology is the biomedical side of things. White biotechnology is the industrial part. Green biotechnology is the environment and how we clean it up, make it sustainable. And lastly, blue biotechnology is with regards to the marine life.
When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability.
-Gurinder Shahi
Another day's quote on the board at the back of the class by Prof. He went on to have a discussion with us about having bioplastics, which are biodegradable, and having our furniture made from renewable resources etc. This is what he would really call 'sustainability'. A really cool idea that I thought Prof came up with would be having a personal bio-reactor in everyone's house. All our waste products like the peeled skins of potatoes, bananas and even plastic bags used to contain sandwiches, if they could generate energy for our homes and cars after being put into the bio-reactor, how great would that be! It is such a good way to clear the garbage rather than having it incinerated and polluting the air with soot and carbon.
We then watched some videos in class:
Video 1: Norman Borlaug on Agribiotechology and the Environment. This man wrote an article too about World Hunger, which was one of our readings for this seminar. In his video, he mentioned a line that I remembered :"There are a lot of dormant crop land that can be put to use." In essence, I think he meant that we are wasting a lot of land, when they could be use for farming and growing more food!
The 2nd video was by a Green revolution leader, and the 3rd video which I found particularly insightful, about Industrial Enzymes and Biotechnology. I learnt that enzymes are prevalent everywhere in our lives, our homes etc. It is naturally occurring and biodegradable, and it can replace synthetic chemicals in many things. Prof enlightened me, he said that in the past, people used papaya skins to treat wounds, as the enzymes on the papaya skin can cure infections. Here's the video:
The term bioremediation is a pretty cool term, with good meaning. I mean that it is good because it doesn't do anything harmful to the earth or the environment, but instead helps it. Bioremediation, by definition, is the process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the natural environment altered by contaminants to its original condition.
Next we moved on the presentations of the day.
Presentation 1: Grace on biofuels like cellulosic and algal.
Presentation 2: Cherrie on saving corals and fisheries
Presentation 3: Annabel on food and water security
Presentation 4: Melina on genetically modified food
Presentation 5: Daryl on transnational biotech companies colonise the food chain
Cherrie's presentation caught my attention, as it was about coral reef and marine life. Having been diving once recently, I took great interest in the coral reef and I think it is a great pity that corals are dying. Seeing bleached corals really makes me sad. Corals beautify the place and makes the sea home to the underwater creatures. So she talked about conserving them by introducing the idea of BioRock. We should all aim to protect corals and marine life. Being underwater is a luxury like no others, and it is just a whole new world out there!
I would rate today's lesson 9/10. The presentations were interesting, I learned a lot from my classmates today about GM food and biofuels etc. One thing I took away for sure is that now I know that all of us are eating GM food almost everyday! Like the food that Prof likes to eat, and we all do too actually, coca cola and nacho chips are all genetically modified! That's all I have to say for today. Till after the break!
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