DailyDirt: Feeding More People Sustainably

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Jun 20th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The modern food supply isn't as efficient as it probably should be. People are over-fishing the oceans and relying too much on monoculture crops and artificial pesticides/fertilizers to keep up with the market demand for various kinds of food. But it's hard to convince a massive number of people to limit their intake of things like meat (and politically deadly as well). Technology will help boost food production for a while, and here are just a few links on some methods that farmers could adopt.

Plant scientist Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram has been awarded the 2014 World Food Prize for his role in increasing world wheat production. Rajaram cross-bred wheat varieties to obtain hundreds of strains of wheat with significantly higher yields. His research is credited for increasing production by 200 million more tons of wheat each year, globally. [url]
Agriculture might get a lot more automation with drones and crawling robots to monitor and tend to crops. Farming robots could help control pests and pathogens, operating round the clock to bolster crop yields. [url]
Sustainable fisheries are developing, but aquaculture isn't easy, and domesticating various kinds of wild fish (eg. tuna) can take up a lot of space and water and attention. However, if we're going to try to keep up with our demand for seafood, catching wild fish isn't going to work for much longer. [url]

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Filed Under: agriculture, aquaculture, automation, drones, farming, food, gmo, sanjaya rajaram, seafood, wheat, world food prize

7 Comments

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mischab1, 20 Jun 2014 @ 5:31pm

Wheat, you mean that thing with gluten that is poison to a bunch of people now-days? :p
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- RonKaminsky (profile), 21 Jun 2014 @ 9:52am
  
  No problem
  We all know that organic foods don't contain "chemicals", and gluten is a chemical, so that must mean that organic wheat is gluten-free!
  
  {sarc}
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- Lawrence D�Oliveiro, 23 Jun 2014 @ 3:27am
  
  Re: Wheat
  Yeah, wheat, the first crop that turned our species from nomad hunter-gatherers into settled farmers on the path to civilization.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 23 Jun 2014 @ 5:22am
    
    Re: Re: Wheat
    Increasingly research is showing how ruinous refined carbohydrates like wheat are to the body. We built civilization right alongside a poison.
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    - John Fenderson (profile), 23 Jun 2014 @ 5:39am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Wheat
      Not to mention that a solid argument can be made that agriculture itself was man's biggest mistake.
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DB (profile), 20 Jun 2014 @ 8:15pm

An increasing number of the food-aware are insisting on natural whole-grain gluten-free products.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 23 Jun 2014 @ 10:21am
  
  Re:
  "natural whole-grain gluten-free products"
  
  There's no such thing. Gluten is a normal and natural part of the grain. If you want a grain product to be gluten-free, you have to remove it, which makes it a processed product and no longer "whole grain".
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