DailyDirt: Feeding More People Sustainably

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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