“I hope President Obama understands that without agriculture, he would simply be naked and hungry.”
These words were uttered earlier this month not by some gruff and crusty Republican senator, but rather by the young, newly elected president of the Wisconsin Future Farmers of America, B.J. Chrisler.
When interviewed about the future of agriculture by his hometown newspaper, the Sauk City Daily Eagle, Chrisler expressed a wish that people, including President Obama, become more connected to “the very industry that keeps our nation alive.” The FFA leader says one of the biggest issues today is agricultural illiteracy, and his goal is to help change that, so progressive farming approaches such as biotechnology don’t send people running for the hills.
Top marks to young president Chrisler. A plethora of Star Wars-like technology already exists for agriculture, such as robot harvesters, satellite-housed disease sensors for crops and remote internal temperate sensors for livestock. Plus, we have the ability to make space-age food – cloned meat, for example, and nutraceutical crops loaded with health-related traits. It’s almost Orwellian, we’re not even past the new century’s first decade yet, and people are frightened because they don’t understand.
Maybe Obama’s administration will be different. But time has shown we don’t always have the political will to get technology out of the lab and into the marketplace. Along with scarce venture capital, this fear of science-based advancements thwarts innovation more than anything else.
“The principal obstacle to additional innovations that will extend and expand benefits even further is ill-considered and scientifically unjustified or illogically implemented regulation,” says Val Giddings and Bruce Chassy on the website Science Progress. They’re talking specifically about biotechnology, but their warning applies across the board.
Globally, as we drive towards the future, I believe the top technologies will be dedicated to feeding the soaring population and providing food security. We won’t be able to ignore the unfortunate fact one out of every six people in the world is hungry. In June, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization predicted the world’s hungry will reach 1.02 billion this year, with the population marching towards eight billion by 2030.
Such predictions are almost always accompanied by pleas to produce more food, a task that will fall to farmers, at home and abroad. But despite the latest technologies, farmers can’t raise the plants and animals needed to feed the world if they’re sick from the likes of contaminated water. Humanitarian Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, has long maintained that adequate and proper water and food helps people in underdeveloped countries – farmers included -- fight disease. Farmers in rural areas need strength to farm and produce food for others. The booming population’s food needs put incredible pressure on water resources.
So, we need technologies to clean up water – cheap, portable, accessible technologies that can be used around a community well in rural Africa as easily as they can in a developed country’s municipal water supply.
We also need technologies – drought tolerant plants, for example – that help farmers deal with water shortages. If the Earth is to become drier and scorched as predicted, we’d be smart to start building drought tolerance into established varieties now. If we’re pretty sure climate change will occur, what are we waiting for? And even if we’re wrong, what’s the harm in having plant varieties around that aren’t as thirsty as their predecessors?
Same for livestock: Can heat tolerance from equatorial animals be bred or built into traditional lines? We know for sure the world’s appetite for animal protein is growing. Global warming won’t change that.
And then there’s soil. If agriculture is to provide a significant amount of the world’s renewable-source fuel, there must be technologies in place – as well as policies -- to preserve the soil that produces those fuel-generating crops.
The FFA’s Chrisler implores President Obama to “think like a realist.” Why, he asks, should farmers have to defend their right to farm, when there’s a whole world naked and hungry? Those people need agriculture. So do we all.
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