How to Feed a Hungry Planet

Amanda Riley-Jones

1In March this year, a San Francisco startup announced that they'd grown the world's first chicken and duck meat in a lab. After isolating poultry stem cells1, Memphis Meats scientists had managed to grow them in a culture of sugars and minerals in bio-reactor tanks. After six weeks, the meat was large enough to harvest.

2 "It was a historic moment for the clean meat movement. We're developing a way to produce meat without the need to feed, breed and slaughter actual animals," says Uma Valeti, a former cardiologist and co-founder of Memphis Meats. "Meat as a product is delicious but the current meat production process has some serious problems for the environment, animal welfare and public health. We need to completely change the way it gets to the plate."

3 Demand for meat is predicted to double in the next 20 years. Yet raising animals for consumption causes pollution, deforestation and uses up staggering amounts of water and feed. "Worldwide, some 70 billion farm animals eat a third of our cereal harvest, 90 per cent of our soybean meal and 30 per cent of our global fish catch—precious resources that could be fed to billions of hungry people," says Philip Lymbery, author of Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat.

4 Experts agree that we must find a more sustainable source of protein. Indeed, Henning Steinfeld of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has described how beef is going to become "the caviar of the future".

5 In a recent US poll, one in three said they'd be happy to eat lab-grown meat and the race is on to find a way to mass produce a tasty, affordable product. Poultry is due to become the world's most popular meat by 2020 and Memphis Meats aim to have their "featherless" chicken meat on sale the following year.

6 The Appliance of Science

Virus-resistant sweet potato, flood-tolerant rice and maize with inbuilt pesticide are just some of the new genetically modified (GM) plants scientists have created to increase global food production.

7 Of course GM food—where scientists "cut and paste" one or more genes with desirable traits from one plant into another—is highly controversial. While the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and China grow substantial amounts of GM food for human consumption, Britain, the EU, New Zealand and Japan do not.

8 Dr. Prakash, professor of crop genetics, genomics and biotechnology at Tuskegee University in Alabama, urges, "With a growing world population and volatile climate changes ahead, humanity must harness various options to ensure sustainable food production. Biotechnology tools including GMO will be potent in developing resilient crops varieties that could be grown in the face of drought, flooding, salinity and pests and diseases. Humanity would benefit greatly."

9 For example, erratic rains frequently flood rice-growing areas in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, ruining crops and leading millions to starve. In response to this, the International Rice Research Institute has developed a strain that can survive underwater for over two weeks.

10 "Human beings, since the dawn of civilization, have been meddling with nature to provide food—agricultural biotechnology is just another extension of that."

11 Regarding the safety of GM foods, he says, "There hasn't been a single instance of known harm from the use of GM crops or food that are on market now—neither to the consumer nor the environment."

12 He further shares his view: "I would like to see governments in Europe, Asia and Africa support investment and commercialization of agricultural biotechnologies, and do more to help the public understand the safety and benefits of these technologies."

13 Mealworms at Mealtime?

Mealworm canapé, bug ice cream or deep-fried locust, anyone? Experts are looking at ways to persuade us to conquer our squeamishness and get our protein from bugs instead of meat. Indeed, some upmarket department stores and trendy London restaurants are already serving up six-legged critters.

14 Insects are a valuable source of protein to 2 million people across the developing world, from Central and South America to Africa and Asia. In his TED talk, "Why not eat insects?", Professor Marcel Dicke, an ecological entomologist from the Netherlands' University of Wageningen, says, "Two billion people in the world already eat insects and regard them as a delicacy—as we think of shrimps and crabs."

15 As global meat and fish resources come under increasing pressure and prices soar, he says that many more humans (and livestock) should get their protein from lower down the food chain. Many edible insects provide all nine essential amino acids, plus an array of micronutrients including iron, zinc and magnesium.

16 There are many environmental advantages. "Insects are more abundant than we are. There are 6 million species—that's a huge variety," says Professor Dicke.

17 Insect-farming uses up a fraction of the land, water and feed compared to traditional livestock. Bugs also produce less greenhouse gases and convert their feed into food more efficiently. "Ten kilos of feed produces one kilo of beef—or nine kilos of locust," states Professor Dicke.

18 Richer Pickings

The challenges are not just to grow more food, but also food that's more nutritious. This is particularly crucial for the developing world, where two billion rural poor are deficient in essential vitamins and minerals—often because their staple crops provide so little nutrition.

19 Over the past decade, great strides have been made by using a process called "bio-fortification" to add nutrients to various food crops. This can sometimes be done by selective plant breeding—but where a plant is difficult to breed or doesn't contain the desired vitamin or mineral at the start, GM bio-fortification is used.

20 One of the biggest challenges facing food scientists is the grave vitamin A deficiency, which is a major cause of childhood mortality in 90 countries and causes up to 500,000 children to go blind every year. Dr. Prakash explains, "Rice is a staple food for nearly half the world's population and there are 100,000 varieties—but not a single one contains any beta-carotene, which our bodies need to make vitamin A. The only way we can add beta-carotene to a rice crop is through genetic engineering."

21 "Golden Rice" has been created by inserting genes from maize to make it produce high levels of beta-carotene. Unfortunately, recent trials in India reported that crossing GM Golden Rice with an Indian variety had resulted in stunted growth.

22 But Dr. Prakash remains optimistic, saying, "I hope Bangladesh and the Philippines complete their tests soon and permit farmers to grow this biofortified crop. With the advent of genomics and gene editing, I hope we'll see further rapid development of biofortified crops. They're the most efficient way to address micronutrient deficiency in the developing world."

(Adapted from Readers Digest, August 2017: P60)