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Magazine
CHALLENGES AHEAD
The future of food
NALAKA GUNAWARDENE
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The abolition of hunger depends more on politics and economics than on science. A look at possible future scenarios…
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Improved communications and the free flow of information will not, by themselves, eradicate either hunger or poverty — but they can be instrumental in the struggle to create a world without these.
Photo: AP
Viable alternative: Harnessing the sea for food requirements is one real option:
It may seem inexcusably heartless to talk about future food, when millions around the world don’t get even one square meal a day right now. But since everyone agrees on the need to banish hunger, I feel justified in discussing some long-term po
ssibilities, even at the risk of raising hopes that may not be realised for generations.
I would not dare to say when hunger will be abolished — that depends more on politics and economics than on science and technology. Contrary to popular opinion, we science fiction writers seldom attempt to predict the future: we only extrapolate possible scenarios — often very unpleasant ones, in the hope that we can prevent them from happening!
Meeting everybody’s basic nutritional needs requires a combined approach of the mind and heart — of intellect and compassion. How can we explain the fact that one sixth of humanity goes to bed hungry every night, when the world already produces enough food for all?
Serious anomalies
The short answer is that there are serious anomalies in the distribution of food. Capricious and uncaring market forces prevent millions of people from having at least one decent meal a day, while others have an abundance. For the first time in history, the number of severely malnourished persons now equals the number suffering from over-consumption: about a billion each!
To adapt a remark that my late friend Buckminster Fuller once made about energy: there is no shortage of food on this planet; there is, however, a serious shortage of intelligence. And, I might add, compassion.
So let’s do some lateral thinking, by considering the following scenarios:
Every few years, thousands of tonnes of high grade protein are airlifted free to parts of Africa and West Asia, but instead of welcoming it, we immediately spray it with poison. Locusts have long been considered a delicacy, as the Bible confirms: “John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.” (Matthew, Ch3, v4.) Yet countries spend large amounts of money and time in eliminating locusts when they could, with some effort, be feasting on them — or at least use them for animal food.
Several decades ago, a microbe that could turn oil into protein was discovered, and the potential of its applications was widely discussed — yet nothing much has happened since. I have often pointed out that petroleum is far too valuable to be burnt as fuel — we should convert it into plastics and food!
In spite of recent concerns about declining fish harvests, we have barely tapped the food production potential of the sea. Conditioned by cultural and economic habits, we consume only a small proportion of the edible marine creatures. By imaginatively expanding our choice of seafood, and by harvesting it sustainably, we could greatly increase food production.
Harnessing the sea for food, minerals and energy are subjects that have long interested me, and I have written both fiction and non-fiction about them. In my 1957 novel The Deep Range, I discussed the possibility of plankton farms that would enable us to tap into one of the largest primary production processes in nature. I also described the ranching of whales for their meat and milk — but I am no longer in favour of either, as whales are intelligent mammals who share more attributes with us than with fish. And I fear that milking whales may not be a very practical proposition!
In the mid 21st century, when the story of The Deep Range takes place, a more rational world population is talked out of eating whale meat by a charismatic Buddhist Prelate — who also promotes the virtues of vegetarianism. Although I must confess to being a lifelong carnivore, I admit that there are economic arguments for staying near the bottom of the food chain, because there is a 10-fold increase in the availability of food each time we go down one level.
But eventually, the matter will be resolved when we are able to synthesise all the food we ever need, thus no longer depending on other animals to satisfy our hunger.
Sometime in the 21st century, when we have mastered complete molecular control with nanotechnology, we will be able to produce whatever we want out of basic elements. We could then, in principle, get all the food we need from the air — a possibility that was pointed out in a remarkable book, Sugar from the Air, by the British plant pathologist E.C. Large, as long ago as 1937.
The atmosphere contains all the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon we need, and hydrogen is readily available from water. By adding the trace elements that are not required in large quantities, one could synthesise the whole range of food. The vegetable kingdom learned this trick, aeons ago.
Sound fantastic?
We can imagine even more fantastic possibilities in the longer term. In Profiles of the Future (1962, revised in 1999), I described a “Replicator” that could create any material object from the elements — just as a photocopier produces two dimensional copies.
I wrote: “There is no reason to suppose, therefore, that the ultimate Replicator would not be able to produce any food that men have ever desired or imagined. The creation of an impeccably prepared fillet mignon might take a few seconds longer, and require a little more material, than that of a paper clip, but the principle is the same. If this seems astonishing, no one today is surprised that a hi-fi set can reproduce a Beethoven climax as easily as the twang of a tuning fork.”
The advent of the Replicator would mean the end of all factories, and perhaps all transportation of raw materials and all farming. The entire structure of industry and commerce, as it is now organised, would cease to exist. Every family would produce all that is needed on the spot — as, indeed, it did through most of human history. The present era of machine mass-production would then be seen as a brief interregnum between two longer periods of self-sufficiency, and the only valuable item of exchange would be the matrices — or recordings, which had to be inserted into the Replicator to control its creations.
A society based on the Replicator would be so different from ours that the present debates between various economic and political systems would become completely meaningless. When material objects are all intrinsically worthless, perhaps only then will a real sense of value arise. Works of art would be cherished because they were beautiful, not because they were rare. Nothing would be as priceless as craftsmanship, personal skills and professional services. But don’t expect the Replicator to be invented, or become commercially available, anytime soon — it lies far in the future, at the end of many social revolutions.
But we cannot wait that long to overcome hunger in the world — and there is really no need to. Already, the tools of the Space Age are available to fight the battle against hunger and its frequent grim companion, poverty. And it’s not just the earth observation satellites and weather satellites, eminently helpful as they are in global efforts to feed six billion. At a more fundamental level, the advent of modern communications technologies and the emergence of global media networks offer humankind even more powerful tools.
Using technology
Improved communications and the free flow of information will not, by themselves, eradicate either hunger or poverty — but they can be instrumental in the struggle to create a world without these. And when the world’s collective conscience finally succeeds in mobilising sufficient political will and resources to banish those twin scourges, we will be left with another, far more insatiable but far less destructive substitute — the hunger for knowledge and wisdom.
Let’s hope that the world will never run out that particular hunger!
This article was written based on an interview with the late Sir Arthur Clarke in mid 2000. It was circulated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to mark World Food Day, but never appeared in a public media outlet until now.
Sir Arthur Clarke, who died in March aged 90, had an impressive track record of anticipating many technological developments that have transformed the modern age. He first proposed the idea of geosynchronous communication satellites in 1945, and one of his short stories inspired the World Wide Web.
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