Super Rice Could Feed The World
More than 40 years ago entomologist Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation for the world in his 1968 book The Population Bomb. According to Ehrlich, in the 1970s and 80’s millions of people would starve to death, from famines caused by population outstripping resources. What happened instead was a technological revolution that drove crop production and yields through the roof. At the same time, population growth slowed. World births have leveled off from their peak in the late 90s but they still continue–while deaths are declining. Current wisdom holds that by 2050, we’re likely to have a global population that exceeds 9 billion.
That expanding population will need to eat, and what a significant portion of them eat is rice. Researchers believe new kinds of genetically engineered super rice–plants that are highly productive and bred to survive flood, drought and disease–may prevent deadly famines, especially in Asia. Several new research papers on rice genetics show how scientists are using “all the molecular tools at their disposal” to create these sorts of plant strains, according to Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Zeigler was quoted in a story on National Public Radio Friday. Those papers were published in the scientific journals Nature and Science last week.
The gist of it is this: a team of researchers from Japan, identified genes called SNORKEL 1 and SNORKEL 2 that control the ability of rice plants in deep water to lengthen their stems in order to keep their leaves above water. They published their findings in the journal Nature. Together the two genes can trigger growth of up to 8 meters–yes eight meters!–in the face of rising water, according to a story on the studies just posted on Nature.com.
Another study from Japan, this one in the journal Science, identified a gene that helps rice plants resist a fungus known as Blast, which devastates them. The gene was isolated from a linked stretch of DNA that happens to make wild varieties of rice taste terrible–so these new Blast-resistant plants will be far more palatable. Molecular geneticist Motoyuki Ashikari of Nagoya University, one of the scientists involved with the SNORKEL gene discoveries, told Science Magazine he estimates the flood-friendly rice could be in farmers’ fields in three or four years.
And perhaps that’s not a moment too soon… The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that warming temperatures worldwide could result in food shortages for 130 million people across Asia by 2050. And Lester Brown, author of the article “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” in the May 2009 issue of Scientific American, wrote that the number of hungry and malnourished people in the world, which was declining historically, bottomed out around 2000 at just more than 800 million. That figure, wrote Brown, “is now approaching one billion and is projected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to hit 1.2 billion within the next decade.”
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
I think this is so interesting – and that genetic engineering for the rice that you’re discussing (and golden rice, and other such projects) are an excellent “stop gap” measure. But it also can’t be the only way to manage this looming crisis. Why is it that a miniscule segment of the world (ours) is way, way, way overfed – and one billion are malnourished? How can we change the underlying socioeconomic structure that create these crises in the first place?
Or maybe we can’t – I might be too idealistic – in which case, bring on the rice, I guess.
I know, it seems sort of ridiculous that we can’t just spread it around somehow. War has an enormous impact on a country being able to feed its people, but it’s just one part of the problem. A reader just emailed me to say that if everyone had enough money, there wouldn’t be hunger, but I think that’s also too simplistic. Money doesn’t do you much good if there’s no food to buy, because drought and famine makes it difficult to grow, or if war makes the import and distribution of food impossible, etc. So maybe, yeah… bring on the super rice…
In response to another comment. See in context »Super Rice might just be a stopgap until the real problems are solved. Largely, it’s to stretch supplies for the “third world”. The LT solution is realigning energy consumption- here, the calories to produce food, and the imbalance between meat and grain consumption.
In response to another comment. See in context »Then there’s the political imbalance of “North” vs. “South”, the old way of referring to “first world” vs. “third world” conflicts in food production and consumption.
Ehrlich was never much good at predicting the future; he also famously lost a ten-year bet regarding the availability of crucial minerals such as copper.
Nice post; good to see some advocacy of engineered foodstuffs, which, as you show, are a crucial component of mankind’s efforts to feed an increasing population.
Yes Barrett, I agree, it seems Ehrlich was clearly off on quite a few of his predictions. Personally I’m still a bit leery of genetically engineered foodstuffs–I just don’t know enough about them…yet…—but yes, this rice could certainly play a crucial role in fighting famine. Thanks for the comment.
In response to another comment. See in context »Ms. Zimmerman,
Hunger in the world is not caused by an excess of people or a shortage of food. Hunger is caused by people being too poor to afford to buy food. World hunger could be wiped out tomorrow if people could afford to buy the food they need. Genetic engineering will not change that.
Case in point might be the Irish potato famine, where farmers were too poor to eat the food they were growing due to land rents. How many of the world’s farmers own their own land? And how much food is not grown because local economies make it an inefficient use of land/labor?
In response to another comment. See in context »Think how Japan for instance is barely self-sufficient in rice alone, imports about everything else, and still it’s not viable to farm there without enormous subsidy from the LDP, which helped that party stay in power for so long.
One way to increase food availability would be to stop using food for cars. If all the grain that now goes into ethanol went to feed hungry people, prices would also come down worldwide. If we also feed less steers, we can feed more humans.
Not to take anything away from well-engineered rice, but science isn’t going to save us from having to change our wasteful lifestyles.
[...] could cry… Was over at True/Slant and found this gem. Having your case made for you is [...]