Spent the past week writing about the future of food production for two different clients.
Since I love noodling on the philosophical and moral questions surrounding issues of food production and allotment, and since I’m a bit of a futuristic junkie, it was a really great week. While interviewing Fonterra’s outgoing CEO Andrew Ferrier, we discussed the need for global consensus on efficient but environmentally-friendly farming practices… especially if we’re going to have to double our food production to feed the population in 2030.
I also wrote about the future of nutraceuticals and learned about all the new ways companies are gearing up to make the most of our nutrients. We’re still a bit of a way off from replicator-generated foods (“tea, Earl Grey, hot”) — and for that I’m grateful — but it’s really cool to look ahead and imagine what our world will look like in ten or twenty years.
And then I saw this happening in Somalia TODAY:
… and suddenly the theoretical questions I’ve bandied about this week matter only as much as they can prevent this from happening again.
Turns out the present is on the other line, and it’s starving.
I made a donation today to fight hunger and poverty through my favorite charity, Heifer International. You can click the logo below to join me, or here to see a good article which lists other fiscally-responsible agencies responding to this and other crises.
Bullpen Communications 