Week 7

This week's topic is The BioBusiness Revolution 2: Agriculture and the Environment: Past, Present, Future. It is a continuation of last week's lesson on biobusiness, however we turn our focus to agriculture and environment, exploring into biotechnologies such as GM food, industrial enzymes and biofuel.

The lesson started with 2 videos. The first video depicts humans as parasites of the earth. Interestingly, it struck me that absurd as it sounded, it is actually true. Humans kill off other species and deplete the world's resources for its own basic and even luxurious use. Which other species on earth does that? The 2nd video, which is actually the more pertinent one to this lesson, provided a quick and insightful overview on how biotech can alleviate pressing issues of the world such as sustainability in food supply and in our energy needs. For example, biotech crops enables agriculture to be more efficient in order to meet the needs of an increasing population as it can increase yield and produce more nutritious food. Biofuel can produced by converting food crops into ethanol. Such a a source of energy is renewable and clean.

Another observation during the lesson was the european's way of colour coding biotech. Red for human, blue for marine, green for agriculture and environment and white for industrial. Honestly, I do not see the practicality of such labelling. One of the key things that l learnt is that most agricultural businesses are valley opportunities and biotech provides a way to bring it up to the summit. A related idea to this is the farmer to a farmist, where the farmer who is one of low educational status and work the traditional way while the farmist is one that has the know-hows and knowledge which can be applied to farming to increase its efficiency and to go up the value chain. Norman Borlaug's video talks about the green revolution about 4 decades and how improved seeds and fertilisers increase yield then. Today, biotech must fill this role. However, both biotech and green revolution cannot be useful without the proper policies put in place by world leaders.

Another issue I came to learn about today was US made the ruling there is no need to label GM food, reason being if the nutrient content was stated as per typical food products, there is no need to differentiate between the 2. As such, many of the food products that we ignorantly consume today are GM foods. For example, I realised that yakult and beer are all GM food which I have been consuming on a regular basis.

A key takeaway from this lesson can be taken from reading 4(Ending world hunger by Norman Borlaug) - the world already has the technogical know-hows and resources to alleviate world hunger. However, all these technology would not help those in extreme poverty and hunger if the proper change management is not in place. Governments and world leaders with the will and proper policies in place can make a world of difference for this people.

My rating for this lesson would be 8/10. I learnt many things which I did not know about.

-Zhishu of G22