Week 7

Today’s focus was again on Biobusiness but centering on agribiology, environmental life sciences and industrial biotechnology. We can classify the different areas of biobusiness under a colour scheme; red for biomedical since it relates to blood, white for environmental and industrial, green for agri-veterinary and food, blur foe marine and water. So as per other lessons, we are concerned with the factor of “sustainability” and the only way to achieve that is to grow the resources we need. We need to balance out earth’s carrying capacity with human carrying capacity.

Before moving on, I need to clarify some terms from the slide that prof shown us. Firstly, the difference between farmer and farmist is that a farmer does all the traditional physically form of farming but a farmist is the new age high technology farmer that uses technology to his advantage which is cool. Next, bioremediation refers to taking contaminated environment and use biotechnology to clean it. So for example, we can use plants or enzyme to break things down, such as heavy metal that was thrown underground for years. Next, we talked about labelling GM foods and I never knew that Japan insist on the labelling of GM food which provides people with the freedom of choice if they are against GM food. However, countries like America and Singapore cannot label GM foods.

The key thing about today’s lesson is on food security-a condition where, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy live. So basically, it is like a food bank/ supply when poverty comes.

Interesting observation

I guess what’s interesting for me was the presentation on the fishery as I never knew so much about corals and fisheries!! It surprises me as to how technology can also be used in the sea water. Seems to me like the possibilities of technology is endless with no limits or boundaries. I also liked her key takeaway message; “with new technologies comes the need for new regulations” and “For these new technologies to be adopted in a widespread manner, support is needed”. I could not agree more that with new technologies comes the need for new regulations. Without proper regulations, I believe new technologies will easily fall from the summit to the valley. After all, patents and copyrights rules need to be enforced so that there will be incentives for the inventors. Moreover, it ensures that technologies will not go into the wrong hands like those in the movies such as spiderman.

I got great insights into GM crops too. All along I thought GM were simply modified food because of pest and to make it more standardize such as the Macdonald concept. However, the presentation showed otherwise. It also includes drought tolerance and added nutrition. I thought the drought tolerance factor was very important as it increase the factor of sustainable to a higher level. It was mentioned in previous presentation; I think by Spencer, that humans need to fulfill the basic needs which are food before we can focus our energy into creating other technologies that are more for convenience and luxury. So I think GM technology has greatly sustained our economy and enabled rapid progression.

Key takeaways

I guess what I learnt is the power of technology to alleviate poverty. We could have done it with the current technology but many countries still decide to keep stocking up their food security just in case anything happens. So clearly, it’s every man for himself and this mindset though not wrong, will not help solve the problem of poverty in other countries.

Further Discussion

I’m quite interested in biomedical and agri-veterinary field so maybe the combination of the two could be further discusses. For instance, how they can work hand-in-hand to make the world a better place.

Rating

8/10