Lesson 7

In continuation to last week’s lesson, we learnt another aspect of the bio-business revolution- Agribiology , environmental life sciences and industrial biology. This aspect of technology reinforced to the class another aspect of what sustainable development can be as the world takes on an ever-increasing toll of human population, by as much as 9.2 billion by the 2050. Today, I learnt about the vast impacts of the bio-business revolution and how it integrated it is, as part of our lives and economy. It is such a large market that has formed, not only in contributing to 25% of the world’s GDP or creating job employment for people but the fact that it is an integral part of human life. Ever since the 1990s, research has been carried out, allowing people now to enjoy the benefits such as healthier food options as well as job options. In a time like this, it is hard to say that we haven’t been in contact to genetically modified foods, much less that we haven’t eaten them.

One of the interesting observations that I had today was what food security is. It is a condition where all people, 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 life. It is safe to say that we are food secure, we simply do not have much to fear about whether we have food on the tables for the next meal, we probably need to fear whether we have the time to sit and eat our meals. Food security however, is affected by a few factors such as physical, economic, socio-political and physiological. As illustrated in one of the presentations, climate change drastically affects food security per se. We are definitely affected by climate change in almost every aspect of our lives. But as humans, we can think of ways and technology to help curb such possible problems and one of such is using technology eg. The wema project for Africa. It is interesting to see how firms invent new technology that is resistant to droughts, avoiding imminent problems to the crops that farmers grow.

Another observation I found interesting during class was the extensiveness of genetically modified foods. I haven’t really realised how large a part that GM foods have been part of our world since the 1990s. And how we have actually eaten them at some parts of our lives even though we might not know it, take for example kiwis. And GM foods usually are better, in the sense that they may have higher vitamin content, protein, are technically more nutritious. However, more importantly is that it can solve the problem of limited food supply especially in this times where the sustainability of foods is at a risk and GM foods can help to solve the above problem to a certain extent, by ensuring that people have sources to turn to and look for.

Subsequently, prof also talked about the different colours of technology, ranging from blue to red to white to green etc, I’m sure the list goes on but it sure is a whole range and aspect of how technology is used in our society these days.

Issues I wished had been given some airtime or discussion as part of the class was that of environmental life sciences technology because it hadn’t been very much addressed in the presentations etc. I feel that waste management is pretty important especially in our context and the kind of lives we lead, there is definitely a lot to the area of waste management that we can look into and how we can help the Earth or ways in which we can.

Overall, I feel the lesson was quite interesting as we explored in what ways are we affected by environmental and other factors and then how people harness technology to turn things around to help ourselves. I’d rate it a 8 out of 10 :)