The University of Western Australia: Call for two-fold approach to create sustainable food supplies

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.uwa.edu.au/news/article/2024/december/call-for-two-fold-approach-to-create-sustainable-food-supplies

Call for two-fold approach to create sustainable food supplies
06/12/2024

Gene editing and plant domestication are essential to protect food supplies in a worsening climate, according to an international team of researchers, led by The University of Western Australia.

Recently recognised as one of Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers for 2024, Professor Sergey Shabala, Chair in Plant Physiology at UWA, was lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Science.

“Rising temperatures, droughts, floods and salinisation caused by climate change are lowering the amount of edible food produced by our staple crops,” Professor Shabala said.

“Creating more land for agriculture is not a sustainable option so we need to adapt crops to new climate conditions.”

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsci.2024.1416023

[markodochartaigh]

1. Great work is being done

on heat-tolerant RuBisCo activase. But it should be done with a Manhattan Project style urgency. Also I think that humanity's best chance of staving off mass starvation caused by serial cereal grain harvest failures is to lower our sights on the food ladder. If we could develop methods of producing palatable and efficiently produced foodstuffs from algae, yeast, and bacteria, Soylent Green might not have to be people.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. The math of "Soylent Green" always seemed hinky to me.

How many people can you feed for how long, with one dead person? (Admittedly, the “Soylent Corporation" had other products.)

As for working our way down the food ladder, I don’t know. It seems to me that so long as we successfully feed the population, the population will continue to grow until it eventually outstrips the food supply (i.e. the classic “Malthusian” scenario.)

Maybe humanity will get smarter, but… Have you heard? The American people reelected Donald Trump as President, so… Apparently, at least Americans are not getting smarter…