NEW SCIENTIST鈥橲 most ambitious virtual event yet took place on Saturday 28 November. The Future of Food and Agriculture saw more than 5500 people register for a day packed full of inspiring talks from world-leading scientists and technologists about what we eat and how we grow it on our changing planet.
The audience had their pick of 15 expertly curated talks across three virtual stages tackling some of the most challenging questions facing humanity today, including how to feed 11 billion people sustainably, how robots are reshaping the future of agriculture and why we should eat insects. A further 30 sessions about everything from plant health to autonomous tractors were run by leaders in the field.
Alongside all the fantastic talks, the audience also engaged with researchers directly through nine virtual rooms, featuring everything from 360-degree lab visits and live chats with scientists and roboticists to a session on the science of cheese and an insect-eating demonstration.
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Over on the main stage, environmental scientist Jacqueline McGlade spoke from Nairobi in Kenya about the profound impact climate change is having on global food production. 鈥淧lants are responding in a tremendous way to climate change,鈥� she said. Some of our most important crops are reacting to droughts by producing poisonous cyanide compounds, she explained 鈥� and these dangerous compounds are already ending up in crucial produce such as cassava.
Rising temperatures and shifting seasons are also increasingly impacting our food in other ways, said McGlade. 鈥淢oulds are really loving climate change,鈥� she told the audience, and while plants can defend themselves against poisons released by moulds, such as aflatoxin, in order to survive, that doesn鈥檛 stop these nasty substances from making their way into our food. 鈥淜enya had to destroy a third of its maize stock last year because of aflatoxin poisoning,鈥� she said.
McGlade and other speakers throughout the day acknowledged that covid-19 has set back efforts to tackle food insecurity and malnutrition. But the pandemic is also putting a spotlight on human resilience, McGlade told viewers.
As we continue to face these problems, we must not forget the importance of food quality, as well as quantity, she said. 鈥淲e need to think about our agriculture not only as food production, but also as land stewardship, thinking about where we grow crops, how close to wild areas, what鈥檚 the zoonosis pool 鈥� the pool of diseases that might actually start to infect our food systems.鈥�
We need to generate food for a growing number of people too. Geoff Simm at the University of Edinburgh, UK, spoke on the Field stage about feeding people sustainably as the global population rises.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really in the last 300 years or so that we鈥檝e seen a dramatic increase in the number of humans on Earth, over a 10-fold increase in that time,鈥� said Simm. 鈥淭hat explains why there is so much pressure on our food systems and on the natural environmental systems that support them.
鈥淎 further challenge is the change in diets towards those that are reliant on animal-sourced products. And that matters, because, by and large, livestock-sourced foods have a much bigger resource requirement than plant-sourced foods,鈥� Simm explained.
So should everyone in the world adopt a plant-based diet? It might not be so simple, said Simm. If we want to be able to feed the growing population in a more sustainable way, we need to improve the way we use land, he told the audience.
鈥淢any people assume that the optimal level of livestock production if you want to minimise land use is zero, but in fact it鈥檚 not,鈥� said Simm. That is because livestock can use the by-products from crop production, as well as low-grade grains that aren鈥檛 suitable for human consumption, and they can use grass and forage grown on land that is unsuitable for crop production.
鈥淲e believe that probably we minimise arable land use, with between 16 and 40 per cent of our protein coming from animal sources,鈥� said Simm. 鈥淥f course, it鈥檚 not the only consideration, we also need to think about greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts.鈥�
Well-managed grazing can have really positive effects on biodiversity, as well as the more publicised negative effects, said Simm. 鈥淎nd we know that the appropriate amounts of livestock-sourced foods in our diets can be very helpful in our nutrition, bringing us bioavailable sources of micronutrients as well as proteins and energy,鈥� he said. These are especially vital during the first few years of the lives of children in many of the poorer countries on the planet, Simm added.
The challenge of adapting our diets to tackle climate change and food insecurity in a world where the population is rising is inspiring a revolution in food and agricultural innovation. Scientists and technologists on the Fork stage gave the audience a glimpse of some of the completely new foods that could one day appear on plates around the globe.
Neil Stephens at Brunel University London and Anneli Ritala at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland spoke about the latest efforts to develop lab-grown meats and cellular foods produced using single-celled organisms in bioreactors. Meanwhile, Tilly Collins at Imperial College London and David Willer at the University of Cambridge argued that insects and shipworms could provide a key source of sustainable protein in our future diets.
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But how can we ensure the safety of foods that many people have never eaten before or novel foods that have been created in a lab? Robin May from the UK鈥檚 Food Standards Agency was on hand to try to answer this important question for the audience.
鈥淚nsects are consumed around the world by many populations already,鈥� said May, and there are plenty of health benefits of eating insects: they are low in fat and high in protein, you can grow lots of them in a small space and you can feed them on waste products that would otherwise need to be disposed of.
But there are also lots of unknowns with expanding our reliance on insects, said May. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been farming cows for thousands of years. We鈥檝e been farming crickets for a lot shorter time,鈥� he told the crowd.
However, insect-based flour, such as cricket flour, is already used as an ingredient in some food products, said May. 鈥淯nderstanding if there鈥檚 any risk of eating ground-up crickets is obviously a key part of our role,鈥� he told the audience. May explained that the Food Standards Agency is constantly evaluating the newest food products on the market for safety.
In the future, smart labels will also contribute towards ensuring our food is safe to eat, said May. 鈥淸Labels] could detect the by-products of bacterial growth and alert you to the fact that your food is spoiling before you can even see or smell it,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a really exciting opportunity there to not only improve the quality and the safety of food, but perhaps also to help mitigate food waste.鈥�
All the speakers and organisations involved in the day offered a delicious peek into the science and technology driving fundamental changes in what we eat and how we grow it. Thanks to everyone who helped make the day such a brilliant success.
Missed out?
For details on how to watch the talks on demand
