Nobel Prize winners warn "moonshoot" technology is now needed to avoid world hunger
150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize winners signed the open letter.
Cereals that can grow without fertiliser are one of the high-risk, high-reward, research breakthroughs on which the world now relies to avoid a global hunger catastrophe in the next 25 years, according to more than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize winners.
The broad coalition of the world’s greatest thinkers said it is too late for incremental agricultural productivity improvements to meet future needs, and "moonshot" initiatives are instead needed, like the cereals that can source their own nitrogen biologically.
The other most promising scientific breakthroughs that could be prioritised in order to boost food production include improving photosynthesis in staple crops such as wheat and rice, to optimise their growth.
Boosting research into hardy, nutrition-rich indigenous crops that have been largely overlooked is also recommended, along with the development of new crops. Enhancement of fruits and vegetables to improve storage and shelf life and to increase food safety is another of the advances in basic research recommended for success in meeting the world’s nutritional needs.
Transformation of annual to perennial crops could also be considered as one of the ways to transform food systems in order to meet the nutritional needs of everyone sustainably.
The creation of nutrient-rich food from micro-organisms and fungi is another "moonshot" recommended by experts such as Robert Woodrow Wilson, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery that supported the Big Bang theory of creation.
Innovations in diverse cropping systems are also called for by the experts, whose open letter was discussed last week by the US Senate Committee on Agriculture in Washington, as they warned of the consequences of not addressing the "tragic mismatch of global food supply and demand".
They traced this mismatch back to a lack of investment in basic and applied agriculture research, and to regulatory barriers prohibiting distribution and use of research advancements. With such failures, "We tie our farming systems and our fate to the past and to the ever-increasing use of diminishing, non-replenishable resources to feed humanity", said the experts in their open letter.
“This is an eminently solvable problem, relatively inexpensive, with a payoff benefiting all of humanity.”Â
Today, 700 million people are food insecure and desperately poor. About half that number don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And 60 million children under the age of five are stunted cognitively, and physically impaired for life by nutritional deficiencies.
It will get worse as climate change decreases the productivity of most major food staples and as the world adds 1.5 billion people to its population by 2050.
For maize, the major food staple in much of Africa (where populations are growing fastest), the picture is particularly dire, with decreasing yield projected for virtually its entire growing area. Extreme weather events associated with climate change will only make matters worse. Soil erosion, land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages, conflict, and policies that restrict innovation will also drag crop productivity down.
Mashal Husain, incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said: “This is an inconvenient truth moment for global hunger. Having the world’s greatest minds unite behind this urgent wake-up call should inspire hope and action. If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely rally the funding, resources and collaboration needed to put enough food on plates here on Earth.”Â
According to the "moonshot" open letter, agricultural research enjoys extremely favourable returns on investment, but there are multiple market failures when it comes to providing the developing world with a nutritious diet.
