12:00noon Monday 16th September
Room 208, 2nd floor,
Microbiology building,
720 Cumberland Street
‘Sustainability lenses: alluding to the precautionary principle via future trends in agriculture’
As a biogeochemist I get hung-up on scale and implications, for example, what happens at microscopic scales has global impacts and vice versa.
How we interact with our world therefore has multiple implications, and according to recent popular press, nothing is more important for climate change than how we produce food and what we eat.
Future food production trends are all about ‘sustainability’ and technology augmented production. But are these visions sensible? What will the future look like if we realistically analyse today? Will future vegetable production occur in sterile indoor environments? Will your future burger be yeast-based and grown in a vat? Does it make sense to vaccinate cows against methanogens? Given the current cascading environmental problems, I think we need to pause for breathe so that we can start to sensibly apply our knowledge and technology in order to restore our relationship with the environment.
