Unbiased introduction, Topic 1: What is the best individual solution to feeding the world's growing population?
Genetic modification of organisms is a powerful tool that enables us to improve food nutritional profiles, empower our crops with disease and insect resistant traits, and increased production in a faster, more efficient manner than traditional breeding. Although several questions have been raised about its possible negative impacts on human health and the ecosystem, if used wisely, this product of science has great potential in closing the gap between food demand and supply.
Another potential solution to secure nutrients for human consumption is entomophagy. Using insect for food has a great development potential. Edible insects are a rich source of protein, amino acids, fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins that can be incorporated into human diets to meet the nutrient requirements of a growing population. Furthermore, insects are more efficient transforming plant biomass into animal biomass than conventional livestock and they also have higher fecundity and a much faster growth rate. Edible insects as human food could be a tough idea to sell but if enough marketing efforts are set in place, one can envisage industry picking up the mass scale production of edible insects.