Creative and Innovative Research: Our Only Hope for Achieving Sustainable Food and Energy Security
Food and energy security are among the most critical challenges on our planet today. Food is required for our survival. Likewise, energy is necessary to sustain our civilization as we know and have come to expect. It is important to realize that while foo
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Creative and Innovative Research: Our Only Hope for Achieving Sustainable Food and Energy Security Gale A. Buchanan and Raymond L. Orbach
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Introduction Energy Security
Few issues grabbed the attention of the American people as did $4 gasoline in the summer of 2008 (U.S. Energy Information Administration http://www.eia.gov). Since then, any decrease in the price of petroleum and petroleum-based products carries the potential for a return to the days of profligacy. Sales of fuel efficient vehicles spiked at the height of gasoline prices but slowed with softening of gasoline prices. However, there is evidence of increasing public concern with development of more hybrid and electric cars. In fact there are approximately 30 companies developing hybrid or electric vehicles at present. Success of each of these ventures remains to be seen. While there are those who are no longer concerned about the seriousness of energy challenges, it is clear that basing our country’s energy future on fossil fuel alone, a finite resource, is not a viable course for the United States or any nation.
G.A. Buchanan (*) National Environmentally Sound Production Agriculture Laboratory, University of Georgia, 2356 Rainwater Rd., Tifton, GA 31793-0748, USA e-mail: [email protected] R.L. Orbach Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Physics, and the Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C2200, ETC 9.146, Austin, TX 78712, USA e-mail: [email protected] D.D. Songstad et al. (eds.), Convergence of Food Security, Energy Security and Sustainable Agriculture, Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry 67, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-55262-5_1, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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G.A. Buchanan and R.L. Orbach
Food Security
Food security is quite a different matter, but is just as serious. Today there are some one billion people who do not receive adequate caloric intake for good health (Gates Foundation, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/agriculturaldevelopment). Approximately 80 % of undernourished people live in seven countries: China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (UN-FAO 2010). Adequate nutrition is the first step toward societal advancement in education and infrastructure development in rural and urban communities (http://www.gatesfoundation.org). Associated with this are the people, perhaps as many as a billion, that do not receive adequate protein, fat, important minerals, and/or essential vitamins. For example, it is estimated that several hundred thousand individuals lose their sight or perish each year due to vitamin A deficiency (Potrykus 2010). The FAO reports that a child dies every 6 s from undernourishment (UN-FAO 2010). Achieving sustainable food security and energy security are two of the most important challenges facing our planet. Both food and energy are critically necessary for survival of our civilization as we know it. While agriculture is only a part (most would argue a critical part) of the energ
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