BioBusiness Revolution2: Agriculture and the Environment

Today’s class was on the revolution of the agriculture sector and the environment. After this week’s lesson, I even more convinced that technology has really unknowingly seeped into our lives and how it has really changed our lives. Last week was how it impacted the healthcare sector, and this week on the agriculture sector. Specifically playing a part in the food that we consume. The consumption of GM food was raised and whether GM food should be labeled, risks brought about by GM food and so on.

What caught my attention was reading 3, where the risk involved from GM was actually raised. For a long time, having consumed GM food, i never thought of the possible risk involved or even thought that there will be risk involved. However, reading 3 talks about some countries who are in opposition to transgenic seed varieties and food products due to unknown risk and absence of obvious consumer benefits arising from genetically modified food. I guess some of us just take things as it is and accept things that are introduced to us. And I guess that it also depends on the background that we are coming from. For instance, people from the other countries may be less educated, hence, may not go so far into thinking of the possible risk involved, or some are just ignorant about it. Furthermore, they are just concern of the benefits that it brings for instance, it provides marketing advantages to food retailers or improved nutrition or taste to attract consumers. 

This also led to the point on whether we should consume GM food. Personally, i feel that it is something that we have already gotten used to. For instance, the broccoli and cauliflower are GM food from wild cabbage and i'm sure there are many more out there in the market. We have already gotten used to eating these vegetables. Furthermore, in one of the presentation, we actually came to realize that the MacDonald meal that we eat has corn or used corn related stuffs to prepare. Jut like how we cannot avoid corn related food, i feel that it's the same as how we can't just avoid GM food. 

In another of the presentation, it talks about the company Monsanto, where it states that farmers have to resort to committing suicide as they are unable to pay off the debt to Monsanto due to high cost incurred for the patenting of their seeds. The number of farmers that committed suicide really shocked me. It really shocked me at how Monsanto actually set rules in different countries, just for their own benefits.  But then again, we cannot push the blame to Monsanto. That's the common goals of most companies- make profits, which help keeps you competitive. I guess the argument here is whether we should be profit driven or we should be welfare driven?? Where they also think about the farmers welfare instead of their own benefits. We also discussed if GM food should be labeled, which i feel that we should. This is also a form of respect to our customers, that we're not hiding anything from them and it also leaves the option open for them to choose whether or not to consume the product. Furthermore, i feel that there is nothing to hide whether or not it's GM food unless there's really something wrong with the product and hence causing the producer to dare not label them. After-all, it's about the producer's integrity, which i feel is one of the most important factor to win the customers' support because there's trust. Hence, i feel that it should be labeled.

We were introduced to another quote this week. "When we are able to arrow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability." I agree with this statement and i felt that it was really true. To remain sustainable, we have to have ample resources for us to use as well as for the future generation. Hence, once we are able to arrow the resources, we need not worry of running out of them in the future. I feel that of course, technology will play a part in helping us arrow the resources, looking at how it has changed our world since the past.

I feel that we have to continue embracing the change in technology on our environment and agriculture to be able to reap greater benefits. It really makes me wonder how will the future GM food be like, what kind of new stuff we can expect from the continuous advancement of technology on this sector.

Class rating: 9/10