Food/Seeding the world with optimized species

In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb, warning that India and China were headed for catastrophic famines, as food production could not keep up with their expanding populations. Yet just six years later, in 1974, not only had the famines not materialized, but India and China were exporting grains.

What changed? High-yield, drought-resistant, semi-dwarf varieties of wheat and other crops were introduced to these countries by an initiative headed by Norman Borlaug , "the man who fed the world". This shows the difference that using an optimized strain of a plant can make.

The strain used can make a huge difference to productivity: NERICA rice has 2.5 times the yield of previously used strains. In 2002, a new strain of tomato was released in India that doubled yields and contains six times as much beta-carotene ^[1]. A new kind of pineapple was recently introduced in Cuba that has triple the yield of previous varieties ^[2]. There are countless more example like this.

Borlaug achieved huge increases in yield by selective breeding. Around seventy years earlier, Luther Burbank  had achieved something similar by creating hybrids. But now, in the early 21st century, we have another powerful tool in our quest to feed the planet: genetic modification. Using a combination of selective breeding, hybridization and genetic modification, it is now possible to create the most productive, nutritious, fast-growing, pest-resistant, drought-tolerant food-crops that have ever existed. Combined with the high-yield farming techniques described above, this can greatly increase the amount and quality of food available to us. Genetic modification can even allow plants to grow in soils they otherwise could not ^[3], opening up whole new swathes of farmland.

The recent surprising trend toward 'garage' biotechnology (or 'biohacking') may even play a role. It will be interesting to see what new biotechnologies come out of hackerspaces like DIYbio and BioCurious that could help feed the world.

Once optimized strains are created, they can be spread around the world through free seed exchanges on the Internet, where anyone can ask for a seed and people give them away for free. (Once a farmer is growing a productive crop, giving away a few seeds is a negligible expense.) Several such exchanges exist already.