Currently the world population has been experiencing a global food crisis. On May 5, 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the food crisis has forced about one hundred million people worldwide deeper into poverty. The SFC also added that in Haiti people have become so desperate they have begun to eat “mud cakes” made of dirt, sugar and food scraps.
However, the Chinese have recently announced their newest experiments with ‘mega veggies’ that some claim may help solve the food crisis for good. A Chinese newspaper, China Daily, wrote about when this particular experiment was first launched. On Sept. 9, 2006, the Chinese launched a satellite carrying 474 pounds of seeds for vegetables, cotton, fruits and grains from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The Space-breeding Centre of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science was testing the effects on seeds when exposed to zero-gravity and cosmic radiation during the germination and sprouting process.
In May 2008, the “Times of India” said the Chinese are showing off the results of their success. The seeds are breeding in giant Chinese hot houses and producing enormous vegetation. Pumpkins 10 times their normal size, 160lb Chinese winter melons, two-foot long cucumbers, fourteen pound aubergines (eggplants), chili plants that ‘resemble small trees’and twenty-one pound tomatoes. “Space seeds offer the opportunity to grow fruit and vegetables bigger and faster,” said researcher Lo Zhigang. The plants produce harvests that are 10% to 20% larger than usual with higher vitamin contents. Many are coming to believe that this is an answer to our current global food crisis.
However, perhaps we should not be so quick to depend on these miracle plants. The drawbacks, such as the possible health effects from eating vegetables exposed to cosmic radiation, may not develop for some time. Lo Zhigang said, “they don’t think there’s any threat to human health because the genes themselves do not mutate, just their sequence changes”. There are those too desperate to wait and find out. The vegetables have already been sold to Japan, Thailand and Singapore, writer David Derbyshire reported from his article “Anyone for Rocket Salad?”
Another possible drawback could be the prices for these vegetables. Global food prices have risen 73% since 2006, writes David Lynch in his USA Today article “Tension in Egypt Shows Potency of Food Crisis.” With food prices already sky-rocketing, hopefully even bigger vegetables won’t simply add on to these prices that are becoming out of reach for the middle class. “Surging inflation is striking hardest at the worlds very poor, who are forced to spend 60 percent to 80 percent of their income on food…” says Laurie Goering in her piece “Food Costs Threaten Gains Against Poverty”.
The website, “Impactlab,” asks if these plants are going to solve world hunger, or merely cause more leftovers for those who can afford them. China found how to make a twenty-one pound tomato, but will families be able to consume that much before the vegetable rots? This would just add to the amount of food that we, Americans especially, manage to waste while others, who can’t afford it, could be eating. In Linda Resnik’s article “How Much Food Do You Waste?” she writes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that Americans throw out over 11 billion pounds of fruit and vegetables every year. How would this statistic be affected with the release of mega veggies? Granted, curiosity would get the best of us when we see these monstrous vegetables, perhaps we’d even buy one. However, would we really finish them up?
While these mega veggies are a fascinating subject, it might be a bad idea to rely on this science for the world’s food consumption. The technology to create this effect on the seeds is ghastly. This idea of making things ‘bigger, better and faster’ was what made the world so crowded where it couldn’t provide for everyone anymore. We sped up medicine, and now everyone’s living longer than ever, and the population just keeps on growing. “The world population doubled between 1961 and 1986 and is still growing at the rate of 75 million people a year,” says Richard North from his article, “Sorry No More Cheap Food.” We sped up technology and now pollution and fuel problems are through the roof. We keep upgrading things, but it just upgrades our problems.
It seems as though we have always been challenged as humans, especially us Americans, to be satisfied with what we have. However, ‘a crisis’ does seem to be a common reaction in the environment and the economy when we take or use more than we really need. Perhaps we need to work on simplifying our society instead of creating more machines to finish our jobs for us. Perhaps we merely have to stop relying on technology for our advancement, and give the jobs that we rely on machines to accomplish, to our unemployed. Maybe we shouldn’t look at simplicity as a downgrade, or working backwards. Could decipher what we truly need and what isn’t necessary? Perhaps we need to dispose of the knick knack materials and the plastic surgeries, and the unneeded sugar and junk foods. What if we could work in our own communities doing jobs we need only in order to survive? If we worked close by and simplified our societies, maybe we could rekindle the need for friendly human contact. Maybe what we need is to eliminate corporations that don’t need to exist that are triggering fluctuations in the economy. In doing so, perhaps it’s our minds and our imaginations that will be receiving the upgrade.