Department of inconvenient questions

( Image title/source/ author: Crop triangle; Wikimedia common; author: Eddie Oosthuizen; user:AbdealiJK Travis)


As a food guy with extensive international brand and new product development marketing experience as well as unfortunately a failed restaurateur I enjoy reading Linkedin posts about amongst other things innovation and technology ( thanks LPK, Tom Goodwin and others)and various other food specific threads on hot food related topics such as plant based everything, alternative proteins( anyone for cricket?), lab grown meat and so on ( other soap boxes are available)...

This is all very stimulating intellectually , but then yesterday I read another food innovation/ tech story ( from "Food Navigator Asia "yesterday which I will try and append in the comments) which disturbed me in my own comfortable ,urban bubble.

So today this post from the newly created Department of inconvenient questions...staffed by completely unqualified people ie me , and with no commercial or other interest in this area, other than being a would be occasional world citizen, from the comfort of my armchair of course.
Why are people still starving in 2018 when the technology apparently exists to make important steps towards eradication ? Who,why and what are blocking the adoption/ commercialisation of things like Genetically modified crops , and now so called Golden rice aka vitamin enhanced rice, which is touted by its' proponents as a "life saver" ? I tried and failed to find some simple stats on global hunger to illustrate the scale of the problem , but need obviously to improve my search skills. Meanwhile just check your preferred news feed...


As this is a business blog I will try and stay away from making politically charged comments, but if the technology exists to make a meaningful impact in reducing starvation in places challenged by climate , know how or conflict then why isn't it happening? Do we need more private charitable initiatives by the likes of Bill Gates or, more action from eg the United Nations? Or is it a matter of freedom of choice , as some farmers fear being locked into particular seed suppliers.


This stuff is worthy of more debate and action than much of what gets debated around the conversation ecosystem..


ps: are some agribusinesses still routinely needing financially to throw away food in order to manage market prices or because their produce is deemed somehow not pretty enough ? Another committee maybe , or a working group?