This chapter details the interplay of biotechnology with food and drink production. Humans have had a long and rich history of using microbes for food and beverage production. The technique of preservation allows microbial growth, which helps with pH changes, gas production, gastronomic value, shelf life, and the texture of the food. The chapter also explains that microbes can be used to make components for food production, including amino acids, enzymes, oils, and polysaccharides. Moreover, microorganisms also play a role in the production of food supplements, such as vitamins and pigments. Essentially, different microbes can be used to make biomass for consumption. However, there are issues with safety and acceptability.
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Biotechnology and Food and Drink Production
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Nutrition, the Environment, and Sustainable Diets
Tim Lang and Pamela Mason
This chapter explores key ways in which the environment shapes human nutrition and vice versa: how what people eat reflects how they treat and think of the environment. Nutrition has traditionally focused on the availability and interaction of nutrients in food and the influence of nutrients, foods, and diet on human health. In the twenty-first century, calls have become stronger for nutrition science to recognize how ecosystems underpin food systems and food systems are key drivers of environmental degradation. Issues such as energy, climate change, biodiversity, water, land use, and soil all shape food systems, the availability of nutrients, and food production. Ultimately, the future of food systems and nutrition is likely to hinge on whether food production and consumption can become more sustainable. The chapter then considers the role of governments, non-governmental organizations, the food industry, and nutritionists in promoting both healthy and sustainable diets.
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Energy
Paul Behrens
This chapter focuses on the energy system, to investigate the ways in which energy is currently used in the food system and how this use may develop in the future. It outlines the physical nature of energy and power and describes the different sources of energy. The discussion highlights that food production uses around 15–20% of the total energy produced for human needs. The discussion covers two critical issues in energy use: the improved availability of energy in poorer countries and the implementation of low-carbon technologies in all countries. Furthermore, it explains the zero-carbon energy system. The chapter also explores how food systems can be decarbonized. Finally, it looks at the role agricultural systems could play in the energy transition itself.
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Introduction
A. Stewart Truswell, Jim Mann, and Leanne Hodson
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the essentials of human nutrition. The science of nutrition deals with all the effects on people of any component found in food. This starts with the physiological and biochemical processes involved in nourishment—how substances in food provide energy or are converted into body tissues and the diseases that result from insufficiency or an excess of essential nutrients (malnutrition). The chapter begins by defining essential nutrients, considering the substances that are needed in the diet for the normal function of the human body. It then assesses whether it is possible to delay or even prevent chronic degenerative diseases by modifying what we usually eat. The chapter provides food composition tables, dietary reference values and guidelines, biochemical tests, and looks at the relationship between food production and delivery and the environment.
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Aquaculture
This chapter introduces the historical development of aquaculture, insight into the variety of techniques used to rear a range of different organisms, the technology employed to increase productivity, and the environmental and biological consequences of aquaculture in marine ecosystems. As in any food production system, aquaculture creates its own environmental problems. It has led to disease outbreaks, over-harvesting of forage fishes to generate fish-meal, and genetic dilution of wild stocks from farm escapees, and it has caused ecological problems in areas where local carrying capacity has been exceeded. In addition, aquaculture has its own emerging issues that have extended beyond simply a consideration of biological or environmental science. As aquaculture involves the rearing of organisms in an artificial environment, there are potential welfare issues that are of concern to wider society, and concerns about labour conditions (modern slavery) are now much higher on the societal agenda.
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Introduction
Can we feed the world sustainably?
Thijs Bosker, Paul Behrens, and David Ehrhardt
This chapter provides significant contexts on how the human population grew dramatically after two major evolutions: the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. It highlights that population growth among humans has required resources to be diverted from natural systems to human societies, including food, water, and energy. The chapter also explains the Holocene, a period of relative stability in the Earth's climate which enabled population growth. Furthermore, it discusses the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch associated with the global and pervasive impacts of human activities on the environment. The chapter also discusses how ecological footprints are calculated and introduces the concepts of biocapacity, resource stocks, and resource flows. Then it tackles the key environmental and societal challenges related to food production. Lastly, it looks at the role of governance in overcoming sustainability challenges.
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Introduced Traits That Benefit Farmers and Industry
Maarten J. Chrispeels and Eliot M. Herman
This chapter addresses the crop-plant traits that primarily benefit farmers and the food production and processing industry. Genetically engineered (GE) crops were introduced in the mid-1990s and have been extensively planted in many developed and developing countries by millions of farmers. Herbicide-tolerant genes make GE plants tolerant of herbicides that were already in use when the GE crops hit the market, while insect-resistant GE crops rely on the effects of Cry proteins, encoded by Bt genes, on insect larvae. The chapter then looks at nitrogen assimilation and phosphate starvation tolerance. It also considers pod shatter-resistant canola, genetically engineered forest trees, and hybrid seed production.
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The Human Population and Its Food Supply in the 21st Century
Maarten J. Chrispeels and Hanya E. Chrispeels
This chapter discusses the past, present, and future of the human population and its relationship to food production. In the past, the uncertainties of food production too often have led to food insecurity, and the future holds further uncertainties posed by climate change. Rapid urbanization in developing countries is changing where vegetables are grown and how they are made available to consumers. The depopulation of the land means that farming will have to become more efficient and less labour intensive. There is agreement among agricultural scientists that the way forward is to increase the productivity of farmland everywhere and to do this sustainably, reducing the impact of agriculture on the environment. The chapter then looks at how government policies play pivotal roles in global food production, as well as the importance of agricultural research and biotechnology.
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A Changing Global Food System
One Hundred Centuries of Agriculture
H. Maelor Davies and Paul Gepts
This chapter examines the changes that have occurred in farming over the past 10,000 years and which continue today. Agriculture and food play an important role in the economic systems of all countries and regions. Indeed, crop and animal domestication — integral to the practices of farming — were essential for the development of human civilizations. Agricultural systems in different regions of the world differ in their productivity, and in the modern world, scientific and technological discoveries are responsible for many of those differences. Whereas modern science-driven agriculture is highly productive, especially in developed countries, a billion smallholder farmers in developing countries are confined to small farms where productivity is low and where they produce just enough food to supply themselves with the bare essentials of life.
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Converting Solar Energy into Crop Production
Donald R. Ort, Rebecca A. Slattery, and Stephen P. Long
This chapter focuses on photosynthesis, which is the basis of all life on Earth. Crop plant growth and development are limited by photosynthesis, and so an understanding of the basic chemistry of this process is important to food production. Indeed, increasing food production may depend in part on our ability to make the biochemical processes of photosynthesis more efficient. The chapter begins by looking at how photosynthetic membranes convert light energy to chemical energy. In photosynthetic carbon metabolism, chemical energy is used to convert CO2 to carbohydrates. The chapter then considers how sucrose and other polysaccharides are exported to heterotrophic plant organs to provide energy for growth and storage. It also studies photoprotection and explores abiotic environmental factors which can limit photosynthetic efficiency and crop productivity.
