TWC Session 7 (Week 7)

Figure 1. Banaue Rice Terraces, Ifugao Provice, Phillippines 
Reproduced from Shedexpedition. (n.d.)

Brief Overview/Summary

We covered the topic on BioBusiness Revolution: Agribiology, Environmental Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology (Past, Present and Future).  

Prof. shared with us the colours of Biotechnology where Red represents Biotechnology that applies to humans - this aspect was also covered in last week's session. Green represents Biotech. that applies to plants or animals; Blue for marine and lastly, white for industrial.

We discussed the trends on when we become more urbanized, trends such as we are not as active as compared to pre-urbanized state (hunter-gatherer to industrial) which leads to more chronic diseases (obesity related health issues), on the other hand we have more income. The interesting thing that I can hypothesize is that we sort of sacrifice health for more income and in the end the income is still gonna be use on correcting on our health,  there is really an irony over here.

We talked about opportunity areas on

• Agri-Veterinary and Food BioBusiness, example the Fisheries and Aquaculture and Prof. shared an interesting fact that over 70% of the fish we consumed are farmed fish, while a very small percentage is from the wild and this is due to limited resource and a spoil food chain. Then, on Agri-biotechnology where Genetically Modified Food (GMO) comes into the picture. 
• Environmental and Industrial BioBusiness , example the Environmental bioremediation which is an opportunity area that is about cleaning up the waste we've created.

We also discussed what is Agribiology vs Agribiotechnology; Farmer vs Farmist; Growing food vs Growing energy resources; To GM or not to GM and actually all along we have been GM thing on a macro-scale for example, dogs have a vast variety of them is because of genetic modifying based on selective breeding and we also link this to Green Revolution which is led by Norman Borlaug who also used selective breeding on crops and this led to why there was a Green Revolution, this is because of Food Security defined as a condition where all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO).

We also covered on a model on Food Security and Flash Pyrolysis which is a higher efficient process where Biomass is converted to Fuel. Then we ended the topic with discussion on readings and the ever entertaining presentation by our peers.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

Agri-biology vs Agri-biotechnogy

• Biology is the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy, while Agriculture, is under a branch of biology, which is the study of producing crops from the land, with an emphasis on practical applications. Hence I conclude that Agri-biology = Agriculture.

• Biotechnology is the any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use" (UN Convention on Biological Diversity). Hence I conclude that Agri-biotechnology is the use of knowledge of biological living systems and organisms to solve or improve agricultural problems. 

Key Take Away Points

On food security, and a quote by Mahatma Gandhi, “There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.”  This is very true as it is proved that food production is able to feed the whole world as the plan is everyone is allocated with 3000 calories worth of food but sadly, this is not the case as we can see the rich get to eat way more than the poor.

Issues for Further Discussion

Personal Ratings for Session

Personally I rate this session 10/10 as the session is very informative and the videos are very engages me, also the presenters were well-prepared and fun.