Source:  NCSU COLLEGE OF AG & LIFE SCIENCES, 1/2/20

By 2050, the United Nations estimates, global demand for food will increase by 50%.

The same UN report predicts that many of the inputs driving food production will dwindle or grow too slowly to meet demand: arable land, the agriculture workforce, water and other natural resources.

Rising demand for food. Falling means to produce it. These are existential issues, and research in genetic engineering and biotechnology have yielded potential solutions: robust seeds that resist drought and disease, genetic modifications that neutralize pests, crops that pack more nutrients into the very food we eat.

With each innovation, though, comes intense debate over the moral and cultural implications of genetically modifying the world around us.

“You have this technology that’s situated to really revolutionize agriculture both in the plant and animal side,” said Jennifer Kuzma, Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) Center. “So you have this fundamental problem of enthusiastic technologists and skeptical publics.”

NC State has played a key role in developing some of biotech’s most meaningful agricultural innovations. Now it’s pioneering a new, interdisciplinary approach to training the interdisciplinary scholars who will shape the debate in the future.

The Agricultural Biotechnology in Food, Energy and Water Systems (AgBioFEWS) program is showing graduate students the full spectrum of issues in biotech and genetic engineering, from the lab, to the field, to the public square. And it’s an approach that could inform how we seek solutions to other grand challenges.

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