Nobel laureates urge global investment in emerging technologies to combat impending “hunger catastrophe”

Over 150 Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates have signed an open letter pleading for financial and political backing to develop “moonshot” technologies to avert an impending “hunger catastrophe” that they say will impact over 2 billion people in the coming 25 years.

The letter calls for investment and expansion of emerging technologies that could use synthetic biology, gene editing and engineering to improve photosynthesis and enable crops to grow without fertilizers, as well as research into overlooked indigenous crops that are naturally nutrition-rich and can withstand environmental pressures.

It also draws attention to the need to improve the storage and shelf life of fruits and vegetables and create nutrient-rich food from microorganisms and fungi.

“There is hope. Agricultural R&D has long been essential to increasing food production. Since the Green Revolution of the last century, our understanding of biology and genetics has increased greatly. However, requisite productivity increases are now hampered by lack of investment in basic and applied research, and by regulatory barriers prohibiting distribution and use of research advancements,” the letter reads.

“Incremental agricultural productivity improvements will be insufficient to meet future needs. By failing to prioritize agricultural R&D and its dissemination today, we tie our farming systems and fate to the past and the ever-increasing use of diminishing non-replenishable resources to feed humanity.”

The signatories say the world is “not even close” to meeting future food needs, with an estimated 700 million people currently living in hunger and an additional 1.5 billion people to feed by 2050.

The letter predicts humanity will face an “even more food insecure, unstable world” by 2050 unless the international community ramps up support for the latest research and innovation.

Returns on investment

The Laureates also highlight the threat climate change poses to food production, particularly in Africa, where population growth is highest, and staple crop yields are forecast to decline throughout the continent.

Other factors undermining crop productivity include soil erosion and land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages and geopolitical conflict.

Mashal Husain, incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, remarks: “This is an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ moment for global hunger. Having the world’s greatest minds unite behind this urgent wake-up call should inspire hope and action.”

“If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely rally the funding, resources and collaboration needed to put enough food on plates here on Earth. With the right support, the scientific community can deliver the breakthroughs to prevent catastrophic food insecurity in the next 25 years.”

The letter stresses that agricultural research gains “extremely favorable returns” on investment with all benefits considered.

“The benefit of enabling healthy, productive and secure lives for billions of people has returns that flow broadly through the global economy,” it reads, “while some of the market failures can be addressed with current technologies, within appropriate regulatory and ‘pricing’ frameworks (such as the pricing of carbon and water), full success in meeting the world’s nutritional needs will also require advances in basic research.”

Brian Schmidt, 2011 Nobel Laureate in Physics, says: “The research-driven green revolution that has dramatically lowered malnutrition across the globe over the past 60 years is losing momentum, with food insecurity once again on the rise, and a looming crisis emerging by 2050.”

“This is an eminently solvable problem, relatively inexpensive, with a payoff benefitting all of humanity.”

The letter is being discussed today at an event in the Senate Committee on Agriculture Roomin Washington, D.C., US.