CPF Discussion on Food Supply Security in Africa

As part of the Crisis Policy Forum, the HotSpring collaborative innovation initiative is now planning an effort to tackle the problem of food supply management and chronic food and water scarcity in Africa. The lessons from this experiment in collaborative research will be applicable in many cases to other situations around the world, and we are open to spurring dialogue in those areas as outgrowths of this ongoing discussion.

Discussion will focus on practical solutions to:

1. Problems related to infusing food supply with enough to feed all those in need;
2. Environmental degradation: i.e. resilience services, ecological measures, ecosystem management;
3. Land use deficiencies: how to improve;
4. Animal and timber poaching;
5. Economic corrosion and instability;
6. Corruption and funding shortfalls;
7. Cooperative measures for extending food supply to conflict-afflicted areas;
8. Overcoming limits of transportation infrastructure;
9. Contagious disease: treatment, education, socio-economic impact;
10. Communications gaps: get relevant anecdotal and researched data to those who can use it.

The goal will be to actually craft calibrated solutions to the seemingly intractable problems related to food security across the diverse regions of the African continent. We hope to use collaborative research, and evolving online commentary to develop innovative practices, including funding options, which local stakeholders can implement in a variety of combinations.

More at Crisis Policy Forum: “FOOD SUPPLY RESTORATION & SECURITY: AFRICA”

Spaceblooms: Is Future of Farming in Outer Space?

Space flora or “xflora”, a category of synthetic biochemical organism, engineered to exist in floating colonies in space, combines nano-technology with and biotechnology. While it sounds near impossible, the concept is to create organisms that can feed from their environment, even where that environment would be deadly (for chill, high radiation or lack of nutrients) to Earthborne organisms, and that can be harvested freely as future “off-Earth” human colonies or transports may require.

One of the most obvious applications would be the potential for such vegetation to greatly extend the viable length of space journeys, providing a “native” farming option for astronauts, and a potential means of adaptation to life in zero-gravity, zero-atmosphere space.

NASA is reportedly working on potential test projects for space flora, and specifically the application of such technologies to creating an environment on Mars where human beings could take shelter and use space-age subsistence farming to keep a research colony going.

An astonishing array of ambitions accompany this field of research, including the hope of being able to implant nanotechnology into the cells of individual plants, to enable them to find light more efficiently, and to promote blooming on cue, and the ability to manipulate up or down the crop density for a given spacebloom.

The future-set web report Spacebloom: a Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora relays from the 23rd century the (currently future) history of space flora and off-Earth self-sustaining farming. The site’s “intro” section speaks of a 150 year period of massive innovation and quips that “The roots of this knowledge explosion can be traced to the middle of the 21st century, when, after many decades of empty rhetoric and grandiose posturing, a worldwide focus on equal access to all levels of education was realized.”

The key to the story, be it theory or practice, is that the field of spacebloom research has been opened, at NASA and by curious seekers, and it will be fed by the imagination of many. The goal of achieving self-propagating, self-reproducing synthetic organisms that can both harvest nourishment from and provide nourishment efficiently in outer space, takes us far beyond the scope of current thought in the realm of agriculture, with possible lessons, potential hazards, and many tempting possibilities, even for the realm of agricultural practice on Earth.

• Mutable Matter: “Salad Machines in Space”
• Spacebloom.net: “Spacebloom: A Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora”