Food, Glorious Food!

Unlike batteries (energy for our toys and tools), food (energy for us) is one product where we should expect significant advances on quite a few fronts over the next century.

Food Production

The biggest changes to food production in recent history have been the Agricultural Revolutions.  First came the Agricultural Revolutions in Europe from the 1700s to the 1900s that spread to rest of the western world.  Still, the majority of the world faced periodic starvation, until the Green Revolution (1940s-1970s) in Mexico, India, the Philippines, China, and other countries.  The massive increase in world food output has limited much of the threat of mass starvation to some countries in Africa (where the Green Revolution has been less successful), poor countries after natural disasters, or isolated cases of poor governance, often due to totalitarian governments (Cuba and North Korea in the 1990s).

The biggest driver of world food production increase in the near future will be due to three factors: the continued propagation of Green Revolution ideas across the African continent, improvements in desalinization technology, and the spread and eventual acceptance of some higher-yield and stress-tolerant genetically modified (GM) crops.  Farther into the future and we start looking at more novel ways of creating food: vat-grown protein (open question: would vegetarians eat this?), kelp ponds, vertical farming.

Crop Terrorism

Unfortunately, food production can be disrupted through relatively small efforts.  (Remember the California fruit fly?)  If terrorist organizations survive the military and ideological wars, they may branch out from bombing buildings (high shock value, but low strategic value) to attacking crops (high strategic value).

Individual Diets

One new concept in the world of nutrition is that of an individualized diet, based on a person’s genetic profile.  Sure, we knew that some people were lactose-tolerant or lactose-intolerant, but now we are finding out that there are many more food categories that are better- or worse-tolerated by people based on their individual genes.

As individual DNA-testing becomes for genetic diseases becomes common, we should expect to see this testing branch out, with personalized diet profiles (a.k.a. "nutrigenomics") as the logical next step, probably within the next few decades.  For only a few hundred dollars, you can find out if the reason PB&J always makes your stomach upset is due to the peanut butter, or due to the bread.