As the Earth's Land Area Is Shrinking

Global warming is blamed for the rising of sea water levels which sinks islands under water. Droughts and rampant forest denudation choked watershed areas and aquatifers  slowly killing the lakes, rivers and streams. More and more areas are slowly becoming deserts. With urbanization and industrialization, large areas of tractable lands are converted into residential areas,  developed into recreaction facilities or commercial establishments. These are causing the earth's land surface to keep on shrinking.

Food production hinges largely on how much land area is available to grow crops and raise animals. Menaced by the shrinking acreage of arable lands and the ever increasing demand for food due to the ever-increasing human population worldwide, scientists are left with the only option of producing more food within less available land. This was the major driving force in the so-called  'agricultural revolution'!

I could still remember, when  I was a young, farmers used to plant traditional varieties of rice in their fields. The rice grew tall, and the winds could easily knocked them down to the ground especially during the booting stage when the grains started to fill. This explained why traditional varieties yield way too low per acreage. In the 1970's, the International Rice Research Institute released new rice varieties, one of which was dubbed  the 'miracle' rice. The rice plants grew up to only knee high, and were resistant to shattering. Being stout and short, normally the plants were able to support the grains at booting until up to harvest. True to its name, a huge increase in yield,  amazingly up to 10 times, were enjoyed by the farmers.

Scientists have developed ways to close in the gap between food production and the increasing global demand for food. They developed genetic engineering or recombinant DNA, a tool which radically changed the way scientists develop new and superior varieties of plants and animals. This technique cuts short generation times needed in the conventional breeding methods. In a nutschell, through this technology, scientists can source out good genes from different plant or animals species, and have them pieced together in a new breed, just like a designer jean. These newly-designed plant or animal varieties will go to the farmers' field or ranch for mass production. A visit to the produce aisle in any huge grocery, one could easily admire the good-looking red, green and yellow bell peppers, huge bright red seedless watermelon, huge ears of freshly-picked sweet corn, and a wide variety of potatoes and tomatoes. Many of them are designer products, now known as 'genetically-modified' crops.

In addition to designing high yielding varieties of crop plants, agriculture is taking a second look at promoting 'hanging gardens'. Vertical structures are built,  on each side, layers of  horizontal 'plots' are planted with crops. Growing some vegetables hang upside down is another practice in consideration.

It's not only the planting of crops that is affected by the shrinkage of agricultural lands. Raising cattle, lamb or goat suffers the same fate as ranches and grazing lands get smaller. As such,  animal breeders came up with rather grain-feeding instead of mostly grazing kinds. In the news lately, a scientist is trying to grow meat in the laboratory. Cultured meat, anyone? Why not?

It has become common practice now using stem cells  to replace certain defective adult body part.s On the same premise, one scientist is using myoblasts, the embryonic stem cells which give rise to the muscles in the body, to start with his meat culture. Pork myoblast for pork, beef myoblast for beef, lamb myoblast for lamb. A beef myoblast made to grow around a T-shaped streak of osteoblast (the stem cells for making bones) , given the right mix of growth substances.... voila, a T-bone steak!  So why raise a whole cow when one needs only the meat? This is called tissue engineering!

Engineering has infiltrated and significantly re-designed the architectural lansdcape of  biological science. There is genetic engineering, protein engineering, food engineering, tissue engineering... Engineering will continue to adulterate the minds of biologists in response to the increasing challenge of life sustainability  amidst the different adversities.

An image in my crystal ball, I see  'green' humans and animals in the future. No, am not thinking about Shrek or the green-haired ompa lompas! Another brave-new-world scenario is predicted where humans and other animals are engineered to contain chlorophyll in their skins instead of or in addition to the usual melanin. This seems very interesting and, apparently, a win-win situation . Imagine, our body producing food through photosynthesis as we walk or jog under the morning sun! We won't go hungry then! Probably thirsty, as the body's demand for water may be doubled - in photosynthesis and perspiration!