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1180. "Moonshot" Innovations to Eradicate Hunger

1180. "Moonshot" Innovations to Eradicate Hunger
On January 14, 153 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates published an open letter calling for financial and political support for the development of "moonshot" technologies with the greatest potential to avert a hunger crisis in the next 25 years.
Dr. Cary Fowler, the joint 2024 World Food Prize laureate and outgoing U.S. State Department's Special Envoy for Global Food Security, said, "All the evidence points to an escalating decline in food productivity if the world continues with business as usual." The open letter warns that the world is "not even close" to meeting future food needs, estimating that 700 million people are currently suffering from hunger and that an additional 1.5 billion will need to be fed by 2050. Unless the international community strengthens its support for the latest research and innovation, humanity faces an "even more food insecure, unstable world" by the middle of this century. Despite Africa having the fastest population growth, the yield of maize, a staple food, is projected to decline almost everywhere on the continent.
The open letter argues that food and nutrition security requires a planet-friendly "moonshot" effort that delivers a realistic—rather than incremental—leap forward, and that its success will require policies, regulations, and incentives to create an environment that can promote science-based AI, computational biology, and advanced genomic technologies. Urgent action is needed to reverse the trajectory towards a tragic mismatch between global food supply and demand by 2050.
The scientists are advocating for transformational efforts across the food value chain, from inputs to production to the postharvest phases. Building on recent advancements in biology and genetics, moonshot initiatives that could be considered include: enhancement of photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, biological nitrogen fixation of major cereals, transformation of annual to perennial crops, development of new and underutilized opportunity crops, innovations in diverse cropping systems, enhancement of fruits and vegetables to improve storage and shelf life and to improve food safety, and the creation of nutrient-rich food from microorganisms and fungi. Also critical will be the study and development of strategies to make certain that the fruits of these scientific research initiatives reach and benefit those most in need.
Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki, Information Program