August 5, at a press conference in London, celebrity chef Richard McGeown prepared a burger which was tasted by critic Hanni Ruetzler, from the Future Food Studio, who said, “The consistency is perfect. This is meat for me.”
The burger was prepared from lab-grown meat. Scientists from the Netherlands, led by Mark Post, used stem cells from a cow and grew them into strips of muscle from which the burger was made. The burger was a bit expensive. At ¤2,50,000 a piece, it isn't exactly what the fast food chain round the corner is likely to be selling anytime soon.
But there is a lot more being done in labs, the fruits of which we are likely to see on our plates in a few years. On the outskirts of Hyderabad is a field which has not been watered in a long time. Scientists from a seed producing firm, DSCL, are testing the rice crop for drought resistance. In another field close by, the crop is watered, but with brackish water. As land under agriculture shrinks, climate change renders present agricultural land unarable and as farm labour gets harder to come by, the future of agriculture is heavily dependent on smart crops.
At seed giant Mahyco's laboratory in Jalna, Maharashtra, a brave new generation of such crops is being developed, from transgenic rice that is better able to pick up nitrogen from soil to transgenic okra that is resistant to pest attack. The transgenic route (taking a gene from another organism and inserting it into a plant) is also being used to develop crops that are herbicide-resistant. “So the farmer can spray the entire field with herbicide instead of manually weeding. The weeds will die, the herbicide-resistant crops won't,” explains Bharat Char, biotechnology head, Mahyco.
The moratorium over Bt brinjal notwithstanding, research and development in agriculture is going on at a rapid, though silent, pace. Wheat and rice are priority crops for R&D while okra, eggplant, gourds, peppers, radish, cabbage and cauliflower are priority vegetables, followed by soyabean, sugarcane and potato. The Golden Rice Project is an international endeavour to tackle vitamin A deficiency by incorporating it into rice grains.
These endeavours have their share of critics. “I foresee a near future in which we will be consuming food capsules,” says agriculture activist Devendra Sharma. “Now scientists are even developing a platinum rice packed with iron, calcium, molybdenum and other trace elements. Food, as we now know it, will disappear.”
Cropping patterns are also likely to change. “Traditional rice growing areas may have to make way for less water-intensive soyabean and maize cultivation, unless farmers resort to drought-resistant crops,'' says Char.
Apple cultivation is expected to gradually move to the upper slopes of Himachal while warming seas will mean that the Bombay Duck fish will have to cease being a local favourite, as it migrates towards relatively cooler Gujarat shores. It will also mean that sardine and mackerel will be more abundant off Maharashtra by then, according to fishery scientists.
However, with greater food imports, better storage and transport, the consumer is not likely to know where the food one is eating has come from, unless one is the type who reads food labels diligently. Labelling, incidentally, will get more regularised. “One big change will be a greater demand for vegetables,” says Char.
Meanwhile, a more visible change that will be seen in kitchens is the increasing reliance on packaged and processed food, says Sharma. He believes this will take away the romance from the plate. The lady in the kitchen might think otherwise. She'll agree that convenient cooking will leave her with more time for romance.
