The safest predictions involve extensions of the recent trends. In doing so, a number of patterns can be expected:
Market-wise, the areas of greatest new opportunity likely involve high-value food
products – especially those linked to better health – and non-food products, particularly those with environmental
and health benefits. Fuel-grade ethanol was one of the first of these products, but it will likely be followed
by other renewable fuels and biologically derived replacements for plastics. Although degradable plastics have
experienced several false starts, one of these times it will be for real... and the potential market is huge.
Biologically, even if the current rush to biotechnology is slowed somewhat by public angst, this trend will not
likely be reversed. The driver will be major consumer benefits – particularly those linked to improved health and
environment.
As the technology improves, the shift will inevitably be to designer genes (i.e., genes created artificially to
perform certain functions, as distinct from those transferred between species).
This will lead to designer food plants, differing significantly from traditional crops – probably even with different
names. Indeed, Canada already has one designer crop with a designer name – canola – created using early forms of
genetic engineering. Much more is likely to follow.
Higher rates of photosynthesis? Nitrogen fixation? Disease resistance? New carbon-based chemical products? Different
roots, leaves, or whatever? No problem. Computer software will code for the required genes, simulate the expected
response, provide the ‘plant breeder/engineer’ with various options, make the fine tuning needed, and program the
gene insertion into a crop plant chromosome. And lawyers and judges will still wear funny robes and fight over
patents.
Perhaps the corn grown a few decades from now will not even be called corn. Or there may be all kinds of designer
corn – with markedly different traits (much more so than at present) and different names – but all based on the
genetic framework now known as Zea mays to the scientists, corn to North American farmers, and by dozens of other
names around the world.
Those wanting more genetic diversity will be pleased. There’ll be oodles of genetic diversity, though it will seldom
resemble “natural diversity”...whatever that means...for Zea mays, a species which does not exist and cannot exist
in the wild (the closest wild relative, teosinte, is classed as a different species).
So, citizens of tomorrow will eat foods grown from designer plants, generally with better nutritional properties
and fewer natural toxins, and produced more cheaply than at present. They’ll also wear ‘synthetic’ clothes made
from biological polymers, and live in a world dominated by renewable resources made from plants and microorganisms.
They’ll buy biodegradable homes, furnishings, transportation vehicles, fuels, communications networks, and more.
The only limitation will be imagination.
Of course, the contrary view is also possible. The second millennium saw a world which changed from relatively
barbaric conditions of the year 1000 to the generally advanced civilization(s) – and human civility – of the year
2000. But that was not especially true for the previous millennium. And there is no assurance of progression for
the next. Perhaps it is the species, Homo sapiens, which won’t be recognizable a thousand years from now.
But so much for dreaming. Back to reality. What’s the chance of the price of corn recovering from its present disastrously
low level by this spring?
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