The Great Intervention: Innovation in Food Systems

The intervention of biotech and innovative industrialization in agriculture could ensure, or compromise, the safety of our food systems and ecosystems. How can we strike the right balance? What needs to be avoided at all costs? Though technologies can produce greater quantities of food from less, while monitoring climate adaptation and reducing the harmful impacts of pesticides on biodiversity, many farmers and rural communities could suffer from the agri-tech revolution. Considering the possible loss of jobs and livelihoods, the inability of farmers to afford “crucial” technologies or chemical inputs, the devaluation of land-use knowledge and traditional farming practices, to what extent does agriculture actually need innovation? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?