Future of Food | CRISPR, Agriculture, and Gene Editing

Today Distinguished Professor Rodolphe Barrangou at North Carolina State University taught me so much about CRISPR and the future of food. Our ever-expanding gene-editing toolkit is now so comprehensive it allows us to write single letters, long sequences or entire genomes as we wish, giving us unparalleled opportunities to improve nutritional value, yield, resilience and other characteristics of harvested crops. All this opens up new pathways to feeding humanity, sustainably, through peak population and beyond. And *sustainably* is the key word in that sentence: the opportunity is to REforest, not deforest -- and to urgently restore some of our critical biodiversity -- while still managing to feed the planet.

Prof Barrangou also pointed out that 95% of CRISPR scientists today are working on gene-editing in human therapies, with the remaining 5% left to tackle ALL other forms of life. Gene therapies can save hundreds of thousands of lives, but how many could we save by transforming agriculture and saving the planet's forests and biodiversity? Opportunity anyone?

Do we want more edited crops? Is it socially challenging? Does editing scare many of us? Yes, yes and yes. With the technical barriers gone, the primary remaining issue is acceptance. A broader understanding of the true risks and rewards by citizens will determine how aggressively each country pursues this pathway to the future.

To learn more about Professor Barrangou and his colleagues and their amazing work, visit:

For more about what I do and why, go to: