Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

This member contributed to:

    • We are not marketing the power of brain but the hunger 

      Dear Scientists

      I just wanted to focus your attention to the following points that I wanted to highlight at this moment.

      Today we are marketing, not the brainpower of the humans but the hunger the feeling of the belly or the gut. Please develop technologies to have foods at affordable prices for needy people and provide education to them to use their brainpower to be used for the coming fourth industrial revolution.

      A few years back I just search the nutrient values of most of the grasses which we feed for cattle and the nutritive value of those grasses is very much higher than we thank. But unfortunately, we are unable to develop at least an energy drink for needy people to maintain their basic health status. Their hunger and diseases are marketed globally. This is very pathetic and a shame for the entire humanity.

    • Global movement to exploit the creativity of the human brain and market knowledge and skills in emerging circular economies to increase the purchasing power    

      Chandima Gunasena – [email protected]

      The creativity of the human brain is immense, according to a research conducted by Torrance in 1961, identified lack of education and resources for working out ideas were some of the limiting factors of creativity among children. The fourth industrial revolution and immerging circular economies mostly depend on technologies, knowledge, and skills. Presently, in most of the developing countries, people earn for foods or in other words market hunger to generate labor for service-oriented employments. Hence, most of the children seek service-oriented jobs and discontinue their education in the early stages. They receive unhealthy foods and become sick during adulthood. Whatever they earn goes for food and medicine and this is the vicious cycle they suffer.

      Food security and the ability to have nutritious foods will decide the quality of human resources of the developing countries and therefore, feeding developing countries and improving their knowledge and skills will have positive impacts on circular economies in developed countries as well as developing countries.

      Therefore, primary production, value addition, and marketing must be coordinated to have sustainable ecosystem services and maintain resilience for future generations. At this juncture, it is very important to develop a global movement or a common model for spiritually coordinated natural resource sharing for production.

    • Global movement to introduce the importance of native, rare, traditional edible fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants for the school community   

      Sustainability depends not only on conserving rare flora but also explore the possibility of edibility and nutritive value of those. When the community identifies the taste and the nutritive values and medicinal properties of rare, native fruits, vegetables, and medicinal plants, they will start to add those plants into their home gardens. With the advancement of landscaping activities as a science, people tend to use plants having certain qualities like colorful flowers and leaves to decorate home gardens. Tissue culture technology proliferates these plants very quickly and distributes these plant varieties cost-effectively, allowing to spread rapidly within home garden ecological systems. This selective growing practice reduces the natural diversity of flora and minimizes the natural nutrient profile which is easily accessible not only for humans but also for other important pollinators like, bees, butterflies, small birds, etc.   

      Therefore, there is a need to introduce the value of these rare, native edible flora to the future community to conserve the gene pool and use it to address the malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. This could be initiated by introducing a time slot into the school curricula and teach school community about the importance of tasting not only sweets and salt but also other tastes like, sour, bitter and umami to improve health conditions and address the malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies via improving edible biodiversity within home garden ecosystems.