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Top agronomists at Purdue University will be part of a new nationwide higher ed task force on food security. It aims to ensure that the world’s rapidly growing population has enough to eat.
The Association of Public and Land Grant Universities is putting together the 31-member commission. It aims to devise research and public education ideas for improving food access and nutrition by 2050, when the global population is set to hit 9 billion.
The group includes World Food Prize winner Gebisa Ejeta, a presidential appointee to the US AID board on food security and director of Purdue’s center on that issue.
He says land grant schools’ legacy of service means they need to figure out how to feed a changing world.
“I think if we mobilize this talent pool to move away perhaps from just pursuing science for science sake or technology for technology’s sake … can we target acute societal problems that are emerging?” Ejeta says.
And bring other partners to the table to implement the new ideas, Ejeta says — like ones about combating the effects of climate change and new diseases on agriculture.
The commission will release a list of research and education goals early next year.
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