Unsung Agricultural Miracle of Modern Science Could Cure World Hunger

People of our generation are quite accustomed to new devices and technologies that vastly alter the way society or industry functions.  The space program, the computer revolution, genetics, medicine and science have all advanced so quickly in the past 40 years that our world has literally been changed by innovation.  And we tend to take it for granted.  However, one area of our lives have pretty much stayed the same for the past 100 years-  and that would be the preservation of food.

In 1895, the refrigerator was invented.  In my opinion, the refrigerator brought about the modern world you see around you now because no other invention of mankind did so much to advance health and well-being more than the ability to keep our food cold and therefore, safe from bacterial contamination.  Since 1895, the most significant development in the progress of food preservation has been the use of genetically modified plants to enhance longevity or combat mold.

But there is a new device on the market that I believe will ultimately have as much of an impact on food as the refrigerator did.  And its so simple and easy to use that it will soon revolutionize agriculture worldwide and could solve world hunger.  What is it?  The Debbie Myers Greenbags.

Have you seen these commercials on television for the bags that stop veggies from spoiling?  They work, and they work very well.  In fact, the bags may as well be a time vortex in the way that they prevent food from getting old, moldy, slimy, spoiled or stinky.  My wife and I have used them for about a year now and we hardly ever throw away vegetables.  I can keep a head of lettuce for months without it spoiling.  And the way it preserves bananas is just plain freaky.  They never spoil, but oddly, the skin gets thin.  I have no idea how much money I’ve saved using them, but its sure to be a bunch.

But curing world hunger?  Am I exaggerating?  I really don’t think so.  Wrapping freshly picked fruit and veggies in these bags would preserve them much longer.  Wholesalers and growers would lose far less to spoilage.  And because of the way the bags “freeze time” it would allow the food industry to ship more food to the markets and extend the reach of the market outwards to include areas that usually do not get fresh products.

Simply put, if you can triple the amount of time produce lasts, you can feed many more people with the same crop yields.

And those little green bags could help in the war on terror too.  It seems that former poppy growers in Afghanistan want to grow helpful food crops, but before they can get their harvest to market, it rots.  From the BBC here:

Qari Osman Sherzad, the eloquent 39-year-old village chief, says: “The Afghan government told them a year ago to stop growing poppies and the villagers were promised alternative crops and reconstruction projects.

“They destroyed my fields because I was poor and they couldn’t destroy those fields belonging to the powerful people at the time. Now I have grown tomatoes and other vegetables, but by the time I transport them to Jalalabad, they are all rotten.”

Its often the application of the simplest technologies that can change the world.  I think that making fresh vegetables last three to six times longer will be one of those technologies.