Several N.C. State faculty members gathered on Monday to discuss the battle between food and fuel across the world, as populations continue to increase.
The Global Issues Seminar, Food versus Fuel, hosted three panelists who presented their perspectives about the growth of the world’s population in correlation to food and fuel consumption. The Office of International Affairs and the School of Public and International Affairs co-sponsored the final seminar, ending a semester-long series that covered a wide range of global issues.
Megan Landwehr, communications and media specialist from the Office of International Affairs, said she worked diligently to organize this event in support of the Global Health Initiative.
“It’s really to showcase N.C. State’s faculty who are solving really big world challenges,” Landwehr said.
Each semester, the Office of International Affairs partners with different organizations to cover a wide range of topics, according to Landwehr.
“We try to make the topics as general as possible to try and get different faculty members to talk about different topics from different angles,” Landwehr said.
Landwehr said that final seminar, covering food and fuel resources, should raise awareness to a diverse crowd of student attendees.
Marian McCord, the director of the N.C. State Global Health Initiative, began the seminar by demonstrating the importance of the topic.
“By the year 2035, we are going to have an 84 percent increase in the amount of energy consumption in our world,” McCord said.
With staggering challenges facing a constantly growing population, McCord said she asserts that a solution must be on the horizon.
“How do we balance appropriately so that we have enough food to go around and enough energy to use?” McCord said.
N.C. State alumnus Alex Lombardi manages the Global Health Programs on campus and said he works to bring consciousness to this prevalent issue.
“With society progressing and the population growing so rapidly, I think it is really important for us to take into consideration of the resources that we have available to us,” Lombardi said.
Lombardi said he hopes that by attending the seminar, students would have a greater understanding of the use of resources worldwide.
“It is important to be aware of the resources we have available and the fact that they are not indefinite,” Lombardi said.
Bob Patterson, a professor of crop science, said the crisis is relevant worldwide, regarding renewable and nonrenewable resources.
While nonrenewable resources, such as coal and oil, dominate the majority of the resources being used, renewable resources provide only a small fraction of the energy being used today, Patterson said.
Patterson said the necessity of these resources is critical to everyday life across the globe, especially in regard to food consumption.
“Human beings will do just about anything to satisfy this basic need,” Patterson said.
Matthew Veal, assistant professor in biological and agricultural engineering, also participated in the panel.
Veal questioned the validity of the issue surrounding food and fuel resources, and ultimately said food conquers fuel in the battle between the two.
“Food always wins out on the economic basis,” Veal said. “We will always pay more for food.”
Kelly Zering, associate professor in agricultural and resource economics, gave audiences an extensive forecast of what he thinks are the future problems regarding food consumption.
Zering said that by 2050, the quantity demanded of all food will increase by approximately 70 percent while the global meat quantity demanded is expected to increase by 100 percent.
“We are in a new critical phase of human development,” Zering said. “Rapid change is occurring, so we are going to experience challenges that no one else has. I think solutions are there.”
