Colette Felton

11/20/16
What connections did you see between the interdisciplinary nature of this Global Challenges
discussion and a global challenge you seek to address? What interdisciplinary approaches might
you take to make that issue real and personal for you?
I would love to attempt to address the problem of world hunger. Access to nutritious food is a
problem around the world, especially in developing countries. Global warming is tied not only to
environmental science, but also to politics, native rights, global cooperation, and economics.
Similarly, world hunger is tied not only to agriculture management, but also to genetics,
environmental science, population studies, and politics. These two challenges are not only related
by the fact that they are both interdisciplinary. In some ways, they are very tightly linked. They
feed off each other. People attempt to solve the problem of food scarcity by using toxic
pesticides, which contribute to global warming. Raising animals for human consumption, as they
release large quantities of CO2 and methane, which are greenhouse gasses that contribute to
global warming. However, all plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and help reduce the
amount of that greenhouse gas. Just as food scarcity impacts global warming, global warming
impacts food scarcity. A warming planet means that many environments around the world will
change and no longer be suitable for the crops that are traditionally grown there. Also, the rising
ocean will not only swallow some arable land, it may also reduce the survival of some fish which
humans depend on for food.
This is the main problem I seek to address in my daily life. I wish to become a geneticist
and hope to genetically engineer crops that will feed the growing world population. Perhaps I
will create more drought resistant crops or some that will grow even where there is saltwater as
groundwater, or genetically engineer a fish that will help revitalize an ocean ecosystem.
However, each of these small ideas is of itself interdisciplinary. There are questions of policy, of
environmental health, of economics, and more underlying any solution that might be proposed to
these big problems.
This idea of working to solve world hunger has always been a dream of mine. I dont
have any firsthand experience of food scarcity, but nevertheless, this issue feels very important to
me. I remember reading a National Geographic article in middle school about geneticists
engineering new species of rice that were drought resistant or more nutritious and for some
reason, it stuck with me. As I progressed through high school, I watched documentaries about
McDonalds, genetically engineered papayas, and small farmers in Africa. Again, for no reason
that I could explain, these were the ones that stuck with me. So, I have no trouble making food
scarcity personal to me, as I have held it in my heart for a long time. One of my biggest
takeaways from the global challenges talk was that the worst possible thing to do is bury your
head in the sand. Even if it seems like everything is going to go wrong and there is nothing you
can do about it, this talk reminded me that even single people and small communities can have a
large impact, so long as they keep on fighting. This sounds exhausting, but it is necessary, as our
world is changing, and we must try to keep up.