Dr. Carl Winter, director of the FoodSafe Program and 2012 winner of the Council for Agriculture and Technology (CAST) Communication award, said: “Rarely do you see the concept of communication recognized as an important element of science.” As an academic scientist, he explained, he has noticed that many times academia underestimates the importance of communication or allows others to do it for them.
The problem with that, he said, is that it can misspackage the science by not allowing the scientist to demonstrate their passion to the audience. This problem is one he has noticed particularly recently in the area of crop genetics and the public’s response to genetically modified organisms.
The CAST Communication award, presented at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa was awarded to Jeff Simmons, president of Elanco. Taking the stage to a wave of applause and congratulatory remarks, Simmons explained that the industry’s ability to communicate with the consumers is key not only to profitability, but to fundamental issues like food security.
“We need to shift this conversation from a crisis to a solution,” he explained of the ag industry’s ability to feed the world by 2050. “People working towards a cure for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, they don’t have a solution to their crisis. We have one. We’ve got enough innovation, let’s take our pipelines and feed the world. We spend too much time going to events and leaving and not doing a lot.”
Su mensaje tuvo eco en los Diálogos Borlaug del Premio Mundial de la Alimentación con varios eventos y oradores que enfatizaron la necesidad de correr la voz sobre las soluciones seguras proporcionadas por la biotecnología.
Dr. John Soper, vice president of Crop Genetics Research and Development at DuPont hailed Norman Borlaug as not only a great scientist but a great communicator. “If you read the books, you know he had a lot of tough conversations. He talked to everyone from the poor farmers to the leaders until the science proved itself.”
The ability to allow the science to prove itself, Soper explained, will require private industries to be a part of the solution. “Political unrest happens, in large part, in countries where people are starving,” he explained. “We have technology that keeps people fed. The challenge we are facing,” he said, “is communicating the complexities of sustainability and feeding the world.”
Simmons se hizo eco de este sentimiento en su discurso de aceptación, explicando que una encuesta del Centro de Integridad Alimentaria de expertos mundiales, incluidos pequeños agricultores y tomadores de decisiones legislativas, dijo que creen que la solución al hambre mundial radica en permitir que la tecnología que existe actualmente se libere e implemente. alrededor del mundo.
Para ayudar a remediar estos problemas, Simmons dijo que le gustaría que su misión, y la misión de los asistentes, sea trabajar en lo siguiente para el Premio Mundial de la Alimentación 2014:
- Lograr que 10 000 personas se registren para hacer de la seguridad alimentaria su causa
- Reciba 1 millón de impresiones positivas a la semana sobre seguridad alimentaria
- Identificar y apoyar la innovación para alimentar a mil millones de personas más utilizando menos recursos