Ensuring World Nourishment

With a rapidly growing world population New Zealand has a key role in ensuring food security and safety for future generations, according to Mark Ward, general manager of Massey University’s The Riddet Institute, which specialises in research on food innovation and nutrition. As fossil fuel prices rise, driving up the cost for agriculture, such research could be one answer to future global food security, according to Ward, who was in Seoul last month for the Food & Beverage Forum. “The Riddet Institute is really interested in understanding how nature assembles the lowest energy foods — lowest energy in terms of cost of input in nature — so that manufactures can replicate that, still producing high nutritious foods. Ward warned that Asia would ultimately have to produce its own food, new technologies or not. “Asia is going to have to produce more food, it’s not going to come from New Zealand, there won’t be enough production,” he said.