“Due to its prohibition, cannabis has not seen the evolution many other crops have undergone. It is still in its infancy, and thus possesses an enormous untapped potential that is waiting to be unleashed. For example, what if I tell you that we can learn everything we need to know to solve the world food shortage problem from cannabis breeding?” Swen Sponagel gets a few laughs from the audience during his TedxTalk ‘How cannabis can help to feed 10 billion people by 2050’, but he is very serious.
Cannabis is here to save the world
“Why cannabis? What can this plant contribute to such a serious challenge?” he asks the audience, and it is very possible you are wondering the exact same thing. Swen continues to explain: “The versatility of cannabis has the potential to disrupt many established industries: cannabis can produce more proteins than soy, it can produce more fiber than a pine forest, and it grows incredibly fast and can capture high amounts of CO2; from life-changing medicines to sustainable animal feed, plastic alternatives, or even CO2 negative construction materials, cannabis has it all.”
“The breeding technology I will talk about is without any genetic modification. In other words, it can make our food better naturally; it can increase yield, make the cannabis disease-resistant, enable it to grow in harsh conditions, and even improve the taste.” Now, you might be wondering, how did scientists manage to do that? To find out, watch the entire TedxTalk below.