Can the World Feed 10 Billion People by 2050?

Chandra Krintz is professor & vice chair of graduate affairs of Computer Science, co-directs the Lab for Research on Adaptive Computing Environments (RACELab) and leads a smart farm initiative at UCSB. She was featured on the Economist’s weekly science podcast, Babbage, on the topic of “Can the world feed 10bn people by 2050?”. 

This specific episode is concerned with the rising global population and questions how genetic engineering could make key crops more resilient, productive and nutritious. Chandra Krintz answers questions about how computer science has already impacted agriculture in areas such as cloud computing, e-commerce and entertainment which has evolved in the last 10-15 years. She touches on how “background technology can be tailored on precision agriculture to really jumpstart it, to really leap us into the future which has to happen given the growing population and how many people we have to feed in a very short amount of time”.