We are excited to share our second video here at Insights for Impact, a YouTube channel that aims to communicate key insights from research that we think could have an especially high positive impact in the world.
There are major threats to our food supply globally, both now and in future. The good news is, there are also plenty of viable food solutions. What are the most promising ways to feed the world cheaply, quickly and nutritiously?
Our target audience is laypeople along with effective altruists who don’t yet have much understanding of the given topic – either because they’ve never heard of it before, or if they don’t have time to delve into long/technical papers! The idea is to facilitate knowledge gain and pique interest by communicating key insights from valuable research. We hope that some viewers will be interested enough to dig deeper or share the ideas, and this may ultimately spark positive change in the world. We also think our videos could be useful for organisations to share their work with potential donors and other stakeholders.
Going forward, we are continuing to explore a range of EA-relevant cause areas in video form. We collaborate with researchers to ensure their work is accurately portrayed.
If you are a researcher wanting to give your work a voice outside of the forum, please get in touch!
Great job Christian and Jenna!
Thank you Jeroen! Your work inspires us!
Great video, you two!
Much appreciated, Coleman!
These food ideas definitely have potential, but it seems like field testing would play an important role in improving their practicality and ways to deploy them.
The world is now facing one of the worst food crises in memory, with famine-like conditions in multiple countries, and conditions have worsened significantly over the past few years. If we're not moving toward feeding everyone today, it seems like it would take several miracles for us to be able to feed everyone in a much larger crisis.
https://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis
Is ALLFED working with organizations that have experience with launching innovative nutritional products and launching them in real crisis situations (such as Action Against Hunger)? I realize that ALLFED is mainly focused on research. I'm just remembering my teachers in agricultural science who told me how their plans and what they thought they knew went out the window when they came into contact with real-life situations. And I've experienced the gap between how researchers see their research results and how farmers can see the same results.
Hi Ilana!
Thank you for taking the time to critically engage with the material!
We agree, it's a very complex issue, and there are many barriers to effective implementation of these ideas. We also appreciate the value of the tacit knowledge carried by people implementing boots on the ground solutions, who often know how hard it is to actually do things in reality.
As to your question, I'm personally not sure. We tried to convey the sense that there are definitely assumptions and unanswered questions being put forward by the angle we take in the video, especially with the limitations of global trade and distribution. We'd like to eventually do a follow up video that tackles the distribution problem.
If you're interested in suggesting ideas, we'd love to talk to you!
Hi Christian, thanks for your reply! I'd love to talk about some related ideas I've been thinking about. What's the best way to get in touch?
DMed! :)