🚀 go-pugleaf

Notes and Report of some events (Part 1)
From: Eng-leong Foo (Stockholm)

I have personally enjoyed participating at the Symposium on
June 2nd and have found the panel discussions and some of
the presentations very interesting. As mentioned in the
earlier message on the Symposium program, these lectures are
not technical though they may have some reference to
bioconversion. The notes provided below will first provide
some background info on the key speakers and then on the
primary messages conveyed by them.

Prof. Harlan Cleveland made the first  presentation on
"Social Innovations and the problem of International
Governance". He is a political scientist and a public
executive. Prof. Cleveland is Professor Emeritus and was the
founding Dean of the Hubert H Humphrey Institute of Public
Affairs at the University of Minnesota, President of the
University of Hawaii, amongst many other academic positions.
He has been the US ambassador to NATO, an Assistant
Secretary of State, a UN relief administrator and now co-
director of a global project on "Rethinking International
Governance".
        Prof Cleveland conveyed a warning that if left to
take its commercialized path, biotechnology will have a
tendency to make the rich richer (and the poor poorer).
Biotechnology will further widen the gap between developed
and developing countries. How then can "it" be controlled,
organized and steered so that it would produced the best
beneficial effects - socially and internationally - in both
developed and developing countries. This key message also
served as the theme of the symposium for other presentations
of initiatives and examples of what various national and
international organizations have contributed, e.g. ICGEB,
IDEA, UNESCO, WAAS.
        It was also a comfort to know that Prof. Harlan
Cleveland is an advocate of electronic messaging and
conferencing. He can be reached on EIES (a conferencing
system in the U.S.) as 481 or Harlan.


        The next speaker was Prof. Alexander King and gave
his presentation on "Africa beyond famine - A global
challenge". Prof. King is the President of the Club of Rome
and currently coordinates several of its major international
activities. He was Director General for Science, Technology
and Education at OECD and chairman of the International
Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFIAS).
        Famines are man-made and so "Nature Pleads Not
Guilty" has been a fitting title of a report from an IFIAS
project on the Sahel Drought many years ago. But what can
science/biotechnology do and how have independent
initiatives of NGOs and responsive governments facilitated
recovery or introduced new ideas for development in Africa.
One example of a private initiative which also involved the
former US President Jimmy Carter; was the development of a
package for small farmers in Ghana, Zambia and Sudan. The
package included seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, extension
advice and loans as well as the commitment from governments
and NGOs. In Ghana, a 90 % repayment of loans showed the
success of the package program.

Immediate comment by E.L. Foo
-----------------------------
In the bioconversion field, there are several examples of
package technologies which uses microbes for food and
beverage production. For example, a few unique approaches
have been used for mushroom production by families in South-
east Asia, e.g. in Bangkok, straw-mushroom spawn is
commercially available in the city.

Question: How does a home mushroom grower gets its spawn in
other parts of the world ?

(more no Symposium to follow later).