The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has estimated that a third of all food produced globally is wasted, that’s 1.3B tonnes.
To put that in context, the Great Pyramid at Giza weighs about 5 million tonnes. If that were food waste it would weigh about 1.4 million tonnes (because food is less dense than stone), so the amount of food waste produced globally is equivalent to just less than 1000 Great Pyramids of Giza.
That’s a lot of food.
Biodiversity and ecosystems provide us with clean air, water, and access to food.
However we don’t really know much about the basic building blocks of biodiversity.
How many species are there on earth? 10 million? What does this mean for humans? Over 250 years we’ve probably found and named approximately 1 million species, approx 10% of the biodiversity on earth.
At the same time the rate of intinction is increasing.
We’re going to need some help.
Continue reading “TEDxAdelaide – DNA Barcoding for Biodiversity”
Prof Andy Lowe 