My take on feeding the world

A few months ago I was interviewed by Story Preservation Initiative. What started out as a nice interview about What A Plant Knows, developed into a discussion about global food security and the role of genetic engineering in agriculture. The interview was edited into a monologue of over an hour, which you can access here. Below is the part pertaining to feeding the world.

Want the bottomline? (1) Increase yield per water unit; (2) reduce food loss from field to fridge and food waste from fridge to trash; (3) modify our diet; (4) adopt technology.

Hawking Food Security in India

I’ve found myself in many bizarre situations. None though perhaps surpasses what I did last week. I hawked Tel Aviv University programs at an Indian trade-fair aimed at the food industry.

I was the guest of the Confederation of Indian Industries trade show called FOODPRO 2015. I have been interacting with CII for almost two years as co-chair of the India-Israel Forum sub-group on Food Security. I was one of the guest speakers for the conference part of the event. That in itself is not so bizarre – I’ve given talks over the years to diverse audiences. But what was bizarre is that they asked us also to man a booth in the exhibition part of the trade-show. So one of the 250 exhibitors at Chennai’s FOODPRO 2015 was the Manna Program for Food Safety and Security at Tel Aviv University. At both #35, we handed out flyers about our summer program and sang the praises of Tel Aviv University. To our right in booth #36 was CoCo Rain – “100% pure tender coconut water”. To our left in booth # 34 was Chennai Food Testing, a chemical service lab. Across the aisle in booth 112, Kookmate had a large exhibit of industrial cooking machines including an automatic chipati maker. Other booths included spice grinders, chicken pluckers, and sweet coffee machines. Booth H43-A belonged to "Spanker International". We didn't spend much time there.

Maya running our booth.

Obviously, Maya Oren, the Program Director at Manna, in her sleeveless back dress, and me with light brown hair, and our promoting an advanced educational program, stood out among the sari-clad women and tika-adorned men selling ice cream machines, rice makers and automatic mixers. Our stall was frequented by an endless stream of curious visitors, most long past university age, who eagerly snapped pictures (especially of Maya), took home TAU leaflets, and especially, our keyfobs. Many of the conversations bordered on the absurd – “In which part of India Tel Aviv is?”, “What are you selling?”, “Are you interested in puffballs?”. It was like touring around India, while staying in one place. We quickly adopted the head bob, which we found made us more understood.

Without a doubt, most of our time was spent more in promoting Israel awareness than in attracting students. But we also met a group of motivated college students studying entrepreneurship who surrounded us, excited about the possibility of studying in the “start-up” nation. They were at the fair as part of a class on agro innovation. And we met a number of industrialists, who found in Tel Aviv University a novel option to the American universities they had been considering for their children. And we bought spices – 8 different types of curry for $5. I thought of taking home a chipati maker, but it wouldn’t fit in my suitcase.

My Pen Pal, Oliver Sacks

As a kid, I dreamt of having a pen pal in a faraway place. A pen pal who could be a confidant, and with whom I could share ideas and experiences, and who would teach me about the strange world he lived in. In those days before Facebook and WhatsApp, before chatrooms and discussion groups, the words “Dear Pen Pal”, which I had seen romanticized on television and in cinema, seemed to me magical, as did the closing “your friend, “.

I did try a few times, through organized school activities, to write to a pen pal, but I don’t remember these efforts lasting more than one exchange. This need for an unknown pen pal probably found a proxy after age 11, in the numerous letters I wrote to friends across the country I had made while away at camp each summer.

Until I turned 51 that is.

One day, while sifting through the mail in my office, I found a letter with a hand-written address to me, and in the return address was printed “Dr. Oliver Sacks, New York”. I remarked to a friend who happened to be visiting in my office at the time, “Olive Sacks. Who is Oliver Sacks? Isn’t that the neurobiologist who wrote The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat?”. Why would he be writing me?

Inside I found a 3-page letter, hand-written by fountain pen in a flowing script. I admit that I had to remember for a second how to read script, I’d grown so use to email. Oliver wrote to tell me how much he enjoyed reading What a Plant Knows” and then went on to tell me of his own experience as a botanist, his quest for understanding what consciousness is, and how he related to my book.

Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I spent the next six hours crafting a reply, which I realized would also have to be written by hand. Numerous attempts found their way to the trash bin as I scratched out mistakes and misspellings. How did we survive without spell-check and backspace? I wanted to come across as erudite, but not pompous, casual, but not disrespectful. What could I write to the great Oliver Sacks which would at all interest him?

As the letter was hand-written, and I didn’t think to snap a picture of it, I don’t recall what I wrote. I’m sure it had to do with plant biology and plant intelligence.  I signed it, “Sincerely yours, Danny Chamovitz”, put it in an envelope (after I found one of those arcane things) and sent it off to New York.

3 weeks later I received another hand-written letter, again 3 pages long, and with a copy of his soon-to-be-published piece in the New York Review of Books, “TheMental Life of Plants and Worms, Among Others” where he gave some mention to my book. Again I was flabbergasted, especially as he signed it this time, “your friend, Oliver”. 

There it was. I had a pen pal.

Oliver and I corresponded several more times. I visited with him in Jerusalem, where I had the honor of interviewing him as a public lecture. He hosted my wife Shira and I for lunch in his apartment in New York. We corresponded after his announcement of his impending doom, and we corresponded a few weeks ago. In his letters he was full of life and wonder of our world, questioning me on any new studies on the abilities of plants, and telling me of his latest projects. I would write back with some details of obscure experiments, and comment on articles he quoted to me, and I would close with “Your friend, Danny”.

In our short friendship I learned humility, curiosity and the importance of intellectual honesty. And courage. Many people will mourn the loss of one of our age’s great communicators of the mind. I mourn the loss of my pen pal.