
“An eye-opening account of some of the most transformative quiet revolutions that will feed humanity.”
—Hod Lipson, Director of Columbia University's Creative Machines Lab and co-author of Driverless
“Our next big challenge is on our plate. Shen delivers a vibrant testimony to the power of technology to address it.”
—Isabelle Decitre, Founder & CEO of ID Capital & Future Food Asia
“Shen Ming Lee details the challenges of the current system while providing hope for its improvement through technology...”
—Dan Altschuler Malek, Senior Venture Partner at New Crop Capital
“Shen Ming Lee skillfully shows that a key to food sustainability in the 21st century is advancing food technology...”
—Paul Shapiro, Author of the Washington Post Bestseller Clean Meat and CEO of The Better Meat Co.
“A bold and compelling vision of what the global food and agricultural systems will look like towards 2050.”
—Dr. Prabhu Pingali, Director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture & Nutrition and Professor of Applied Economics at Cornell University
I am extremely impressed by Shen Ming. She has written this book with strong passion and concern in food sustainability. She has rightly pointed out the urgency in using innovative technology to transform the future of food and to feed the world's fast growing population nutritionally well by 2050.
— Tan Sri Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, Former Housing Minister and Transport Minister of Malaysia and Former President of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA)
About the Book
The food industry is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 30.
The future of food is fast, fresh, and hungry for disruption, requiring new solutions to today's most pressing food production problems. How do we leverage tech innovations to increase food production—both quantitatively and qualitatively—in an increasingly resource-scarce future?
In Hungry for Disruption, Shen Ming Lee offers a futuristic vision for embracing the scientific and technological advances in food for the coming decades. She explores how breakthrough innovations in smart agriculture, novel farming systems, genomics, cellular agriculture, and food waste management will play a key role in the future of food and agriculture. By revealing how technological advances help us re-imagine our food system, Shen gives readers hope that the future of nourishing the world is a sustainable, inclusive, and delicious one.
A Note from Shen
Food production in the 21st century is facing multiple challenges: it has to produce more nutritious food to feed a growing population amidst the increasing scarcity of resources, adapt to adverse climate change, and in turn reduce its impact on climate change.
Humankind is facing unprecedented challenges in food production, but the agri-food technologies explored in this book has made me as optimistic as ever about the future of nourishing our world by 2050. Because while we live in a world of significant challenges, we also live in one where the pace of scientific and technological advances is unparalleled.
With urgent pressures put on our food systems, we simply must harness the power of science and technology to transform our global food systems.
This book unlocks that power.
About 9 months ago, I set out on a mission to explore how scientific and technological innovations could help us nourish almost 10 billion people on this planet by 2050. This mission has brought me to the wildest of discoveries and the craziest of adventures. I've talked to dozens of food and agriculture experts, entrepreneurs at the cusp of cutting-edge agri-food technologies, and investors funding the next agri-food tech revolution.
From skipping a midterm exam to attend the Future of Food conference to the shocking realization that we could either genetically engineer cows or feed them seaweed to belch less, I hope you're as excited as I am for you to join me in this exploration of how technological innovation can help us create a better, more sustainable and inclusive food system.
To a better food future,
