An Interview with Dr. Naseer Homoud on Spirulina and Food Security

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(Free-Press-Release.com) September 22, 2010 -- Question: What is the role of Spirulina in ensuring food security? Why in arena of food security, Spirulina is the most important alternative?

Answer: Given its credentials as a potential food by the reputed world institutions and scholars and experts in the field, Spirulina has become an efficient tool through which we can curb the dangers of undernourishment and hunger and thereby all the related consequences. Through sincere efforts and strategies with the help of modern technology, it can smoothly be supplied to the hunger affected parts of the globe. There are many factors which make the cultivation and consumption of Spirulina more effective in providing an all inclusive food security regime in today’s world of growing hunger and malnutrition. For example, its production is easy, cost-effective and environment friendly, its use is extremely simple and diverse, it contains almost all the essential nutrients, and finally Spirulina can in a less time consuming manner can fulfill the requirements of our present day evils like hunger and malnutrition.

Question: How and where do you place the importance of Spirulina amid rising concerns of hunger, poverty and malnutrition and the need to provide food security?

Answer: The significance of Spirulina in the present age becomes more pronounced by the fact that on one side we are facing the problems of climate change, while on the other side we are struggling to ensure a world free of hunger, malnutrition and poverty by guaranteeing food security to our fellow human beings. This urgent and extreme requirement to give the security of food to all those concerned is can only be achieved through the worldwide cultivation and use of Spirulina which complies with both these standards of climate change and hunger.


Question: How do you relate Spirulina with food security and climate change?

Answer: The issues and dimensions of food security have completely changed due to the threat posed by the changes in the climate which have deteriorated the aspects of availability of food in a direct mode. As I have mentioned, the cultivation of spirulina is based on ecological harvesting system consuming less energy, water, green resources, costs and human efforts. And if we add to its climate friendly production its nature to grow in a very limited time, spirulina, which contains all the necessary elements of nutrition and health, becomes the only viable option in global fight against the negative impacts of both the climate change and the lack of food security.

Question: Can you give some insights into the affect of climate change on food security scenario in relation with Spirulina? How Spirulina is compatible with the climate change?

Answer: Climate change has major retrogressive repercussions on food security as it results into uncontrolled and recurrent natural catastrophe and calamity, paucity of water, greenery, and water resources and lack of productive health items like food and habitat making the dangers of hunger and poverty more pronounced and bigger and reducing the accessibility to food. Spirulina comes as a way out because of its ecologically sensitive cultivation which does not cause soil erosion, air or water or land pollution, deforestation, and loss of natural surroundings. Climate change will act as a multiplier of existing threats to food security: It will make natural disasters more frequent and intense, land and water more scarce and difficult to access, and increases in productivity even harder to achieve. The implications for people who are poor and already food insecure and malnourished are immense. It is estimated that climate change will affect all four dimensions of food security: availability, accessibility, stability, and utilization. It will reduce food availability, because it negatively affects the basic elements of food production – soil, water and biodiversity. Rural communities face increased risks including recurrent crop failure, loss of livestock and reduced availability of fisheries and forest products. Changing temperatures and weather patterns furthermore create conditions for the emergence of new pests and diseases that affect animals, trees and crops. This has direct effects on the quality and quantity of yields as well as the availability and price of food, feed and fiber.