Golden Rice: Should It Be Our Future?
At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, scientists created golden rice by inserting three genes into a certain rice variety which will in turn produce a greater amount of beta-carotene. This rice has a sort of yellowish hue, which has given the rice its name, golden rice. The rice is still under research and testing before it will reach the markets, which is guessed to be around 2003. If this rice is found to be safe and effective it will be a tool in providing these rice dependent countries with the nutrients they need.
Rice is the staple food of many Asian and South Pacific countries. Rice is a major portion of these countries economic and agricultural systems. In places such as India, they used to eat brown rice, which is more nutritious because the outer bran layer is not removed during the milling process. When the British came to India they introduced white rice, which means the milling process has been taken to one further step. This reduces the amount of nutrients such as thiamine. White rice is now the major type of rice eaten in these Asian and Pacific countries. This has led to serious problems of malnutrition. Since normal rice does not have any beta-carotene, which is the precursor to Vitamin A, these populations are having vitamin a deficiencies. The World Health Organization stated that about 250 million people worldwide are at risk of permanent blindness, iron deficiency in women, and other serious ailments due to their lack of vitamin A. This genetically modified rice, known as “golden rice” has been created to meet the nutritional needs of these malnourished populations.
Genetic engineering has become a world-wide issue. Hungry countries in Africa, such as Zimbabwe, whose population is as risk for starvation and death are skeptical about receiving genetically altered food from countries such as the United States. In China, a rice known as “super rice” has been created which is more resilient; but it has not been accepted by the Chinese markets because it is genetically altered. People are more interested in their food than ever before, and are concerned about their overall safety. They want to know where it comes from and if it has been altered from its natural state.
In the first chapter of the book the author discusses a brief world history and evolution of rice crops. It is interesting to see that even though parts of Africa had their own rice crop variety, the globalization of rice crop Oryza Sativa has been slowly replacing the African variety. The author also starts
Firstly, social entrepreneurship has become inclusive that it now has an immense tent into which all manner of socially beneficial activities fit.(1). In the contemporary, social entrepreneurs recognize immediate social problems, but also seek to understand the broader context of an issue that crosses disciplines, fields, and theories. Gaining a larger understanding of how an issue relates to society allows social entrepreneurs to develop innovative solutions and mobilize available resources to impact the greater global society (2). ...
For an enterprise to continue and scale their activities, these resources need to generate sufficient income (Haugh, 2007), and therefore sustain their operations (Austin et al, 2006). Austin et al (2006) justify the inclusion of financial importance within their framework by maintaining that “the non-distributive restriction on surpluses generated by for-profit organizations and the embedded social purpose of non-profit or hybrid forms of social enterprise limits social entrepreneurs from tapping into the same capital markets as commercial entrepreneurs”. It is therefore necessary to analyse the potential opportunities, barriers and tensions, both internally and externally, SE’s might face in light of simultaneously creating income while managing the social value and numerous revenue streams
Two entrepreneurial approaches I will reflect upon are profit-oriented and social-oriented entrepreneurs. I will describe these approaches through two entrepreneurs, Victor Kiam and Anita Roddick. Victor Kiam was what one would call a profit entrepreneur. This is “a person who seeks a profitable opportunity and takes the necessary risks to set up and operate a business (Boone, Kurtz, 2011, pg.182). Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, was a social-oriented entrepreneur. These types of entrepreneurs are “pioneers of innovations that benefit humanity” (Boone, Kurtz, 2011, pg.185). Social entrepreneurs not only want to profit from their business but also have an interest in helping society.
The objective of this essay is to illustrate and highlight the role of social entrepreneurship in regards to an actual social enterprise, as well as to make an analysis of the business model applied by the social enterprise. Since the 1990s, the notions of “social enterprise” and “social entrepreneurship” are increasingly gaining more recognition as they indoctrinate new dynamics within the third sectors which include non-profit sectors, voluntary sectors and the social economy, where innovative solutions are created with a social view in mind to respond to problems unresolved by private organizations and public providers (Defourny and Kim, 2011) with a market orientation similar to other conventional enterprises. One social enterprise has
We live in a world that is constantly changing and advancing thanks to technological advancements, especially in the field of molecular genetics. Today, we are discovering and implementing new ways to overcome the ill-fated symptoms developed as a result from poor health or accidents. We are also making advancements in the field of agriculture thanks to molecular genetics. As we all know, food is an essential entity in our lives and is abundant as well as relatively easy to obtain here in the United States. However, as good as it may sound, this is not necessarily true for developing countries. Many people in developing countries receive very little food, if any, due to its scarcity. It is estimated that in Asia alone, close to 800 million people go to bed hungry every night due to food shortage. This problem can be alleviated by turning to the production of genetically modified organisms (a.k.a. GMOs).
Since 2014, Ashoka Switzerland cooperates with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and organizations Hystra and New Ventures in order to identify, promote and support social entrepreneurs in Central and Latin America from access to finance to support in scaling up and replication of their ideas (Ashoka Switzerland, 2017). This program included 72 social entrepreneurs (Ashoka Switzerland, 2017). The plan of the organization is to replicate this project in Africa.
What is social entrepreneurship? Social entrepreneurship is a process by which citizens build or transform institutions to advance solutions to social problems, such as poverty, illness, illiteracy, environmental destruction, human rights abuses and corruption, in order to make life better for many. The social entrepreneur also helps others discover their own power to change by helping them envision a new possibility and recognize how it can be broken down into doable steps that build momentum for change.
Social entrepreneurs drive social innovation and transformation in various fields including education, health, environment and enterprise development. They pursue poverty alleviation goals with entrepreneurial zeal, business methods and the courage to innovate and overcome traditional practices. A social entrepreneur, similar to a business entrepreneur, builds strong and sustainable organizations, which are either set up as not-for-profits or companies.
The success of a business is greatly dependent on its entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is someone who takes the financial risk of starting and managing a new business venture. In order to be a successful entrepreneur, one must be ready to take a risk and invest one’s own savings into a business. The job requires that the individual be ambitious and committed to working hard in order to achieve the set targets. A successful entrepreneur is able to multi-task and communicates effectively with people, possessing leadership qualities such as confidence and motivation. The individual must play the role of constant motivator and inspire employees to improve their work performance, whilst ensuring a comfortable environment for the employees to work in. According to Schumpeter (1982), an entrepreneur is more of a ‘heroic’ than an ‘economic’ figure; his motivation should not solely be monetary, rather stemming more from inspiration and ambition.
Social enterprise in last decade has been in core and certainly has shown great potential in becoming the next big thing. Its advocates put forward an aspiring plan of generating jobs, offering training programs and evolving local services in areas of serious and long-standing deficiency, while holding on the prospect of self generating income business model rather than relying of government aid or other grant. (Dees, 1998) What does social entrepreneurship really mean? What does it take to be a social entrepreneur? ‘Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish, or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.’ Bill Drayton, Ashoka
Social entrepreneurship can be described as entrepreneurship that aims to provide innovative solutions to unresolved social problems. Therefore, it often goes hand in hand with social innovation activities, aimed at improving people’s lives by encouraging social changes. Social entrepreneurs link themselves to a wide spectrum of organizations that have an commercial approach and whose overall primary mission is to tackle social problems. Social entrepreneurship is, therefore, about solving social problems rather than exploiting market opportunities.
Entrepreneurship is an important aspect of social, economic and community life. It can be viewed as a critical factor to economic growth as well as a way of addressing unemployment (Nolan, 2003).Entrepreneurs are people who are persistently focused on identifying opportunities, they seek to create something worthwhile while taking into account foreseeable risk and rewards associated with the efforts (Nolan, 2003). Furthermore, entrepreneurs are frequently understood to be individuals who discover market needs and establish new business to meet those identified opportunities. The following assignment will firstly discuss the types of entrepreneurship, secondly it will discuss the reasons people become entrepreneurs, and thirdly it will discuss the importance of entrepreneurship.
Introduction Opening Entrepreneurs play a very important role in the economy as they are the building blocks for a country by providing job opportunities, producing goods and rendering services to consumers. An entrepreneur is an individual or group of people (entrepreneurs’) that identify a business opportunity in a particular market and then provide a product or render a service that will satisfy the needs and wants of the consumers. In my opinion entrepreneurship should be promoted more and thought to the younger generations as it has lots of different advantages to it such as providing job opportunities which will lead to combating socio-economic problems such as poverty and unemployment which in turn will reduce crime levels because more people will become employed. The younger generations should be thought entrepreneurial skills from early ages so that they could be exposed to entrepreneurship from the early ages and the younger generation is more creative and new inventions and developments could be invented and established by them. So in this task is all about 2 entrepreneurs that are famous for their entrepreneurial skills that have lead them to success in their lives. It will explain why they are seen as entrepreneurs and find out the product that they invented or service that they rendered that lead them to success. Richard John Pelwana Maponya Why his seen as an entrepreneur: Opening and Background information: Richard Maponya was a very successful South African entrepreneur, who was born in Limpopo on the 24th of December 1926 and was raised in Soweto and had a dream to see the Soweto township develop economically. At the age of 22 Maponya was a teacher and was offered a job as a stock tacker in a clothes manu...
Two individuals, David Bornstein and Susan Davis, two pillars of social entrepreneurship who are very passionate about social innovation, have teamed up to write “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” It is a book published by the Oxford University Press that aims to provide a deep understanding of what social entrepreneurship really is. More than that, it seeks to let the readers realize its importance in the global landscape. This paper aims to summarize the major points and give a critical review and learning insights. Since the book is divided into three major parts, namely (1) Defining Social Entrepreneurship, (2) Challenges of Causing Change, and (3) Envisioning an Innovating Society, the paper will follow this flow of