Shantanu Saha's Page

For dinner in March 2020, my family will be dining on food that was grown in our garden in the previous year. We grew tomatoes, squash, strawberries, and apples, and after eating our fill last summer, we preserved the rest. The rich tomatoes from my garden are only enhanced once my wife has cooked them in her special recipe and sealed them in mason jars, and we are eating the last of them this month. At the end of the month, my children and I are planning this year's planting. In addition to… Continue

When I was growing up, I helped my father grow all manner of vegetables in his garden. We grew tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and cuc**bers most of the time, and in some years, we experimented with strawberries, onions, lettuce, cabbage, and even corn. At that time, my father used lots of chemical fertilizer. In recent years, I have been talking to Dad to use more organic methods, like using compost from yard waste (grass clippings and leaves), vegetable scraps from the kitchen, and other organic… Continue

Probably the biggest danger to food security in this country is not the lack of food (or the lack of ability of farmers to grow it) but the incentive system currently in place that encourages farmers to use highly polluting, energy-intensive, and wasteful methods in growing such huge amounts of crops like maize, wheat, and soy that it becomes much more than we can possibly eat leading to epidemics of obesity, rather than growing smaller amounts of more nutritious food that would be better… Continue

Assuming that the world still exists after 2012 :), I expect in 2020 to be teaching students to think about using technology to solve real-world problems. This teaching would involve students actually coming up with their own ideas, so that they can see the effects of their own creativity and be bitten by the innovation bug.