I absolutely know one thing for sure
about each and every one of you all of
you eat something somewhere at some
point on a rate basis another thing I
know with absolute certainty is that the
future of food for all of us
will be different
ladies and gentlemen I’m an optimist I’m
convinced that even in the face of
massive population growth soil depletion
water scarcity peak phosphorus corporate
consolidation and climate change I think
we’re gonna be okay however we are at a
point that we need to tear up the sheets
on how things have been and start fresh
it’s vitally important that we do not
underestimate this challenge here in
Canada where we enjoy so much abundance
it would be easy to be complacent the
rest of the world cannot afford for us
to do that with great strength comes
great responsibility
today we’ve reached limits to growth
with the old tools on the established
pathways we need to make exponentially
more food available from exponentially
less resources from here incremental
advances are inadequate to address the
threats we face 100 years people lived
in a local and linear world for the most
part only things within a day’s walk or
ride had any meaningful impact on your
daily life
the world was experientially very big
and the entire planet had only slightly
more people than China alone does
today as this hundred years has passed
the corn produced from a piece of land
has increased six-fold wheats increased
fourfold both barley and oats threefold
we’ve doubled the milk we get from a cow
in a day and we’ve doubled the finish
weight of both beef cows and chickens
well wildly reducing the time it gets
takes to get to market for both do you
know it takes just 18 months now for a
beef get to processing weight and for a
broiler chicken as little as four weeks
today these gains of slaughter stopped
with only nominal advances or worse many
reports are published now showing the
rising co2 rates are shifting the may
couple plants driving carbohydrates at
the expense of protein iron and zinc
this is a threat that we don’t notice on
our plates but in the doctor’s office
we’ve been able to increase yields but
we see nutrition value slide we are not
okay on either quantity or quality where
things got really tough and last hundred
years we’ve gone from one point six to
seven point six billion people for
everybody alive on the earth today to
get just the purpurin calories that the
developed world was getting in 1900 we
need to increase our supply by forty
seven and a half times what we had then
all from the same one planet this is a
hard data fact and thankfully only part
of the equation I’m trusting technology
to give us the tools we need so we can
reboot all the above true and verifiable
making it harder is that we humans are
fabulously wasteful globally right now
today one third of all food produced is
wasted 33% is a lot and we need to solve
that immediately of it but that’s just
looking at food once it’s food upstream
parts of the production system are much
worse cows when looking at waste in the
food production system there’s simply
the best bad example I’ve got nothing
against them personally I let the data
speak a dairy cow uses just 40 percent
of the plant energy that it eats venting
the rest from its front and back ends 60
percent losses it uses or converse just
15 percent of the plant nutrients it
eats 85 percent losses when looking at
beef cows it takes 15 kilo of feed to
get 1 kilo of meat this is not
sustainable yes some of the throughput
gets used again in conventional
production but cycling through a series
of woefully inefficient systems
polluting our air soil and water I’ve
been working on the cow part of things
for more than a decade as the poop soup
guy 2006 I started a deep dive and today
2008 I built something called an
anaerobic digester where I cooked my
soup producing renewable natural gas for
about a thousand customers we also make
a safe plant available non stinky manure
based fertilizer for vegetable growers
this is the beginning of a solution
harvesting pieces of the energy and
nutrients as much as can be done at the
back end of a cow 90% of the energy
waste is methane that comes out of its
mouth it burps and it’s just not
practical to capture that
a single dairy cow eating the now common
high milk production rations can produce
up to 400 liters of methane a day
belching if used for electricity
production that’s enough to power a
small fridge each one can power a small
fridge this methane problems not just
cows like you said they’re just the best
bad example this is a net net waste of
resources that’s damaging our
environment if we will feed the world
and maintain a planet we will reduce our
reliance on animals so the great reboot
of Agriculture what will it look like it
won’t be a reboot in a refresh it’ll be
a reboot in a reformat seeing a start
with a clean slate and new ways of
thinking thankfully some are working
this already we’re closely watching
groups like the open agriculture
initiative MIT and the indoor
agriculture movement championed by the
foundation for Food and Agriculture
Research they’re developing the
information based tools we need so that
we can reboot my personal work is
through a program called technology
meets permaculture where we use the
explosion of information in a better way
to look at the whole big picture we have
the power in our hands to fully
completely understand all of nature and
our bodies we can then use that
information to give them what they need
rather than trying to force them to
submit to what we want as we move into
this new paradigm we have to ensure that
our decisions are hard data-driven but
do your own research
don’t just search opinions and
statistics numbers can be made to say
anything if you torture them long enough
and many do the world stage of
information is very very noisy and quite
unreliable apparently even the great
visionary Abraham Lincoln warned us
don’t believe everything you read
the Internet in the future of food
internet noise there is much ado about
GMOs some are saying they’re 100% safe
and the only way out of our challenges
others are saying they’ll be the death
of a soul I’m not taking a position on
the topic because I have read a lot from
both sides and I’m not fully convinced
by either I do know this it was still
common practice when I was a kid to
prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics as
a precautionary measure to someone who’s
just not feeling well glyphosate is a
broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and
plant desiccant it makes them dry up and
die like broad-spectrum antibiotics it
kills indiscriminately globally
glyphosate use has increased nearly 15
fold since 1996 when plants genetically
engineered to be ready for it were
introduced advances in life science are
showing us the importance of good
bacteria in our bodies that’s why we’re
moving away from general human
antibiotic use it’s also showing us the
importance of good bugs and bacteria in
nature this is a piece of the equation
that needs to be watched very carefully
there’s a lot of other ideas being
bounced around to like clean meat 2011
mark post gave us our first lab-grown
burger cost over $300,000 to make from
animal cells and reportedly
didn’t taste very good today a company
called impossible foods makes a burger
that looks like meat tastes like meat
even feels like meat in your mouth but
is 100% plants so it needs no cows at
all the day I checked their website you
could order in 291 locations for about
12 bucks there’s a lot of noise on the
internet about insects those are protein
source it’s totally normal for many
people around the world eat bugs and
while it may not look like this for us
in the short term it’s already here in
products like this sure there’s still a
yuck factor for some but only in the way
and that’s falling away for me
personally I’m betting on a fast-growing
aquatic grass called duck weed
it’s a tiny floating plant that we grow
in stacks of trays under lights inside
shipping containers producing food while
we clean the waste water and the air
from a land-based fish farm our design
model says we can produce at least a
thousand times as much fruit from a
footprint as anyone with can with corn
or soy it’s for sure the world’s least
sexy aquaponic system but i recently
learned nasa’s looking at as a promising
space food
so i’m encouraged the great master of
veggie protein eve Potvin told me that
if I could make it taste like nothing he
can make it taste like anything I know
for sure it’ll be emotionally easier for
us to eat grass than grasshoppers
now for what may be the next giant leap
in food production to think really big
we got to get super small there’s a
group of microbes called meThe Anna
troughs they’re tiny methane eating
protein pooping box microorganisms that
convert natural gas to chemical building
blocks that can be food remember the
food versus fuel debates a little while
ago as we get better at harvesting
renewable energy and the values dropped
the world’s taking another look at fuel
to food first attention back in the 70s
but then cheap soybeans and expensive
energy knocked it out today the tables
have turned
major advantage this uses 77 to 98
percent less water than common
agriculture products some are saying
this method can produce 10,000 times as
much food from a footprint as corn or
soy and in a perfect world
I’m going to produce it in methane I
captured from the farm that I’m making
the new feed for and I’ll have enough
protein left over to supply all the
people of a big city
this will shift things by a magnitude
yeah recently a group of companies join
forces raised thirty million dollars to
develop production for animal feed
it’s simply advanced fermentation and I
think we’ll all celebrate the day when
our protein comes from here instead of
here if it tastes good so the great
reboot of Agriculture it’s unavoidably
on the way I don’t profess to have the
answers to all that it will be but I do
know for sure that it will be different
how things are done today simply cannot
continue I said earlier we’re doing
things to recover some of the waste
years big parts of waste in the
production systems harvesting the energy
and nutrients we’re creating pathways to
progress but we must also change our
consumption will we get here the
replicator of Star Trek Fame delivering
a full complete meal at the utterance of
a command company called natural machine
says they’re real close to a big
breakthrough and they’ve got prototypes
another company called modern metals is
already 3d printing leather replacement
and can do food but figured it was
easier to market textiles for now if we
can already 3d print body parts and
buildings complete foods only a matter
of time we are close to that revolution
so remember at the beginning I said I
think we’re gonna be ok here’s really
why we are being forced to change our
food production by physical limitations
of the planet we now have the
proliferation of information tools to
help us holistically understand all that
we are doing diabetes heart disease and
cancer are now inextricably tied to diet
we’re living in a time of demand for
radical personal rights and it’s making
the world messy we will solve all of the
Grand Challenges of humanity
we shift to radical personal
responsibility cost will always be a
part of our buying decisions but now as
we’re seeing the health impact of what
we eat were understanding that the wrong
food even if it’s cheap to buy can be
tragically expensive please let’s all
use the amazing tools we have to
understand all of nature and our bodies
we eaters by changing what we buy can
steer food production to wellness truly
the world is in our hands and with great
strength comes great responsibility it’s
time to reboot [Applause]
about each and every one of you all of
you eat something somewhere at some
point on a rate basis another thing I
know with absolute certainty is that the
future of food for all of us
will be different
ladies and gentlemen I’m an optimist I’m
convinced that even in the face of
massive population growth soil depletion
water scarcity peak phosphorus corporate
consolidation and climate change I think
we’re gonna be okay however we are at a
point that we need to tear up the sheets
on how things have been and start fresh
it’s vitally important that we do not
underestimate this challenge here in
Canada where we enjoy so much abundance
it would be easy to be complacent the
rest of the world cannot afford for us
to do that with great strength comes
great responsibility
today we’ve reached limits to growth
with the old tools on the established
pathways we need to make exponentially
more food available from exponentially
less resources from here incremental
advances are inadequate to address the
threats we face 100 years people lived
in a local and linear world for the most
part only things within a day’s walk or
ride had any meaningful impact on your
daily life
the world was experientially very big
and the entire planet had only slightly
more people than China alone does
today as this hundred years has passed
the corn produced from a piece of land
has increased six-fold wheats increased
fourfold both barley and oats threefold
we’ve doubled the milk we get from a cow
in a day and we’ve doubled the finish
weight of both beef cows and chickens
well wildly reducing the time it gets
takes to get to market for both do you
know it takes just 18 months now for a
beef get to processing weight and for a
broiler chicken as little as four weeks
today these gains of slaughter stopped
with only nominal advances or worse many
reports are published now showing the
rising co2 rates are shifting the may
couple plants driving carbohydrates at
the expense of protein iron and zinc
this is a threat that we don’t notice on
our plates but in the doctor’s office
we’ve been able to increase yields but
we see nutrition value slide we are not
okay on either quantity or quality where
things got really tough and last hundred
years we’ve gone from one point six to
seven point six billion people for
everybody alive on the earth today to
get just the purpurin calories that the
developed world was getting in 1900 we
need to increase our supply by forty
seven and a half times what we had then
all from the same one planet this is a
hard data fact and thankfully only part
of the equation I’m trusting technology
to give us the tools we need so we can
reboot all the above true and verifiable
making it harder is that we humans are
fabulously wasteful globally right now
today one third of all food produced is
wasted 33% is a lot and we need to solve
that immediately of it but that’s just
looking at food once it’s food upstream
parts of the production system are much
worse cows when looking at waste in the
food production system there’s simply
the best bad example I’ve got nothing
against them personally I let the data
speak a dairy cow uses just 40 percent
of the plant energy that it eats venting
the rest from its front and back ends 60
percent losses it uses or converse just
15 percent of the plant nutrients it
eats 85 percent losses when looking at
beef cows it takes 15 kilo of feed to
get 1 kilo of meat this is not
sustainable yes some of the throughput
gets used again in conventional
production but cycling through a series
of woefully inefficient systems
polluting our air soil and water I’ve
been working on the cow part of things
for more than a decade as the poop soup
guy 2006 I started a deep dive and today
2008 I built something called an
anaerobic digester where I cooked my
soup producing renewable natural gas for
about a thousand customers we also make
a safe plant available non stinky manure
based fertilizer for vegetable growers
this is the beginning of a solution
harvesting pieces of the energy and
nutrients as much as can be done at the
back end of a cow 90% of the energy
waste is methane that comes out of its
mouth it burps and it’s just not
practical to capture that
a single dairy cow eating the now common
high milk production rations can produce
up to 400 liters of methane a day
belching if used for electricity
production that’s enough to power a
small fridge each one can power a small
fridge this methane problems not just
cows like you said they’re just the best
bad example this is a net net waste of
resources that’s damaging our
environment if we will feed the world
and maintain a planet we will reduce our
reliance on animals so the great reboot
of Agriculture what will it look like it
won’t be a reboot in a refresh it’ll be
a reboot in a reformat seeing a start
with a clean slate and new ways of
thinking thankfully some are working
this already we’re closely watching
groups like the open agriculture
initiative MIT and the indoor
agriculture movement championed by the
foundation for Food and Agriculture
Research they’re developing the
information based tools we need so that
we can reboot my personal work is
through a program called technology
meets permaculture where we use the
explosion of information in a better way
to look at the whole big picture we have
the power in our hands to fully
completely understand all of nature and
our bodies we can then use that
information to give them what they need
rather than trying to force them to
submit to what we want as we move into
this new paradigm we have to ensure that
our decisions are hard data-driven but
do your own research
don’t just search opinions and
statistics numbers can be made to say
anything if you torture them long enough
and many do the world stage of
information is very very noisy and quite
unreliable apparently even the great
visionary Abraham Lincoln warned us
don’t believe everything you read
the Internet in the future of food
internet noise there is much ado about
GMOs some are saying they’re 100% safe
and the only way out of our challenges
others are saying they’ll be the death
of a soul I’m not taking a position on
the topic because I have read a lot from
both sides and I’m not fully convinced
by either I do know this it was still
common practice when I was a kid to
prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics as
a precautionary measure to someone who’s
just not feeling well glyphosate is a
broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and
plant desiccant it makes them dry up and
die like broad-spectrum antibiotics it
kills indiscriminately globally
glyphosate use has increased nearly 15
fold since 1996 when plants genetically
engineered to be ready for it were
introduced advances in life science are
showing us the importance of good
bacteria in our bodies that’s why we’re
moving away from general human
antibiotic use it’s also showing us the
importance of good bugs and bacteria in
nature this is a piece of the equation
that needs to be watched very carefully
there’s a lot of other ideas being
bounced around to like clean meat 2011
mark post gave us our first lab-grown
burger cost over $300,000 to make from
animal cells and reportedly
didn’t taste very good today a company
called impossible foods makes a burger
that looks like meat tastes like meat
even feels like meat in your mouth but
is 100% plants so it needs no cows at
all the day I checked their website you
could order in 291 locations for about
12 bucks there’s a lot of noise on the
internet about insects those are protein
source it’s totally normal for many
people around the world eat bugs and
while it may not look like this for us
in the short term it’s already here in
products like this sure there’s still a
yuck factor for some but only in the way
and that’s falling away for me
personally I’m betting on a fast-growing
aquatic grass called duck weed
it’s a tiny floating plant that we grow
in stacks of trays under lights inside
shipping containers producing food while
we clean the waste water and the air
from a land-based fish farm our design
model says we can produce at least a
thousand times as much fruit from a
footprint as anyone with can with corn
or soy it’s for sure the world’s least
sexy aquaponic system but i recently
learned nasa’s looking at as a promising
space food
so i’m encouraged the great master of
veggie protein eve Potvin told me that
if I could make it taste like nothing he
can make it taste like anything I know
for sure it’ll be emotionally easier for
us to eat grass than grasshoppers
now for what may be the next giant leap
in food production to think really big
we got to get super small there’s a
group of microbes called meThe Anna
troughs they’re tiny methane eating
protein pooping box microorganisms that
convert natural gas to chemical building
blocks that can be food remember the
food versus fuel debates a little while
ago as we get better at harvesting
renewable energy and the values dropped
the world’s taking another look at fuel
to food first attention back in the 70s
but then cheap soybeans and expensive
energy knocked it out today the tables
have turned
major advantage this uses 77 to 98
percent less water than common
agriculture products some are saying
this method can produce 10,000 times as
much food from a footprint as corn or
soy and in a perfect world
I’m going to produce it in methane I
captured from the farm that I’m making
the new feed for and I’ll have enough
protein left over to supply all the
people of a big city
this will shift things by a magnitude
yeah recently a group of companies join
forces raised thirty million dollars to
develop production for animal feed
it’s simply advanced fermentation and I
think we’ll all celebrate the day when
our protein comes from here instead of
here if it tastes good so the great
reboot of Agriculture it’s unavoidably
on the way I don’t profess to have the
answers to all that it will be but I do
know for sure that it will be different
how things are done today simply cannot
continue I said earlier we’re doing
things to recover some of the waste
years big parts of waste in the
production systems harvesting the energy
and nutrients we’re creating pathways to
progress but we must also change our
consumption will we get here the
replicator of Star Trek Fame delivering
a full complete meal at the utterance of
a command company called natural machine
says they’re real close to a big
breakthrough and they’ve got prototypes
another company called modern metals is
already 3d printing leather replacement
and can do food but figured it was
easier to market textiles for now if we
can already 3d print body parts and
buildings complete foods only a matter
of time we are close to that revolution
so remember at the beginning I said I
think we’re gonna be ok here’s really
why we are being forced to change our
food production by physical limitations
of the planet we now have the
proliferation of information tools to
help us holistically understand all that
we are doing diabetes heart disease and
cancer are now inextricably tied to diet
we’re living in a time of demand for
radical personal rights and it’s making
the world messy we will solve all of the
Grand Challenges of humanity
we shift to radical personal
responsibility cost will always be a
part of our buying decisions but now as
we’re seeing the health impact of what
we eat were understanding that the wrong
food even if it’s cheap to buy can be
tragically expensive please let’s all
use the amazing tools we have to
understand all of nature and our bodies
we eaters by changing what we buy can
steer food production to wellness truly
the world is in our hands and with great
strength comes great responsibility it’s
time to reboot [Applause]
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