[Music]
have you ever tried growing tomatoes
you know actually planting a seed and
seeing it grow and then keeping it alive
for more than a month well well I did I
tried and um this was the result but not
all that impressive Rhett I mean if
people like me are responsible for
feeding the world we’re in a lot of
trouble but then there’s my neighbor who
did this you know it can be done
same seed same conditions vastly
different results here I mean we could
have expected that I guess because he’s
an agronomist and I’m just a marketing
guy right but today I want to tell you a
story of how gardening can change the
world not just grow a few extra
vegetables for the kitchen but how it
becomes this powerful engine of economic
transformation for a country like meme’
and how it can unleash economic success
on a scale that would put Silicon Valley
to shame when I talk about gardening of
course I do mean agriculture and
typically what you see is that
agriculture plays a role of outsized
importance for many countries that are
at an early stage of economic
development and in this memoirs no
different right I mean you have a fast
growing population most of whom are in
the countryside and you can just see the
importance of the agricultural sector to
the overall country’s economy the
interesting thing about Myanmar though
is that the vast potential that we have
that agriculture can continue to be this
driver of the economy going forwards and
we have this large land mass we have
fantastically fertile soil and an
amazing climate which means you can
cultivate any number of crops all year
round but it’s funny right because
there’s this perception
that if your country’s economy is based
on farming well you’re going to be a
poor country or this general belief that
agriculture in a pinning your hopes on
agriculture to develop the economy it’s
not a smart thing to do or it’s because
of this that Myanmar is a poor country I
say that is nonsense that’s just not
right and what we learn from examining
the development of economies throughout
the 20th century is this you can’t
become a rich country until you’ve got
agriculture right now it’s funny because
all the time we kind of ignore
agriculture in many countries it’s this
implicit urban bias threat the presumed
superiority of the city over the
countryside of the urban over the rural
and governments I mean not just here but
governments all around the world they
make policies that make perfect sense
if you’re a city dweller but no sense at
all if you’re a farmer in the
countryside which is where everybody is
so if we understand just the fundamental
importance of agriculture for our
success in the success of many other
countries I mean we can’t ignore it we
can’t afford to ignore it we need to be
taking pride in our agriculture we need
to be proud of our farms and of our
farming of the wealth of the beauty of
these fantastic natural conditions it’s
funny because all too often the reality
of agriculture just doesn’t live up to
the potential I mean here we are in
Southeast Asia it’s the land of the
smallholder farmer right so that means
you have millions of small small plots
of land which need to feed a family and
also need to provide them as some kind
of an income it’s pretty tough let me
give you an example this is Mars in now
Mars in cultivates the 3 acre plot of
land just outside maguey in central
Myanmar a she grows peanuts and maybe
some sesame if she thinks that the rains
are going to
kind to her this year her farm isn’t
irrigated which means that half the year
it lies empty because there’s no water
in her village pretty much everyone’s a
farmer pretty much everyone’s poor now
life here is precarious Mazen knows that
if she doesn’t get the yield from the
crop that she needs or the crop price
dips she’s not going to have enough
money to pay back the money lender who
lent her money to buy the seed and the
fertilizer and to send her child to
school now if that happens then she may
well lose the farm now it’s the same
story again and again throughout the
country you know these are the two
biggest crops here in Myanmar we’ve
we’ve got rice and we’ve got corn and if
you’re comparing the average performance
right the average yield from these farms
niyama here in red is consistently
underperforming our neighbors or the
best in class I mean if you go back to
what I said before about you know taking
pride in agriculture we see these
numbers but we think we’ve got so much
work to do here and you say okay so if I
asked you to say
what does agriculture look like to you
if it makes you proud right what is
agriculture that we can be proud of what
does it look like you might think of
something like this right this is pivot
irrigation in the Midwest of the US or
maybe something like this this is a
20,000 acre mega farm in Argentina you
know all these things big machines big
scale remember the economists always
tell us the importance of scale and it’s
about efficiency right a higher scale
you can be more efficient you can make
you can make more money but these sorts
of things have actually sparked
revolutions in the past right and just
think about the the Soviet Union or
China I mean they had this vision of
Agriculture and the Marxists and
Chairman Mao they hated these small
small
Farms that you still see today
throughout much of Asia they wanted to
knock all the walls down pool all the
resources and set everyone to work in
these huge state farms you know this was
gonna be the model of progressive
agriculture that we can all be proud of
well we’ve moved on a little from from
these state farms but the thinking is
largely the same the received wisdom we
have for agriculture is scale you know
big farms as few people as possible so
this chap here in Iowa he farms a 500
acre farm just him and his father and
well some rather large machinery behind
him as well so is this the model of
Agriculture that we are waiting for here
in Myanmar is this what we want to
recreate is this the panacea of
productivity and efficiency that we need
well actually no and all the data we
have says exactly the opposite if you’re
talking about growing food producing
food from one patch of land how Maas in
farms is vastly more productive than our
friend from Iowa it doesn’t make sense
right if you’ve got a farm like this I
mean this is not the most productive
farm you can get actually the most
productive farm looks like this I mean
what’s what’s going on well the thinking
is this the more you can pay attention
to each of the individual plants the
more it will reward you let’s go back to
gardening your field is your garden your
crops will they’re individual plants
that need to be nourished now when you
have a five acre patch of land you can
actually go up into your field and you
can see oh yeah we need a bit more water
here because the plants are a bit bigger
over here well yeah I need a little bit
more nutrition over here well there’s a
bit of flooding and maybe the soil
temperature needs some change in all
these tiny tiny details
that you can change and when you fix it
you can access these phenomenal yield
increases you can’t do that if you’ve
got a twenty thousand acre mega farm
right so what’s interesting is when you
can compare smallholder agriculture with
a large scale agriculture you know
side-by-side and what we notice well
I’ll show you some data in just a moment
but go back to those state farms
alongside the big collective you
actually had these micro plots of land
which served as a vegetable garden for
the guys who were working on the farm
that they produce food for them to eat
so they could get through the day of
hacking away at the rice what you see is
the productivity between these micro
plots and the rest of the farm I mean
it’s it’s staggering so in China five
percent of the state farm was actually
these micro plots and it produced twenty
percent of the food in the Soviet Union
same thing two percent of the land were
these micro plots and it produces 30
percent
I mean we’ve got data from many other
places from India from Brazil from from
other parts of Europe it all says the
same thing there’s no correlation
between the size of a farm and its
productivity so I mean it’s the same
thing right how can you pay the most
attention to your plants when they look
like this then if they’re in a two acre
plot of land just outside your village
think of a plantation this here is a
professional plantation in Malaysia and
they’re growing oil palm right what you
see is that around the edge of the
plantation you you tend to get small
holders who are growing the same crop
and consistently these small holders
will have better and more productive
farms than the plantation okay that’s a
pretty difficult message to deliver to
this guy who’s running a multinational
corporation and say look I’m sorry but
you’re running a less productive farm
than this guy in a cap but it’s worth me
just clarifying that
if we’re talking about productivity and
efficiency it’s really important to
understand that the definition of
efficiency depends entirely on what your
objective is what you’re trying to do
these small holders can produce the most
amount of food for a patch of land that
that’s clear but what if your objective
is return on investment so you know for
the money and the resources you put in
what’s the money that you get back well
you get a vastly different picture and
if you get it right
large-scale agriculture can be
incredibly attractive but it’s not
enough to say well you know which one
makes me the most money and let’s go and
do that you’re missing the point if
you’re running a country your objectives
cannot be the same as if you’re running
a business it’s not about the money it’s
about people and the work that they do
large-scale agriculture tries to
minimize labor tries to minimize people
just because people tend to be expensive
and in many economies there’s something
more productive for these people to be
doing now for returns from the farm if
you’re if it’s a small holder system
that spread liberally across millions of
farming families now when you have
large-scale agriculture returns the
money from the farm goes into the
pockets of just a few people great news
if you own that farm not so great news
if you’re a farmer working on that farm
so if you’re running a developing
country your objective can’t possibly be
to use as few people as possible I mean
you’ve got a whole countryside full of
them and honestly what else are they
going to do where are we going to find
jobs for them to do how are we going to
create these jobs in the cities and can
we really accommodate another few
million people coming to these cities I
mean it already feels as if we’re
reaching some kind of an infrastructural
crisis in in in some cities and it’s
just not right
that we should be having encouraging a
few more million people to be coming to
the city to try and find a job
think about those whole communities who
after decades of conflict they finally
laid down their arms I don’t want to
live a marginal existence in the cities
they want to go back to their village
they want to go home so you encourage
people to stay in the countryside and be
as productive as they can in doing what
they’re doing which is agriculture
now I said at the beginning I said you
know no country can become a rich
country until it’s got agriculture right
now I want to take that just a step
further and say that actually how you do
agriculture is just as important
so it’s either smallholder based or or
or it’s not what’s interesting is that
here in East Asia over the last 50 70
years you’ve got broadly two groupings
of countries now Northeast Asia you’ve
got some of the richest countries in the
world right now they implemented land
redistribution and had small holder
friendly policies for agriculture after
the Second World War
now in the Southeast Asia typically they
went for larger scale plantation based
agriculture mostly as a hangover from
the colonial experience now it’s hard to
escape the conclusion that Southeast
Asia is lagging behind Northeast Asia in
this respect at this point
it’s I have to admit that you know it’s
not enough for me to stand here and say
to all the farmers you can be wildly
productive if you just put your head
down and focus on growing better
tomatoes right not better cabbages or
whatever it is you’re growing there’s
some significant infrastructure that you
need in order to make this
transformation happen now this first
question of land
it’s a thorny one okay and I’m not going
to go into it today but just suffice to
say if you have an asset your land
you’re not going to invest in your asset
unless you know it’s your asset
training growing a better crop I mean it
is people like me growing the food guys
were in a lot of trouble financing how
do you get the cash to buy the seed and
the fertilizer and what you need to grow
a crop and finally when you’ve grown a
great crop how do you know that you can
get it to market or that you can get a
fair price for it so let’s assume that
our venerable leaders I mean they’re
here today or they’re big fans of Ted
they see the talk and they say huh let’s
do what the British guy said so they do
all of this great
okay well fast-forward a few years
actually what you see is that as the
productivity goes up the number of
people you need actually goes down so
people are freed up and now they have a
choice well maybe they want to go to the
city and find a job you know they can
come back to the farm at harvest time
now they get twin streams of income one
from the farm and one from the city if
they lose their job in the factory well
they can come back to a productive
smallholder farm and await the next
opportunity just think of the resilience
that that creates for a rural economy or
alternatively well they stay where they
are I mean just because you’re in the
countryside doesn’t mean you need to
grow stuff doesn’t mean you need to be a
farmer there’s many things you can do
right from breeding ducks to selling
fertilizer to milling rice and using the
profits from a farm to invest in your
rural enterprise people this is rural
entrepreneurship this is where it starts
let’s be clear farmers are the ultimate
entrepreneurs I mean they’re not sitting
down tapping away on their laptop or
wearing their hoody no but effectively
they’re doing exactly the same thing
right they’re using their assets their
land and their labor to run their small
business now many of us this we see the
plight of these small holder farmers and
you know we feel we want to
we want to help them we want to donate
we want to want to do something but let
me tell you farmers don’t need that they
don’t want it they just want to get on
and run their business one final thought
in many countries we’ve reached the
stage of development where we simply do
not understand the value of our farmers
right we delegate the most fundamental
responsibility of our lives which is to
feed our family to a group of people who
live in some of them most difficult
conditions imaginable we are free to
live our lives and chase our goals and
our ambitions simply because we don’t
have to worry about growing food every
day these farmers they’re not to be
pitied they’re not to be ignored they
are to be recognized as a fundamentally
important part of our society the
foundation on which all of our success
is based let’s face it without farmers
we would all be naked hungry and sober
and I say that’s a sad place to be thank
you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
have you ever tried growing tomatoes
you know actually planting a seed and
seeing it grow and then keeping it alive
for more than a month well well I did I
tried and um this was the result but not
all that impressive Rhett I mean if
people like me are responsible for
feeding the world we’re in a lot of
trouble but then there’s my neighbor who
did this you know it can be done
same seed same conditions vastly
different results here I mean we could
have expected that I guess because he’s
an agronomist and I’m just a marketing
guy right but today I want to tell you a
story of how gardening can change the
world not just grow a few extra
vegetables for the kitchen but how it
becomes this powerful engine of economic
transformation for a country like meme’
and how it can unleash economic success
on a scale that would put Silicon Valley
to shame when I talk about gardening of
course I do mean agriculture and
typically what you see is that
agriculture plays a role of outsized
importance for many countries that are
at an early stage of economic
development and in this memoirs no
different right I mean you have a fast
growing population most of whom are in
the countryside and you can just see the
importance of the agricultural sector to
the overall country’s economy the
interesting thing about Myanmar though
is that the vast potential that we have
that agriculture can continue to be this
driver of the economy going forwards and
we have this large land mass we have
fantastically fertile soil and an
amazing climate which means you can
cultivate any number of crops all year
round but it’s funny right because
there’s this perception
that if your country’s economy is based
on farming well you’re going to be a
poor country or this general belief that
agriculture in a pinning your hopes on
agriculture to develop the economy it’s
not a smart thing to do or it’s because
of this that Myanmar is a poor country I
say that is nonsense that’s just not
right and what we learn from examining
the development of economies throughout
the 20th century is this you can’t
become a rich country until you’ve got
agriculture right now it’s funny because
all the time we kind of ignore
agriculture in many countries it’s this
implicit urban bias threat the presumed
superiority of the city over the
countryside of the urban over the rural
and governments I mean not just here but
governments all around the world they
make policies that make perfect sense
if you’re a city dweller but no sense at
all if you’re a farmer in the
countryside which is where everybody is
so if we understand just the fundamental
importance of agriculture for our
success in the success of many other
countries I mean we can’t ignore it we
can’t afford to ignore it we need to be
taking pride in our agriculture we need
to be proud of our farms and of our
farming of the wealth of the beauty of
these fantastic natural conditions it’s
funny because all too often the reality
of agriculture just doesn’t live up to
the potential I mean here we are in
Southeast Asia it’s the land of the
smallholder farmer right so that means
you have millions of small small plots
of land which need to feed a family and
also need to provide them as some kind
of an income it’s pretty tough let me
give you an example this is Mars in now
Mars in cultivates the 3 acre plot of
land just outside maguey in central
Myanmar a she grows peanuts and maybe
some sesame if she thinks that the rains
are going to
kind to her this year her farm isn’t
irrigated which means that half the year
it lies empty because there’s no water
in her village pretty much everyone’s a
farmer pretty much everyone’s poor now
life here is precarious Mazen knows that
if she doesn’t get the yield from the
crop that she needs or the crop price
dips she’s not going to have enough
money to pay back the money lender who
lent her money to buy the seed and the
fertilizer and to send her child to
school now if that happens then she may
well lose the farm now it’s the same
story again and again throughout the
country you know these are the two
biggest crops here in Myanmar we’ve
we’ve got rice and we’ve got corn and if
you’re comparing the average performance
right the average yield from these farms
niyama here in red is consistently
underperforming our neighbors or the
best in class I mean if you go back to
what I said before about you know taking
pride in agriculture we see these
numbers but we think we’ve got so much
work to do here and you say okay so if I
asked you to say
what does agriculture look like to you
if it makes you proud right what is
agriculture that we can be proud of what
does it look like you might think of
something like this right this is pivot
irrigation in the Midwest of the US or
maybe something like this this is a
20,000 acre mega farm in Argentina you
know all these things big machines big
scale remember the economists always
tell us the importance of scale and it’s
about efficiency right a higher scale
you can be more efficient you can make
you can make more money but these sorts
of things have actually sparked
revolutions in the past right and just
think about the the Soviet Union or
China I mean they had this vision of
Agriculture and the Marxists and
Chairman Mao they hated these small
small
Farms that you still see today
throughout much of Asia they wanted to
knock all the walls down pool all the
resources and set everyone to work in
these huge state farms you know this was
gonna be the model of progressive
agriculture that we can all be proud of
well we’ve moved on a little from from
these state farms but the thinking is
largely the same the received wisdom we
have for agriculture is scale you know
big farms as few people as possible so
this chap here in Iowa he farms a 500
acre farm just him and his father and
well some rather large machinery behind
him as well so is this the model of
Agriculture that we are waiting for here
in Myanmar is this what we want to
recreate is this the panacea of
productivity and efficiency that we need
well actually no and all the data we
have says exactly the opposite if you’re
talking about growing food producing
food from one patch of land how Maas in
farms is vastly more productive than our
friend from Iowa it doesn’t make sense
right if you’ve got a farm like this I
mean this is not the most productive
farm you can get actually the most
productive farm looks like this I mean
what’s what’s going on well the thinking
is this the more you can pay attention
to each of the individual plants the
more it will reward you let’s go back to
gardening your field is your garden your
crops will they’re individual plants
that need to be nourished now when you
have a five acre patch of land you can
actually go up into your field and you
can see oh yeah we need a bit more water
here because the plants are a bit bigger
over here well yeah I need a little bit
more nutrition over here well there’s a
bit of flooding and maybe the soil
temperature needs some change in all
these tiny tiny details
that you can change and when you fix it
you can access these phenomenal yield
increases you can’t do that if you’ve
got a twenty thousand acre mega farm
right so what’s interesting is when you
can compare smallholder agriculture with
a large scale agriculture you know
side-by-side and what we notice well
I’ll show you some data in just a moment
but go back to those state farms
alongside the big collective you
actually had these micro plots of land
which served as a vegetable garden for
the guys who were working on the farm
that they produce food for them to eat
so they could get through the day of
hacking away at the rice what you see is
the productivity between these micro
plots and the rest of the farm I mean
it’s it’s staggering so in China five
percent of the state farm was actually
these micro plots and it produced twenty
percent of the food in the Soviet Union
same thing two percent of the land were
these micro plots and it produces 30
percent
I mean we’ve got data from many other
places from India from Brazil from from
other parts of Europe it all says the
same thing there’s no correlation
between the size of a farm and its
productivity so I mean it’s the same
thing right how can you pay the most
attention to your plants when they look
like this then if they’re in a two acre
plot of land just outside your village
think of a plantation this here is a
professional plantation in Malaysia and
they’re growing oil palm right what you
see is that around the edge of the
plantation you you tend to get small
holders who are growing the same crop
and consistently these small holders
will have better and more productive
farms than the plantation okay that’s a
pretty difficult message to deliver to
this guy who’s running a multinational
corporation and say look I’m sorry but
you’re running a less productive farm
than this guy in a cap but it’s worth me
just clarifying that
if we’re talking about productivity and
efficiency it’s really important to
understand that the definition of
efficiency depends entirely on what your
objective is what you’re trying to do
these small holders can produce the most
amount of food for a patch of land that
that’s clear but what if your objective
is return on investment so you know for
the money and the resources you put in
what’s the money that you get back well
you get a vastly different picture and
if you get it right
large-scale agriculture can be
incredibly attractive but it’s not
enough to say well you know which one
makes me the most money and let’s go and
do that you’re missing the point if
you’re running a country your objectives
cannot be the same as if you’re running
a business it’s not about the money it’s
about people and the work that they do
large-scale agriculture tries to
minimize labor tries to minimize people
just because people tend to be expensive
and in many economies there’s something
more productive for these people to be
doing now for returns from the farm if
you’re if it’s a small holder system
that spread liberally across millions of
farming families now when you have
large-scale agriculture returns the
money from the farm goes into the
pockets of just a few people great news
if you own that farm not so great news
if you’re a farmer working on that farm
so if you’re running a developing
country your objective can’t possibly be
to use as few people as possible I mean
you’ve got a whole countryside full of
them and honestly what else are they
going to do where are we going to find
jobs for them to do how are we going to
create these jobs in the cities and can
we really accommodate another few
million people coming to these cities I
mean it already feels as if we’re
reaching some kind of an infrastructural
crisis in in in some cities and it’s
just not right
that we should be having encouraging a
few more million people to be coming to
the city to try and find a job
think about those whole communities who
after decades of conflict they finally
laid down their arms I don’t want to
live a marginal existence in the cities
they want to go back to their village
they want to go home so you encourage
people to stay in the countryside and be
as productive as they can in doing what
they’re doing which is agriculture
now I said at the beginning I said you
know no country can become a rich
country until it’s got agriculture right
now I want to take that just a step
further and say that actually how you do
agriculture is just as important
so it’s either smallholder based or or
or it’s not what’s interesting is that
here in East Asia over the last 50 70
years you’ve got broadly two groupings
of countries now Northeast Asia you’ve
got some of the richest countries in the
world right now they implemented land
redistribution and had small holder
friendly policies for agriculture after
the Second World War
now in the Southeast Asia typically they
went for larger scale plantation based
agriculture mostly as a hangover from
the colonial experience now it’s hard to
escape the conclusion that Southeast
Asia is lagging behind Northeast Asia in
this respect at this point
it’s I have to admit that you know it’s
not enough for me to stand here and say
to all the farmers you can be wildly
productive if you just put your head
down and focus on growing better
tomatoes right not better cabbages or
whatever it is you’re growing there’s
some significant infrastructure that you
need in order to make this
transformation happen now this first
question of land
it’s a thorny one okay and I’m not going
to go into it today but just suffice to
say if you have an asset your land
you’re not going to invest in your asset
unless you know it’s your asset
training growing a better crop I mean it
is people like me growing the food guys
were in a lot of trouble financing how
do you get the cash to buy the seed and
the fertilizer and what you need to grow
a crop and finally when you’ve grown a
great crop how do you know that you can
get it to market or that you can get a
fair price for it so let’s assume that
our venerable leaders I mean they’re
here today or they’re big fans of Ted
they see the talk and they say huh let’s
do what the British guy said so they do
all of this great
okay well fast-forward a few years
actually what you see is that as the
productivity goes up the number of
people you need actually goes down so
people are freed up and now they have a
choice well maybe they want to go to the
city and find a job you know they can
come back to the farm at harvest time
now they get twin streams of income one
from the farm and one from the city if
they lose their job in the factory well
they can come back to a productive
smallholder farm and await the next
opportunity just think of the resilience
that that creates for a rural economy or
alternatively well they stay where they
are I mean just because you’re in the
countryside doesn’t mean you need to
grow stuff doesn’t mean you need to be a
farmer there’s many things you can do
right from breeding ducks to selling
fertilizer to milling rice and using the
profits from a farm to invest in your
rural enterprise people this is rural
entrepreneurship this is where it starts
let’s be clear farmers are the ultimate
entrepreneurs I mean they’re not sitting
down tapping away on their laptop or
wearing their hoody no but effectively
they’re doing exactly the same thing
right they’re using their assets their
land and their labor to run their small
business now many of us this we see the
plight of these small holder farmers and
you know we feel we want to
we want to help them we want to donate
we want to want to do something but let
me tell you farmers don’t need that they
don’t want it they just want to get on
and run their business one final thought
in many countries we’ve reached the
stage of development where we simply do
not understand the value of our farmers
right we delegate the most fundamental
responsibility of our lives which is to
feed our family to a group of people who
live in some of them most difficult
conditions imaginable we are free to
live our lives and chase our goals and
our ambitions simply because we don’t
have to worry about growing food every
day these farmers they’re not to be
pitied they’re not to be ignored they
are to be recognized as a fundamentally
important part of our society the
foundation on which all of our success
is based let’s face it without farmers
we would all be naked hungry and sober
and I say that’s a sad place to be thank
you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
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