[Applause]
the most intimate relationship you will
have is with food you put it inside your
body every day and it literally turns
into you and that relationship is also
deeply and madly emotional we celebrate
by sharing food and when we’re sad we
eat so many of our strongest memories
are also coupled to food and flavors but
we also define who we are through food
so you might remember those little books
that we had when we were kids you know
everybody filling in one page putting
your name your favorite color your
hobbies and your favorite food
now we take pictures of what we eat post
it on Instagram telling this is what I
eat this is how I want you to see me
even on tinder people have like very
limited space to give the first
impression and they want to tell that
they are vegans or vegetarians or meat
lovers so food is a very powerful way to
express our values and our social status
to tell who we are as individuals but it
goes way beyond that we as a group as a
nation as a culture define ourselves
through food some people eat meat some
eat pork some eat beef some eat chicken
hearts some eat bread made of rhyme it
tells us who we are and it gives us a
tool to separate the enemies from
friends if you eat food that looks
familiar to me you’re probably one of
the good guys
but goes even further than that we
define ourselves as species through what
we eat if you would have access to alien
Wikipedia and check human it would
probably say that human is a primate
that uses controls other animals and
plants to produce their food and if you
take a look on earth from far enough
that’s quite obvious we species are
farmers but it wasn’t like that always
if you go back 200 thousand years the
anatomically modern human being was
already there we were collecting our
food from the environment nuts roots
leaves occasional animal if we caught
one so in many ways we were
just another primate just another ape
and harmless insignificant species on
the planet and we lived like that
for most of our history it was only some
ten thousand years ago some things
started to change we started to farm and
this was a major transition in how we
fed ourselves agricultural revolution
did not happen overnight but it did
change everything we started to
domesticate plants and animals to make
them easier to control so that we could
settle down and produce more food than
we needed for our family so that we
could support some others as well who
could focus on other kinds of tasks
administration trade that sort of things
so those small communities they building
– bili cheese will eat cheese became
towns towns became cities cities became
connected by trade we build
civilizations civilizations build
technology and science and TED talks all
the good stuff
but all this accelerated in the past 100
years it has been breathtaking tractors
industrial fertilizers plant breeding
have enabled us to produce more food
than ever before and to support a larger
population than ever before actually
right now we are more than 1,000 times
more than we were in the beginning of
agricultural revolution and that did not
come without some trouble the way we
produce food nowadays is the largest
environmental disaster that we have cost
the nutrients we put on the fields they
leaked into the water systems
agriculture produces more greenhouse
emissions than all traffic combined and
it uses about 40% of the fertile surface
of earth size of South America and all
that space is away from biodiversity
that has caused major extinctions so we
are quite literally consuming our planet
and that’s not going to get any easier
because by 2050 we need to produce up to
70% more food without increasing the
field service area
and the climate is finding fighting back
changing climate extreme weather
conditions flats draught they’re hitting
hardest our food production so we are in
this vicious circle the way we produce
our food harms environment and the
environment punches back making
agriculture really hard obviously
there’s a lot of things that we could do
right now easy things stop wasting food
but use the amount of meat we consume
come up with more resource efficient
farming systems yes we should do all of
those things but they are just
incremental improvements into existing
system we need something new something
else a greenhouse is a structure that
protects the crops from the weather and
this is the reason we can produce fresh
vegetables in Finland through the whole
year we are the northernmost country on
the planet that does that greenhouses
allow control to the environment that
the crops see and that allows more
efficient use of nutrients and water and
these technologies developing really
fast in the modern greenhouse the plants
are growing under LED lies stacked
vertically on several layers in close to
completely contained system where use
water nutrients extremely efficiently
and these can be placed anywhere
Antarctica Sahara Finland underground
this is a step forward and definitely
part of the solution but this is not
enough I think we can do much better
and this is me with my parents some
years ago we had this old green house in
our backyard and we’re growing all kinds
of plants there that was my playground
and when there the whole summer and
eating things that I was not supposed to
eat like probably right there the bad
mom that’s going into my mouth
I don’t know if it’s supposed to go
there I was fascinated about the flavors
and tastes of plants and why they were
so different
wise mint different from strawberry and
different from sage and my mom was the
chemistry teacher so she could provide a
lot of answers but you know you grow up
and at some moment your mom’s advice
it’s just not good enough anymore so I
read a book it was called the medical
plants in Finland I was seven he was the
first book I ever read but it took me to
study molecular biology and cellular
biology because I really wanted to
really go on the bottom of it what goes
on there and the smallest units of life
in the cells actually to figure out how
life itself works so plant cells they
can be taken out of the plant and they
can be grown in laboratory and
completely artificial environment and
they can do pretty much the same thing
as a plant going to you they can take
very simple nutrients and turn them into
very very complex biomolecules but we
need as food or as medicine right so
here is arctic bramble it produces a lot
of very interesting biomolecules the
problem is it’s almost impossible to
cultivate and it’s getting really very
unfinished nature so the lab where I
work they hacked it they took some cells
and grow it in the lab as a cell culture
and they did the same for many plant
species so I got into that lab
you can probably figure out what
happened they told me that not supposed
to eat that stuff we are in the lab you
don’t eat things in the lab now I
convinced them that we can do it and it
wasn’t that crazy after all so what if
we could grow plants in the lab and
grown only the best bits of it and we
could tell the cells what to do so we
can actually grow that berry in the lab
berry to find out completely contained
environment but we wanted to take this a
bit further we took that all the complex
laboratory equipment simplified it
redesigned it and made a device that you
could have in your kitchen in your
kitchen counter growing fresh food out
of plant cells out of any plants cells
in anywhere on the planet
that’s Arctic ramble there as cell
culture yummy with yogurt if we can do
that with plants could we do that with
animals sure let’s take a sense that
stem cell out of a cow produce muscle
tissue in the lab and make a burger
technology exists it’s still
ridiculously expensive but it provokes
the question do we need animals to make
meat in the future probably not and we
don’t need them for many other things
either we can take piece of DNA out of
the cow do you know the codes for milk
proteins put it in baker’s yeast throw
that in the tank and have the yeast
produce milk or gelatin for gummy bears
or egg proteins for eggs any proteins so
we can actually make completely
synthetic cells we could just engineer a
cell that makes all kinds of components
our nutrition that we need have it
engineered to take carbon from carbon
dioxide from the air or methane from the
air in there are synthetic biology all
this is possible and I think if we could
have these tanks many tanks growing all
these different organisms that would
combine that would make complete human
diet right completely contained why
and then we could take all those
components and put them together with 3d
printer and have food complete
transition in food system I would call
that solar agriculture and now you say
hold on that’s crazy
that’s not my food that’s not natural
what about the risks that we cannot see
yet what about playing God
what about is this technology will it be
equally available for everyone what are
the things that we don’t know yet and
you’re absolutely right it is a scary
thing because we are farmers now if you
look back the previous transition in
food agriculture
none of those organisms that we knew use
now to make our food existed carrots
cabbage cheese rice corn none of that
was there we created all of them we
created completely artificial
environment where they grow the fields
and the forms and yes it did cause a lot
of harm for the environment obviously
but also for us it narrowed down our
diets in the beginning and settling down
cause a lot of infectious diseases that
we didn’t have before Agricultural
Revolution was a transition and it was a
trade off but without that we wouldn’t
be here so the next transition might be
inevitable if the climate change is
enough we have no other choice then
produce our food in completely contained
environments
but I hope but there would be they would
be a choice that we make it would be a
necessary transition that we would
willingly make if we could make our food
in small surface area in contained
environment with extreme efficiency not
wasting resources we could probably
reforest some of those fields we could
live on this planet without consuming it
but it could be much more than that
now if we can make that bioreactor farm
where we could make the whole complete
human diet that would for the first time
break the bond that we have to soil and
earth that could actually enable some of
us to leave this planet become truly
interplanetary species space monkeys
now food is in the core of our identity
and when we think of who we are we tend
to look to the past I see that we are
farmers but when you look far enough to
the past it’s clear that we have been
farmers only very short part of our
history and it’s clear that we cannot go
back to be hunter-gatherers now we’re
facing some of the biggest challenges of
humanity right now and we have to use
all possible technologies all possible
smart ideas to live on this planet
without consuming it that requires us to
fix the current system stop wasting food
reduce meat consumption develop better
agriculture systems that use resources
efficiently but that also means that we
have to take the next transition we have
to develop food production systems that
are completely decoupled from the
environment and for that we need to
create completely new synthetic single
cell production organisms now that
thought feels strange and awkward
because who we think we are but the
world around us is changing fast and
instead of looking back we really need
to bravely look forward and ask the
questions
who will we become next thank you
you
the most intimate relationship you will
have is with food you put it inside your
body every day and it literally turns
into you and that relationship is also
deeply and madly emotional we celebrate
by sharing food and when we’re sad we
eat so many of our strongest memories
are also coupled to food and flavors but
we also define who we are through food
so you might remember those little books
that we had when we were kids you know
everybody filling in one page putting
your name your favorite color your
hobbies and your favorite food
now we take pictures of what we eat post
it on Instagram telling this is what I
eat this is how I want you to see me
even on tinder people have like very
limited space to give the first
impression and they want to tell that
they are vegans or vegetarians or meat
lovers so food is a very powerful way to
express our values and our social status
to tell who we are as individuals but it
goes way beyond that we as a group as a
nation as a culture define ourselves
through food some people eat meat some
eat pork some eat beef some eat chicken
hearts some eat bread made of rhyme it
tells us who we are and it gives us a
tool to separate the enemies from
friends if you eat food that looks
familiar to me you’re probably one of
the good guys
but goes even further than that we
define ourselves as species through what
we eat if you would have access to alien
Wikipedia and check human it would
probably say that human is a primate
that uses controls other animals and
plants to produce their food and if you
take a look on earth from far enough
that’s quite obvious we species are
farmers but it wasn’t like that always
if you go back 200 thousand years the
anatomically modern human being was
already there we were collecting our
food from the environment nuts roots
leaves occasional animal if we caught
one so in many ways we were
just another primate just another ape
and harmless insignificant species on
the planet and we lived like that
for most of our history it was only some
ten thousand years ago some things
started to change we started to farm and
this was a major transition in how we
fed ourselves agricultural revolution
did not happen overnight but it did
change everything we started to
domesticate plants and animals to make
them easier to control so that we could
settle down and produce more food than
we needed for our family so that we
could support some others as well who
could focus on other kinds of tasks
administration trade that sort of things
so those small communities they building
– bili cheese will eat cheese became
towns towns became cities cities became
connected by trade we build
civilizations civilizations build
technology and science and TED talks all
the good stuff
but all this accelerated in the past 100
years it has been breathtaking tractors
industrial fertilizers plant breeding
have enabled us to produce more food
than ever before and to support a larger
population than ever before actually
right now we are more than 1,000 times
more than we were in the beginning of
agricultural revolution and that did not
come without some trouble the way we
produce food nowadays is the largest
environmental disaster that we have cost
the nutrients we put on the fields they
leaked into the water systems
agriculture produces more greenhouse
emissions than all traffic combined and
it uses about 40% of the fertile surface
of earth size of South America and all
that space is away from biodiversity
that has caused major extinctions so we
are quite literally consuming our planet
and that’s not going to get any easier
because by 2050 we need to produce up to
70% more food without increasing the
field service area
and the climate is finding fighting back
changing climate extreme weather
conditions flats draught they’re hitting
hardest our food production so we are in
this vicious circle the way we produce
our food harms environment and the
environment punches back making
agriculture really hard obviously
there’s a lot of things that we could do
right now easy things stop wasting food
but use the amount of meat we consume
come up with more resource efficient
farming systems yes we should do all of
those things but they are just
incremental improvements into existing
system we need something new something
else a greenhouse is a structure that
protects the crops from the weather and
this is the reason we can produce fresh
vegetables in Finland through the whole
year we are the northernmost country on
the planet that does that greenhouses
allow control to the environment that
the crops see and that allows more
efficient use of nutrients and water and
these technologies developing really
fast in the modern greenhouse the plants
are growing under LED lies stacked
vertically on several layers in close to
completely contained system where use
water nutrients extremely efficiently
and these can be placed anywhere
Antarctica Sahara Finland underground
this is a step forward and definitely
part of the solution but this is not
enough I think we can do much better
and this is me with my parents some
years ago we had this old green house in
our backyard and we’re growing all kinds
of plants there that was my playground
and when there the whole summer and
eating things that I was not supposed to
eat like probably right there the bad
mom that’s going into my mouth
I don’t know if it’s supposed to go
there I was fascinated about the flavors
and tastes of plants and why they were
so different
wise mint different from strawberry and
different from sage and my mom was the
chemistry teacher so she could provide a
lot of answers but you know you grow up
and at some moment your mom’s advice
it’s just not good enough anymore so I
read a book it was called the medical
plants in Finland I was seven he was the
first book I ever read but it took me to
study molecular biology and cellular
biology because I really wanted to
really go on the bottom of it what goes
on there and the smallest units of life
in the cells actually to figure out how
life itself works so plant cells they
can be taken out of the plant and they
can be grown in laboratory and
completely artificial environment and
they can do pretty much the same thing
as a plant going to you they can take
very simple nutrients and turn them into
very very complex biomolecules but we
need as food or as medicine right so
here is arctic bramble it produces a lot
of very interesting biomolecules the
problem is it’s almost impossible to
cultivate and it’s getting really very
unfinished nature so the lab where I
work they hacked it they took some cells
and grow it in the lab as a cell culture
and they did the same for many plant
species so I got into that lab
you can probably figure out what
happened they told me that not supposed
to eat that stuff we are in the lab you
don’t eat things in the lab now I
convinced them that we can do it and it
wasn’t that crazy after all so what if
we could grow plants in the lab and
grown only the best bits of it and we
could tell the cells what to do so we
can actually grow that berry in the lab
berry to find out completely contained
environment but we wanted to take this a
bit further we took that all the complex
laboratory equipment simplified it
redesigned it and made a device that you
could have in your kitchen in your
kitchen counter growing fresh food out
of plant cells out of any plants cells
in anywhere on the planet
that’s Arctic ramble there as cell
culture yummy with yogurt if we can do
that with plants could we do that with
animals sure let’s take a sense that
stem cell out of a cow produce muscle
tissue in the lab and make a burger
technology exists it’s still
ridiculously expensive but it provokes
the question do we need animals to make
meat in the future probably not and we
don’t need them for many other things
either we can take piece of DNA out of
the cow do you know the codes for milk
proteins put it in baker’s yeast throw
that in the tank and have the yeast
produce milk or gelatin for gummy bears
or egg proteins for eggs any proteins so
we can actually make completely
synthetic cells we could just engineer a
cell that makes all kinds of components
our nutrition that we need have it
engineered to take carbon from carbon
dioxide from the air or methane from the
air in there are synthetic biology all
this is possible and I think if we could
have these tanks many tanks growing all
these different organisms that would
combine that would make complete human
diet right completely contained why
and then we could take all those
components and put them together with 3d
printer and have food complete
transition in food system I would call
that solar agriculture and now you say
hold on that’s crazy
that’s not my food that’s not natural
what about the risks that we cannot see
yet what about playing God
what about is this technology will it be
equally available for everyone what are
the things that we don’t know yet and
you’re absolutely right it is a scary
thing because we are farmers now if you
look back the previous transition in
food agriculture
none of those organisms that we knew use
now to make our food existed carrots
cabbage cheese rice corn none of that
was there we created all of them we
created completely artificial
environment where they grow the fields
and the forms and yes it did cause a lot
of harm for the environment obviously
but also for us it narrowed down our
diets in the beginning and settling down
cause a lot of infectious diseases that
we didn’t have before Agricultural
Revolution was a transition and it was a
trade off but without that we wouldn’t
be here so the next transition might be
inevitable if the climate change is
enough we have no other choice then
produce our food in completely contained
environments
but I hope but there would be they would
be a choice that we make it would be a
necessary transition that we would
willingly make if we could make our food
in small surface area in contained
environment with extreme efficiency not
wasting resources we could probably
reforest some of those fields we could
live on this planet without consuming it
but it could be much more than that
now if we can make that bioreactor farm
where we could make the whole complete
human diet that would for the first time
break the bond that we have to soil and
earth that could actually enable some of
us to leave this planet become truly
interplanetary species space monkeys
now food is in the core of our identity
and when we think of who we are we tend
to look to the past I see that we are
farmers but when you look far enough to
the past it’s clear that we have been
farmers only very short part of our
history and it’s clear that we cannot go
back to be hunter-gatherers now we’re
facing some of the biggest challenges of
humanity right now and we have to use
all possible technologies all possible
smart ideas to live on this planet
without consuming it that requires us to
fix the current system stop wasting food
reduce meat consumption develop better
agriculture systems that use resources
efficiently but that also means that we
have to take the next transition we have
to develop food production systems that
are completely decoupled from the
environment and for that we need to
create completely new synthetic single
cell production organisms now that
thought feels strange and awkward
because who we think we are but the
world around us is changing fast and
instead of looking back we really need
to bravely look forward and ask the
questions
who will we become next thank you
you
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