WEBVTT

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I'm here today to challenge

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the way we think
about food and civilization.

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We live in a mobile, highly-technological,
largely urban civilization;

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our food markets
are bursting with produce.

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We have an amazing global system

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that brings food from all over the world
to those who can buy it;

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and there's the rub:
to those who can buy it.

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In 2008, the food prices spiked

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and food riots broke out
in 30 countries; governments fell.

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At the time, I was working
as the science advisor

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to the US Secretary of State,
then, Condoleezza Rice.

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She asked me to organize

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a high-level meeting
on this food price crisis.

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Secretary of Defense Bob Gates was there;
he understood the implications.

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In the ensuing years,
food prices moderated,

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then spiked again,
and the Arab Spring began.

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(Video starts) (Moderator)
Angry protesters burning tires,

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blocking roads, and attacking
the police with fireworks

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in the Algerian capital.

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They are protesting

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over the rise in food prices
and unemployment.

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(Arabic) We do not accept
this government

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because we've been suffering
for ten years

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and ten more years are coming,
and nothing will have changed.

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(Moderator) Anti riot squads

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deployed in many Algerian cities

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as a simmering anger
threatens massive protest

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in the oil and gas-rich
North African country.

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(Rioters) The government
is humiliating us,

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they're raising the price of sugar.

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We have to pay the rent,

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the electricity, water,
sugar,and oil; we're all poor.

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(Video ends)

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Nina Fedoroff: You all know
how that came out;

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and if you think
that's a coincidence, watch this:

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the red lines mark when,

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and the flags mark
where food riots happen -

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a scary thought.

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Can the stability of governments,
indeed civilizations, ride on food?

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Let's go back for a moment
and look at how civilizations started.

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For most of our history,
we were hunter-gatherers.

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We spent our days 
gathering and capturing food.

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Then, about 10 or 20,000 years ago,

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we began to adapt plants and animals
better to our own deeds,

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and settle down to grow and herd them.

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That, of course, is called agriculture,

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and it allowed us to feed
more than ourselves and our families.

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We could feed scribes,
artisans, warriors, and kings.

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These are scenes 
from a 3,000-year-old Egyptian tomb.

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Cities and civilizations flourished.

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What I'm saying is simply this:
all of human civilization emerged

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because we figured out
how to produce surplus food.

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For millennia,
civilizations rose and fell,

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lasting largely until the land wore out

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or until the neighbors invaded
having worn out their own.

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Even at the turn of the 18th century,

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Thomas Malthus told us

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that we were doomed to hunger and strife

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because our numbers inevitably grew faster
than our ability to produce food.

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If Malthus thought the game was over

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when we were just a billion people
on the face of the earth,

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how did we get to today's seven billion?

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It was just about the time

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Malthus was penning his gloomy predictions

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that science began
to enter agriculture in earnest.

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Over the next two centuries,

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three key innovations
transformed agriculture.

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These were: synthetic fertilizer,

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genetics, and the internal
combustion engine.

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These three innovations set in motion
the most profound changes

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in human civilization ever.

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Plants do something quite extraordinary:

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they make sugar out of water, in thin air;

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well across the carbon dioxide in the air.

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We also need nitrogen,

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but most plants can't use
atmospheric nitrogen.

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Manure contains nitrogen
in the right kinds of compounds,

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and of course, it's been used
since time immemorial to fertilize crops.

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The problem is there
isn't much nitrogen in manure

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so it takes a lot of it
to fertilize crops,

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and of course, you have to feed
the animals that produce the manure.

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About a century ago, Fritz Haber
and Carl Bosch figured out

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how to convert nitrogen in the atmosphere
to compounds plants can use.

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That's done in huge plants
all around the world today.

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And then, there's genetics.

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This is Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug,
the father of the Green Revolution

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that put the countries, the populace,
and famine-plagued Asian countries

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on the road out of poverty.

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What you might not know

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is that the Green Revolution
was based on mutations,

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genetic changes that allowed plants
to use fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer,

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more efficiently,
doubling and tripling yields.

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Genetic modification, GM;
today, we vilify that

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- I'll get back to that.

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Then there's
the internal combustion engine:

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for most of human history,

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agriculture was back-breaking work
and occupied most people.

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The populace remained largely agrarian
even in developed countries,

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well into the 20th century.

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As machines gradually took over the task,

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it requires fewer and fewer people
to produce more and more food;

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people flow to cities, cities became
hotbeds of innovation and collaboration;

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technology-driven
wealth generation accelerated

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giving us all the machines, the gadgets,
and the comforts of modern life,

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even the Internet and even Twitter.

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What does the future hold?

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Was Malthus just plain wrong
because he didn't figure out science?

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Are there limits

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to how much, how many people
the plant can provision?

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Will climate change help or harm?

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Let's look at some trends.

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Population growth is slowing,

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but it's not likely to stop
much short of 10 billion;

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probably will go higher.

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As technology powers country
after country out of poverty,

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people want to eat more meat;

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transitioning from a grain-based diet
to a meat-based diet requires more grain;

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growing more grain requires more land,
but there isn't any more.

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In fact, we're losing it faster

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to urbanization, salinization,
and desertification than we're adding it.

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If we don't do something different,

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we'll be back to Malthus in our lifetime;

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well, maybe not mine,
but certainly yours and your children's.

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Then there's climate change.

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Our major food and feed crops
grow best at about the temperatures

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that you and I find comfortable.

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Let me draw your attention
to this very hot summer of 2003

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many of you experienced it.

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It was only three degrees 
above average for the last century,

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but crop yields declined by about 30%;

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think about that - that's going to be
an average summer in a few decades,

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and a cool summer
by the end of the century.

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Then there's water -

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the most productive agriculture
is irrigated agriculture,

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and the most reliable water
comes from deep underground,

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indeed, from fossil aquifers.

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These are being exhausted faster
and faster the world around.

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Not good trends;

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I think that our past successes
in our bursting food markets

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have led a lot of city folks into thinking
Malthus is ancient history;

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but Norman Borlaug knew otherwise.

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In his Nobel Prize speech, he said,

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"We may be at high tide now,
but ebb tide could soon set in

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if we become complacent
and relax our efforts,"

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and that's just what we've done.

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We've contracted our investments
in agricultural research

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leaving the job primarily
to big agribusiness companies,

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and then we berated them
- think Monsanto.

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We've taken to the notion of organic food
because it's more natural;

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don't be seduced -

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the primary tenant 
of organic farming is a prohibition

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on the use of synthetic fertilizer,
but manure alone can't do the job;

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if we, the entire world,
went organic tomorrow,

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we could probably feed
half of our current population.

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So can we feed 10 billion people?

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I think we can, but we have
to think and act differently.

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Agriculture is a complex system
of water, energy, chemical nutrients,

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environment, of course, people;

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we have to optimize that system as a whole

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and make it more sustainable.

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Very easy to say, hard to do.

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Let me give you some specifics:

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we need to increase the yield

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on the land we already farm
using less water.

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One contribution of many
is moving high-value crops indoors.

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This is a very modern greenhouse
in Southern California;

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tomatoes are growing
on strings straight up

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producing five to ten times as much this
they produce in open fields,

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as much as 100 kilograms
per square meter per year

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using a tenth as much water.

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We can build greenhouses
in cities on rooftops,

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and even in the desert
with a bit of tweaking,

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but we won't grow our grain under glass.

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Today, farmers distribute

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a hundred million tons
of chemical fertilizer

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on their fields each year.

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Much of it runs off to pollute
our waterways, killing them;

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figuring out how to deliver the nutrients
precisely when they are needed,

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exactly where they're needed
is one of the challenges of the future.

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Here's one system, is called fertigation,

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and you can see the nutrients in the water
go directly to the roots underground,

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but there's much more to be done.

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Then there's insecticides -

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we use about a billion pounds
a year globally,

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to kill pests like this corn earworm,
but they also kill beneficial insects.

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Rachel Carson, author of "Silent Spring"
that ignited the environmental movement

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dreamed of a time

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that we could do this biologically
rather than with toxic chemicals.

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Now we can: take this corn
- is called BT corn.

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similar to any other corn
except it has one extra gene in it,

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taken from a safe bacterium 
used as a pesticide by organic farmers

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and put directly
into the genome of the plant.

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This is modern genetic modification, GM:

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the plant produces the bacterial protein,

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and it affects only the insects
that munch on the plant;

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insecticide use has gone down
a lot, worldwide,

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with the use of these plants,
with these crops,

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beneficial insects flourish,
and farmers' prices come down;

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but there's much, much more
that can be done.

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We can look forward to crops
that withstand drought,

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that use nitrogen more efficiently,
that tolerate heat,

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and they are frankly,
more nutritious for us,

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but contemporary
genetically modified crops

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are the only ones
that have gotten the GMO moniker,

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and that's a fearful word.

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Google it, and you'll be astounded:

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GMOs have been blamed
for farmer suicides in India,

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tumors in rats,
and every manner of human ill

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from autism to obesity
to infertility and cancer.

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Scary - fortunately, none of it is true.

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Indeed, after 25 years
of government research,

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the EU published a report, basically
summarizing the 25 years of research

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costing upwards of 300 million euros

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by saying very simply the modification
of plants by GM techniques

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is no more dangerous than modification
of plants by other techniques.

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But the GMO wars rage on
fueled by electronic gossip,

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by organizations
that exploit GM fears for profit;

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fears sell better than facts.

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Important work on GM crops
has been destroyed the world around

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like work on this golden rice,
vitamin-A-enriched rice;

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I myself have been picketed,

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verbally abused,
subject to endless hate email,

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and even narrowly escaped physical attack,

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all because I keep trying to explain

00:16:14.561 --> 00:16:20.101
the science and the sense
behind this amazing revolution.

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We are approaching a tipping point;

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we expect 10 billion people for dinner
in the not-too-distant future.

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How we meet their demands for food
will again reshape civilization;

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will we continue to ignore facts
and cling to fear-based belief systems

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with the glowing embers 
of poverty-based social instability

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flare into 
civilization- consuming conflagrations?

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Or will we be able to develop, test, 
and actually use new technologies?

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Will we be able to realize
the knowledge civilizations

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to which we all aspire?

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Will we have the wisdom to invest

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in the scientific
and technological innovations

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that can give everyone a livelihood,
a seat at the table, and enough to eat?

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I believe we can.

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Will we? I don't know.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)