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Truth: Food is awesome.

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We all love to eat.

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It's one of the best things [br]we do every single day.

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Food actually can be the solution[br]to so many problems,

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from my own personal mood[br]to geopolitical strife.

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But the reality is — food can also[br]be the cause of a lot of problems,

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and as an entrepreneur,[br]I love to solve problems.

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The first one I went out [br]to tackle was hunger,

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because it's a pretty [br]intractable problem.

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A billion people hungry in a world[br]where we actually have enough food

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to feed everyone more than[br]a 2,000 calories a day that they need,

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today on the planet.

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The problem is obviously that

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food is not necessarily getting[br]to the people where they are.

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Even in America, there are [br]49 million hungry people.

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One thing I found ironic when travelling[br]to the world's hungry regions,

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is that even in the most [br]desperate desolate places

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where hunger is ravaging populations,

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you can generally find soda,

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and you can generally find[br]packaged processed foods,

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and sometimes even French fries,

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which has led to another intractable [br]problem in our food system,

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which is a massive [br]global obesity epidemic.

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Now, there are places in the world

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where people are transitioning[br]from hunger to obesity

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in just one generation,

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and having all of the health problems

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that we in our own [br]Western diet countries have.

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Things like, diabetes, [br]and heart disease, and cancer,

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at the same rates that we do,[br]in just one generation

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after being hungry for years.

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And it looks like this problem[br]is going to balloon

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to about 2 billion people,[br]even in just 2015.

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So we have on our planet,[br]just caused by food

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two major malnutrition crisis,

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and I argue that they're [br]essentially the same problem.

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In both hunger and obesity,

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it's very difficult to access[br]nutritious foods,

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no matter where you are.

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And they're killing us.

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These two problems alone[br]are responsible

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for millions and millions [br]of deaths every year.

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And they're totally preventable, right?

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Because it's all because of food.

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So, I'm trying to understand

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why food can be the cause [br]of so much death and destruction.

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Or, where does food come from?

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It comes from agriculture.

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And we've been made to believe

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that there's essentially[br]two forms of agriculture.

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One, which we mostly get [br]in the United States,

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represented by me on a gray bin,

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where there's massive highly[br]consolidated farms.

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And another, which you can see it[br]represented by these women,

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which is mostly women farmers on [br]very under-financed plots of land

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that they don't necessarily own.

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80% of the farmers in Africa are women,

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most of them have [br]no rights to their lands,

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and have no resources.

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So, we now see that maybe [br]hunger and obesity,

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both connected to farms,

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could be connected to this fact

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that there's a bifurcated agricultural [br]system around the planet.

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Where did this come from?

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It actually came around the same time[br]I came onto the planet, 1980.

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And, something kind of weird [br]happened in 1980

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that led to that graph of obesity[br]that we all see today.

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It pretty much starts with 1980.

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Well, what changed?

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Something changed that [br]fundamentally shifted dinner.

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I argue that in the 70's oil crisis,

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making oil and all the inputs[br]to agriculture wildly more expensive,

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a lot of changes came out of that.

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One of the biggest changes[br]was a massive loss

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of small and medium size [br]farmers in America.

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We lost a million farmers[br]right around 1980.

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But other interesting things[br]happened in 1980.

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Genetically modified crops [br]became patentable

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according to a Supreme Court [br]decision in 1980.

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High fructose corn syrup first came[br]onto the market in a big way in 1980.

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We started to divest [br]in agriculture internationally.

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So since 1980, we've shifted away[br]from agricultural development

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and towards food aid [br]by measure of about 75 percent.

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And we also stopped investing in [br]agricultural systems in our own country,

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like, publicly financed [br]research for seeds.

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Today, most of that [br]is done by corporations,

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and you can obviously tell what kind [br]of results they're gonna get.

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Also since 1980, the data is very clear,

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both hunger and obesity are up.

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Hunger has increased by 80 million people.

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This is in a time when we know [br]exactly how to grow food,

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and how to certainly feed the planet.

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And this other problem [br]has obviously appeared.

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Well, what we grow [br]is clearly part of the problem.

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Corn is in everything.

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From our soda to our beef,[br]to our cars, and to our food aid.

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And what we eat is an absolute [br]outcome of what we grow.

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Because we have such preponderance

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of corn, soy and wheat[br]in our agricultural system.

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And we subsidize it.

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Fruits and vegetables have become [br]much more expensive relatively.

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Also, we're growing these inputs[br]that go directly into fast food.

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And, if we can see that data alone,

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you can tell obviously [br]that our global food system

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has changed quite dramatically.

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The other weird part of the food system[br]that no one likes to talk about

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is that both hunger and obesity [br]are connected to some strange middle man.

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We solve hunger by canned food drives,

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and that same canned food [br]is what has caused

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a lot of our health and obesity [br]problems around the world.

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We all know that the solution to both

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is fresh fruits and vegetables,

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healthy food, and easy access [br]to them by everyone.

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I argue that in the next 30 years

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we can actually erase all those [br]bad problems with the food system

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and change the food system for the better.

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We have a 30-year-call-to-action [br]to reverse problems that started in 1980,

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and recreate a better food system[br]of the future.

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I think it's time to change dinner.

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And my argument is not [br]just that these problems

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are intractable, and big, and global.

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It's that there are things[br]that we can do something about

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right at our own dinner table.

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If we change dinner, we can change health.

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187 billion dollars is our [br]per year investment

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in just obesity related diseases[br]in our health system.

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We can change the environment.

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We've seen that our food system,[br]our soil can be a carbon eater,

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instead of a carbon output.

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We see that our water has been [br]degraded by our agricultural system.

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All things that can be changed[br]right from our dinner table

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if we choose better,[br]more agro-ecological farming.

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We can change farms.[br]That whole middle section between

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the really small farmer who is under-funded,[br]and the really big farmer

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that is a corporate conglomerate.

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That whole section is waiting for change.

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Here in San Diego,[br]you have living in a county

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with the most farms[br]of any county in America.

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That's something you can do to change [br]dinner right in your own home.

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We can change trade[br]by buying fair trade products.

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We have huge opportunity to affect [br]change around the world

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and make sure people are paid well[br]enough to feed their kids.

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We can change meat. We're not supposed [br]to be eating corn-fed meat.

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it's worst for the environment,[br]it's worst for our health.

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If we buy better quality meat, we're helping[br]to change the food system for the better.

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We can change local economies[br]and forget about other investment plans

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that are brought by Washington[br]or Sacramento.

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We can change local economies right here,

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by keeping our money in our [br]food system right at home.

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We can change family health:[br]like we've seen in some of those videos,

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eating together not only brings[br]home the family story,

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but it actually makes kids have [br]better grades, do better in school,

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do fewer drugs later in life,[br]it's a huge social impact.

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We can change security.

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"A hungry man is an angry man,"[br]says an old African proverb,

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and if we make sure that we're investing[br]in agricultural aid around the world,

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we're helping to improve hunger.

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We can change innovation.

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There are systems,[br]like those farms in a box,

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that we can actually improve upon[br]local regional agricultural systems

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right in our own backyard.

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And we can change value.[br]What's the new value meal?

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Is it something that we make at home,

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or is it something [br]that we go out and buy?

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My call to action is change dinner [br]and change the world.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)