WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 I'm not at all a cook. 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:05.000 So don't fear, this is not going to be a cooking demonstration. 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000 But I do want to talk to you about something 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.000 that I think is dear to all of us. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:13.000 And that is bread -- something which is as simple 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:17.000 as our basic, most fundamental human staple. 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:20.000 And I think few of us spend the day 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:23.000 without eating bread in some form. 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:27.000 Unless you're on one of these Californian low-carb diets, 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.000 bread is standard. 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.000 Bread is not only standard in the Western diet. 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:33.000 As I will show to you, it is actually 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:36.000 the mainstay of modern life. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:38.000 So I'm going to bake bread for you. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:41.000 In the meantime I'm also talking to you, 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:44.000 so my life is going to be complicated. Bear with me. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:48.000 First of all, a little bit of audience participation. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.000 I have two loaves of bread here. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:54.000 One is a supermarket standard: 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.000 white bread, pre-packaged, 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000 which I'm told is called a Wonderbread. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:00.000 (Laughter) 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.000 I didn't know this word until I arrived. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:05.000 And this is more or less, 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 a whole-meal, handmade, 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:09.000 small-bakery loaf of bread. 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:12.000 Here we go. I want to see a show of hands. 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:17.000 Who prefers the whole-meal bread? 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:21.000 Okay let me do this differently. Is anybody preferring the Wonderbread at all? 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:22.000 (Laughter) 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:26.000 I have two tentative male hands. 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:29.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.000 Okay, now the question is really, 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.000 why is this so? 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:36.000 And I think it is because 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:39.000 we feel that this kind of bread 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:42.000 really is about authenticity. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:45.000 It's about a traditional way of living. 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:49.000 A way that is perhaps more real, more honest. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.000 This is an image from Tuscany, where we feel 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:54.000 agriculture is still about beauty. 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:56.000 And life is really, too. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:00.000 And this is about good taste, good traditions. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Why do we have this image? 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:07.000 Why do we feel that this is more true than this? 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:10.000 Well I think it has a lot to do with our history. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.000 In the 10,000 years since agriculture evolved, 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:17.000 most of our ancestors have actually been agriculturalists 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:20.000 or they were closely related to food production. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:22.000 And we have this mythical image 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:26.000 of how life was in rural areas in the past. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:29.000 Art has helped us to maintain that kind of image. 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:32.000 It was a mythical past. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000 Of course, the reality is quite different. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.000 These poor farmers 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.000 working the land by hand or with their animals, 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000 had yield levels that are comparable 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:44.000 to the poorest farmers today in West Africa. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:46.000 But we have, somehow, 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:50.000 in the course of the last few centuries, or even decades, 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:52.000 started to cultivate an image of 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:56.000 a mythical, rural agricultural past. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.000 It was only 200 years ago 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:01.000 that we had the advent of the Industrial Revolution. 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:04.000 And while I'm starting to make some bread for you here, 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:06.000 it's very important to understand 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:09.000 what that revolution did to us. 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:15.000 It brought us power. It brought us mechanization, fertilizers. 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:17.000 And it actually drove up our yields. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:21.000 And even sort of horrible things, like picking beans by hand, 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:24.000 can now be done automatically. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:29.000 All that is a real, great improvement, as we shall see. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:33.000 Of course we also, particularly in the last decade, 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000 managed to envelop the world 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000 in a dense chain of supermarkets, 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000 in a chain of global trade. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.000 And it means that you now eat products, 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.000 which can come from all around the world. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:49.000 That is the reality of our modern life. 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:53.000 Now you may prefer this loaf of bread. 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Excuse my hands but this is how it is. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:59.000 But actually the real relevant bread, 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:03.000 historically, is this white Wonder loaf. 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:06.000 And don't despise the white bread 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:09.000 because it really, I think, 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:12.000 symbolizes the fact that bread and food 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:16.000 have become plentiful and affordable to all. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:18.000 And that is a feat that we 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:21.000 are not really conscious of that much. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:23.000 But it has changed the world. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:26.000 This tiny bread that is tasteless in some ways 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.000 and has a lot of problems 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:31.000 has changed the world. 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:33.000 So what is happening? 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:37.000 Well the best way to look at that is to do a tiny bit of simplistic statistics. 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:40.000 With the advent of the Industrial Revolution 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000 with modernization of agriculture 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:46.000 in the last few decades, since the 1960s, 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:49.000 food availability, per head, in this world, 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:52.000 has increased by 25 percent. 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:56.000 And the world population in the meantime has doubled. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:59.000 That means that we have now more food available 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:01.000 than ever before in human history. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:03.000 And that is the result, directly, 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 of being so successful 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:09.000 at increasing the scale and volume of our production. 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:12.000 And this is true, as you can see, for all countries, 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:14.000 including the so-called developing countries. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:17.000 What happened to our bread in the meantime? 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:19.000 As food became plentiful here, 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.000 it also meant that we were able to decrease 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.000 the number of people working in agriculture 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:29.000 to something like, on average, in the high income countries, 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:33.000 five percent or less of the population. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:37.000 In the U.S. only one percent of the people are actually farmers. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:40.000 And it frees us all up to do other things -- 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.000 to sit at TED meetings and not to worry about our food. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:47.000 That is, historically, a really unique situation. 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:51.000 Never before has the responsibility to feed the world 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:53.000 been in the hands of so few people. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:56.000 And never before have so many people 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:59.000 been oblivious of that fact. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:03.000 So as food became more plentiful, bread became cheaper. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:07.000 And as it became cheaper, bread manufacturers decided to add in all kinds of things. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:09.000 We added in more sugar. 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:15.000 We add in raisins and oil and milk 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:17.000 and all kinds of things to make bread, 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:22.000 from a simple food into kind of a support for calories. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:26.000 And today, bread now is associated with obesity, 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 which is very strange. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 It is the basic, most fundamental food 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:33.000 that we've had in the last ten thousand years. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:37.000 Wheat is the most important crop -- the first crop we domesticated 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:39.000 and the most important crop we still grow today. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:42.000 But this is now this strange concoction 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:44.000 of high calories. 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.000 And that's not only true in this country, 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:49.000 it is true all over the world. 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:51.000 Bread has migrated to tropical countries, 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:55.000 where the middle classes now eat French rolls and hamburgers 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:58.000 and where the commuters 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:00.000 find bread much more handy to use 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:02.000 than rice or cassava. 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:06.000 So bread has become from a main staple, 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:08.000 a source of calories 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:10.000 associated with obesity 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:12.000 and also a source of modernity, 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.000 of modern life. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 And the whiter the bread, in many countries, the better it is. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000 So this is the story of bread as we know it now. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:24.000 But of course the price of mass production 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:27.000 has been that we moved large-scale. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:31.000 And large-scale has meant destruction of many of our landscapes, 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.000 destruction of biodiversity -- 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.000 still a lonely emu here 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:38.000 in the Brazilian cerrado soybean fields. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.000 The costs have been tremendous -- 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.000 water pollution, all the things you know about, destruction of our habitats. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:49.000 What we need to do is to go back to understanding what our food is about. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.000 And this is where I have to query all of you. 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:55.000 How many of you can actually tell wheat apart from other cereals? 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.000 How many of you actually can make a bread 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:01.000 in this way, without starting with a bread machine 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:05.000 or just some kind of packaged flavor? 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:09.000 Can you actually bake bread? Do you know how much a loaf of bread actually costs? 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:11.000 We have become very removed 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.000 from what our bread really is, 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.000 which, again, evolutionarily speaking, 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:17.000 is very strange. 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:19.000 In fact not many of you know that 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:21.000 our bread, of course, was not a European invention. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:23.000 It was invented by farmers in Iraq 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:25.000 and Syria in particular. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:28.000 The tiny spike on the left to the center 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:31.000 is actually the forefather of wheat. 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000 This is where it all comes from, 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.000 and where these farmers who actually, ten thousand years ago, 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:39.000 put us on the road of bread. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:41.000 Now it is not surprising 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:44.000 that with this massification and large-scale production, 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:46.000 there is a counter-movement that emerged -- 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.000 very much also here in California. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:51.000 The counter-movement says, "Let's go back to this. 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:53.000 Let's go back to traditional farming. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:57.000 Let's go back to small-scale, to farmers' markets, 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:00.000 small bakeries and all that." Wonderful. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.000 Don't we all agree? I certainly agree. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:04.000 I would love to go back to Tuscany 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 to this kind of traditional setting, 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:08.000 gastronomy, good food. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.000 But this is a fallacy. 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:13.000 And the fallacy comes from idealizing 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:16.000 a past that we have forgotten about. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:20.000 If we do this, if we want to stay with traditional small-scale farming 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:23.000 we are going, actually, to relegate 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:26.000 these poor farmers and their husbands -- 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.000 among whom I have lived for many years, 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.000 working without electricity and water, to try to improve their food production -- 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:34.000 we relegate them to poverty. 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:36.000 What they want are implements 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:38.000 to increase their production: 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:40.000 something to fertilize the soil, 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000 something to protect their crop and to bring it to a market. 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:45.000 We cannot just think that small-scale 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:48.000 is the solution to the world food problem. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:51.000 It's a luxury solution for us who can afford it, 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.000 if you want to afford it. 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.000 In fact we do not want this poor woman 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.000 to work the land like this. 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:59.000 If we say just small-scale production, 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:01.000 as is the tendency here, 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.000 to go back to local food means that a poor man like Hans Rosling 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:06.000 cannot even eat oranges anymore 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:09.000 because in Scandinavia we don't have oranges. 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:11.000 So local food production is out. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:13.000 But also we do not want 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:16.000 to relegate to poverty in the rural areas. 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.000 And we do not want to relegate 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.000 the urban poor to starvation. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:24.000 So we must find other solutions. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:26.000 One of our problems is that world food production 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000 needs to increase very rapidly -- 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:31.000 doubling by about 2030. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:34.000 The main driver of that is actually meat. 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:37.000 And meat consumption in Southeast Asia and China in particular 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:42.000 is what drives the prices of cereals. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:46.000 That need for animal protein is going to continue. 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:49.000 We can discuss alternatives in another talk, perhaps one day, 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 but this is our driving force. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.000 So what can we do? 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:57.000 Can we find a solution to produce more? 00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:01.000 Yes. But we need mechanization. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:03.000 And I'm making a real plea here. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:07.000 I feel so strongly that you cannot ask a small farmer 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:10.000 to work the land and bend over to grow a hectare of rice, 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:14.000 150,000 times, just to plant a crop and weed it. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:17.000 You cannot ask people to work under these conditions. 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:20.000 We need clever low-key mechanization 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:24.000 that avoids the problems of the large-scale mechanization that we've had. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:26.000 So what can we do? 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:29.000 We must feed three billion people in cities. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:31.000 We will not do that through small farmers' markets 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:35.000 because these people have no small farmers' markets at their disposal. 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:38.000 They have low incomes. And they benefit 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:41.000 from cheap, affordable, safe and diverse food. 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:44.000 That's what we must aim for in the next 20 to 30 years. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:46.000 But yes there are some solutions. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.000 And let me just do one simple conceptual thing: 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.000 if I plot science as a proxy 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:57.000 for control of the production process and scale. 00:11:57.000 --> 00:11:59.000 What you see is that we've started 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:02.000 in the left-hand corner with traditional agriculture, 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.000 which was sort of small-scale and low-control. 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:09.000 We've moved towards large-scale and very high control. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:14.000 What I want us to do is to keep up the science and even get more science in there 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:16.000 but go to a kind of regional scale -- 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:18.000 not just in terms of the scale of the fields, 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:21.000 but in terms of the entire food network. 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:23.000 That's where we should move. 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:26.000 And the ultimate may be, but it doesn't apply to cereals, 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:29.000 that we have entirely closed ecosystems -- 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:33.000 the horticultural systems right at the top left-hand corner. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:37.000 So we need to think differently about agriculture science. 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:39.000 Agriculture science for most people -- and there are not many farmers 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.000 among you here -- 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:44.000 has this name of being bad, 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:46.000 of being about pollution, about large-scale, 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.000 about the destruction of the environment. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:50.000 That is not necessary. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:53.000 We need more science and not less. And we need good science. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:55.000 So what kind of science can we have? 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.000 Well first of all I think 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:00.000 we can do much better on the existing technologies. 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:02.000 Use biotechnology where useful, 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:05.000 particularly in pest and disease resistance. 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.000 There are also robots, for example, 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:09.000 who can recognize weeds 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:12.000 with a resolution of half an inch. 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:14.000 We have much cleverer irrigation. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:18.000 We do not need to spill the water if we don't want to. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:21.000 And we need to think very dispassionately 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:23.000 about the comparative advantages 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:26.000 of small-scale and large-scale. 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:28.000 We need to think that land is multi-functional. 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:30.000 It has different functions. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:33.000 There are different ways in which we must use it -- 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:36.000 for residential, for nature, for agriculture purposes. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:39.000 And we also need to re-examine livestock. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:42.000 Go regional and go to urban food systems. 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:46.000 I want to see fish ponds in parking lots and basements. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:48.000 I want to have horticulture 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:51.000 and greenhouses on top of residential areas. 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:54.000 And I want to use the energy that comes from those greenhouses 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000 and from the fermentation of crops 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:58.000 to heat our residential areas. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:00.000 There are all kinds of ways we can do it. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:02.000 We cannot solve the world food problem 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:04.000 by using biological agriculture. 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:07.000 But we can do a lot more. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:10.000 And the main thing that I would really ask all of you 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:13.000 as you go back to your countries, or as you stay here: 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:17.000 ask your government for an integrated food policy. 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:20.000 Food is as important as energy, 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:22.000 as security, as the environment. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.000 Everything is linked together. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:27.000 So we can do that. In fact in a densely populated country 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:30.000 like the River Delta, where I live in the Netherlands, 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:32.000 we have combined these functions. 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.000 So this is not science fiction. We can combine things 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.000 even in a social sense of making 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:39.000 the rural areas more accessible to people -- 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.000 to house, for example, the chronically sick. 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:44.000 There is all kinds of things we can do. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:47.000 But there is something you must do. It's not enough for me to say, 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:50.000 "Let's get more bold science into agriculture." 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:52.000 You must go back 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.000 and think about your own food chain. 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:56.000 Talk to farmers. When was the last time 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:58.000 you went to a farm and talked to a farmer? 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:00.000 Talk to people in restaurants. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.000 Understand where you are in the food chain, 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:04.000 where your food comes from. 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:06.000 Understand that you are part 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:08.000 of this enormous chain of events. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:11.000 And that frees you up to do other things. 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:15.000 And above all, to me, food is about respect. 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:17.000 It's about understanding, when you eat, 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:21.000 that there are also many people who are still in this situation, 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.000 who are still struggling for their daily food. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:27.000 And the kind of simplistic solutions that we sometimes have, 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:29.000 to think that doing everything by hand 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:31.000 is going to be the solution, 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:34.000 is really not morally justified. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:36.000 We need to help to lift them out of poverty. 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:40.000 We need to make them proud of being a farmer 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:43.000 because they allow us to survive. 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:45.000 Never before, as I said, 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:47.000 has the responsibility for food 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:49.000 been in the hands of so few. 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.000 And never before have we had the luxury 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.000 of taking it for granted 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:56.000 because it is now so cheap. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:58.000 And I think there is nobody else who has expressed 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:02.000 better, to me, the idea that food, in the end, 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:05.000 in our own tradition, is something holy. 00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:07.000 It's not about nutrients and calories. 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:11.000 It's about sharing. It's about honesty. It's about identity. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:14.000 Who said this so beautifully was Mahatma Gandhi, 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:17.000 75 years ago, when he spoke about bread. 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:20.000 He did not speak about rice, in India. He said, 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.000 "To those who have to go without two meals a day, 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.000 God can only appear as bread." NOTE Paragraph 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:31.000 And so as I'm finishing my bread here -- 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.000 and I've been baking it, and I'll try not to burn my hands. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.000 Let me share 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:39.000 with those of you here in the first row. 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:41.000 Let me share some of the food with you. 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:43.000 Take some of my bread. 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:46.000 And as you eat it, and as you try it -- 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:48.000 please come and stand up. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:50.000 Have some of it. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:53.000 I want you to think that every bite connects you 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:55.000 to the past and the future: 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.000 to these anonymous farmers, 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:01.000 that first bred the first wheat varieties; 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:03.000 and to the farmers of today, 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:06.000 who've been making this. And you don't even know who they are. 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:08.000 Every meal you eat 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:12.000 contains ingredients from all across the world. 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:15.000 Everything makes us so privileged, 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:18.000 that we can eat this food, that we don't struggle every day. 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:20.000 And that, I think, 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:22.000 evolutionarily-speaking is unique. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:24.000 We've never had that before. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.000 So enjoy your bread. 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:28.000 Eat it, and feel privileged. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:30.000 Thank you very much. 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:42.000 (Applause)