Changing our minds about food waste | Haven Baker | TEDxBoise

Take a walk through your local grocer’s produce section and stop to appreciate the dizzying array of colors, shapes and smells. Plentiful, reasonably-priced fruits and vegetables are one of the unsung delights of the developed world. We will struggle to meet an increasing demand in a sustainable way unless we tackle the epidemic of food waste. Solving this problem for fresh produce may require our society to embrace a variety of unorthodox solutions.

Haven Baker is the son of a farmer, giving him unique insight into the inefficiencies of modern agriculture. he went on to study at Yale and Harvard, earning and MBA and doctorate before becoming an international fund manager to better learn the economies of the developing world. In his role at Simplot, he leads the team responsible for the world's first biotech crop with consumer traits, which has the potential to cut potato waste in the U.S. by 1.4 billion pounds annually.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Good afternoon.

I'm excited to talk you about
changing our minds about food waste.

Before I get into food waste though,

I'd like us to step back
and think about changing our minds.

When is the last time you changed
your mind about something?

I don't mean about what you want
for dinner or perhaps your weekend plans,

but something significant:
maybe religion,

maybe how you feel
about someone important in your life,

or a long-held belief
that suddenly had to change.

Sometimes when we change our mind,
it's a process that takes its time.

Sometimes there's just one instant,
you thought one thing

and then the next is something different.

I'd like to tell you a little bit about
how I changed my mind about litter.

As I mentioned, I grew up
on a farm in Washington State,

and our farm bordered a highway.

It was about 1.5 mile stretch
and in the summer,

we drove that highway
three or four times back and forth,

checking on the fields,
changing water and the like.

The highway was littered
with beer bottles, beer cans,

those styrofoam packages
you used to get your hamburgers in,

paper, plastic, things like that.

Up close and personal,
it was kind of gross.

But as I think about my own litter habits,

I was raised in the '80s
when this was happening,

and you weren't supposed to litter
but it was more a matter of convenience.

So I have to say that when
you're going down the road,

and if it was a little bit messy,

it was okay to roll down
your window and toss it out.

If you didn't have a garbage bag
for your pop can,

sometimes it did go out
the window unfortunately.

Terrible, I know!
I'm ashamed about it now.

So, I had a summer job with the retired
high school math teacher,

and what we were doing is checking
these agricultural fields.

We'd drive from field to field
in a pick up truck and take soil samples.

This guy had been doing
the job a long time.

I remember my first trip with him.

He had his favorite spot for lunch.

It was a beautiful field
on your right, you just tested it.

There were a dirt road, a ditch,
an embankment and another field,

and there happened to be
at least one big tree,

so if you parked in the right spot,
you had shade.

You could eat your lunch
in the shade in a hot day.

Anyway, we sit down
and get our bag lunches out.

He likes sardines and is eating it away.

Now, he gets done with the sardine can,
rolls down the window and tosses it out.

Then, we finish our lunches.

He puts it in its bag,
throws it out the window,

finishes the soda can,
same thing. Terrible!

Somewhere in there, I looked
through the driver's window

and I could see
on the far embankment,

there was a small pile
of sardine and soda cans,

and some of them were gray -
they had been there a year or two.

He'd been eating in the same spot
for several years, unfortunately.

For me, at that moment, I could connect

the actions of one individual
with the litter problem, and I realized:

"Oh, if this is how you act, this is what
you get. I shouldn't litter anymore."

I've tried to do a good job since then,
be respectful and stop that problem.

If you look at our highways,
they are so much cleaner.

Collectively, we've changed
our minds about litter.

And it's for the better.

Now, changing our minds is something
we often think other people should do.

We're right, more enlightened,
and especially sophisticates.

So, you change your mind
and we got it right.

Maybe the more educated you are,
the more you feel you got it right.

Since the Middle Ages,
it was considered that to be educated,

you had to know Greek
and Latin, sometimes French.

If you go look at the old letters
they wrote to each other in Latin.

When Northwestern University
was founded in the 1850s,

they had a requirement
for Greek and Latin.

It wasn't a requirement in college.

You had to have studied it
in high school to even be admitted.

That was the standard view.

If you were educated, your college
application had Greek and Latin on it.

As the Industrial Revolution happened,
it became a little bit more controversial,

and Harvard dropped the requirement
for Greek in the late 1880s,

Latin a little while later,
and all the other colleges followed.

Within a couple of decades,
our society had changed its mind

about what it meant to be educated.

I think we're all for the better.

We now study math and science.

We study other subjects like Art,
rather than Latin and Greek.

Our perceptions of beauty can change too.

I think we all know who this is:
Michael Jordan.

When we think of Michael Jordan,
he's generally known for three things:

first that tongue, the "wagging tongue,"
we remember that;

second, sneakers -
selling sneakers Air Jordan;

then lastly, of course,
his athletic prowess

that led the Chicago Bulls
to six NBA Championships.

However, as History progresses,
some have suggested

that when we look back
on the career of Michael Jordan,

his greatest impact on all of us
will be to make baldness cool.

(Laughter)

Yeah! ... And it wasn't just him,
it was Patrick Stewart.

But up until this time,

up until this time, we had wigs
in England and toupees in the '80s,

and if you were going bald,
it was embarrassing,

and you did everything you can about it.

Now, a couple of decades later,

the University of Pennsylvania
just did a study.

It was on women,

and bald men were considered
to be more masculine.

So, we've changed our perception.

At least half of us did change
their perception about baldness

in a series of couple of decades,
and it's fantastic.

We changed our mind.

So, we need to think about
changing our mind about food waste.

There are close to a billion people
who are malnourished in the world,

and food waste is a problem.

I remember when I was a kid,

it was in one of those African famines,
my mom served the meal -

I was full or didn't like it
at all, I don't remember -

passed the plate to me.

I took a couple of bites,
pushed it back and said, "I'm done."

She says "You're going to eat that.
- No I'm not."

She says, "There are millions of starving
kids in Africa, you need to eat your food."

And I say, "Okay, well, give it to them."

Once it's on the plate,
there is a food waste problem,

but the food waste that I want
to talk about is between farm to fork,

because once it gets to the plate,
it's a bit harder to deal with.

The USDA, on the conservative side,
has been noted to say

that we're losing 33% of food
between farms and the plate,

and some other estimate
that it's closer to half.

So, the truth is probably somewhere
in between, depending on the item.

There are various solutions.

The ones I want to focus on today
have to do do with the produce aisle.

We take it for granted,
but one of the beautiful things

about growing up
in North America or Europe

is to be able to walk
into a grocery store,

look at the produce -
there's dozens of kinds of produce.

It's inexpensive, safe, ripe,

smells good, and there's just a variety.

It's there almost every day of the year.

We don't even think about it,
we just expect it.

It hasn't been like this for that long,

and most of the rest of the world
doesn't get to eat like us.

But the food waste problem
is particularly severe in produce.

Where we can grow produce
is relatively restricted,

so fixing the food waste on produce

would make it more available
for everyone else.

How does this problem start
and what can we do about it?

We'll use strawberries as an example.

We buy them in clamshells.

They're generally a pound or two.

You can buy them in a flat
if they're cheap.

We take them home and we eat them.

But strawberries start
in California or Florida,

or Baja California in Mexico.

These are the places where strawberries
are primarily grown.

It starts on farms there,
and strawberries are particular

because they've a shelf life
of seven to eight days.

So from the time they're picked

to the time they're going bad
in your fridge, is eight days.

The food waste happens in that time.

So on farm, there are these berms
about this high and this wide,

and strawberries are still picked
manually - you walk on and pick them.

For strawberries,
the on-farm food waste isn't that bad.

Generally, five to ten percent
is being left in the field,

and the ones we're leaving
are usually either overripe or misshapen.

So, relative to some other produce items,
it could be a lot higher,

but it's five to ten percent
food waste on farm.

Then, they're loaded,
they're quickly cooled for 12-18 hours;

they're loaded on trucks
to go to distribution centers,

to supermarkets, to where we buy them.

One of the issues on strawberries,
is that, in that distribution center,

if there are any inefficiencies,
the shelf life becomes a real problem.

Last summer, I sat down with a senior
buyer for a major supermarket chain.

He admitted that 30% of the berries
they buy are being thrown away

before they get to consumer shelves.

Occasionally, they get
too ripe on the shelf,

but that's before we even see them.

So you lost 10% on farm,
and now you loss another 30%,

and then we're taking them home.

My family's experience on buying berries

is that we'd buy the berries -
they look like this -, take them home,

and if they're great tasting berries,
they'll get eaten right away.

Kids are right at them.

However, if they weren't
especially great tasting

or looked a little funny,
or if I was saving them for an event,

I might only use half of them,
or a portion of them,

and then they go in the fridge
and you guys all know,

you have about a day, a day and a half,
before they look like this.

This is what we in America experience.

Now, if you live in California,
it isn't quite so bad

because you're right there
where they're grown.

So they don't always see the problem
as bad as the rest of us see it.

But generally, we're losing another third
at the consumer level.

So collectively, we're buying $6 billion
with the strawberries in the US,

and we're eating 35, maybe 40% of them,

and that's the food waste problem.

So what can we do about it?

There's a couple of solutions,

but that's going to require us
to change our mind.

You've all been to the supermarket,

and maybe you've seen crooked carrots

or tomatoes
that aren't quite perfect round,

apples that are lopsided,

pears that have those striations down them

where they cracked or otherwise,
now, abraded on the field.

That's misshapen food and a lot of times
we're not ever seeing it as consumers,

because we've trained ourselves
to only buy what's perfect.

That "ugly food" as you would call it,
or misshapen food,

is often being disposed of
before we ever see it.

But if supplies are tight
or it's super cheap,

sometimes, we'll see it in the stores.

Nature doesn't produce a perfect berry
or a perfect tomato every time.

But those imperfect misshapen fruits
are still nutritious.

They are still ripe and tasty.

There's a movement that started in Europe
that is getting going in the States.

It's called the Ugly Food Movement.

(Laughter)

Okay.

So other than maybe not being
the most visually appealing

this is great produce.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be
buying it and consuming it.

This would help solve
part of the food waste problem.

But it doesn't solve the shelf life issue.

On the shelf life, we've a couple
of solutions that are in the works.

One group of entrepreneurs
is building green houses

on rooftops or near urban areas, saying,

"Hey, if we can grow
our produce close to cities,

we can have a longer shelf life,
no transportation, it would be easier."

Some are even delivering to your house.

Tomatoes grow really well
in those environments,

as well as some types of lettuce.

We certainly can't grow fruit that way

and it's not clear
that we can grow all vegetables.

So far, they're more expensive
not less expensive

than a farm-produced produce.

So while I think greenhouse production
close to cities is a partial solution,

it's not going to be a complete solution.

The other part of the solution of course,

is biotechnology or genetic engineering.

Twenty-five years ago,
the Flavr Savr Tomato was launched.

It was a tomato that had extra shelf life.

It wasn't perfect, but there was
true shelf life that was there.

It was at the beginning when biotechnology
was coming on the market.

Groups of people
were a little worried and scared

and they formed groups and opposed it.

People that are against GMOs
still consider

defeating Flavr Savr Tomato
as one of their big wins.

Not to judge those times,
but I think from our times now,

we can see there aren't
other solutions to shelf life.

If we want everybody to be able
to eat like us, we need longer shelf life.

Some of these technology solutions
are now known to be safe,

they're recommended by Nobel Laureates,
the National Academy of Sciences,

and the technology has improved.

Recently in India, they published a paper,

and showed tomatoes that had 45 days
of shelf life, if you can believe it.

Just a month, if it only worked
for four weeks instead of 45 days,

it would significantly change
the food waste problem.

So, when we run into shelf life issues,

sometimes we're able to give these away

but most of the time,
they're going in the garbage can.

These are the solutions:

more greenhouse production,
especially near cities,

biotechnology,

and eating the ugly food.

But there is a paradox.

Some of these topics
are easier to talk about

and some of them
are harder to actually do.

Let's think about
how we change our minds.

Think about when you have
a conversation,

a colloquial or a familiar conversation -
water cooler at work,

maybe a family dinner table,
maybe a bar with friends.

Collectively, I can imagine us
all sitting down or a small group of us,

and you say, "Yes, we're on board.
We need to change the food waste.

We need to solve this problem.
I'm going to buy ugly food."

We could all say, "As long as it doesn't
taste different, well, I will buy it."

However, when we go to the supermarket,
our minds and our eyes are not connected.

We naturally buy what's pretty.

Okay? So, we have to change our minds.

We've to disassociate, be more open
and buy what we know is safe,

cognitively, mentally,
but maybe doesn't look the prettiest.

That takes us to the ugly food.

The shelf life issue is a different issue.

Greenhouses are probably fine.

It'll be higher priced, very likely,
but we can all accept that.

If we're having the same conversation
about biotechnology,

some of us aren't as secure about that.

I believe it's safe.
It's fine for my family.

I believe that that's the solution,

especially for the shelf life
of fruits and vegetables.

But I don't expect everyone
to be convinced it is.

However, we have our conversation,
I'm not sure everyone's on the same page.

As soon as you go to the store,
you're going to buy sodas,

papaya, corn chips,
and a whole bunch of other items

that all have GMO ingredients,
and nobody ever thinks twice about it.

We have to change how we feel
about the technology

so that it can go
into fruits and vegetables

and people make this possible for us.

Collectively, I hope we can all step back

and think about changing our minds
about food waste.

I'm an optimist, I think that we
as a group, a crowd, a society,

when we change our minds
we're changing it for the better.

We're trying to make
improvements for society.

We're trying to make life better
for those around us.

Working on food waste,
changing our minds about food waste

will make our planet a better place.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)