10 billion people for dinner | Nina Fedoroff | TEDxCERN

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The world population is estimated to reach 10 billion in the near future. How can we feed so many with our existing resources? Nina Fedoroff gives an overview of what's needed, highlighting the important role that science has played in developing food and agriculture throughout human history and the solutions it could offer.

Nina Fedoroff's research interests range from the biochemistry of microRNA processing and transposition to the design of greenhouses for hot, humid environments, although she is best known for her pioneering work on plant transposons. A PhD from Rockefeller University, she is an Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University. A 2006 National Medal of Science laureate, she served as Science and Technology Adviser to the US Secretary of State and to USAID's administrator.

I'm here today to challenge

the way we think
about food and civilization.

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

our food markets
are bursting with produce.

We have an amazing global system

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

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

In 2008, the food prices spiked

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

At the time, I was working
as the science advisor

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

She asked me to organize

a high-level meeting
on this food price crisis.

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

In the ensuing years,
food prices moderated,

then spiked again,
and the Arab Spring began.

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

blocking roads, and attacking
the police with fireworks

in the Algerian capital.

They are protesting

over the rise in food prices
and unemployment.

(Arabic) We do not accept
this government

because we've been suffering
for ten years

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

(Moderator) Anti riot squads

deployed in many Algerian cities

as a simmering anger
threatens massive protest

in the oil and gas-rich
North African country.

(Rioters) The government
is humiliating us,

they're raising the price of sugar.

We have to pay the rent,

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

(Video ends)

Nina Fedoroff: You all know
how that came out;

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

the red lines mark when,

and the flags mark
where food riots happen -

a scary thought.

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

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

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

We spent our days
gathering and capturing food.

Then, about 10 or 20,000 years ago,

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

and settle down to grow and herd them.

That, of course, is called agriculture,

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

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

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

Cities and civilizations flourished.

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

because we figured out
how to produce surplus food.

For millennia,
civilizations rose and fell,

lasting largely until the land wore out

or until the neighbors invaded
having worn out their own.

Even at the turn of the 18th century,

Thomas Malthus told us

that we were doomed to hunger and strife

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

If Malthus thought the game was over

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

how did we get to today's seven billion?

It was just about the time

Malthus was penning his gloomy predictions

that science began
to enter agriculture in earnest.

Over the next two centuries,

three key innovations
transformed agriculture.

These were: synthetic fertilizer,

genetics, and the internal
combustion engine.

These three innovations set in motion
the most profound changes

in human civilization ever.

Plants do something quite extraordinary:

they make sugar out of water, in thin air;

well across the carbon dioxide in the air.

We also need nitrogen,

but most plants can't use
atmospheric nitrogen.

Manure contains nitrogen
in the right kinds of compounds,

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

The problem is there
isn't much nitrogen in manure

so it takes a lot of it
to fertilize crops,

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

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

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

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

And then, there's genetics.

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

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

on the road out of poverty.

What you might not know

is that the Green Revolution
was based on mutations,

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

more efficiently,
doubling and tripling yields.

Genetic modification, GM;
today, we vilify that

- I'll get back to that.

Then there's
the internal combustion engine:

for most of human history,

agriculture was back-breaking work
and occupied most people.

The populace remained largely agrarian
even in developed countries,

well into the 20th century.

As machines gradually took over the task,

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

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

technology-driven
wealth generation accelerated

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

even the Internet and even Twitter.

What does the future hold?

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

Are there limits

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

Will climate change help or harm?

Let's look at some trends.

Population growth is slowing,

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

probably will go higher.

As technology powers country
after country out of poverty,

people want to eat more meat;

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

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

In fact, we're losing it faster

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

If we don't do something different,

we'll be back to Malthus in our lifetime;

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

Then there's climate change.

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

that you and I find comfortable.

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

many of you experienced it.

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

but crop yields declined by about 30%;

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

and a cool summer
by the end of the century.

Then there's water -

the most productive agriculture
is irrigated agriculture,

and the most reliable water
comes from deep underground,

indeed, from fossil aquifers.

These are being exhausted faster
and faster the world around.

Not good trends;

I think that our past successes
in our bursting food markets

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

but Norman Borlaug knew otherwise.

In his Nobel Prize speech, he said,

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

if we become complacent
and relax our efforts,"

and that's just what we've done.

We've contracted our investments
in agricultural research

leaving the job primarily
to big agribusiness companies,

and then we berated them
- think Monsanto.

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

don't be seduced -

the primary tenant
of organic farming is a prohibition

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

if we, the entire world,
went organic tomorrow,

we could probably feed
half of our current population.

So can we feed 10 billion people?

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

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

environment, of course, people;

we have to optimize that system as a whole

and make it more sustainable.

Very easy to say, hard to do.

Let me give you some specifics:

we need to increase the yield

on the land we already farm
using less water.

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

This is a very modern greenhouse
in Southern California;

tomatoes are growing
on strings straight up

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

as much as 100 kilograms
per square meter per year

using a tenth as much water.

We can build greenhouses
in cities on rooftops,

and even in the desert
with a bit of tweaking,

but we won't grow our grain under glass.

Today, farmers distribute

a hundred million tons
of chemical fertilizer

on their fields each year.

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

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

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

Here's one system, is called fertigation,

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

but there's much more to be done.

Then there's insecticides -

we use about a billion pounds
a year globally,

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

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

dreamed of a time

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

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

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

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

and put directly
into the genome of the plant.

This is modern genetic modification, GM:

the plant produces the bacterial protein,

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

insecticide use has gone down
a lot, worldwide,

with the use of these plants,
with these crops,

beneficial insects flourish,
and farmers' prices come down;

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

We can look forward to crops
that withstand drought,

that use nitrogen more efficiently,
that tolerate heat,

and they are frankly,
more nutritious for us,

but contemporary
genetically modified crops

are the only ones
that have gotten the GMO moniker,

and that's a fearful word.

Google it, and you'll be astounded:

GMOs have been blamed
for farmer suicides in India,

tumors in rats,
and every manner of human ill

from autism to obesity
to infertility and cancer.

Scary - fortunately, none of it is true.

Indeed, after 25 years
of government research,

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

costing upwards of 300 million euros

by saying very simply the modification
of plants by GM techniques

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

But the GMO wars rage on
fueled by electronic gossip,

by organizations
that exploit GM fears for profit;

fears sell better than facts.

Important work on GM crops
has been destroyed the world around

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

I myself have been picketed,

verbally abused,
subject to endless hate email,

and even narrowly escaped physical attack,

all because I keep trying to explain

the science and the sense
behind this amazing revolution.

We are approaching a tipping point;

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

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

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

with the glowing embers
of poverty-based social instability

flare into
civilization- consuming conflagrations?

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

Will we be able to realize
the knowledge civilizations

to which we all aspire?

Will we have the wisdom to invest

in the scientific
and technological innovations

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

I believe we can.

Will we? I don't know.

Thank you.

(Applause)