Climate change is becoming a problem you can taste

Our food systems have not been designed to adapt to major disruptions like climate change, says environmental journalist Amanda Little. In this eye-opening talk, she shows how the climate crisis could devastate our food supply -- and introduces us to the farmers, entrepreneurs and engineers who are radically rethinking what we grow and how we eat, combining traditional agriculture with state-of-the-art technology to create a robust, resilient and sustainable food future.

In the early months of the pandemic,

chef José Andrés circulated two photos

that have come to symbolize
a modern American food crisis.

The first shows mountains of potatoes

that have been left to rot
in a field in Idaho.

The restaurants and cafeterias
and stadiums that had consumed them

were shuttered during the pandemic.

The second shows a devastating scene
outside of the San Antonio food bank.

Thousands of carloads of people lined up,

waiting for food with not enough
supply to go around.

"How is it possible these two photos
exist at the same time,

in the most prosperous

and technologically advanced
moment in our history," tweeted Andrés.

In the months after
the photos were published,

the crisis got worse.

Billions of pounds of potatoes
and other fresh produce

were chucked by American farmers.

At the same time,

food banks all over the country
were reporting demand increases

and 40 percent were facing
critical shortfalls.

Outside the US,

especially in the Middle East
and throughout Southeastern Africa,

COVID-19 was paralyzing food systems
that were already vulnerable.

Oxfam has predicted
that by the end of 2020

12,000 people per day could die
of hunger related to COVID.

That's more than the highest
daily mortality rate

recorded so far.

But what's worse

and what's much more
concerning to all of us

is that COVID is just one
of many major disruptions

that have been predicted

in the years and decades ahead.

More chronic and complex
than the pressures of COVID

are the pressures of climate change.

And those of you who live in California
have seen this on your farms.

You've seen withering heat
and drought and fires

disrupt avocado and almond
and citrus and strawberry farms.

This summer, we saw
the devastating impacts of storms

on corn and soy farms.

I've seen the various
pressures of drought,

heat, flooding, superstorms,

invasive insects, bacterial blight,

shifting seasons and weather volatility

from Washington to Florida,

and from Guatemala to Australia.

The upshot is this.

Climate change is becoming
something we can taste.

This is a kitchen-table issue
in the literal sense.

The International Panel on Climate Change

has predicted that by mid-century

the world may reach a threshold
of global warming

beyond which current
agricultural practices

can no longer support
large human civilizations.

The USDA scientist Jerry Hatfield
put it to me this way:

the single biggest threat
of climate change

is the collapse of food systems.

The reality we face,

one that was exposed
by those mountains of potatoes

and the cars lined up during the pandemic,

is that our supply chains are antiquated.

Our food systems have not been designed

to adapt to major disruptions
or preempt them.

Addressing this challenge
as much as any other

is going to define our progress
in the coming century.

But there's good news.

And the good news is that farmers
and entrepreneurs and academics

are radically rethinking
national and global food systems.

They are marrying principles
of old-world agroecology

and state-of-the-art technologies

to create what I call
a third way to our food future.

We're going to see radical changes

in what we grow and how we eat
in the coming decades,

as these environmental and population

and public health pressures intensify.

I studied these changes
for my book "The Fate of Food:

What We'll Eat in a Bigger,
Hotter, Smarter World."

I traveled for five years
into the lands and the minds

and the machines that are shaping
the future of food.

My travels took me
through 15 countries and 18 states,

from apple orchards in Wisconsin
to tiny cornfields in Kenya,

to massive Norwegian fish farms

and computerized foodscapes in Shanghai.

I investigated new ideas,

like robotics and CRISPR
and vertical farms.

And old ideas, like edible insects
and permaculture and ancient plants.

I began to see the emergence
of this third way to food production.

A synthesis of the traditional
and the radically new.

There's a growing controversy

about the best path
to future food security in the US.

Food is ripe for reinvention,
Bill Gates has proclaimed.

Huge flows of investment

are funding new methods of climate-smart
and high-tech agriculture.

But many sustainable food advocates
bristle at this idea of reinvention.

They want food deinvented.

They argue for a return to preindustrial

and pre-green revolution,

biodynamic and organic farming.

To which skeptics inevitably respond,

"Nice, but does it scale?

Sure, a return to traditional
farming methods

could produce better food,

but can it produce enough food
that's affordable?"

The rift between the reinvention camp
and the deinvention camp

has existed for decades.

But now it's a raging battle.

One side covets the past,

the other side covets the future

and as someone observing this
from the outside,

I began to wonder,
why must it be so binary?

Can't there be a synthesis
of the two approaches?

Our challenge is to borrow
from the wisdom of the ages,

and from our most advanced science,

to forge this third way.

One that allows us
to improve and scale our harvests,

while restoring rather than degrading

the underlying web of life.

I belong to neither camp.

I'm a failed vegan
and a lapsed vegetarian,

and a terrible backyard farmer.

If I'm honest,

I will keep trying at this,
but I may fail.

But I'm hell-bent on hope,

and if my travels have taught me anything,

it's that there's good reason for hope.

Plenty of solutions are merging

that can help build sustainable,
resilient food systems.

Even if we can't rely on a critical mass

of backyard-farming vegetarians
to do this on their own,

from the ground up.

Let's start with artificial
intelligence and robotics.

Jorge Heraud is a Peruvian-born engineer

who now lives in Silicon Valley,

and his company developed
a robotic weeder named See and Spray,

and I went to Arkansas to see
the maiden voyage of See and Spray.

And I was half expecting
a battalion of C3PO-style robots

to march into the fields
with pincer hands to pluck the weeds.

And instead, I found this.

A tractor with a big, white
hoop skirt off the back of it.

And inside that hoop skirt are 24 cameras

that use computer vision
to see the ground beneath

and to distinguish between
the plants and the weeds.

And to deploy with sniper-like precision

these tiny jets
of concentrated fertilizer,

or herbicide,

that incinerate the baby weeds.

I learned how robotics
can end the practice

of broadcast spraying chemicals
across millions of acres of land

and how we can reduce
the use of herbicides

by up to 90 percent.

But the bigger picture
is even more exciting.

Intelligent machines
can treat plants individually,

applying not just herbicides

but fungicides and insecticides

and fertilizers on a plant-by-plant,
rather than field-by-field basis.

So that eventually,

this kind of hyperspecific farming

can allow for more diversity
and intercropping on fields.

And big farms can begin
to mimic natural systems

and improve soil health.

Heraud is the embodiment
of third-way thinking, right?

Robots, he told me,

don't have to remove us from nature,

they can bring us closer to it,
they can restore it.

Increasing crop diversity will be crucial

to building resilient food systems.

And so will decentralizing agriculture

so that when farmers
in one region are disrupted,

the others around, they can keep growing.

The rise of vertical farms,

like this farm, built inside
a former steel mill in Newark, New Jersey,

can play a key role
in decentralizing agriculture.

Aeroponic farms use a tiny fraction

of the water that is used
in in-ground farms.

And they can grow food much faster,
about 40 percent faster.

And when located in and near cities,

where the food is consumed,

they eliminate a huge amount
of trucking and food waste.

It struck me at first as creepy

in kind of a "Silent Running" way

that we'd be growing
our future fruits and vegetables

inside, without soil or sun.

And after weeks of spending time
in these plant factories,

I began to see it as oddly,
almost perfectly natural

to deliver the plants
only and exactly what they need,

with zero herbicides
and radical efficiency.

Here again, we see innovators
borrowing from,

and perhaps even elevating
the wisdom of natural ecosystems.

Developments in plant-based
and alternative meats

are also profoundly hopeful.

And they follow a similar trend

toward local, resilient,
low-carbon protein production.

Consumers are excited about this,

and during the pandemic,

we've seen a 250 percent increase

in demand for alternative meats.

A study by the Journal
of Clinical Nutrition

found that the participants
who were eating the plant-based proteins

saw a drop in their cholesterol levels,

in their weight

and eventually, a drop
in their risk of heart disease.

The potential environmental benefits
of plant-based meats are astounding.

And there's even potential
in lab-grown or cell-based meats.

Uma Valeti fed me my first plate
of lab-grown duck breast,

harvested fresh from a bioreactor.

It had been grown
from a small sampling of cells

taken from muscle tissue and fat
and connective tissues,

which is exactly what we eat
when we eat meat.

This lab-grown or cell-based duck meat

has very little threat
of bacterial contamination,

it's about 85 percent lower CO2
emissions associated with it.

Eventually it can be grown

like those crops inside vertical farms
in decentralized facilities

that aren't vulnerable
to supply-chain disruptions.

Valeti started out as a cardiologist,

who understood that doctors
have been developing

human and animal tissues
in laboratories for decades.

He was inspired as much by that

as he was by a 1931 quote
from Winston Churchill that says,

"We shall escape the absurdity
of growing the whole chicken

in order to eat the breast or the wing,

by growing them separately
in suitable mediums."

Like Heraud, Valeti is
a quintessential third-way thinker.

He's reimagined an old idea
using new technology,

to usher in a solution
whose time has come.

I've met with dozens of farmers
and entrepreneurs and engineers

who emulate third-way thinking,
all over the world.

They're using modern
breeding tools like CRISPR

to develop nutritious heirloom crops
that can withstand drought and heat.

They're using AI to make
aquaculture sustainable.

They're finding ways
to eliminate food waste.

They are scaling up

conservation agriculture
and managed grazing.

And they're reviving ancient plants,

and they're recycling
sewage and gray water

to develop a drought-proof water supply.

The upshot is this:

Human innovation that marries
old and new approaches to food production

can, and I believe, will
usher in this third way

and redefine sustainable food
on a grand scale.