1 00:00:02,614 --> 00:00:05,614 DIF Disruptive Innovation Festival 2 00:00:07,506 --> 00:00:10,506 Leontino Balbo on the future of global food systems 3 00:00:14,681 --> 00:00:20,095 Some people get intrigued about how I see the next step. 4 00:00:20,627 --> 00:00:24,907 I do not see anything, the nature tells me what to do. 5 00:00:26,745 --> 00:00:29,764 What am I? I am an observer. 6 00:00:31,078 --> 00:00:34,517 I believe that the further you want to go, 7 00:00:34,517 --> 00:00:38,217 the less you have to take with you. 8 00:00:38,217 --> 00:00:43,677 That's what I do. I develop a technology, I profit from it and I go to the next one. 9 00:00:43,677 --> 00:00:48,814 And we leave, to allow everybody else to profit from that. 10 00:00:49,263 --> 00:00:51,533 My name is Leontino Balbo Jr, 11 00:00:51,533 --> 00:00:57,233 I'm an agronomist and a executive at Balbo Group in Brazil. 12 00:00:59,301 --> 00:01:02,641 Balbo Group is composed by three sugar mills: 13 00:01:02,641 --> 00:01:07,791 two in Sao Paulo State and one in Minas Gerais State. 14 00:01:07,791 --> 00:01:10,214 Lots of change were done 15 00:01:10,214 --> 00:01:15,220 until we totally change the profile of our company and our business. 16 00:01:15,220 --> 00:01:20,559 We switched 20,000 hectares of cane sugar plantation 17 00:01:20,559 --> 00:01:25,182 from conventional production technology 18 00:01:25,182 --> 00:01:28,697 into revitalizing agriculture. 19 00:01:28,697 --> 00:01:33,643 This results from this new type of agriculture were so good 20 00:01:33,643 --> 00:01:39,053 that we became the biggest supplier of organic sugar in the world. 21 00:01:39,053 --> 00:01:43,313 We export to 64 countries, and now we also supply 22 00:01:43,313 --> 00:01:47,313 neutral organic alcohol for the cosmetic industry. 23 00:01:50,193 --> 00:01:55,733 My grandfather started working for the King of Coffee, Mr. Schmidt, 24 00:01:55,733 --> 00:01:58,083 a hundred and ten years ago. 25 00:01:58,083 --> 00:02:02,663 He had 12 children, which also worked for the German boss. 26 00:02:02,663 --> 00:02:09,813 Since the beginning, they were used to face the soil and farm challenges, 27 00:02:09,813 --> 00:02:13,617 which made all things easier for me. 28 00:02:13,617 --> 00:02:18,348 When I arrived here I started working as an agronomist. 29 00:02:18,348 --> 00:02:25,098 In the second week I couldn't accept the cane burning, all those things, 30 00:02:25,098 --> 00:02:28,348 so I started to burn the cane, to cut it by hand, 31 00:02:28,348 --> 00:02:33,588 to drop it in the soil, to dirty it and then to take it to the mill, 32 00:02:33,588 --> 00:02:38,431 where we used to need four million liters of water per hour to wash that cane. 33 00:02:38,431 --> 00:02:43,741 If we harvest that cane green, we wouldn't need that much water. 34 00:02:43,741 --> 00:02:45,194 Something inside me said 35 00:02:45,194 --> 00:02:49,701 that we should find a cleaner way of producing. 36 00:02:49,701 --> 00:02:56,931 I proposed the Green Cane Project, aiming to improve the production way, 37 00:02:56,931 --> 00:03:01,581 to take the cane to manifest its ecological potential. 38 00:03:01,581 --> 00:03:05,801 We're going to to lower the environmental impact of the production, 39 00:03:05,801 --> 00:03:10,881 while at the same time reducing the production's costs. 40 00:03:10,881 --> 00:03:13,341 It worked so well 41 00:03:13,341 --> 00:03:17,171 that this mill was the first one to harvest green cane in Brazil, 42 00:03:17,181 --> 00:03:21,295 and then our example was followed 43 00:03:21,295 --> 00:03:25,005 by 90% of the cane groves in Brazil. 44 00:03:25,005 --> 00:03:28,815 Deep transformation is easier to happen 45 00:03:28,815 --> 00:03:33,200 in a family business than in other kinds of big companies. 46 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:36,460 The next step after green cane harvests 47 00:03:36,460 --> 00:03:41,260 was that I decided to eliminate the chemical fertilisers, 48 00:03:41,260 --> 00:03:44,840 and then I decided to abolish the pesticides. 49 00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:49,320 I didn't know how to do it and I was a little confused, 50 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:54,199 so I decided to go inside a forest to relax my mind. 51 00:03:58,191 --> 00:04:03,111 I opened myself to the nature wisdom, 52 00:04:03,111 --> 00:04:08,141 and suddenly I started seeing inside the forest, like an infographic. 53 00:04:08,141 --> 00:04:15,134 I saw the birds, the insects and everything was interconnected. 54 00:04:15,134 --> 00:04:20,424 There was a very sophisticated system of communication, 55 00:04:20,424 --> 00:04:24,024 and I realized that all of those insects 56 00:04:24,024 --> 00:04:27,744 were not attacking the plants of the forest 57 00:04:27,744 --> 00:04:30,754 but the same insects used to attack the canes. 58 00:04:30,754 --> 00:04:31,674 So, why? 59 00:04:31,674 --> 00:04:36,964 I started observing what used to happen inside that forest, 60 00:04:36,964 --> 00:04:41,144 and one by one, exemple by example I learned, 61 00:04:41,144 --> 00:04:45,574 I started transferring them to agriculture. 62 00:04:46,401 --> 00:04:51,530 There are lots of useful information in the nature 63 00:04:51,530 --> 00:04:57,421 that we can use to create the basis of a new production system, 64 00:04:57,421 --> 00:05:02,895 which is less impactant, more rational and more efficient. 65 00:05:03,634 --> 00:05:09,045 We can observe the design, totally healthy leaves 66 00:05:09,698 --> 00:05:15,738 and the reason is the focus here, we do not put too much focus on the crop. 67 00:05:16,707 --> 00:05:21,487 The focus is in the environment and in the ecosystem as a whole. 68 00:05:21,487 --> 00:05:27,477 The result of that is the ecosystem itself takes care of the crop. 69 00:05:27,477 --> 00:05:29,397 We don't fertilize the crop. 70 00:05:29,397 --> 00:05:33,767 We feed the soil life and then it takes care of the cane, 71 00:05:33,767 --> 00:05:38,547 about its nutrition and its immunological system. 72 00:05:38,547 --> 00:05:42,987 And we don't have one eaten part, one bite, no problems 73 00:05:42,987 --> 00:05:45,815 and no disease in our cane, in 20,000 hectares. 74 00:05:50,081 --> 00:05:54,681 Ecosystem revitalizing agriculture is an agriculture, 75 00:05:54,681 --> 00:06:00,331 but at the same time provides all conditions for the crop growth 76 00:06:00,331 --> 00:06:04,491 with no plagues and diseases problems, 77 00:06:04,491 --> 00:06:07,231 but at the same time 78 00:06:07,231 --> 00:06:12,941 providing to the environment the most important environmental services, 79 00:06:12,941 --> 00:06:15,821 like preserving the water, 80 00:06:15,821 --> 00:06:19,361 improving and keeping soil fertility, 81 00:06:19,361 --> 00:06:22,931 bringing back the fauna biodiversity 82 00:06:22,931 --> 00:06:28,371 and absorbing carbon from other activities of the economy. 83 00:06:30,450 --> 00:06:33,510 One of the most interesting results 84 00:06:33,510 --> 00:06:37,140 of implementing the revitalizing agriculture 85 00:06:37,140 --> 00:06:40,200 is the radical change of the soil structure. 86 00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:44,940 It was recovered in a such high level 87 00:06:44,940 --> 00:06:48,300 that the soils are even reaching 88 00:06:49,190 --> 00:06:53,578 a soil fertility class higher than we had in the world 89 00:06:53,578 --> 00:06:57,408 before men started disturbing the environment. 90 00:07:02,633 --> 00:07:10,083 This is a naturally structured rich soil, 91 00:07:10,083 --> 00:07:15,503 and it retains four times more water than a conventional soil, 92 00:07:15,503 --> 00:07:20,683 in a way that we produce 20% above conventional production 93 00:07:20,683 --> 00:07:22,323 without any irrigation. 94 00:07:22,323 --> 00:07:28,663 And the best thing is that this soil helps the water lifecycle. 95 00:07:30,833 --> 00:07:38,341 It has the capacity of infiltrating and storing water in six times 96 00:07:39,051 --> 00:07:44,141 in a way that the water is enough for the crop, to evaporate, 97 00:07:44,141 --> 00:07:50,179 to be transferred to the clouds and also to supply the aquifer. 98 00:07:50,386 --> 00:07:54,566 Some measurements showed that the fresh water here, 99 00:07:54,566 --> 00:07:59,421 in the farms, streams and rivers increased 30%. 100 00:08:00,426 --> 00:08:06,765 Besides becoming more fertile and providing much better yields, 101 00:08:06,765 --> 00:08:12,105 the soil was rebuilt by the activity of fungus, bacteria 102 00:08:12,105 --> 00:08:15,295 and hundreds of different species of insects. 103 00:08:15,295 --> 00:08:18,525 and it now presents a resilience. 104 00:08:18,525 --> 00:08:21,535 Recently researchers discovered 105 00:08:21,535 --> 00:08:26,685 that the fungus act as a natural Internet in the soils. 106 00:08:26,685 --> 00:08:32,565 They are translators of the different ways of communication 107 00:08:32,565 --> 00:08:39,007 among vegetables, bacterias insects and so on. 108 00:08:49,911 --> 00:08:55,623 Ninety percent of the machinery didn't fit in what we were doing, 109 00:08:55,623 --> 00:09:00,072 so we started studying what were the soil demands. 110 00:09:00,072 --> 00:09:04,282 Then we started customizing here, in our workshop, 111 00:09:04,282 --> 00:09:07,112 with our mechanics and electricians, 112 00:09:07,112 --> 00:09:13,186 equipments like tillers and harvesters. 113 00:09:16,912 --> 00:09:22,522 In order to provide and guarantee that this soil is biodiversity friendly 114 00:09:22,522 --> 00:09:26,782 our harvesters are equipped with metal tracks 115 00:09:26,782 --> 00:09:29,962 which pressure over the soil is 9 psi. 116 00:09:29,962 --> 00:09:35,666 In the same way, those trucks are equipped with ultra-high rotation tires. 117 00:09:36,621 --> 00:09:40,671 We choose about 20 psi of pressure. 118 00:09:40,671 --> 00:09:44,701 This guarantees the soil is not going to be compacted 119 00:09:44,701 --> 00:09:49,661 and that under the stretch there will be enough comfort level 120 00:09:49,661 --> 00:09:53,661 for all life forms which promotes the soil rebuilt. 121 00:09:59,426 --> 00:10:02,686 While the machine harvest the cane, 122 00:10:02,686 --> 00:10:07,366 it spreads 20 tonnes of trash over the field, 123 00:10:07,366 --> 00:10:10,056 twenty tonnes of trash per hectare in a year. 124 00:10:10,056 --> 00:10:14,546 And this trash provides soil comfort for the life forms 125 00:10:14,546 --> 00:10:17,870 which reconstructs the soil. 126 00:10:20,507 --> 00:10:24,297 The production model is pretty much closed and circular. 127 00:10:24,297 --> 00:10:28,827 We harvest the cane, take it to the mill, where it's processed, 128 00:10:28,827 --> 00:10:33,877 then we have the production of alcohol, sugar, electricity and so on. 129 00:10:33,877 --> 00:10:39,637 Then we take back all the organic waste products. 130 00:10:39,637 --> 00:10:45,927 We take them back to the field and they are used to feed the life forms. 131 00:10:45,927 --> 00:10:49,919 So, in a way we have a closed cycle, 132 00:10:50,671 --> 00:10:53,486 and nothing is lost. 133 00:10:54,060 --> 00:10:59,350 Here we can see another important stage of the management. 134 00:10:59,350 --> 00:11:01,770 We are seeing vinasse's application. 135 00:11:01,770 --> 00:11:07,067 Vinasse is a very important organic fertilizer 136 00:11:07,750 --> 00:11:13,500 and we use the vinesse, which is rich in organic matter and nutrients 137 00:11:13,500 --> 00:11:18,210 to boost the soil and life forms activity. 138 00:11:18,210 --> 00:11:22,910 Here we integrate sophisticated harvesting technologies 139 00:11:22,910 --> 00:11:25,460 with natural practices. 140 00:11:25,460 --> 00:11:32,700 This is the current concept of modernity for me, not the opposite. 141 00:11:32,700 --> 00:11:38,036 We don't need to have everything artificial, synthetic or electronic. 142 00:11:41,508 --> 00:11:47,023 Our production environment became a lot more resilient. 143 00:11:47,023 --> 00:11:53,313 The weather has been much more unpredictable than it used to be before, 144 00:11:53,313 --> 00:11:57,632 but now we can get more tonnes of cane 145 00:11:57,632 --> 00:12:01,140 per millimeter of rain. 146 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:06,548 Compared to 30 years ago, we more than doubled, 147 00:12:06,548 --> 00:12:12,801 and compared to 10 years ago the efficiency increased in 15%. 148 00:12:16,601 --> 00:12:22,501 One of the main concerns when we started was how we would measure the results. 149 00:12:22,501 --> 00:12:26,631 and then I went after idoneus institutions 150 00:12:26,631 --> 00:12:30,811 like Embrapa, University of São Paulo, University of Campinas, 151 00:12:30,811 --> 00:12:37,631 and I looked for specialized people in soil fertility, fauna biodiversity, 152 00:12:37,631 --> 00:12:43,401 water resources, atmosphere, CO2 release and so on. 153 00:12:43,401 --> 00:12:51,701 We have lots of publications and studies about how the soil fertility evolved here, 154 00:12:51,701 --> 00:12:55,241 how biodiversity evolved here, and so on. 155 00:12:55,241 --> 00:12:59,681 Just as an example, after a whole year of organic production, 156 00:12:59,681 --> 00:13:02,771 besides compensating all our releases, 157 00:13:02,771 --> 00:13:08,871 we extracted 45,000 tonnes of co2 from other economic activities. 158 00:13:08,871 --> 00:13:14,246 So we are not just just carbon neutral, we are carbon sink. 159 00:13:17,523 --> 00:13:25,013 We do not analyze water and soil anymore, because the ecologists taught me 160 00:13:25,013 --> 00:13:31,653 that the best way to compare the results 161 00:13:31,653 --> 00:13:35,003 is using biological indicators. 162 00:13:35,003 --> 00:13:39,373 For instance, we have some insects and some animals here 163 00:13:39,373 --> 00:13:44,035 that are extremely demanding in terms of environment comfort. 164 00:13:53,650 --> 00:13:57,710 We have 340 species of superior vertebrates, 165 00:13:57,710 --> 00:14:01,980 mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, 166 00:14:01,980 --> 00:14:10,274 which means more than 50% of the natural parks in São Paulo state. 167 00:14:10,692 --> 00:14:13,882 And these are astonishing news, 168 00:14:13,882 --> 00:14:17,876 because they break the scientific paradigm 169 00:14:17,876 --> 00:14:21,436 that monoculture is bad for biodiversity. 170 00:14:21,714 --> 00:14:24,693 What is bad for biodiversity is the management, 171 00:14:24,693 --> 00:14:27,571 the way you do, and not what you plant. 172 00:14:34,423 --> 00:14:40,276 The soil change was not the last thing that happened here, it was the first, 173 00:14:40,913 --> 00:14:46,403 but one of the last things was how the soil change 174 00:14:46,403 --> 00:14:52,272 and this different agriculture method impacted the business model. 175 00:14:55,354 --> 00:14:58,904 Since the first day, 19 years ago, 176 00:14:58,904 --> 00:15:04,638 when we started to sell our certified products, we never have a loss 177 00:15:04,638 --> 00:15:08,958 There were profits every year, 178 00:15:08,958 --> 00:15:15,794 because the price is constructed over the basis of the sustainability. 179 00:15:15,794 --> 00:15:19,974 In order to define the prices, 180 00:15:19,974 --> 00:15:24,184 we consider how much costs the social, the environmental 181 00:15:24,184 --> 00:15:27,764 and economic aspects of this business. 182 00:15:27,764 --> 00:15:30,804 This is a total different relationship 183 00:15:30,804 --> 00:15:36,684 among all the actors participating in the value chain, 184 00:15:36,684 --> 00:15:42,674 from the grower to the industrial food manufacturer, 185 00:15:42,674 --> 00:15:45,414 because in conventional food chains 186 00:15:45,414 --> 00:15:48,918 what happens is the gross margin 187 00:15:48,918 --> 00:15:52,358 remain 90% of the grow margin, 188 00:15:52,358 --> 00:15:59,608 with that actor which keeps the key resource of the food chain. 189 00:15:59,608 --> 00:16:05,232 Sometimes it's the logistic, or the financial capital, 190 00:16:05,232 --> 00:16:12,286 sometimes it's the clients and so on. 191 00:16:12,286 --> 00:16:17,957 But in sustainable food chain or value chain, 192 00:16:17,957 --> 00:16:23,907 this margin is more equitably distributed along the chain, 193 00:16:23,907 --> 00:16:26,917 because this connection happens. 194 00:16:34,456 --> 00:16:40,026 Surely we can't apply it instantly in nine million hectares of sugarcane, 195 00:16:40,026 --> 00:16:42,635 but the same principles can be applied 196 00:16:42,635 --> 00:16:47,685 to other crops, charts, planted forests and so on. 197 00:16:47,685 --> 00:16:52,645 The system has not a recipe like in the conventional, 198 00:16:52,645 --> 00:16:55,498 where there's a pack you must use. 199 00:16:55,838 --> 00:16:59,308 You can do it in thousands of different ways, 200 00:16:59,308 --> 00:17:02,628 because you are talking about natural principles. 201 00:17:02,628 --> 00:17:04,038 If you observe the nature, 202 00:17:04,038 --> 00:17:09,018 you are going to see thousands of different ways of doing it, 203 00:17:09,018 --> 00:17:13,228 reaching the same objectives, vegetable and animal production. 204 00:17:16,413 --> 00:17:20,123 I think that the biggest difficulty is not teaching people 205 00:17:20,123 --> 00:17:23,383 how to do one operation, the change and so on. 206 00:17:23,383 --> 00:17:27,863 I think that the challenge is how to change people's mind, 207 00:17:27,863 --> 00:17:33,523 because men emancipated themselves from the natural rhythms, 208 00:17:33,523 --> 00:17:39,963 so we lost a big important part of ourselves, 209 00:17:39,963 --> 00:17:45,491 which is the capacity of perceiving ourselves in the environment. 210 00:17:46,863 --> 00:17:53,753 The nature is teaching us the lessons we didn't have before, 211 00:17:53,753 --> 00:17:56,993 and we must learn very quickly 212 00:17:56,993 --> 00:18:03,460 that there is an intelligence coordinating what happens in the nature. 213 00:18:11,069 --> 00:18:13,479 We have to convince all people, 214 00:18:13,479 --> 00:18:17,949 no matter if they are organic producers or conventional producers, 215 00:18:17,949 --> 00:18:23,150 to have a more systemic vision 216 00:18:23,150 --> 00:18:26,210 of the whole, of the farm, 217 00:18:26,210 --> 00:18:30,546 of the business and especially about the role 218 00:18:30,546 --> 00:18:32,978 of the human being in this planet. 219 00:18:43,727 --> 00:18:47,584 My long-term vision for this production method 220 00:18:48,297 --> 00:18:52,197 considers a consciousness expansion. 221 00:18:52,441 --> 00:18:57,528 What we did in 20,000 hectares is just the tip of the iceberg. 222 00:18:58,076 --> 00:19:03,626 I foresee that we can, for instance, take back, switch garbage 223 00:19:03,626 --> 00:19:08,836 from the big cities to the agriculture ecosystem. 224 00:19:09,169 --> 00:19:14,139 And in the same way we did here, we can feed the life of the soil 225 00:19:14,139 --> 00:19:17,153 with all the waste products of the cities, 226 00:19:17,153 --> 00:19:20,733 closing the cycle, turning it circular. 227 00:19:21,749 --> 00:19:28,179 I foresee a wide range of application, because since is based on a principle, 228 00:19:28,179 --> 00:19:34,246 we can find housands of different ways of getting the same result.