What can astronauts teach us about farming? | Rodney Reis | TEDxEcoleHôtelièreLausanne

Due to a lack of space in their spacecrafts and rockets, astronauts have developed new farming techniques in order to produce fresh vegetables during their journeys through space. Even with limited resources, they are now able to grow healthy salad and lettuces, despite being thousand of kilometers away from Earth. Mr. Rodney Reis has studied this new space agriculture and will show you that the authentic way to grow vegetables may not be the future for our society on Earth. Why not change our vision of old farms and incorporate new processes that are able to produce local fresh food all year long, with an added benefit of reducing our impact on the planet?

Rodney had his executive training from IMD Lausanne and London Business School, his MBA from IBMEC in Rio de Janeiro, a Telecommunications Engineering certificate from University of California Irvine, and finally, a Bachelors in Computer Science from São Carlos Federal University. He has worked for large corporations like Accenture, Nortel, and Ascom, as well as smaller start-ups. He has helped create and develop companies in Switzerland, India, the UAE, and Brazil, working on and closing deals in over 25 countries for the past 16 years, mainly in the high-tech sector.

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

One year ago, almost to the date,
it was the 20th of April, 2014.

This resupply mission from NASA

delivered more than food
to the International Space Station;

it delivered a way to grow food.

Now, this would be the first time
that food, plants, grown in space

are not used only for studies
but also for consumption.

That's the arrival of space farming.

Commander Steve Swanson
is in front of VEGGIE.

VEGGIE is a mini greenhouse
that can produce lettuce

just like this one,

in space.

It uses 10 times less water
than traditional agriculture,

it takes less power
than a desktop computer,

and to transport, it took
six times less space than to operate.

Bringing anything to space from Earth
costs its weight in gold,

so resources there are precious.

Should we treat our natural
resources the same way?

When I look at the globe,

I see Brazil, the country I was born,

a country blessed
with many natural resources.

Still, a few weeks ago,
I read an article in the press

about the severe drought
that's happening in São Paulo.

São Paulo is a metropolitan area
with 27 million people.

And they're having a drought

that is one of the worst
for the past 100 years.

Now, this journalist was asking this lady

how she was going to cope
with the drought.

Brazilians are known
to have several showers during the day.

So he was asking her,
"Are you going to have less showers,

or are you going to have
quicker showers?"

Unfortunately, a second shower
is not the most pressing issue we have

when we have water shortage.

Every minute, around the world,
a child dies from water-related diseases.

In 10 years, two-thirds of humanity
are expected to suffer

from a form of water shortage.

And this is not an
emerging-market problem only.

OECD countries, industrialized nations,

are expected to have
their water consumption grow

by 65% by 2050.

That's a lot faster
than the rest of the world.

So, if we were to put
all the water in the world

into one big droplet
right next to our planet,

that's what it would look like.

Of that, only one percent is fresh water.

Of this one percent, two-thirds are frozen
on our polar caps and on our glaciers.

And of what's left,
70% is used in agriculture.

Water security is food security.

But if we can farm
with less water in space,

surely we can farm
more efficiently here on Earth.

We can use some of these ideas.

So, I lead a Swiss startup
called CombaGroup,

and that's exactly what we
set out to do: efficient farming.

This is our research
and development greenhouse,

not far from here, from Lausanne.

And we are growing salads out of earth.

We spray a mix of nutrients and water
directly onto the roots,

using a technology called aeroponics.

What's not used is recycled.

And for every kilo of salad we produce,
we save 180 liters of water.

However, most salad
doesn't grow like this.

So, I want to tell you
the story of a salad,

from when it's born
to the end of its life,

hopefully fulfilling its mission,
which is to feed us.

And to do that, I want to go back
to the place I came from

before coming to Switzerland;
I want to go back to the UK.

Now, I used to live in this lovely village
in the countryside of England,

and it had a wonderful pub, a teahouse,
and a church, but not much else.

And around, it had
a lot of fields for agriculture.

Now, during the cold months,
particularly during winter,

not much grew there,
but certainly not salad.

Still, I could go to the nearest market
and I could buy fresh salad

any time of the year.

More than half the year, this salad
will be coming from the south of Spain;

the two main places
are Murcia and Almería.

They'll be driven 2,300 kilometers

in the back of a truck
for over three days,

and by the time they arrive in England,

they'll have lost
more than half of their vitamin C.

What's the impact on waste?

What's the impact on the environment?

Well, let's talk about waste first.

Imagine these are 100 salads
growing on the field in Spain,

trying to fulfill their mission.

Seventeen will be lost
before they're harvested.

Nine will make it to the shops

but won't be purchased
because they don't look that good.

And the biggest amount of waste
will happen at home.

We throw away 45% of the salad we buy.

Why do we do this?

Why do we pay for it and throw it away?

The main reason is short shelf life.

It goes past its expiry date,

it smells bad, it tastes bad,
so we throw it away.

So, the days it's been traveling
in the back of a truck

are important days
that they could be with us.

And if we could cut the level of waste
we have with salads by 50 percent

and make it, instead of
the number one in food waste,

the number two in food waste -

which isn't a great track record -

we could save 300 liters of water
for every kilo of salad we eat.

Now, that's enough for that lady
to have a second shower

every day of the week for one week.

Unfortunately, these salads
don't grow in Brazil; they grow in Spain.

And water reserves in Spain, per capita,

are 12 times smaller
than the water reserves in Brazil.

These salads grow in one of
the most arid places of Europe.

In the south of Spain, they have
half the average rainfall of Spain.

They have six times less rainfall
than we have in the UK.

Still, they export the equivalent
of 100 million cubic meters of water

in the form of salads
to other countries in Europe.

What should we do?

Should we stop eating salad
when it's wintertime?

Water reserves in the UK, per capita,
are more or less the same as in Spain.

And salads, lettuce, is one of the most
water-efficient crops we can have.

If we replace one kilo of salad
by one kilo of potato,

we'll be using twice as much water.

If you want a little milk,
it's eight times more water.

If you want a kilo of beef,
that's 15,000 liters of water,

as opposed to 200 liters of water

that is required
to grow one kilo of lettuce.

Furthermore, there's a lot of sunshine
in the south of Spain.

That's why we go there for holidays.

It's twice as much sunshine
than we get in the UK.

And plants need light and heat to grow.

So, if we were to grow these plants
in a greenhouse in the UK

and use electricity to light
and heat this greenhouse,

we would spend more money
and emit more carbon

than actually we do bringing them
by truck all the way from Spain.

So this seems to be the most efficient way
for us to eat salad all year round.

But is that how an astronaut
would look at the problem?

We saw how we could grow salad
with 10 times less water.

Well, we can also start
by using light that's more efficient.

We can give the plants
only the colors they need: red and blue.

That's why you see
the purple light in the picture.

Now, these salads, they grow in the air.

And when they're small,
we can huddle them closely together

and gradually give them
more space as they grow.

That way, we can produce
two times more salad per square meter

than we would in the field

and use the energy from the light
and heating more efficiently.

We could also use waste heat
to warm up the greenhouse.

Here in Switzerland,

we are going to build
a large-scale project

right next to a bio-gas plant.

Now, this power plant
throws away heat and CO2

as a byproduct of energy production.

These resources are precious.

We'll connect our greenhouse
to this power plant

and warm it up during winter,

also using the CO2
to accelerate plant growth.

By doing that, the carbon footprint
we have per kilo produced

is five times lower

than doing the same thing
on the field here in Switzerland.

However, energy footprint in the UK

is 70 times higher
than what we have in Switzerland.

There are a lot of renewables here,

and we burn a lot of coal in the UK
to generate electricity.

So would that math also work
for the same ideas, in Britain?

In fact,

we could produce, during winter,
with the same CO2 footprint

that the field can produce
during summer in the UK

and even lower during winter
when we don't need to light them up,

to complement the light -

but furthermore, we could provide
a product that's fresher,

locally produced, and hopefully,
reduce the amount of waste,

reducing the carbon footprint
per kilo consumed,

and bringing it to less than half
of what we have right now

importing food from Spain.

Ultimately, we throw more food away
than we consume, today.

This is happening right now.

We're growing these plants
right next to you.

We will be serving the salad today
so we'll be able to taste it.

And if you could replace
only 10% of the food imports in the world,

that would be enough

to offset the carbon footprint
for one million people

and would save enough water

for 30 million people to have a shower
every day during the year -

the whole of São Paulo and the people.

We could even bring the salad
alive to our kitchens,

extending space farming
all the way to our homes,

have a product that has
a longer shelf life, more vitamins,

and reducing waste,
therefore saving our natural resources.

This is our team.

We try to dress like astronauts.

We try to think like astronauts.

But what we learn
from astronauts about farming

is that we can farm with less water,
less energy, and less waste,

and by doing that,

we can have food that's fresher,
healthier, and better for the planet.

Thank you.

(Applause)