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Since 2009, the world has been stuck
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on a single narrative around
a coming global food crisis,
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and what we need to do to avoid it.
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How do we feed
nine billion people by 2050?
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Every conference, podcast,
and dialogue around global food security
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starts with this question
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and goes on to answer it
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by saying we need to produce
70 percent more food.
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The 2050 narrative started to evolve
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shortly after global food prices
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hit all-time highs in 2008.
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People were suffering and struggling,
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governments and world leaders
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needed to show us
that they were paying attention
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and were working to solve it.
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The thing is, 2050
is so far into the future
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that we can't even relate to it,
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and more importantly,
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if we keep doing what we're doing,
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it's going to hit us
a lot sooner than that.
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I believe we need to ask
a different question.
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The answer to that question
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needs to be framed differently.
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If we can reframe the old narrative
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and replace it with new numbers
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that tell us a more complete pictures,
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numbers that everyone can understand
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and relate to,
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we can avoid the crisis altogether.
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I was a commodities trader
in my past life,
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and one of the things
that I learned trading
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is that every market has a tipping point,
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the point at which
change occurs so rapidly
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that it impacts the world
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and things change forever.
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Think of the last financial crisis,
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or the dot com crash.
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So here's my concern.
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We could have a tipping point
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in global food and agriculture
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if surging demand
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surpasses the agricultural system's
structural capacity to produce food.
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This means at this point supply
can no longer keep up with demand
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despite exploding prices,
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unless we can commit
to some type of structural change.
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This time around,
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it won't be about stock markets and money.
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It's about people.
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People could starve
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and governments may fall.
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This question of at what point
does supply struggle
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to keep up with surging demand
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is one that started off as an interest
for me while I was trading
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and became an absolute obsession.
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It went from interest to obsession
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when I realized through my research
how broken the system was,
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and how very little data was being used
to make such critical decisions.
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That's the point I decided to walk away
from a career on Wall Street
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and start an entrepreneurial journey
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to start Gro Intelligence.
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At Gro, we focus on bringing this data
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and doing the work to make it actionable,
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to empower decision-makers at every level.
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But doing this work,
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we also realized that the world,
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not just world leaders,
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but businesses and citizens
like every single person in this room,
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lacked an actionable guide
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on how we can avoid a coming
global food security crisis.
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And so we built a model,
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leveraging the petabytes
of data we sit on,
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and we solved for the tipping point.
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Now, no one knows
we've been working on this problem,
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and this is the first time
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that I'm sharing what we discovered.
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We discovered that the tipping point
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is actually a decade from now.
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We discovered that the world
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will be short 214 trillion calories
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by 2027.
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The world is not in a position
to fill this gap.
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Now, you'll notice
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that the way I'm framing this
is different from how I started,
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and that's intentional, because
until now, this problem
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has been quantified using mass:
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think kilograms, tons, hectograms,
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whatever your unit of choice is in mass.
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Why do we talk about food
in terms of weight?
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Because it's easy.
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We can look at a photograph
and determine tonnage on a ship
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by using a simple pocket calculator.
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We can weigh trucks,
airplanes and oxcarts.
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But what we care about
in food is nutritional value.
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Not all foods are created equal,
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even if they weigh the same.
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This I learned firsthand
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when I moved from Ethiopia
to the US for university.
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Upon my return back home,
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my father, who was so excited to see me,
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greeted me by asking why I was fat.
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Now, turns out that eating
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approximately the same amount of food
as I did in Ethiopia, but in America,
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had actually lent
a certain fullness to my figure.
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This is why we should care about calories,
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not about mass.
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It is calories which sustain us.
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So 214 trillion calories
is a very large number,
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and not even the most dedicated of us
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think in the hundreds
of trillions of calories.
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So let me break this down differently.
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An alternative way to think about this
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is to think about it in Big Macs.
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214 trillion calories.
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A single Big Mac has 563 calories.
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That means the world will be short
379 billion Big Macs in 2027.
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That is more Big Macs
than McDonald's has ever produced.
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So how did we get
to these numbers in the first place?
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They're not made up.
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This map shows you
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where the world was 40 years ago.
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It shows you net calorie gaps
in every country in the world.
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Now, simply put,
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this is just calories
consumed in that country
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minus calories produced
in that same country.
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This is not a statement
on malnutrition or anything else.
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It's simply saying how many calories
are consumed in a single year
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minus how many are produced.
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Blue countries are net calorie exporters,
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or self-sufficient.
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They have some in storage for a rainy day.
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Red countries are net calorie importers.
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The deeper, the brighter the red,
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the more you're importing.
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40 years ago, such few countries
were net exporters of calories,
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I could count them with one hand.
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Most of the African continent,
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Europe, most of Asia,
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South America excluding Argentina,
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were all net importers of calories.
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And what's surprising is that China
used to actually be food self-sufficient.
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India was a big net importer of calories.
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40 years later, this is today.
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You can see the drastic transformation
that's occurred in the world.
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Brazil has emerged
as an agricultural powerhouse.
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Europe is dominant in global agriculture.
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India has actually flipped
from red to blue.
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It's become food self-sufficient.
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And China went from that light blue
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to the brightest red
that you see on this map.
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How did we get here? What happened?
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So this chart shows you India and Africa.
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Blue line is India, red line is Africa.
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How is it that two regions
that started off so similarly
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in such similar trajectories
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take such different paths?
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India had a green revolution.
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Not a single African country
had a green revolution.
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The net outcome?
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India is food self-sufficient
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and in the past decade has actually
been exporting calories.
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The African continent now imports
over 300 trillion calories a year.
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Then we add China, the green line.
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Remember the switch
from the blue to the bright red?
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What happened, and when did it happen?
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China seemed to be
on a very similar path to India
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until the start of the 21st century,
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where it suddenly flipped.
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A young and growing population
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combined with significant economic growth
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made its mark with a big bang,
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and no one in the markets saw it coming.
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This flip was everything
to global agricultural markets.
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Luckily now, South America
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was starting to boom
at the same time as China's rise,
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and so therefore, supply and demand
were still somewhat balanced.
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So the question becomes,
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where do we go from here?
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Oddly enough,
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it's not a new story,
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except this time
it's not just a story of China.
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It's a continuation of China,
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an amplification of Africa,
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and a paradigm shift in India.
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By 2023, Africa's population
is forecasted to overtake that
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of India's and China's.
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By 2023, these three regions combined
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will make up over half
the world's population.
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This crossover point starts to present
really interesting challenges
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for global food security,
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and a few years later,
we're hit hard with that reality.
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What does the world look like in 10 years?
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So far, as I mentioned,
India has been food self-sufficient.
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Most forecasters predict
that this will continue.
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We disagree.
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India will soon become
a net importer of calories.
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This will be driven both by the fact
that demand is growing
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from a population growth standpoint
plus economic growth.
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It will be driven by both.
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And even if you have
optimistic assumptions
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around production growth,
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it will make that slight flip.
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That slight flip can have
huge implications.
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Next, Africa will continue
to be a net importer of calories,
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again driven by population growth
and economic growth.
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This is again assuming optimistic
production growth assumptions.
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Then China,
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where population is flattening out,
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calorie consumption will explode
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because the types of calories consumed
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are also starting to be
higher calorie content foods.
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And so therefore,
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these three regions combined
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start to present a really interesting
challenge for the world.
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Until now, countries with calorie deficits
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have been able to meet these deficits
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from importing from surplus regions.
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By surplus regions, I'm talking about
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North America, South America and Europe.
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This line chart over here shows you
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the growth and the projected growth
over the next decade of production
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from North America,
South America and Europe.
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What it doesn't show you
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is that most of this growth is actually
going to come from South America,
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and most of this growth
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is going to come at the huge cost
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of deforestation.
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And so when you look at
the combined demand increase
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coming from India, China
and the African continent,
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and look at it versus the combined
increase in production coming from India,
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China, the African continent,
North America, South America and Europe,
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you are left with
a 214 trillion calorie deficit,
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one we can't produce.
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And this, by the way, is actually assuming
we take all the extra calories
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produced in North America,
South America and Europe
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and export them solely
to India, China and Africa.
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What I just presented to you
is a vision of an impossible world.
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We can do something to change that.
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We can change consumption patterns,
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we can reduce food waste,
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or we can make a bold commitment
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to increasing yields exponentially.
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Now I'm not going to go into discussing
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changing consumption patterns
or reducing food waste,
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because those conversations have been
going on for some time now.
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Nothing has happened.
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Nothing has happened
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because those arguments
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ask the surplus regions
to change their behavior
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on behalf of deficit regions.
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Waiting for others
to change their behavior
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on your behalf for your survival
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is a terrible idea.
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It's unproductive.
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So I'd like to suggest an alternative
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that comes from the red regions.
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China, India, Africa.
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China is constrained in terms
of how much more land it actually has
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available for agriculture,
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and it has massive water
resource availability issues.
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So the answer really lies
in India and in Africa.
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India has some upside in terms
of potential yield increases.
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Now this is the gap
between its current yield
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and the theoretical
maximum yield it can achieve.
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It has some unfarmed
arable land remaining, but not much,
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India is quite land constrained.
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Now the African continent,
on the other hand,
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has vast amounts of arable land remaining
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and significant
upside potential in yields.
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Somewhat simplified picture here,
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but if you look at sub-Saharan
African yields in corn today,
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they are where North American
yields were in 1940.
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We don't have 70-plus years
to figure this out,
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so it means we need to try something new
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and we need to try something different.
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The solution starts with reforms.
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We need to reform and commercialize
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the agricultural industries in Africa
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and in India.
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Now, by commercialization,
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commercialization is not about
commercial farming alone.
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Commercialization is about leveraging data
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to craft better policies,
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to improve infrastructure,
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to lower the transportation costs,
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and to completely reform
banking and insurance industries.
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Commercialization is about
taking agriculture
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from too risky an endeavor
to one where fortunes can be made.
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Commercialization
is not about just farmers.
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Commercialization is about
the entire agricultural system.
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But commercialization
also means confronting the fact
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that we can no longer place
the burden of growth
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on small-scale farmers alone,
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and accepting that commercial farms
and the introduction of commercial farms
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could provide certain economies of scale
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that even small-scale
farmers can leverage.
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It is not about small-scale farming
or commercial agriculture,
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or big agriculture.
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We can create the first successful models
of the coexistence and success
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of small-scale farming alongside
commercial agriculture.
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This is because, for the first time ever,
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the most critical tool
for success in the industry --
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data and knowledge --
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is becoming cheaper by the day.
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And very soon, it won't matter
how much money you have
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or how big you are
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to make optimal decisions
and maximize probability of success
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in reaching your intended goal.
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Companies like Gro are working really,
really hard to make this a reality.
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So if we can commit
to this new, bold initiative,
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to this new, bold change,
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not only can we solve
the 214 trillion gap
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that I talked about,
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but we can actually set the world
on a whole new path.
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India can remain food self-sufficient,
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and Africa can emerge
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as the world's next dark blue region.
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The new question is,
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how do we produce
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214 trillion calories
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to feed 8.3 billion people by 2027?
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We have the solution.
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We just need to act on it.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)