The other inconvenient truth | Jonathan Foley | TEDxTC

We typically think of climate change as the biggest environmental issue we face today. But maybe it's not? In this presentation, Jonathan Foley shows how agriculture and land use are maybe a bigger culprit in the global environment, and could grow even larger as we look to feed over 9 billion people in the future.

Tonight, I want to have a conversation

about this incredible global issue
that's at the intersection

of land use, food, and environment,

something we can all relate to,

and what I've been calling
"the other inconvenient truth".

But first, I want to take you
on a little journey.

Let's first visit our planet,
but at night and from space.

This is what our planet looks like
from outer space

at night time, if you were going to
take a satellite

and travel around the planet.

And the thing you would notice first,
of course,

is how dominant the human presence
on our planet is.

We see cities, we see oil fields,

you can even make out
fishing fleets in the sea.

We are dominating much
of our planet, and mostly

through the use of energy
that we see here at night.

But let's go back
and drop it a little deeper

and look during the daytime.

What we see during the day
is our landscapes.

This is part of the Amazon Basin,
a place called Rondonia

in the south center part of
the Brazilian Amazon.

If you look really carefully
in the upper right hand corner,

you're going to see a thin white line,

which is a road
that was built in the 1970s.

If we come back to the same place in 2001

what we're going to find
is that these roads

spurred off more roads
and more roads after that,

at the end of which is a small clearing
in the rainforest,

where there are going to be a few cows.

These cows are used for beef.

We're going to eat these cows,
and these cows are eaten

basically in South America,
in Brazil and Argentina.

They're not being shipped up here.

But this kind of fish bone pattern
of deforestation

is something we notice
a lot of around the tropics,

especially in this part of the world.

If we go a little bit further south

on our little tour of the world,

we can go to the Bolivian edge
of the Amazon,

here also in 1975.

And if you look really carefully,

there's a thin white line
through that kind of seam,

and there's a lone farmer out there

in the middle of the primeval jungle.

Let's come back again a few years later,
here in 2003.

And we'll see that
that landscape actually looks

a lot more like Iowa
than it does like a rainforest.

In fact, what you're seeing here
are soybean fields.

These soybeans are being shipped to Europe

and to China as animal feed,

especially after the Mad Cow Disease scare

about a decade ago,
where we don't want to feed animals

animal protein anymore,
because that can transmit disease.

Instead, we want to feed them
more vegetable proteins,

so soybeans have really exploded,

showing how trade and globalization

are really responsible for the connections

to rainforest and the Amazon.

An incredibly strange,
interconnected world

that we have today.

Well, again and again what we find

as we look around the world
in our little tour of the world

is that landscape after landscape
after landscape

have been cleared and altered

for growing food and other crops.

So, one of the questions we've been asking

is, how much of the world
is used to grow food,

and where is it, exactly?

And how can we change that
into the future,

and what does it mean?

Well, our team has been looking at this

on a global scale using satellite data

and ground based data
kind of to track farming

at a global scale.

And this is what we've found,
and it's startling.

This map shows the presence
of agriculture on planet Earth.

The green areas are the areas we use

to grow crops like wheat,
or soybeans, or corn,

or rice, or whatever.

That's 16 million square kilometers
worth of land.

If you put it all together in one place,

it'd be the size of South America.

The second area in brown
is the world's pastures

and rangelands where our animals live.

That area is about 30 million
square kilometers,

or about an Africa's worth of land,

a huge amount of land.
And it's the best land,

of course, is what you see.

What's left is like the middle
of the Sahara Desert,

or Siberia, or the middle of a rainforest.

We're using a planet's worth
of land already.

If we look at this carefully,

we find that about 40 percent
of the Earth's land surface

is devoted to agriculture,
and it's 60 times larger

than all the areas we complain about:

our suburban sprawl, and our cities
where we mostly live.

Half of humanity lives in cities today,

but its 60 times larger area
is used to grow food.

So, this is an amazing kind of result,

and it really shocked us
when we looked at that.

So we're using an enormous amount
of land for agriculture,

but also we're using a lot of water.

This is a photograph flying into Arizona,

and when you look at it you're like,
what are they growing here?

It turns out, they're growing lettuce
in the middle of the desert

using water sprayed on top.

Now, the irony is it's probably sold

on our supermarket shelves
in the Twin Cities.

But what's really interesting is

this water's got to come from some place,

and it comes from here,
the Colorado River in North America.

Well, the Colorado on
a typical day in the 1950s -

this is just, not a flood, not a drought,

kind of an average day -
looks something like this.

But if we come back today
during a normal condition

to the exact same location,
this is what's left.

The difference is mainly
irrigating the desert for food,

or maybe golf courses in Scottsdale.

You take your pick.

Well, this is a lot of water.

And again, we're mining water
and using it to grow food.

And today, if you travel down
further down the Colorado,

it dries up completely and no longer
flows into the ocean.

We've literally consumed an entire river

in North America for irrigation.

Well, that's not even the worst
example in the world.

This probably is, the Aral Sea.

Now, a lot of you will remember this

from your geography classes.

This is in the former Soviet Union
between Kazakhstan

and Uzbekistan, one of the great
inland seas of the world.

But there's kind of a paradox here,

because it looks like
it's surrounded by desert.

Why is this sea here?

The reason it's here is because
on the right hand side

you see two little rivers
kind of coming down

through the sand,
feeding this basin with water.

Those rivers are draining snow melt

from mountains far to the east,
where snow melts,

travels down the river,
through the desert,

and forms the great Aral Sea.

Well, in the 1950s, the Soviets decided

to divert that water
to irrigate the desert

to grow cotton, believe it or not,
in Kazakhstan,

to sell cotton
to the international markets

to bring foreign currency
into the Soviet Union.

They really needed the money.

Well, you can imagine what happens:

[if] you turn off the water supply
to the Aral Sea, what's going to happen?

Here it is in 1973,

1986,

1999,

2004,

and about 11 months ago.

It's pretty extraordinary.

Now, a lot of us in the audience here
live in the Midwest.

Imagine that was Lake Superior.

Imagine that was Lake Huron.

It's an extraordinary change.

This is not only a change in water

and where the shoreline is,

it's a change in the fundamentals
of the environment of this region.

Let's start with this.

The Soviet Union didn't really
have a Sierra Club,

let's put it that way.

So what you find at the bottom
of the Aral Sea ain't pretty.

There's a lot of toxic waste,

a lot of things were dumped there,
they're now becoming airborne.

One of those small islands

that was remote and impossible to get to

was a site of Soviet biological
weapons testing.

You can walk there today.
Weather patterns have changed:

19 of the unique 20 fish species
found only in the Aral Sea

are now wiped off the face of the Earth.

This is an environmental disaster
writ large.

But let's bring it home.

This is a picture that Al Gore
gave me a few years ago

that he took when he was
in the Soviet Union

a long, long time ago showing

the fishing fleets of the Aral Sea.

You see the canal they dug?

They're so desperate to try
to kind of float the boats

into the remaining pools of water
that they finally had to give up,

because the piers and moorings

simply couldn't keep up
with the retreating shoreline.

I don't know about you, but I'm terrified

that future archeologists
will dig this up

and write stories about our time
in history and wonder,

what were you thinking?

Well, that's the future
we have to look forward to.

We already use about 50 percent

of the Earth's fresh water
that's sustainable,

and agriculture alone
is 70 percent of that.

So we use a lot of water,

a lot of land for agriculture -

we also use a lot of the atmosphere
for agriculture.

Usually when we think
about the atmosphere,

we think about climate change

and greenhouse gases,
and mostly around energy.

But it turns out, agriculture is one

of the biggest emitters
of greenhouse gases, too.

If you look at carbon dioxide
from burning tropical rainforest,

or methane coming from cows and rice,

or nitrous oxide
from too many fertilizers,

it turns out agriculture is 30 percent
of the greenhouse gases

going into the atmosphere
from human activity!

That's more than all our transportation,

it's more than all our electricity,

it's more than all other manufacturing,
in fact.

It's the single largest emitter
of greenhouse gases

of any human activity in the world,

and yet we don't talk about it very much.

So, we have this incredible presence today

of agriculture dominating our planet,

whether it's 40 percent
of our land's surface,

70 percent of the water we use,

30 percent of our greenhouse
gas emissions.

We've doubled the flows
of nitrogen and phosphorus

around the world simply
by using fertilizers,

causing huge problems of water quality

from rivers, lakes, and even oceans.

And it's also the single
biggest driver of biodiversity loss.

So without a doubt, agriculture

is the single most powerful force
unleashed on this planet

since the end of the Ice Age, no question.

And it rivals climate change
in importance,

and they're both happening
at the same time.

But what's really important
here to remember

is that it's not all bad.

It's not that agriculture's a bad thing.

In fact, we completely depend on it.

It's not optional, it's not a luxury.

It's an absolute necessity.

We have to provide food and feed, and yes,

fiber, and even biofuels

to something like seven billion
people in the world today.

And if anything, we're going to have

the demands on agriculture
increase into the future.

It's not going to go away:

it's going to get a lot bigger,

mainly because of growing population.

We're seven billion people today

heading towards at least nine,

probably nine and a half
before we're done.

More importantly, changing diets

as the world becomes wealthier
as well as more populous -

we're seeing increases in
dietary consumption of meat,

which take a lot more resources
than a vegetarian diet does.

So more people eating
more stuff and richer stuff,

and of course, having an energy
crisis at the same time

where we have to replace
oil with other energy sources

that will ultimately have to include

some kinds of biofuels
and bioenergy sources.

So, you put these together,
it's really hard to see

how we're going to get
to the rest of the century

without at least doubling global
agricultural production.

Well, how are we going to do this?

How are we going to double

global agro production around the world?

Well, we could try to farm more land:

this is an analysis we've done
where on the left

is where the crops are today.

On the right is where they could be,

based on soils and climate,

assuming climate change
doesn't disrupt too much of this,

which is not a good assumption.

We could farm more land,
but the problem is,

the remaining lands
are in sensitive areas:

they have a lot of biodiversity,
a lot of carbon,

things we want to protect.

So we could grow more food
by expanding farmland,

but we'd better not,

because it's ecologically a very,

very dangerous thing to do.

Instead, we maybe want to freeze
the footprint of agriculture

and farm the lands we have better.

This is work that we're doing

to try to highlight places in the world

where we could improve yields
without harming the environment.

The green areas here
show where corn yields

- just showing corn as an example -

are already really high,
probably the maximum

you could find on Earth today
for that climate and soil.

But the brown areas and yellow areas

are places where we're only getting
maybe 20 or 30 percent

of the yield you should be able to get.

You see a lot of this in Africa,
even Latin America,

but interestingly, Eastern Europe,

where Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc
countries used to be,

is still a mess, agriculturally.

Now, this would require
nutrients and water.

It's going to either be organic,
or conventional,

or some mix of the two to deliver that.

Plants need water and nutrients.

But we can do this,
and there are opportunities

to make this work.

But we have to do it
in a way that is sensitive

to meeting the food
security needs of the future

and the environmental
security needs of the future.

We have to figure out
how to make this tradeoff

between growing food and having
healthy environment work better.

Right now, it's kind of
all or nothing proposition.

We can grow food in the background

- that's a soybean field -
and in this flower diagram

it shows we grow a lot of food,

but we don't have a lot of clean water,

we're not storing a lot of carbon,

we don't have a lot of biodiversity.

In the foreground, we have this prairie

that's wonderful
from the environmental side,

but you can't eat anything.
What's there to eat?

We need to figure out
how to bring both of those

together into a new kind of agriculture

that brings them all together.

Now, when I talk about this,
people often tell me,

well, isn't - blank - the answer,
or organic food,

local food, GMOs, new trade subsidies,
new farmvilles?

And yes, we have a lot of good ideas here,

but not any one of these
is a silver bullet.

In fact, what I think they are

is more like silver buckshot.

And I love silver buckshot:

you put it together,
and you've got something really powerful.

But we need to put them together.

So what we have to do, I think,

is invent a new kind of agriculture

that blends the best ideas
of commercial agriculture

in the Green Revolution

with the best ideas
of organic farming and local food,

and the best ideas
of environmental conservation.

Not to have them fighting each other,

but to have them collaborating together

to form a new kind of agriculture,

something I call terraculture,

or farming for a whole planet.

Now, having this kind of conversation

has been really hard.

We've been trying very hard
to bring these key points to people

to reduce the controversy
and increase the collaboration.

I'm going to show you a short video

that does kind of show
our efforts right now

to bring these sides together
into a single conversation.

So let me show you that.

(Music)
[Environment.]

[Institute on the environment –
University of Minnesota]

[Driven to discover]

[The world population is growing]

[by 75 million people each year.]

[That's almost the size of Germany.]

[Today, we're nearing 7 billion people.]

[At this rate, we'll reach
9 billion people by 2040.]

[And we all need food.]

[But how?]

[How do we feed a growing world
without destroying the planet?]

[We already know climate change
is a big problem.]

[But it's not the only problem.]

[We need to face
“the other inconvenient truth.”:]

[a global crisis in agriculture.]

[Population growth, meat consumption,
dairy consumption, energy costs]

[bioenergy production
= stress on natural resources.]

[More than 40% of Earth's land
has been cleared for agriculture.]

[Global croplands cover
16 million square kilometers.]

[That's almost the size of South America.]

[Global pastures cover
30 million square kms.]

[That's the size of Africa.]

[Agriculture uses 60 times more land]

[than urban and suburban areas combined.]

[Irrigation is the biggest
use of water on the planet.]

[We use 2,800 cube kilometers
of water on crops every year.]

[That's enough to fill 7,305
Empire State Buildings every day.]

[Today, many large rivers
have reduced flows.]

[Some dry up altogether.]

[Look at the Aral Sea,
now turned to desert.]

[Or the Colorado river,
which no longer flows to the ocean.]

[Fertilizers have more than doubled]

[the phosphorus and nitrogen
in the environment.]

[The consequence?]

[Widespread water pollution]

[and massive degradation
of lakes and rivers.]

[Surprisingly, agriculture is the biggest
contributor to climate change:]

[it generates 30%
of greenhouse gas emissions.]

[That's more than the emission
from all electricity and industry.]

[Or from all the world's planes,
trains and automobiles.]

[Most agricultural emissions
come from tropical deforestation,]

[methane from animals and rice fields]

[and nitrous oxide from over-fertilizing.]

[There is nothing we do that transforms
the world more than agriculture.]

[And there's nothing we do that is more
crucial to our survival.]

[Here's the dilemma...]

[as the world grows
by several billion more people,]

[we'll need to double, maybe even triple,
global food production.]

[So where do we go from here?]

[We need a bigger conversation,
an international dialogue.]

[We need to invest in real solutions:]

[incentives for farmers -
precision agriculture -]

[new crop varieties - drip irrigation]

[gray water recycling
- better tillage practices- smarter diets]

[We need everyone at the table:]

[advocates of commercial agriculture,]

[environmental conservation,]

[and organic farming...]

[must work together.]

[There is no single solution:]

[we need collaboration,]

[imagination,]

[determination.]

[Because failure is not an option.]

[How do we feed the world
without destroying it?]

Jonathan Foley:
And so, we face

one of the greatest grand challenges

in all of human history today:

the need to feed nine billion people

and do so sustainably
and equitably and justly.

At the same time, protecting our planet

for this and future generations.

This is going to be one
of the hardest things

we ever have done in human history,

and we absolutely have to get it right.

And we have to get it right
on our first and only try.

So, thanks very much.

(Applause)