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So data and analytics are dramatically
changing our everyday lives.
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Not just online,
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not just in some distant future,
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but in the physical world
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and in very real and tangible ways.
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I spent the last 11 years
of my life as a geek at MIT
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working in big data labs
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that seek to use data science
to study the physical world
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and try to solve society's great problems.
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The field of big data seeks to analyze
massive pools of data
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using computational tools
to find patterns and trends.
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Data can be a really
extraordinary storyteller,
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unveiling the hidden narratives
of things in our everyday lives
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that we never would have seen.
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I find the personal stories of inanimate
things brought to life
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to be extraodinarily compelling.
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I want to highlight first two projects
from my time at MIT
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that I think highlight
this phenomenon really well.
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The first is called Trash Track,
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and in this project we sought to better
understand the waste management system
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to answer the question:
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where does your trash go
when you throw it away?
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Your old coffee cup or that flip phone
that you carried around in the early 2000s
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or a bagel
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or this morning's paper --
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where do these things go?
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This data didn't exist
so we had to create it.
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We answered and then
visualized this question
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by installing small censors
into pieces of trash
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and then throwing them
into the waste system.
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And what you're seeing here is the data.
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Every line,
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every node that you see
is a single piece of trash
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moving through the city of Seattle,
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and then across the state,
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and then across the country
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as weeks and months go by.
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And it's important to visualize this data
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because none of you are probably
sitting here thinking,
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"Yeah that looks right."
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(Laughter)
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That's working like it should, right?
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'Cause, no --
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(Laughter)
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What the data shows us
is a highly inefficient system
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whose inherent brokeness I don't think
we really would have seen
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had the censors not done
the journalism for us.
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A second project
that I'd have to highlight
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has to do with creating robots
that dive into sewers
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and sample waste water.
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I know that sewage kind of gets a bad rap,
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but it's actually kind of awesome
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because it can tell us
an incredible amount
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about the health of our communities.
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This technology was spun out
by a group call Biobot Analytics,
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who's creating a cutting-edge technology
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to turn our sewers into modern-day
health observatories.
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Their goal is to study opioids
within the sewage
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to better understand
consumption in cities.
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And this data is key because
it really helps cities understand
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where people are using,
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how to allocate resources
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and the effectiveness
of programming over time.
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Once again, the technology
that's built into this machine
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is pulling back the curtain
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and showing us something about our cities
that we never would have seen without it.
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So it turns out,
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as we see,
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that big data is really everywhere --
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even in your toilet.
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And so now that we've talked
about trash and sewage,
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let's move on ...
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to food.
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(Laughter)
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A year ago I left MIT
to pursue a passion in food.
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And in 2017,
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started a company with my husband
called Family Dinner.
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The goal of our company is to create
community around local food
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and the people who grow it.
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To make this happen,
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we're using data analytics,
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automation
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and technology
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to build a distributed
network of local farms
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and to make improvements
on the food system.
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So what we see here is that
the broad techniques
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and the mission of what we're trying to do
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is really not dissimilar from
the work at the MIT labs.
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Which brings us to a critical question:
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why exactly would someone leave
a very promising career
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at one of the top urban
science labs in the world
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to drive carrots around
in her Mom's Acura?
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(Laughter)
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It's a great car.
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Because I believe that the story
of local food needs to be understood,
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told
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and elevated,
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and in many ways,
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I think that nerds like us
are really uniquely poised to tell it.
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So where are we starting?
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What's our starting point?
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The current national food system
is optimized for one thing only,
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and that's corporate profit, right?
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And think about that.
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The most compelling reason
for food companies to exist
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is not to feed hungry people,
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is not to make delicious-tasting food.
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It's profit.
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And that has detrimental effects
at all levels of our food system.
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The antibiotics and pesticides
that are being into our food
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are detrimental to our health.
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Price pressure is forcing
small farms out of business.
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In fact, a lot of the things that you
think about farms no longer exist.
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Farms don't look like farms,
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they look like factories.
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And at the end of the day,
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the quality of the food
that we're eating really suffers too.
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A factory-farmed tomato may kind of
look like a regular tomato, right?
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Red exterior.
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But when you bite into it,
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the taste and texture
just leave you wanting.
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And we know that perhaps
the greatest tragedy in all of this
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is that between 30 and 40 percent
of this food is just wasted --
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thrown away.
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That is 1.5 billion tons.
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I can't even wrap my head
around that number.
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1.6 billion tons.
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That's 1.2 trillion dollars a year
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in wasted food.
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That is the cost of on-demand eating
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and convenience
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and the broken food system.
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Now where's this waste happening?
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Where's all this waste coming from?
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Well, we know that it happens in the field
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when you don't pick
the sexiest looking potatoes.
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We know that it happens in transit
at the warehouses,
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in the grocery stores.
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And finally on our own kitchen counters
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when we determine that that spotty,
brown banana no longer looks so yummy.
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All that waste,
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all that effort.
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Food is planted,
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grown,
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harvested,
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shipped
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and then just thrown away.
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We think that there
has to be a better way.
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And so how to we improve upon this?
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How do we make a better system?
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In order to do this
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we need to understand
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that we need to eliminate waste
in the food supply chain.
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We need to get data
in the hands of farmers
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so that they can make better predictions.
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So they can, you know,
kind of compete with the big guy.
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And then finally,
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we need to prize as a company,
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quality and taste above everything,
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so that people really value
the delicious food on their plates.
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This, we believe, is the better system.
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This is the better way.
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And the path to that better way
is paved with data.
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To highlight all of this I want to tell
the tale of two tomatoes.
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We'll talk about them one-by-one.
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A tomato in itself contains
a beautiful snapshot
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of everything you might want to know
about the life cycle of that fruit:
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where it was grown,
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what it was treated with,
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nutritional value,
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miles traveled to get to your plate,
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CO2 emissions along the way.
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All of that information;
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all those little chapters
in one small fruit.
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It's very exciting.
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This is tomato number one.
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This is the guy that you'll find
in sub shops, supermarkets
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and fast-food joints around the world.
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It's got a really long
and complicated backstory.
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It's been treated with a cocktail
of like, a dozen pesticides
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and it has traveled at least
1600 miles to get to your house.
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And the image here is green
because these tomatoes when green
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and hard as a rock,
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and then they are gassed along the way
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so that when they arrive
at the destination,
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they look bright and shiny
and red and ripe.
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All of that effort,
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all of that agricultural innovation
and technology
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to create a product
that is entirely without taste.
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And onto the second tomato in our tale.
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This is the local version of the fruit.
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It's story is much, much shorter.
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This guy was grown by Luke Mahoney
and his family a Brookford Farm
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in Canterbury, New Hampshire.
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It's got a pretty boring backstory.
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It was planted,
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sat in the sun
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and then it was picked.
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(Laughter)
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That's it.
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You wouldn't want to --
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yeah, there's not much more to that.
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And it traveled maybe 70 miles
to get your plate.
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But the difference is dramatic.
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I want you think about the last time
you ate a fresh, summer tomato.
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And I know we're all covered
in our jackets but think about it.
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The last time you ate
a tomato from the garden.
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It's warm from the sun,
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richly red,
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maybe it smells like dirt.
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There's something nostalgic
and almost magical in that experience.
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The taste and the flavor are incomparable.
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And we really don't have to travel
super far to get it.
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Now this story extends up the food chain
from the fruits and the vegetables
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that are on our plate,
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to the animals and the animal
products that we consume.
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What goes into raising them,
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and more importantly,
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what doesn't go into raising them
is critically important.
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Luke and his family have 60 cows.
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They use traditional methods.
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They do it the old way:
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pasture-raised,
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no hormones,
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no antibiotics,
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hay for days.
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And what they're doing here
is just treating cows like they're cows,
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not like they're in a science experiment.
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He's raising animals they way
that his grandfather
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and his grandfather would have.
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And at the end it's just better.
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It's better for the animals,
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it's better for the environment.
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Luke is not optimizing for profit or price
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but for taste and for humanity.
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And what you're think is:
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there's already a solution to this.
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It's the farmer's markets.
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The ones that many of you visit
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and the ones that I really enjoy.
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They are a wonderful but in many ways
sub-optimal solution.
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For us as the consumers
it's kind of great, right?
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You go,
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there's this beautiful bounty of food,
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you get the warm and fuzzies
for supporting a local farm
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and you get the experience of trying
something new and trying diverse products.
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And inevitably there's some guy
playing the ukulele
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somewhere in the background.
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(Laughter)
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But for the farmers,
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this presents a lot of risk, right?
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You wake up at four.
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You pack your truck,
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you hire a team,
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you get to your stall
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but you have no guarantees
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that you're going to move
your product that day.
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There's too many variables in New England.
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For example, the weather,
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which is just like, a little it
unpredictable here.
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The weather is one of the many X factors
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that determine whether or not
a market will be worth it for the farmers.
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Every time, they roll the dice.
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And there's another option.
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Here we're talking about CSAs:
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community-supported agriculture.
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In this model, customers pay up front,
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bearing the financial risk for the farms.
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Farmers grow what they can,
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and the customers enjoy that bounty.
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This also has a couple issues.
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It's great for the farmer
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because they're ensuring
that they'll sell what they buy,
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but for us,
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we still have to go and pick up that share
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and we know that a lot of farms
can't grow a huge diversity of products,
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so sometimes you're stuck with a mountain
of any one particular thing.
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Maybe this has happened to some of you.
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And what do you do with 25 pounds
of rutabaga in the dead of winter?
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I still don't know.
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So back to the question.
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How do we fix this?
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What we're hoping to do
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and what we're hoping to build
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is just a better way to CSA.
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And there are three core innovations
that make this thing hum,
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the first of which
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is a subscription-based
e-commerce platform,
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which helps us create a consistent
demand for our farmers
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throughout the year.
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The subscription part here is key.
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Orders process weekly,
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customers opt-out instead of opt in,
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that means we've got kind of the same
number of orders week to week.
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Second, this means
that if farmers can sell online,
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they're no longer limited to the geography
directly around their farm
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or to the number of markets
that they can sell.
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We've blown the doors
off of that for them.
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Second:
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demand forecasting.
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We're using analytics to allow
ourselves to look into the future
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and forecast demand.
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This lets farmers know how much to harvest
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in the near-term
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but also what to plant going forward.
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If 200 orders process on Monday,
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then we buy to meet that demand.
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200 heads of broccoli,
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200 pieces of salmon, etc, etc ...
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This automation in ordering
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means that here we are eliminating
the waste in the food system
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that bothers us all so much,
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because we are ensuring that the supply
meets the exact demand.
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It also allows us to look
into the future with the farmers
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and do crop planning.
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So if we can say to them
in June of this year,
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"I'm going to need 400 pounds of asparagus
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and 500 pounds of berries every week,"
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they can plant that accordingly,
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knowing with confidence that they
will sell everything that they've grown.
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And finally,
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we use a route optimization software
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to help us solve the problem
of the traveling salesman.
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We get a fleet of workers to come in
and help us go the last mile,
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bringing all these goodies
directly to your door.
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Without data science
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and super-capable, wonderful team,
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none of this would be possible.
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So maybe you've seen that we have
some fiery, passionate core beliefs.
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Yes, we're trying to build
a sustainable business,
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but our eye is not only on profit,
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it's only building a better,
holistic system of food.
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And here's what we value.
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People first.
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We're trying to build
community around food,
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the people who love it
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and the people who grow it.
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We built this company
to support small farms.
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Zero waste.
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We all hate wasting food;
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it just feels wrong --
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even that weirdo banana
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that's been sitting around
on your coffee table for too long.
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And lastly, taste.
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If it doesn't taste good,
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if it's not that like, perfect,
summer tomato,
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why bother?
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So what we've done is worked
with all these local farms
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to bring their things in
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and then to drop them
directly at your door
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so that we're connecting you right to them
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and making it again,
a more holistic system.
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This is our vision of the future.
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To extend this model beyond Boston,
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beyond New England
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and across the country,
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to create a nationwide,
distributed network of local farms
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to connect all these farmers
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with the people like you
who will love their food.
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We believe at the end of the day
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that really insisting on eating local food
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is a revolutionary act.
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And we invite you to join us.
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And who knows?
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You may even make
some friends along the way.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
Victor Borges
I think she meant (5:53):
when you [only] pick
the sexiest-looking potatoes.
or
when you don't pick
[the least sexy-looking] potatoes.
Victor Borges
I think she meant (5:53):
when you [only] pick
the sexiest-looking potatoes.
or
when you don't pick
[the least sexy-looking] potatoes.