-
So data and analytics are dramatically
changing our everyday lives.
-
Not just online,
-
not just in some distant future,
-
but in the physical world,
-
and in very real and tangible ways.
-
I spent the past 11 years
of my life as a geek at MIT,
-
working in big data labs
-
that seek to use data science
to study the physical world
-
and try to solve society's great problems.
-
The field of big data seeks to analyze
massive pools of data
-
using computational tools
to find patterns and trends.
-
Data can be a really
extraordinary storyteller,
-
unveiling the hidden narratives
of things in our everyday lives
-
that we never would have seen.
-
I find the personal stories of inanimate
things brought to life
-
to be extraordinarily compelling.
-
I want to highlight, first,
two projects from my time at MIT
-
that I think highlight
this phenomenon really well.
-
The first is called Trash Track,
-
and in this project, we sought to better
understand the waste-management system,
-
to answer the question
-
"Where does your trash go
when you throw it away?"
-
Your old coffee cup or that flip phone
-
that you carried around
in the early 2000s,
-
or a bagel or this morning's paper --
-
where do these things go?
-
This data didn't exist,
so we had to create it.
-
We answered and then
visualized this question
-
by installing small sensors
into pieces of trash,
-
and then throwing them
into the waste system.
-
And what you're seeing here is the data.
-
Every line, every node that you see
-
is a single piece of trash
moving through the city of Seattle,
-
and then across the state,
-
and then across the country,
-
as weeks and months go by.
-
And it's important to visualize this data,
-
because none of you
are, probably, sitting here thinking,
-
"Yeah, that looks right."
-
(Laughter)
-
"That's working like it should, right?"
-
Because, no --
-
(Laughter)
-
What the data shows us
is a highly inefficient system
-
whose inherent brokenness
I don't think we really would have seen
-
had the sensors not done
the journalism for us.
-
A second project
that I'd have to highlight
-
has to do with creating robots
that dive into sewers
-
and sample wastewater.
-
I know that sewage kind of gets a bad rap,
-
but it's actually kind of awesome,
-
because it can tell us
an incredible amount
-
about the health of our communities.
-
This technology was spun out
by a group call Biobot Analytics,
-
who's creating a cutting-edge technology
-
to turn our sewers into modern-day
health observatories.
-
Their goal is to study opioids
within the sewage
-
to better understand
consumption in cities.
-
And this data is key,
-
because it really helps cities understand
where people are using,
-
how to allocate resources,
-
and the effectiveness
of programming over time.
-
Once again, the technology
that's built into this machine
-
is pulling back the curtain
-
and showing us something about our cities
that we never would have seen without it.
-
So it turns out, as we see,
-
that big data is really everywhere --
-
even in your toilet.
-
And so now that we've talked
about trash and sewage,
-
let's move on ...
-
to food.
-
(Laughter)
-
A year ago, I left MIT
to pursue a passion in food,
-
and in 2017,
-
started a company with my husband,
called Family Dinner.
-
The goal of our company
is to create community around local food
-
and the people who grow it.
-
To make this happen,
we're using data analytics,
-
automation and technology
-
to build a distributed
network of local farms
-
and to make improvements
on the food system.
-
So what we see here
-
is that the broad techniques
and the mission of what we're trying to do
-
is really not dissimilar
from the work at the MIT labs.
-
Which brings us to a critical question:
-
why exactly would someone
leave a very promising career
-
at one of the top
urban science labs in the world
-
to drive carrots around
in her mom's Acura?
-
(Laughter)
-
It's a great car.
-
Because I believe
that the story of local food
-
needs to be understood, told and elevated,
-
and in many ways,
-
I think that nerds like us
are really uniquely poised to tell it.
-
So where are we starting?
-
What's our starting point?
-
The current national food system
is optimized for one thing only,
-
and that's corporate profit, right?
-
And think about that.
-
The most compelling reason
for food companies to exist
-
is not to feed hungry people,
-
it's not to make delicious-tasting food.
-
It's profit.
-
And that has detrimental effects
at all levels of our food system.
-
The antibiotics and pesticides
that are being put into our food
-
are detrimental to our health.
-
Price pressure is forcing
small farms out of business.
-
In fact, a lot of the things
that you think about farms
-
no longer exist.
-
Farms don't look like farms,
they look like factories.
-
And at the end of the day,
-
the quality of the food
that we're eating really suffers too.
-
A factory-farm tomato
may kind of look like a regular tomato:
-
bright red exterior ...
-
But when you bite into it,
-
the taste and texture
just leave you wanting.
-
And we know that perhaps
the greatest tragedy in all of this
-
is that between 30 and 40 percent
of this food is just wasted ...
-
thrown away.
-
That is 1.6 billion tons.
-
I can't even wrap my head
around that number.
-
1.6 billion tons.
-
That's 1.2 trillion dollars a year
-
in wasted food.
-
That is the cost of on-demand eating,
-
and convenience,
-
and the broken food system.
-
Now, where's this waste happening?
-
Where's all this waste coming from?
-
Well, we know that it happens in the field
-
when you don't pick
the sexiest-looking potatoes.`
-
We know that it happens in transit,
-
at the warehouses,
-
in the grocery stores.
-
And finally, on our own kitchen counters,
-
when we determine that that spotty,
brown banana no longer looks so yummy.
-
All that waste, all that effort.
-
Food is planted,
-
grown, harvested, shipped,
-
and then just thrown away.
-
We think that there has to be
a better way.
-
And so how to we improve upon this?
-
How do we make a better system?
-
In order to do this,
-
we understand that we need
to eliminate waste
-
in the food supply chain.
-
We need to get data
in the hands of farmers
-
so that they can make better predictions.
-
So they can, you know,
kind of compete with the big guy.
-
And then finally,
-
we need to prize, as a company,
-
quality and taste above everything,
-
so that people really value
the delicious food on their plates.
-
This, we believe, is the better system.
-
This is the better way.
-
And the path to that better way
is paved with data.
-
To highlight all of this, I want to tell
the tale of two tomatoes.
-
We'll talk about them one by one.
-
A tomato in itself contains
a beautiful snapshot
-
of everything you might want to know
about the life cycle of that fruit:
-
where it was grown,
what it was treated with,
-
nutritional value,
-
miles traveled to get to your plate,
-
CO2 emissions along the way.
-
All of that information,
-
all those little chapters
in one small fruit.
-
It's very exciting.
-
This is tomato number one.
-
This is the guy that you'll find
in sub shops, supermarkets
-
and fast-food joints around the world.
-
It's got a really long
and complicated backstory.
-
It's been treated with a cocktail
of, like, a dozen pesticides
-
and it has traveled at least
1,600 miles to get to your house.
-
And the image here is green
-
because these tomatoes are picked
when green and hard as a rock,
-
and then they are gassed along the way
-
so that when they arrive
at the destination,
-
they look bright and shiny
and red and ripe.
-
All of that effort,
-
all of that agricultural
innovation and technology
-
to create a product
that is entirely without taste.
-
And onto the second tomato in our tale.
-
This is the local version of the fruit.
-
Its story is much, much shorter.
-
This guy was grown by Luke Mahoney
and his family at Brookford Farm
-
in Canterbury, New Hampshire.
-
It's got a pretty boring backstory.
-
It was planted,
-
sat in the sun,
-
and then it was picked.
-
(Laughter)
-
That's it.
-
Like, you wouldn't want to --
-
yeah, there's not much more to that.
-
And it traveled maybe 70 miles
to get your plate.
-
But the difference is dramatic.
-
I want you think about the last time
you ate a fresh, summer tomato.
-
And I know we're all
covered in our jackets,
-
but think about it.
-
The last time you ate
a tomato from the garden.
-
It's warm from the sun,
-
it's richly red,
-
maybe it smells like dirt.
-
There's something nostalgic
and almost magical in that experience.
-
The taste and the flavor are incomparable.
-
And we really don't have to travel
super far to get it.
-
Now this story extends up the food chain,
-
from the fruits and the vegetables
that are on our plate
-
to the animals and the animal
products that we consume.
-
What goes into raising them,
-
and more importantly,
what doesn't go into raising them,
-
is critically important.
-
Luke and his family have 60 cows.
-
They use traditional methods.
-
They do it the old way:
-
pasture-raised,
-
no hormones, no antibiotics,
-
hay for days.
-
And what they're doing here
is just treating cows like they're cows,
-
not like they're in a science experiment.
-
He's raising animals the way
that his grandfather
-
and his grandfather would have.
-
And at the end, it's just better.
-
It's better for the animals;
-
it's better for the environment.
-
Luke is not optimizing
for profit or price,
-
but for taste and for humanity.
-
And what you're thinking is,
"There's already a solution to this.
-
It's the farmer's markets."
-
The ones that many of you visit
-
and the ones that I really enjoy.
-
They are a wonderful, but,
in many ways, suboptimal solution.
-
For us as the consumers,
it's kind of great, right?
-
You go,
-
"There's this beautiful bounty of food,
-
you get the warm and fuzzies
for supporting a local farm
-
and you get the experience of trying
something new and trying diverse products.
-
And inevitably, there's some guy
playing the ukulele
-
somewhere in the background.
-
(Laughter)
-
But for the farmers,
this presents a lot of risk, right?
-
You wake up at four.
-
You pack your truck, you hire a team,
-
you get to your stall,
-
but you have no guarantees
-
that you're going to move
your product that day.
-
There's too many variables in New England.
-
For example, the weather,
-
which is just, like,
a little bit unpredictable here.
-
The weather is one of the many X factors
-
that determine whether or not
a market will be worth it for the farmers.
-
Every time, they roll the dice.
-
And there's another option.
-
Here, we're talking about CSAs:
-
community-supported agriculture.
-
In this model, customers pay up front,
-
bearing the financial risk for the farms.
-
Farmers grow what they can
-
and the customers enjoy that bounty.
-
This also has a couple issues.
-
It's great for the farmer,
-
because they're ensuring
that they'll sell what they buy,
-
but for us,
-
we still have to go
and pick up that share,
-
and we know that a lot of farms
can't grow a huge diversity of products,
-
so sometimes, you're stuck with a mountain
of any one particular thing.
-
Maybe this has happened to some of you.
-
And what do you do with 25 pounds
of rutabaga in the dead of winter?
-
I still don't know.
-
So back to the question.
-
How do we fix this?
-
What we're hoping to do
and what we're hoping to build
-
is just a better way to CSA.
-
And there are three core innovations
that make this thing hum.
-
The first of which
-
is a subscription-based
e-commerce platform
-
which helps us create
a consistent demand for our farmers
-
throughout the year.
-
The subscription part here is key.
-
Orders process weekly,
-
customers opt out instead of opt in --
-
that means we've got kind of the same
number of orders week to week.
-
Second, this means
that if farmers can sell online,
-
they're no longer limited to the geography
directly around their farm
-
or to the number of markets
that they can sell.
-
We've blown the doors
off of that for them.
-
Second: demand forecasting.
-
We're using analytics to allow
ourselves to look into the future
-
and forecast demand.
-
This lets farmers know
how much to harvest in the near-term,
-
but also what to plant going forward.
-
If 200 orders process on Monday,
-
then we buy to meet that exact demand.
-
200 heads of broccoli,
-
200 pieces of salmon, etcetera, etcetera.
-
This automation in ordering
-
means that here, we are eliminating
the waste in the food system
-
that bothers us all so much,
-
because we are ensuring that the supply
meets the exact demand.
-
It also allows us to look
into the future with the farmers
-
and do crop planning.
-
So if we can say to them,
in June of this year,
-
"I'm going to need 400 pounds of asparagus
-
and 500 pounds of berries every week,"
-
they can plant that accordingly,
-
knowing with confidence
that they will sell
-
everything that they have grown.
-
And finally, we use
a route-optimization software
-
to help us solve the problem
of the traveling salesman.
-
We get a fleet of workers to come in
and help us go the last mile,
-
bringing all these goodies
directly to your door.
-
Without data science
-
and a supercapable, wonderful team,
-
none of this would be possible.
-
So maybe you've seen
-
that we've got some sort of fiery,
passionate core beliefs.
-
Yes, we're trying to build
a sustainable business,
-
but our eye is not only on profit,
-
it's on building a better,
holistic system of food.
-
And here's what we value.
-
People first.
-
We're trying to build
community around food,
-
the people who love it,
and the people who grow it.
-
We built this company
to support small farms.
-
Zero waste.
-
We all hate wasting food,
it just feels wrong --
-
even that weirdo banana
-
that's been sitting around
on your coffee table for too long.
-
And lastly, taste.
-
If it doesn't taste good,
-
if it's not that, like,
perfect summer tomato,
-
why bother?
-
So what we've done
is worked with all these local farms
-
to bring their things in
-
and then to drop them
directly at your door
-
so that we're connecting you right to them
-
and making, again, a more holistic system.
-
This is our vision of the future.
-
To extend this model beyond Boston,
beyond New England
-
and across the country.
-
To create a nationwide
distributed network of local farms,
-
and to connect all these farmers
-
with the people like you
who love their food.
-
We believe, at the end of the day,
-
that really insisting on eating local food
is a revolutionary act.
-
And we invite you to join us.
-
And who knows?
-
You may even make
some friends along the way.
-
Thank you very much.
-
(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.