Agriculture fundamentally changed the way humans live — but at a cost, using up huge tracts of land and wreaking havoc on the environment, even as millions still go hungry. Entrepreneur and investor David Friedberg paints a picture of the evolution of agriculture and introduces a scientific breakthrough — “boosted breeding” — that might just transform how the world produces food. (This conversation was recorded live with head of TED Chris Anderson.)
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subarasii
If applied to hemp plant that has 100% genes required , reassuring non production of unwanted substances, the world can benefit from its other stunning usefulness to the environment, soil, etc…think of it
Poi naturally doubles (dry land sweet potatoe) can you quadruple it?
❤❤❤
I'd love to see someone try to grow downwards using Earth's gravity to water the plants below on the lower levels of the greenhouse, with reflective materials all throughout to focus more light where needed most down below. I think the way forward is a balanced approach. Maybe we should approach this issue in a similar fashion to how they approached designing Earthships, which are luxury self contained & sustained homes that runs completely off grid on the cheap. Say if we were in invent a battery grid that could run long enough to pay for itself from the energy the home owner can sell back to the utility company. Where it's free in the end.
There is no food shortage, only inequality of distribution. A small percentage of the world's population has the luxury of throwing away good food. A larger percentage has the luxury of wasting empty calories. And then there are those who have no control over the means of production or access to nutritious food. You speak of the amount of land given over to growing crops to feed livestock and neglect to discuss in detail the land given over to growing cereals and grains for the industrial giants who dominate the food industry, and for seed oils. There is no discussion, either of the commercial and industrial interests which are driving small farmers into the ground. Improving productivity will not level the playing field.
Modern arable farming, with the application of vast quantities of nitrates, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, destroys healthy soil and ecosystems. The runoff poisons the streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. The vast herds of animals which once roamed the plains of Europe, Africa, Asia and America did not create global warming. Their passage fertilised the land and ensured that it was healthy.
Nature has a nasty habit of adapting to control, and history has some unfortunate lessons about the consequences of reliance on monoculture and inbreeding.
Why was there no mention of regenerative farming, or the democratisation of production? Is not biodiversity, even in agriculture, the best safeguard against crop failure?
With all due respect, technocratic solutions work well for those who control the rights and the facilities and not so well for those who do not. They are unlikely to address the inequalities or fix the climate. And indoor farming, on a scale which would be sufficient to feed the entire population is a preposterous idea.
As for calories: the focus on carbohydrates and seed oils to provide substrates for ultraprocessed products has contributed to the epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease, dementia mental health and other diseases, the root causes of which are mitochondrial and metabolic dysfunction.
Quite sinister and puzzled when you portray agriculture in a negative light..
appeling
Legend
USA has 40 percent of its population in Obesity and Overweight .
Europe has 50 percent of its population in Obesity and Overweight .
food production is not the problem .
distribution is the problem .
USA and Europe will be better of with less food ; population heath wise and medical aid .
Africa will be better of with more food .
The answer to "is x scalable" is, if you eliminate human labor, yes. Each human represents a minimum wage.
26:36 I stopped watching 15 seconds atter he said this.
This shows the worst of humanity, "it doesn't solve our problem but you can create businesses."
What's even the point, then ?
Money & Greed & More control !
This isn't a Ted Talk this is an investment pitch.
This is so exciting. The potential is unbounded. Thank you, David Friedberg.
The solution is indoor vertical farming and lab-grown meat
For sure we entered a new era and everything will be different from now on. In our channel we're trying to educate others and include these interesting topics. Check us out!
Either these boosted genetics plants yield seeds that are uniform or they don't. The farmer comes back to the company each year because the boosted plants s/he grows will produce seeds with natural variations in genetics and will not repeat the productivity year on year. It works in a similar way to F1 hybrid varieties.
Waiting your hands
Did you ask god if he is interested to learn your great, highly profitable, solutions? God seems to be very patient with guys like you. I wonder when you guys will go too far, experiencing the lightning in your neck? I only can say – sayonara!
Love Friedberg . Love science corner
Bestie on Ted channel!
as a diabetic, I cannot eat corn, potatoes, rice or high glycemic foods… this tech will not solve my diabetes but will cause more damage to the body and mind call type 3 diabetes.!
God loves you and cares for you so that this message reaches you. God is the one who created this large universe and controls it completely. The greatest loss a person loses in this life is that he lives without knowing God who created him and knowing the Messenger of Muhammad, the last of the messengers, and the Islamic religion, the last of the heavenly religions. Great intelligence, before you believe in something or not, is to read it, study it, and understand it well, and after that you have the choice to believe in it or not to believe in it. I advise you to do this now, before you no longer have time to do so. Life is very short. It is just a test, just a passage to eternal life. Great advice to those who… Understands
David, your insights into the historical evolution and future of agriculture are incredibly valuable. It's great to see such a comprehensive approach to tackling environmental challenges through technology.
I have ZERO interest in listening to you run your mouth
ALL I need is the pertinent information
Boosted breeding sounds like a tag on R34
I encourage you (TED and this speaker) to move beyond the technocentric viewpoint you're oozing. It's so limited. If farming was our first technology, then it was preceded by our social fabric and recognition of humanity in others and our abiotic environment.
The productivity equation ignores the input of marginalized groups (often women, children, and vulnerable individuals) on a local scale. The mention of the Haber process without acknowledgement that it was initially used to generate explosives for the Soviet Union is testament to the idea that progress at any cost is destructive, and that's equally true for agriculture today. Technology isn't the only solution needed.
The idea that there isn't food is completely false, it is political agreements like the US-Canada-Mexico policy that requires the productive country (Mexico) to export it's crops at lower prices while the bigger players flood their market with cheap imported crops, like in the case of corn (agricultural dumping). It is these political regimes that keep productive countries from breaking out of their debt on a global scale – for Nicaragua there were attempted and failed coups by the US government when Nicaraguans nationally rejected the incumbent neoliberal government.
Productive countries do not owe the tech hubs of the world anything, and they are not interested in commerce that reduces the existing biodiversity and indigenous knowledge they possess. They are interested in improving their systems – but not in a way that makes them reliant on a global market that relegates their contribution to pennies, as in the case of the potato seed mentioned.
And yes smallholder farmers care about their livelihood, it is what sustains them. But they are not made aware of their rights and the global market interests of others nor the reliance they inhabit through GMO seed cultivation. I'm not against GMOs (they're necessary to adapt to climate change on a human scale), I'm against the concept of making someone who already understands local ecology and agriculture feel less than because of factors out of their control (commodifying crops, supply chains, extractive global policy).
What a great example of educational TED talk. This is kind of Entertainment I like.
34:45 Look I bet this comment won't get pinned or liked, reply and I'll do absolutely NOTHING
I do not give him good credibility when he equates AI to chatGPT. AI is already hugely considered in agriculture.
I think farming should be a civic compulsory service. If conscription is happening more and more in some country, so should mandatory farming service. There is SUCH a disconnect between knowing basic food production of a society vs picking up food at the local store and listen to my favorite social media/ celebrity telling me what to and what not to eat.
Experiments, yeild, and sector growth sounds great, but all the bullshit that's been conjured up in labs up to now has resulted in nothing more than bankrupt farmers and put goddamn fisher price fruit and veggies on my store shelfs! I can't fuckin waaaiit to hear the long term health studies. You treat this planet, the food and us peasants like rats in some fuckin lab.
I’ve noticed it’s possible to stimulate growth with AI & resonance; sound waves.. no toxic stuff, no disruption from dna-modification unbalancing ecosystems; only more growth and food