 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm really lovely to see you all this evening. Thank you very much indeed for joining me on a panel which the organisers here at WEF have given me. It's second year in a row I've been involved in something to do with food systems and food security because they know how passionate I am about it. The other thing is I'm always learning and I'm an old dog, but I'm loving learning new tricks and that's why I've got this most amazing panel of really stunningly smart people. I've spoken to them all already and they're just... I've already learned enormous amounts from Verna and from Hanukkah, from Sara and David, one or two points as well. So, you're going to learn a lot in this panel about the problems we're facing. We know the problems we're facing and how we're going to get agri-systems, food systems, more secure in the world. I don't want to give you too many stats because you know the stats, but safe to say the number of people facing acute food insecurity thawed from £135 million in 2019 to £345 million in 2022. Currently, a total of 49 million people in 49 countries are on the edge of famine, one in 10 people, 828 million people currently suffering from hunger, defined as chronic undernourishment, in addition, 3.1 billion people. That's a large percentage of our planet, ladies and gentlemen, cannot afford a healthy diet. There's a hell of a lot of other bad things going on as well. We've got war, we've got weather problems, we've got input costs increases as well, we're not all adding to the medium to longer-term problems we have. We have concerns about soil erosion, how many harvests have we got left in some parts of the world? But there are answers and there is a way through it as well. So, I'm looking to hear about opportunities and innovation in technology, in food systems, how we can track them better, how we can ensure adoption as well. Stakeholders working together. That's where we're going to go forward on this one. I'm going to... I'm stopped talking I'm just going to introduce you to five people, actually. There's four here. I'm Steve Sager, by the way, you don't need to worry about me. And what I want is a really interactive session. So, you, ladies and gentlemen, will help make it interactive. If you hear something and really want to question it or want more information on it, please get involved a little bit later on. You will all get your chances. Now, I said five people because, of course, not only have we got David Beasley, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme. To my left, lovely to see you, David. We've got Sara Menker, who is the chief executive officer and founder of Grow Intelligence USA. David tells me she's the real brains behind the data here. I think we're not going to challenge her. I think we know that as well. Then we have someone I'm delighted just to meet as well, is Hanukah Farber, who is the president of nutrition at Unilever. I mean, who can work for Paul Pullman and not be enthused by the desire to make things change? She's worked for him twice over the years. Not anymore, but she's worked for him twice as well. And guess what? I've already had a free lesson from Verna Bowman, who is the chairman of the Board of Management, chief executive officer at Bayer, about the amazing changes that are happening on modified genes for plants and for how... Well, I won't reveal, but the new technology means you're not necessarily putting external inputs in, but you're using the DNA you've got. And it just is mind-blowing. It is mind-blowing. I'm actually really excited. If you're not, I'm surprised already. Right, OK, I've said enough already. I'm just going to go down the panel. I'm going to ask them a very simple question to start off with. I might question them as they go along. And I'll just reiterate to you four as well. Sorry, I said a fifth person, didn't I? I did. I did. Arnold Puysh Peh Dali Sak is the president of the World Farmers Organization. No debate about food security can be done without the farmers. So, feel free to any stage, Arnold, and I mean this, to get involved in this as well. You are the fifth panelist as well. Right, OK, let's start off with David. David, I've given a couple of facts about the problems for people, but the world has a very, very big problem here. Why don't you flesh it out a bit more detail for us? Yeah, you know, when I took this role, actually reluctantly about six years ago, which is a story in itself, there were 80 million people in what we call IPC level 345, marching towards starvation, not knowing where the next meal's coming from. So I was like, look, we can end the need for the World Food Program. End this type of hunger. I didn't think it was going to be that complicated. Well, within a couple of years, the number went from 80 million to 135. And it's important to understand this time progression because you begin to see we are in a hell of a situation. So the question, why did you go from 80 to 135? Man-made conflict, climate. COVID comes along. 135, 276. Now, break that, that's just not a number. These are people in countries making these countries very vulnerable, susceptible to all types of things. So just when you think it couldn't get any worse, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and then the bread basket of the world, grows enough food to feed 400 million people from the bread basket to bread lines, and now you've got fertilizer crisis. You've got fuel crisis. You've got droughts. You've got a very bad situation in every region around the world. And so like when Sarah and I were just sitting down earlier, was that the day yesterday? Yes, sir. You know how to go. It's a really blurry time. No. And so now you've got, let me just give you an example. You said 49 million people basically in 50 countries, give or take, that are knocking on famine's door. So if you want to know which countries in the next 18 months that may have famine, may have destabilization, and may have mass migration, those are just the 49 to start with. Now when I start overlaying, because people are saying, well, inflation is getting in check. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can fool yourself with that. Inflation compared to what, a year ago, then you start doing currency devaluation and all these other issues in a country-by-country analysis. The world's in trouble. Now, we didn't have mass destabilization and mass famine and mass migration in the last two years especially because we were able to convince with the messaging that we've done in the last 24 months with the Nobel Peace Prize, et cetera, that's awakened the leaders to step up. So our funding went from what was five point something billion to 14 billion. So we've been in strategically keeping things at bay, keeping famines or postponing famines. And the droughts are continuing. The fertilizer's not out there. And the production in countries like Argentina, India, I think I can go on and on, is down. Ukraine, for example, production wasn't so bad 2022. But guess what? They don't have any fertilizer for 2023. The stockpiles have been used. So their production very well could be down 35, 45, 50%. And I keep going place by place. So I'm trying to get the leaders around the world to wake up. You've got to understand there's a short-term phenomenon and then there's a long-term game plan which is where the private sector is critical. We will not solve hunger nor poverty without the private sector being front and center. 200 years ago, world population was 1.1 billion. 95% of the people on Earth were in extreme poverty. Today, lesson 10, why private sector? Systems, solutions, innovation, technology. We're going backwards right now, but we got to get back on track because I do believe from what I am seeing in the private sector, we truly, if we can get through the next 18 months without a global collapse, and I'm now using the D word and no longer the R word, recession versus depression, if we don't get our act together in the next 10 to 12 months, we could really get in some serious, serious trouble. And if we can get through this next 12 to 18 months, then I believe with the private sector being front and center, we can end hunger as we know it, because the technology, innovation, the research is really exciting. That's enough. Let me throw it now. Those are real smart folks. I'm going to ask you one more question very quickly though. And we'll do this one quickly as well. You said your funding went from $5 billion to $14 billion. That's great news as well. But I still wonder if we're just talking fractions compared to the amount of time and energy and debate that goes on about energy, about hydrocarbons, about fossil fuels as well. It's my understanding that we could solve a vast amount of the climate change problems and hence energy security, food security problems within a very short period. If we concentrated more on agriculture, on the food we eat and how we farm that food and how we consume that food as well. Am I getting something wrong here all the time? Is the world focusing over here? Well, actually that's great. Focus on energy, but give equal time to food systems, to agriculture. Yeah, this is one of the things I'm doing with leaders publicly and in private is be strategic now. There's not enough money to do everything. What are the icebergs in front of the Titanic versus the broken wine glass in the bowl room? What must we... Now, some of us still like the wine in the bowl room, right? But you got an iceberg out there. So what are those icebergs? And how do we really address them? I remember when the war broke out in Ukraine, everybody was focused on the eastern border. I'm like, you know how to get down Odessa. If we don't get that Odessa port, it ain't gonna matter what happens on the eastern side for a whole lot of reasons. But you're exactly right. We got to be strategic. Research has got to be strategic. And this one little fact. We waste one trillion, give or take, dollars of food, 1.3, 1.4 billion metric tons of food per year. Now think about the climate impact of that wasted water, that wasted fertilizer, et cetera. Just that alone feeds 2 billion people. And that's another side of the equation, isn't it? The fact is, despite all that unbelievably dire statistics about famine and poverty and people having malnutrition, we also know that there's over a billion people in the world who have Western diseases because we eat too much and throw the rest away. Yeah, and just on your Ukraine point as well, I was going down there in 2014 before the Russians even got into Crimea and this American Chamber of Commerce guy on the plane said to me, you know what this is all about, don't you? I was like, well, it's about Russia and Novorossi. No, this is about food. This is about the most fertile soil on the planet. That's where my education started. Right, okay, you've had a big bidding up from this man here as well. When he gets on the phone, he needs to speak to someone about the data about what's really going on. He speaks to you. Now, I have to find a little bit about, oh, I watched a whole video of you. I mean, this is how much research I do. And it was you saying, do you know what? No one's talking about food systems. No one's talking about agricultural systems. It's the same thing as well. That was only four, five years ago. I presume things have got a bit better. They haven't, they haven't. Oh, yeah, okay. So... Put your seatbelt on. There you go. Listen, I came from an energy background. And then I went into sort of the agricultural world and everybody thought I was crazy because they didn't even see the relationship between the two. And the one thing that I think the last year the world has learned is that food security is energy security and energy security is food security. I mean, we need energy to produce our food because we need energy to produce fertilizer. We also use some of that food that we produce in corn or palm or sugar to make fuel. And so the link between the two is both in the input side as well as the output side. So there is a deep link between those two worlds and there's a lot that one could have learned from looking at the transformation that the energy markets went through, which I was lucky enough to see in terms of how much capital flooded into the markets to truly transform them. I mean, to move to sort of the conversations we're having today about clean energy took a lot of private capital sort of moving in and the catalyst for that was data. It was better real-time data that led us measure risks on a real-time basis. When you can measure that risk on a real-time basis you can now transfer and price that risk and the minute you can do that so many more players come around the table. Give me a great example of what? Sorry, I've interrupted you but just give me a great example of, okay, I've got my AI over here. I've got this amazing data going on. How is that going to improve my food security? I mean, so let me go back to the energy analogy and then I'll bring it in. So we wanted to move to a clean energy world. There were two ways to do it. Government could try and force it or subsidize it but it would never scale or it could bring enabling policies that then let private capital flow into it. But for that to happen, what had to happen was we had to move from coal to making natural gas cheaper than coal which took fracking energy and fracking technology to work which then sort of displaced coal naturally and natural gas became a cleaner fuel and that then made way to other cleaner fuels and it's been a process. But the billions of dollars that went into sort of developing those technologies did not come from government. It came from private sector. It took markets to do that. So now apply that to sort of food systems and say we need a lot of transformation of food systems. This is, we're not talking about $10 billion or $100 billion. You're literally talking possibly trillions of dollars to reshape something that we've built over thousands of years. And to do that, what you need now is mechanisms to price and transfer that risk. So all of a sudden, if you know what, you know, so let me use Unilever as an example. You know, Unilever has its inputs and it has lots of foods and lots of ingredients that it buys for its ingredient base. Only five or six are actually traded on an exchange that they can go and manage that risk against when their ingredient space is hundreds of different products. So now if they need to go say, we're going to go invest deeply in nutritious foods, they need all sorts of guarantees and capital in the marketplace to go do that. Now, if you don't know how much of that supply exists, what the supply risks are, what the demand is going to be, how do you go to a bank and how do you actually systematically price that risk? Not just for tomorrow or for the next year, but for the next 10, 20 years because building out this infrastructure takes that much money, right? So we're really good in agricultural markets today to go out and manage that risk one to two years out. So if you take the most liquid agricultural product in the world today, it's corn in the U.S., if you can sell that two years forward, it's still a miracle. Let alone, you know, in the oil markets, you can go sell oil 20 years ahead and fund all sorts of new development, right, and technology. So data becomes that infrastructure that allows and enables that risk sharing and risk taking to happen. So it sort of facilitates different players, banks, companies, governments, et cetera, to play their role, but it sets a baseline by which people use to make those decisions. And I mean, David and I got pretty close because of the Russia-Ukraine War and because stuff was moving around so much and it was constant updates and, you know, but it was sort of having a platform that lets you, you know, using AI to actually generate these insights in that data becomes critical to also not just driving business, but also helping with essentially natural, you know, disasters or helping humans. Yeah, and helping farmers know what they need to plant. Yeah. If you've got the data on a global basis and we'll come back to you a little later on. I want to come back to you when you, when we've got a bit more information for you. Hello, right, Hannah. We've talked about a few fascinating things already. I mean, the evolution of the mustard's crisis are regenerative agriculture. You can take it where you like to start off with because I'll get the other one in at some stage anyway. I'll pick it up from where David started on, you know, the private sector has to solve some of these problems because we can't just do with Band-Aids the whole time. So we're really focused on what are the big problems to solve in the food system and you guys have mentioned a few of them already, a billion people hungry or suffering from malnutrition, 2 billion overweight or obese, which is another big problem leads to chronic disease. Food system responsible for 30% of all emissions and a third of all food waste that we could literally feed 10 billion people today if we weren't throwing it away. So those are the big problems. We all know them. We're a consumer goods company. We make stuff that we all eat every day. So our innovation is focused on products that you will eat every day, but that solves some of these problems. So four big areas, and I'll be pretty quick on those. First of all, more plant-based eating, big focus for us because if we all ate a little bit less meat every day, it would go a long way in solving that emissions problem and it's healthier for us too. So you get to products like Ben & Jerry's Dairy Free or Vegan Magnum. Delicious. Don't have to change your habits, but they're vegan and they don't use cows. Second area is reducing salt, sugar and calories. Really, really important and sometimes hard. It sounds easy, but we're the biggest seller of bouillons and stocks in the world. You know, that's actually quite a lot of salt. We just launched Knorr Zero Salt Bouillon. No salt at all. So if you're suffering from hypertension or if you're overweight, that's like a real innovation and it's hard to do. Third area is bringing more micronutrients that children, especially in a developed world, need into products that people use every day. In much of Southeast Asia and Africa, children don't get enough iodine, iron and therefore as much as many as 30 percent of all kids don't reach their potential in terms of height and brain. So we have a huge program of fortification. Indonesia is a nice example where last year we started adding iron and iodine to our Royco stocks. They're in 90 percent of Indonesian households twice a week. So when you add those micronutrients to a product that is so often used, you have a real impact on public health. So that's another big focus. And finally, more resilience to drive food security. And that's where we work closely with farmers around the world to support them to do what we now call regenerative agriculture, which is not charity. It's not some lofty thing. It's to drive resilience. And that's where I'll tell you the mustard story. And then I'll go over to Werner. Not a great story. It's a terrifying story. Yeah. So we're the biggest seller of mustard in the world. The French especially love mustard. So we sell mai there. We source mustard seeds in Canada and in France. Last year, both harvest failed, both due to climate. So floods into one place, a drought in the other place. So there were no mustard seeds. Our backup plan for mustard seeds because you always have a backup plan was the Ukraine. We know how that worked out. So for the last year, there's been very little mustard in France because the inputs just weren't there. Now the French are in an uproar, you know, because they need their moutard. That's okay. The world can probably do without mustard for a while. But if that same dynamic happened on soy and corn and it can happen tomorrow, we have a big problem. So we have to farm differently if we're going to have enough food to eat for people. If farmers are going to harvest and make money on those harvest and if our businesses are to exist 10 years from now. So that's why Regen Ag is actually, it's the way our grandparents farmed. So it doesn't sound super innovative, but we have to scale it now. I'll give you an opportunity to flesh out because I think it's one of the key concepts of this panel. Regenerative agriculture. And I know the others will want to come back on this at some stage and we can ask the farmer as well. But just give us a little bit more detail on what that actually means now for farmers today or for food companies who are buying from those farmers. Absolutely. So I'm sure Verna will build on this as well. But it's implementing practices that improve your soil health, that reduce emissions, reduce water and improve yields for farmers because that is so important for our income. And it's actually fairly simple practices like cover cropping, like crop rotation, like no-till, like planting hedges. But all those things have been lost in the way we have started to farm in the last 30, 40 years. Giving farmers a proper price for their product. I live on the edge of a farm. I live on the edge of an agricultural community. And so many of the fields they just don't use and they set aside because they can't get a decent price for their product as well. Absolutely. I'm sure. You talked about resilience. And I know that's something that Verna Bellman really wants to talk about as well. So tell us a little bit about resilience and why food resilience is the key. And there's some other points, but we'll come to those when you've had your opening remarks. Maybe before I do that, let me briefly respond to what David said. You mentioned that we have an acute and actually further building crisis with a lot of people facing famine. I think for that one, we need hands-on crisis management as you do. So all the technologies of the world will not solve that problem in the next 12 to 18 months. What that means is that the public sector, private sector governments really have to step up. I think there are few places which are better than this one here. We have all constituencies together to make some progress. And we have seen some of that, I think, work out very, very well. For example, with de-blocking the Seaway with the Black Sea, which brought actually some of the product that was sitting in storage in Ukraine, then in particular to the Middle East, which is one of the areas that is most dependent on Ukrainian produce. What it also means for us is that we have to do our piece to it. We are, of course, active in Ukraine. There's a lot of criticism for people who stay the course and remain active in actually Ukraine and in Russia. But you have to see to the extent that we withdraw from, for example, from Russia. The Russians will be all over Ukraine and steal further grains for their people. And with that, the G7 has asked all people in the food sector to stay the course and stay active both in Russia and Ukraine. In Ukraine, it's actually your life-threatening exercise for our people to continue to serve farmers around. First of all, places are being bombed. Secondly, even for farmers not safe to farm on their farms because some of their farmland is mined. We have actually done something that I certainly didn't think about was our people. We found actually here in Switzerland a demining machine that we refurbished and brought to Ukraine so that farmland can be demined and people can farm again. We are donating similar to other people here in the room, I see Mike Frank there. We are donating seeds to farmers who don't have the liquidity to farm. And without seeds, they cannot even start the operation and then bring some harvest. So this is all of the acute stuff that we can do for crisis management. Longer term, the challenges are much bigger when it comes to resilience of farm system and X systems. Just picking up on what Hanukkah said, regenerative farming is something that we have to do in order to be more sustainable long-term. But there's a very big difference between some of the terminologies that are being confused all the time. Regenerative farming is not organic farming. So some of these technologies that are being used, for example, NOTIL is only possible with some of the technologies that were developed in the last three, four decades. It's far superior in terms of soil preservation. It's far superior in terms of carbon sequestration. It's far superior in terms of yield and with it and with further increasing yields. That's the only chance that we can feed more people, 2 billion more people in the next 25 years to come. And at the same time, you'll get to something that the X sector is absolutely critical to and that is to decarbonize a big part of the carbon footprint that modern societies have that will only work with intensification, which means more yields with better and new technologies that we are working on. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. Fertilizer is a big issue. Fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer that is being produced stands for about 2% of all primary energy that is being consumed worldwide. Fairly big ticket. There are new technologies out there where you would simply solve some of these things that some plants cannot do. So corn cannot fix that nitrogen out of the atmosphere. So it does and so it does not need to be fertilized. We can today with some of the new biotechnology solutions we can teach plants to do that. And with that eventually save 30% of your fertilizer that is being used. This is some of the innovation that we need in order to both feed the world, feed the world better and decarbonize at the same time. I'm going to ask you one more question. Arnold, I want you in a moment. In a moment you've got a couple of minutes to then just comment on what you've heard so far and what the farmers think should be done as well. And then it's open season. I want you all just to get involved wherever you feel you want to. And you know what? If you see something or hear something, you'll just stick your hand up and I'll get to you. I promise you. Right, so my last question for you Verna is we talk about technology. We talk about science. We talk about new forms of genetically modified seeds and what have you. We talk about higher yields. Is there an environmental damage to this as well though? Are we talking about wastelands where there's no biodiversity or actually have we overcome that hurdle? Well, I think there's a good thing to look at the reduction of overall pesticides use. So we can do an awful lot, an awful lot better today compared to what we were able to do maybe 15, 20 years ago. Today we have precision application methods. We have the means, for example, also with digital farming devices to spot areas in a field that have disease without having to treat the entire field. We can go with spot applications. We can do that through drones with new high precision applications with new formulations of crop protection products. And there is something that of course will be substantially more sustainable compared to some of the current practice where you simply fly planes over all of your acreage. So there's one of the things that we can do. When it comes to some of the other things that we can enable digitally and where we can also use some of the new breeding technologies, we need to make these technologies a core part of the solutions that we are working on. Now the issue is that not all regulatory systems are equally as well-coming for these new technologies. So the U.S. and Latin America, you don't need to convince anybody that no till and then GMO is the way to go because that's been the practice for the last decades. Forget about even starting or restarting that discussion in Europe. Now what's very important is that the new technologies that are out there, all of you have heard about CRISPR, this is not about bringing material, genetic material from one source organism into a target organism in order for a certain activity to be expressed by the target organism. This is about modifying the genome in the plant itself where you regulate up or down or switch genes on and off. This is what CRISPR does. And that is essentially this is nature identical. That's what you would also get to with your traditional breeding but it's much, much faster. So it's not just about the governments giving you the money, David, and have a think about this and we'll come back to you afterwards. It's not just about the money. It's about the change of attitude from regulators on a global jurisdiction to actually treat agriculture in the same way they treat healthcare as well. And I think that's the point you were making on and off the stage as well. Arnold Puerschepe, Dalisac, what a beautiful name. President of the World Farmers Organization. You've heard a lot. You've heard some of the issues. You've heard some of the solutions but you're the farmer. So you're representing them. What do you think? Thank you, Steve. I want just to complete the definition giving by an echo about regenerative agriculture and then maybe complete also that when you take the floor. It's important to have tools. Data is a tool and with the data you use the right fertilizer at the right time. The right plant protection product at the right time. You the right biocontrol developed with the new technology. But the more important things I think for all the market is the sign giving by the price for the producer. In the developed country, we see an important inflation of the food product. In the developed country, we haven't seen the same gap, the same increase of the price. And it's fundamental for the small order and like for all the farmer to have sign with the price. When you have a better price immediately, you see that it's the products to do to produce tomorrow. And unfortunately, sometimes the, I don't know if the bad food chain relation or the trade would disturb the things, the business. But we don't see this sign. And everywhere, the world is different in Europe. We have a big problem with the price of energy who have disturbed the cost of the fertilizer when it stays cheaper in the US, for example. The price of the cost of electricity to storage the vegetable you eat this winter. It's don't came from a field where it's came from freezer. But from two cents per kilo of products now it's 20 cents. You need to increase the price of the products. If you don't do that, you will not give the sign to the market and nobody will produce more what is needed by the market. And the level of action really is the price and the retailer need to help us, need to give the right sign, I think. I know, thank you very much indeed for that. Right, David, did you want to respond to that as well about getting the right price for the farming community? Again, there's another key point. I know you've made some other points as well. So just take it away. I know it's critical. But that's not just a narrowly defined area. I mean, it's broad scale and the whole supply chain system. And one of the things that we've really shifted, we historically were just bringing food, bringing food. We're now helping stimulate local economies. We now do cash-based transfers over almost three billion, over three billion dollars just in cash-based transfers trying to help local farmers that will buy locally. We're putting billions of dollars in buying locally ourselves versus just bringing it in from the United States or from already developed nations to help stimulate economies so that you can get the pricing that smallholder farmers need because if you don't develop the systems for inputs, they will never have long-term success. You've got to build the systems up. So when you analyze out how did we go from 95% extreme poverty to less than 10? And we still got work to do on that 10. It was because the systems that were designed in development, supply chain systems were flowing and working. But they're not working in the poorest of the poor. This is in addition to the complex situation we have on crisis today. But if the private sector will not just yield that to the government and to the United Nations and say, all right, which of these 30 or 40 countries developing nations, the supply chain systems not where it needs to be, what are the inputs, what is it going to take? Then we'll start solving poverty and making more stable nations such that you don't have mass migration at 1,000 times more of the cost than going in and doing it right. So argument I make with leaders around the world is let me give you the cost. It is the way it's going now versus if you do it right. It's a thousand times cheaper and I can quantify that. And we can go to the Syria crisis. We can go into the Sahel and we can show what happens when you don't do it right. It's a lot cheaper to do it right. Hannah, come in next. No, absolutely. And I think your point on local sourcing. We've probably gone a bit too far in terms of this whole global supply chain. So Africa is the prime example. So we have a pretty big business in Africa. We have factories in Africa. But until two years ago, only 20% of our crops are raw materials were coming from Africa. So we were sourcing eggs from France to use in our African factories like there's no chickens in Africa, completely crazy. So we've changed that two years on right now. We're sourcing about 65% in Africa. But we need even more innovation. I see Mauricio up front here. So with the Project Africa Improved Foods where we work with the World Food Program and DSM and Unilever to do even more localization of both your food and my food and trying to figure that out together in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Sarah, come in. I wanted to comment on the getting the right price to the farmer comment. I think if you look at what makes the life of a farmer difficult, it's that if you look at the cost in the cost base, 40% of production costs come from fertilizer, the price of fertilizer. Then you have seed, you fuel, and then you have other costs. But fertilizer is by far the biggest line item. And so when we look at sort of the inflationary pressures we're talking about today, and then you look at how prices are set, they're set on a global standard. Well, natural gas prices in Europe went up by 5x. So when that happens, I can guarantee you the price of corn did not go up 5x, right? But from an input standpoint, that sort of you just have to think of the farmer's profitability and balance sheet. That sort of transfer does not sort of happen. And that mechanism of transferring that doesn't happen. Part of it is because of broken markets. There's like one or two benchmarks. Not enough localized markets to create liquidity to offtake that sort of risk, right? But also because there is no long term partnership between farmers and sort of the buyers from farmers. And again, even in the US, let alone in places like Sub-Saharan Africa where the markets are more fragmented and you have small holder farmers. So you're not seeing that sort of the inflationary pressures that farmers are facing on their balance sheets are significantly greater than the inflationary pressures that we as consumers are facing in the sort of produced product because it takes such a long time for all of that to feed through. And so part of what we need to do is start to create new market mechanisms to adjust for that. And there are ways to do it. This is important. It says, yeah, give me a way that we can do this. No, I think there are ways. It's just you just have to innovate new market places, right? Like it's not using the markets we already have. Anywhere where you're seeing that happen. No. It's really hard to do. And it's also it takes convincing a lot of different players across the supply chain to agree to new ways of doing things. It also takes government getting out of the way, right? And so innovation and financial markets oftentimes happens when there's an incentive for people to innovate. So but if you look at agricultural markets in particular, you know, if you look at the U.S., essentially all farmer loans are subsidized by the government. So there's close to zero incentive in the U.S. to innovate in sort of new financial instruments. Brazil has a lot of innovation because it was forced to because the government did not step in as much. So you have to start to think about what are the levers that government can use to backstop markets and help markets feel secure, but also how do you actually create a system in a marketplace that sort of resembles the global nature of the markets we operate? It's really hard. It creates disincentive. Then you're going to come in and then we're going to hit me and Maritio. Yeah. But if we wanted to build on what Hanukkah said when it comes to sourcing in developing markets, which have been importing so far and the need for more innovation. I think innovation is part of it, but it's going to take quite some time. Yeah. If you look at your further adapted seeds that are more stress-resistant for arid places and so on. But there's also a piece of good news that we shouldn't forget. And that is that currently many, many of these countries where small holders supply 80% of the food that is being consumed in these countries. They have huge potential. If you just look at the current agricultural practice that could be changed for the better with better inputs, better knowledge, better training, and we get orders of magnitude more productivity with no incremental innovation that we need. It's just about getting to these small holders, educating them better, unleashing also the forces of women who are crucially important in these small holder families in order to drive your better agricultural practice and with that higher yields. We have given ourselves a target to reach 100 million, small holders by the end of this decade. We have reached 50 million with a lot of partnerships and of course technology. If you multiply it by the size of a typical average household with six, seven members of these farmer households, it gives you a notion of how many people we can reach and how many people we can help getting out of subsistence and at the same time provide for more food security and with that more national security with better farming practices and that is something that is worth going for. Can I have a look at anyone else who wants to ask a question in the audience? Well, I've got one coming here now. Have a think. Okay. Right. Well then, Mauricio, let's take it away with you. Thank you. So that's a question. Yes, of course. Yeah. Thank you for mentioning the AIF. I think there are pieces of good news. There are a lot of examples that have been mentioned here and I have been to the World Economic Forum for a couple of years and I'm very happy to see that I mean we are entering much more in an actionable mode instead of just having these empty discussions. It was very frustrating. Very frustrating. Everybody discussed and then you come one year again and you continue. So the question that I have is that it's a very simple question for all of you and whoever wants to respond. 2023 does not look like it's going to be better. Does not look like. So continue the polarizes and everything. So if you want to pick one action that you will prioritize and do 2023 which is this action to support and to alleviate the situation that we're living and as we talk about collaboration what will be your pledge and to whom to support and get is done. So let me just get every one of you to answer that because the only reason to say that is because we've got four minutes left and Sean's going to want to say something at the end as well. I know he is so we'll just start off with you David and then we'll work our way along simple in wars in conflicts. I mean because of time that's enough right there. They'll do that. Oh boy. No, come on David. We can't just. I mean I would love to end wars in conflicts. I want a bit more than that. I didn't think of that. Let me get real clear here because our leaders in the world are not any wars. I've got extra billions of dollars of aid going into Yemen that could be used in Africa Syria Lebanon is about ready to just completely collapse Jordan. The absolute failure to address Syria is impacting the entire region. So we go and I'll keep going on around the world. So I'm just like leaders slow down focus focus and in some of this stuff. Okay. Now we can talk about the food stuffing. Sorry. You took my idea. No. I had a panel yesterday asking for an idea. They all said AI. It was like so in total it was 10 letters. Thanks guys. I would actually I would go back to refocusing our world leaders on these issues. So I do think that the narrative is beginning to slip and the reason and David touched upon it a little bit which is the narrative that says you know inflation is calming down is statistically true because inflation is a year on year look on the world. But when the world has been so messed up for three years you're basically saying the last three years is now a new normal. If that's the case then we're in a lot of trouble. Right. So the like if you look at sort of the average food price across the world in the U.S. It's up 66 percent since the beginning of 2020. In Sudan it's up 1,900 percent. Argentina is 380 percent inflation. Yes. Year on year is going to be tempered down because it's going to look like relative to last year not much happened this year. But the last three years have have been an absolute calamity. No one focused on it. A war forced our world leaders to come together and say what do we collectively do. I mean reopening Odessa was no easy task but enough people got around the table and got it done. Now we need them as focused and not let a statistical narrative stop them. And that my biggest worry is that people are looking elsewhere as if the problem solved when I think the problem is just beginning and it can get a lot more expensive if we don't actually do something about it. Yeah. Yeah. Very powerful. Both of you. Thank you. I think for us in the private sector I think this year we have to stop admiring the problem. Also stop doing loads of little pilots but scale regenerative agriculture scale scale scale big. Fairner. So that you since David you already fixed the wars. Yeah. So I can focus focus on the on the more mundane stuff and very surprised you how how basic it is for us. I think the most important point this year is ability to supply. Don't be confused with us being able to simply make the stuff that we could theoretically make. Just a few examples. We are still facing significantly disrupted supply chains with suppliers who are not necessarily able to fully cater to our demands. Logistics is a mess. It continues to be a mess. We had to actually rent our own ships in order to get product shipped around the world where you would normally go and simply say I want to have that and that product here and there by then. None of that is really stable today. So that's one. Secondly we want to reach the next 3 to 5 million smallholders this year and we are rest assured that we are going to get to them. We are going to be at about 55 maybe 60 million that we will have reached by the end of 2023. And last but not least looking at you going forward at innovation. We want to start the few trials of the first higher nitrogen sufficient varieties this year. Those are the three things that we want to get done this year. I want to thank you all myself before Sean says the final words as well. I mean I told you I'd learn something I have. I hope you will have as well. I just want to thank all of you. David Beasley Saramanic Menker sobering statistics as well. Hanukkah again if what happens to mustard happens to soil corn or rice we are in big big trouble as well. And then you've filled me full of hope actually because science has come to the solution always come into so many issues if we treat agriculture in the same way we talk treat human health then we have got a hope as well. And a massive intervention as well from Arnold Pooresh Pay Delhi Sack. I'm sorry your name is fantastic as well from the farmer's point of view. Sean do you want to just conclude everything for us. Thank you. Thank you Stephen. I mean you must admit I mean I love working with Steve Sedgwick. He not just does he bring passion to this. He brings knowledge but he also just brings a panel to life. So you know Steve Sedgwick thank you very much but David Sara Hanukkah you know thank you and Arnold you know the farmer's piece. So I mean from the forum side just apart from thanking the panel I just what was exciting was you brought innovation to life. You know it isn't just something that's locked in a room where you're studying science and that's so going to be so key for food systems transitions. And as David so rightly put I mean we're dealing with a massive series of conflicting crises coming together right now but we need a long term game plan and innovation is going to be absolutely critical in allowing us to do that and to ensure that innovation is done in a way that's equitable and that's accessible and that is affordable for everyone. This isn't you know and what was exciting about listening to you today was it's low tech innovation that's being rolled out. It's innovation that's been around for years. You know it's high tech innovation but being done in a way that reaches the last mile. It's the role of data to completely de-risk and to provide a lot of the solutions that we need. So from the forum side I mean we remain totally committed to this agenda. This is you know to how we can use innovation in a way and use our platforms in a way to really take this forward to create food systems that sort of talk to the long term sustainability of both people and the planet and also the way that we can really make this work in real terms. You know to that point it's you know we're working with the government of the Netherlands and the UAE to build out a whole series of food innovation hubs at the country level with the idea of building these innovation ecosystems that can unlock at the country level. We're going to have to go country by country by country to really drive this innovation. It isn't there isn't a cookie cutter approach. One one approach fits all. So thank you to the panel once again. Thank you to Steve Sedgwick for a fantastic job.