 It's great about mad is they even invite people from the dark side like me, so I hope that But being in the dark side Gives me oops. That's one. No, okay being on the dark side gives me the opportunity to really take a long step back and in 1821 of my fellow countrymen Wrote a very interesting thought the destiny of nations depend on the way they which they feed themselves well two centuries later, I think it's true than ever and You know the old planets or entire plans destiny is going to depend on how well We're gonna feed ourself in the next 20 years or so so the current the current state of the food system is really scary and But I would like to show you in the next 15 minutes 14 minutes And why and how chefs can act today to help shape up the different revolutions are taking place right now in the food world So we can gain control again about our own destiny So I'm sure that most of you here today are very well aware of the issues that the food system is facing But when you are looking at all the different facts in different angles, it's really really shocking So allow me for just a few moments to walk you through some of these facts So you can you know soak in the scale of the challenge we are facing so first of all our food is produced at a totally unsustainable way because Food is produced at a huge energetic and environmental cost but also it's produced at a huge human cost and Most of you know our modern Western diet is responsible for most of the diseases and health issue we're facing today and All of that while we are still wasting a third of what we are producing. So it's doubly absurd Now You would think things would change fast, but they are not because we are you know, we are in a monopolistic situation and Things are not going to change by themselves We are permanently brainwashed by the dominant ideology What we are beginning we are being given the illusion of that we can decide but we are not The reality were victims of a disastrous storytelling and have cleverly organized this information system Why would there be 57 legal names to name sugar in the US on a package? Why name something Evaporated can extract when it's just plain canned sugar You know we need a revolution So the But that's not all oh, sorry, you know They think that's fast. Okay. Yeah, and we cannot really afford the static core because we are facing a huge Increased in population the most important being the number of people reaching the middle class which is great for them But if we continue to feed the middle class five billion people all wanted a western diet in the next 35 years It's almost impossible We already have you know we the experts predict that we need to double or crop production And especially our animal production in the future But we're already using almost half of the available land to raise The corn them into grow the corn that feeds the animals to feed us So if we're already using half of that today, I don't know where we're gonna feed So it's just absolutely crazy to think we can continue with the same system. So we need a real revolution and It the flip side of that is you know, it is actually happening. It's brewing. There is revolution happening in different areas of the of of the of the agriculture and food system and as a venture capitalist, I'm You know preview to a number of these Revolution happening a new number of the disruption happening we're seeing hundreds of Startup companies being funded in these different sectors And they are I don't know if you're aware of that But there are several billion dollars being invested every year for the past two or three years in these different sectors so something is really happening and I'm gonna walk you through some of these sectors now and then look at the overalls picture after that So in in Botany, there is something really profound that happened in the past few years in microbiology It is the understanding of what happens with Micoriza and Micoriza is a symbiotic relationship Between fungi and plant roots. So all the crop plants need fungi to survive because it's a symbiotic relationship where you exchange Glucides against mineral and one cannot live without the other really Now you would think yeah, great. So what happened? Well until now industrial farming has been promoting deep tilling and the usage of herbicides Which are actually are killing systematically all the fungi in the fields. So now you have a Crop plant which is very fragile Which also has disrupt the entire water system around it. So that only survives because we are giving them this artificial You know diet made of whatever the Monsanto and other people are giving us and That explains a lot of the issues we're seeing in the fields today By the way in parallel we are doing we're seeing a lot of development in Biotech companies small biotech companies who are studying what's happening with our own biome You know all these things happening here and they are finding which is You know at the end would make sense But quite mind-blowing the first time you hear about it We are finding that there is a huge amount of symbiosis between our own biome and the soil in which we are growing our food So that if you are going your vegetables and your chicken in the same area of where you're eating You're in total symbiosis with them, but if you're not you might not be in the same symbiosis So expect some amazing developments in this area of microbiology in the next few years the first being really about the revolution in agriculture going on and In the past few years what we have seen is the crop yields in industrial farming all over the world Including in the best areas of Western Europe the best areas of the US We've seen the the corp is going down, but also the nutrient content of the of the crops of the Vegetables and the cereals that we are eating have been going down. So today for example in the UK It takes about nine carrots to get the same nutrient level that would you would be getting in the 1950s from one carrot So it's also something that people have been aware of But it's not widely publicized by the food industry so we really need to Stop growing plants on a fast-food diet of inorganic chemicals and bring back the complexity and the power of biology Into agriculture and it's this is just what permaculture is all about is bringing back the biology into the field so the far the you know Farm industry is telling us where it doesn't work. It doesn't scale obviously not true Because we're not going back to the dark ages It's not like going back to the middle ages and and trying to do you know things on the app as a Fashion we have a lot of technology at our disposal. We can use soil microbiology analysis Which is you know very different from looking at the soil component from a mineral point of view but looking at the actual actual microbiology inside we can use satellite Surveillance we can look at a lot of things in the field to make the informed decision about what happened there We can use other farming technologies such as precision farming where you use GPS and stuff and satellite to to Optimize the way you go into your field. We can use micro drones We can use small robots to bring the nutrients to the soil where they need it You can use bio Biodefense against pests and so on right at the right place And this is working financially at a large scale one of my companies one of the companies. I mean invested in is currently Is currently managing? 55,000 hectares of fruits and vegetables. That's a lot of fruits and vegetables and what we what we do We are passing the entire 55,000 hectares into ecological farming into permaculture and and the the results are absolutely staggering. We obviously are lowering the Input of the things we put in because at the end we don't put anything in the soil anymore once we are totally into permaculture and And our yields are going up by double digits every year So whatever the the big farm industry is telling you is not true so we are in six different countries in Very exotic country like Suriname down to Turkey and Argentina and Uruguay and and and Belgium So we're doing that in different places. The goal is really to scale up that a lot more if we can In parallel to that on the other end of the spectrum We're seeing the rays and I'm sure you guys have our pioneers in many ways in that too In the rays of urban farming so urban farming is the idea of being able to grow vegetables and fruits with species that don't need a lot of soil to start with you don't see here and And what we are seeing is a number of initiatives to grow these these vegetables into small boxes We have seen I'm investing in one of these projects or big boxes like the size of a football field and you can you can bring back The the farming in the urban areas where you're gonna get 80% of the population in the future So this is working very well. It brings back a lot of soil analysis and microbiology, but also computer programming looking at leads how do you program leads? How do you do these type of things? It's fascinating and it's really happening But all that would not be possible by itself So it's all interlinked which is very exciting without the food distribution revolution and These food distribution revolution is happening because everyone is interconnected as one is using mobile phones in Africa in Europe in Asia and Australia and Not only do they allow to do a better match between demand and supply you can actually aggregate the demand and get know exactly what you need to supply but it also gives a Access to market which was not possible for number of decades to small farmers. So I Picked a couple of examples, but you know, we have a new on-demand platform for aggregating demand for fish and I'm talking about line-code fish from our season fishermen So the guys know exactly the day after how many for example seabass do they need to catch So they when they come back, they know exactly, you know They're going to bring a hundred kilos worth of seabass not 50 kilo not 200 kilos and that avoid waste and also have a better A better impact on price equilibrium. So very interesting not possible five years ago We're seeing a number of short circuit distribution models that are taking place like the food assembly It's called a rush in France another Company we have invested in and they allow consumers to buy directly online from the producers in local virtual Farmers market which are themselves organized by micro entrepreneurs so someone can say well, I want to start a farmers market in my In my area in in London or in Paris or in this area of Denmark and I'm going to find two hundred three hundred people that want to buy with me and The platform is going to allow me to do that the the amazing thing there is that the farmers have a You know the the the cut they are getting from that which is around 80 percent or even more is Three to four times bigger than they were with the supermarket chains So they can really concentrate on quality instead of just quantity, which is very very important for the future so By the way food assembly is starting in Denmark in a couple of weeks if you guys are interested by participating and All of that is really sustained by a change in behavior from the public towards, you know, fresher food and Going back to you know knowing what's no provenance and what's inside So I just wanted to add one more example of that which is cookpad, which is a Japanese company I don't know I mean I know that some guys are from Japan. He I'm sure they know it Because cookpad really is a platform that allow you to post comment on share recipes cooking recipes Now there are 60 million Unique users of cookpad in Japan, which is really about You know two-third of all Japanese families using it every month Mind-blowing and these guys have started recently in other countries. They just started in Indonesia took off like crazy They're 15 million 15 million users and they just started in Spain They're five million users and they are you know, they're seven million users in the Middle East It's actually Amazing not because their stuff is so good, but because of the demand for it It means like people want to share they want to reconnect with their with their culture and and and the food that is behind it So we're using all cover you know all the startup companies using food is food nutrition databases and software programs to match Consumers demand for health and the recipes they are using so lots of things happening. It's really amazing Seeing hundreds. I tell you hundreds of new ideas every month Of course probably 2% of them are gonna be successful. That's pretty much the ratio within invention capital But it's really really interesting to see the you know five years ago. There was none not a single one So it's very interesting now What I wanted to bring up now is the fact that all these revolutions are going to happen anyway But they could go one direction or another, you know all old all revolutions can be hijacked by someone Remember the French Revolution you had Napoleon hijacked back to a centralized system. So it was not democracy really at the end And here we you know if we left it to engineers We're likely to go toward a very different type of I know I'm an engineer So we are likely to go back to a great to go to a different first future that would may be made of you know So you learn for for for lunch and then healthy pills for dinner So we can spend more time in front of our computers I think what chefs have the an opportunity To help us regain a sense of joy Fun and social fabrics for cooking and that's very very important that you guys realized The huge impact that you can have because we're not into a centralized world anymore. It's gonna be a very decentralized Actually, I was looking for a metaphor for my ideas around that and I came across this beautiful woman nesco broccoli and which is you know an example of a factual geometry in nature Which is really cool Of course as a mathematician I love it because you can you know as you scale in and out you get the same thing and It makes the invisible visible and more importantly the order disorder and the disorder order which is really Again for mathematicians fun but it's a it's a very resilient system, so We have you know if we go back to the first picture I'm not going to go back to it, but if we go back to the first picture of The individual farming of today. You see these very linear things You see these long rows of cows of chicken of corn of wheat all aligned all very clean very Soviet style Now if we look now the new revolutions, they're all happening at the same time They're all in parallel and they are all interconnected to one another the fungi the garden the distribution system between people the cooking and exchange of recipes and Actually, April Bloomberg this morning was talking about that, you know how she got Reconnected at different level between your cooking and between your farming. It's it's that you are doing broccoli revolution Because I think this is you know, maybe what how we should call that you know the broccoli revolution But these broccoli revolution are still very for dry We're still at the beginning of it as I said it could be hijacked back by the big farm industry the big food industry and we need to get a critical mass to make it very resilient and so We have I know it's very blurry chefs here So you can see Jamie and Ronnie and Alex and David Chang very blurry, but Maybe it's there's a purpose for it because I think chefs will go beyond the summit of the food and Beyond gastronomy and really embrace this food revolution to help them make You know joyful and human again So I came up with a couple of ideas, which I think are very very very important What for what chefs should be doing very concretely in the next couple of years really and it's first of all We need to eat real food. We need to stop talking all the time about nutrition and talking about you know Vitamins and stuff like that because that's the way the food industry has been hijacking the conversation, you know We you can come up with Oreo cookies, which are full of vitamin C. It's not going to change the issue and You guys are the best place to be able to do that You need also to showcase the producers That on your menu the local producers are the real heroes of these revolutions You guys are the you know orchestra Chef, but you have people who are playing and the players are really the Farmers the guys who are growing the thing and it's very important to do so and By doing so you're going to be able to inspire a younger generation of farmers to come up to speed Today because of the ugliness of the injury or farming You people don't want to be farmers if you talk to this morning We're talking about how bad it is to be a chef. I tell you being a farmer today is even worse because you see people around you are catching you know Developing cancer because of the older products you are using you don't want your kids to be farmers and that needs to change Otherwise, we're gonna go and continue to be in a more and more industrial world and the last point It's a personal point, but I think we really need to move away from a You know animal protein centric Diet because we cannot sustain it. We just cannot sustain it and we need to and and I know that Rene and Others here. I've been there, you know to showcase some of the you know vegetable based Dishes, but they should be a centerpiece of the menu not just that So I know I'm totally into it, but just a Lastly old thing here It's a ten days ago. I was having dinner in Santa Fe New Mexico show you that venture capitalist travel a lot and That's British on the rise of farm to fork Restaurant a new one in Santa Fe and courage you to go there. It's really cool But the really interesting thing is if you look on the on the right side on zoom in on some of the thing here You have body farms in Las Vegas and three sisters farm in Glorietta. I Know this place is because there is a high school there And six years ago. There was absolutely no market for any of these farms actually some of this one did not even exist there was a chance encounter talking about fractal and stuff like that between a biology professor at the high school and a chef that took over the job as Sodexo manager for the area the guys who are doing the disgusting school lunches for the for the for the schools and They met there's the guy from Sodexo say well Let's try to bend the rules and allow the school to get some of the Locally produced thing into the menu and we are with the Jamie Oliver food foundation got by serendipity Got alerted to that. We help them organize a food revolution day at the school They invited the entire community around this very poor area of New Mexico. It's one of the poorest counties And they started to have a discussion and all the schools started to get in the bandwagon and then the local Governments started to buy the food from these people. So today six years later You have a thriving community of organic farmers who have taken over over And now you even have in Santa Fe this type of restaurants that do that So it's very much like, you know, the old butterfly that change the things in the fractal world You can have an influence from far away because not everyone here is a celebrity chef But everyone is a master of his own world, which is his own kitchen So you can start a revolution in your kitchen and then see it propagates from there So each of you today as the opportunity and I would call that Social responsibility to help break the food system and build a better one because you are the better You are the butterfly that can make a food storm happen on the other side of the planet Thank you