 Thank you, Bas, for that very warm and generous introduction, so much so that if my late father was present in this audience, he would be wondering who the hell you were talking about, but my late mother, God bless her soul, would have agreed mostly with you. Distinguished guests, delegates, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for inviting me to present this talk at the Fifth International Rice Congress, and as a Singaporean I'm delighted that you have chosen Singapore to host the Fifth International Rice Congress. I know from your past convention, your first four congresses were largely located in a large producing country. So this I see is departure from the norm, but a welcome departure so that you can include more of the ecosystem even beyond producers, including consumers, brands, retailers, the trade, et cetera, in trying to develop an enduring global sustainable rice production ecosystem. I'm going to be speaking today, as Bas mentioned briefly, on two issues, reimagining global agriculture and secondly, reimagining the rice bowl, both are interlinked and connected, and they have interlinked costs as well, and I'll try and explain the connection between the two. But before I start, I thought it would be useful because I'm going to be speaking from two vantage points to briefly introduce the two organizations that I represent today. So one is as a co-founder and CEO of OLAM, and OLAM is a leading global agribusiness. We are selectively integrated in the agricultural value chain, we are upstream in farming and plantation, so we grow over 21 different crops in 26 different countries and that includes farming of rice in different places, but we also do grow almonds and pistachios and walnuts, palm and rubber, coffee and cocoa, black pepper, and the whole host of broad acre annual row crops. Secondly we are involved in supply chain and trading, so that includes origination and sourcing of agricultural raw materials directly from the farm gate in the producing countries. It involves processing of these raw materials into intermediate products, and we have over 206 factories around the world that processes cocoa beans into cocoa butter powder, liqueur cake, or coffee into soluble coffee, peanuts into peanut paste and so on and so forth. And we are selectively involved in the downstream where we provide fortified packaged foods particularly in Africa where we are focused on the downstream business there. So we are a selectively integrated player in the whole agricultural value chain. We employ roughly 76,000 people, we operate in about 71 countries around the world and we have revenues of approximately 20 billion US dollars, we are a relatively young company, we started life in 1989, so we are 29 years old, we celebrate our 30th anniversary next year and that is an infant or toddler in this industry. Most of the incumbents and participants in this industry have very long pedigrees and long editations. So Cargill is 154 or 55 years old, Dreyfus is 167 years old, Boongi is close to 200 years old, in Indian Fman is about 245 years old. So compared to all of them, we are a young toddler in this business, just learning to stand on our own and take a few steps and walk. I want to introduce a second role or hack that I'm wearing today and that is introducing the World Business Council for Sustainable Development where I have the privilege to serve as a chairman and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development is a combination of about 200 organizations around the world represented by the CEOs focused on assuring a transition to a more sustainable world and the role of the private sector in assuring this transition to a more sustainable world. Together these 200 companies represent revenues of about $8.9 trillion and employ about 19 million people worldwide covering different sectors and most of the global economies. So it is an institution with far reaching influence. And at WBCSD, we work on five programs. The first program that we work on is Food Land and Water because we believe that this is a big meta system in the world. And if you can make that system sustainable, you can really change the world. The second is on energy and the circular economy, which is another big meta system. And if you can produce sustainable energy and make a transition to sustainable energy, we can change the world. The third program that we run is on urbanization or we call it urban urbanization and mobility, urban mobility. So if we can have more sustainable forms of urban mobility as urbanization, revolution is happening across the world, we can also change the world. The fourth program that we run is on redefining value, looking beyond just financial and economic capital and trying to assess what are the other forms of capital that we create when we set and run a business and grow and scale a business. And that includes human capital, intellectual capital, intangible capital, natural capital, and social capital. How do you capture and measure the value of these strategic assets that a company builds that creates long term enduring value? A study done on the S&P 500 companies show that in 1975, about 84% of the market capitalization of these S&P 500 companies was explained by the tangible assets and only about 16% of their market capitalization was explained by the intangible assets. In 2015 that got reversed, only 13% of the S&P 500 companies market capitalization is explained by their tangible assets. And 87% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 companies today is explained by the intangible assets, the intellectual capital, intangible capital, natural capital, social capital, and human capital. So the fourth program that WBCST is focused on is to help companies redefine the way they look at building long term enduring sustainable value. And the last program we are focused on is really social capital, which is about people and how do you build human and social capital in our companies and in our ecosystems. So I'm going to be addressing this topic of reimagining global agriculture as well as reimagining the rice bowl from the vantage point of these two experiences and roles that I play today. So let's start with the first problem, reimagining global agriculture. The first question is, why does global agriculture need to be reimagined? And that's because I believe that the global food and agricultural system is broken. And why is it broken? One 817 million people go to bed hungry every day today. And if you have a working food and agricultural production system, that should not be the case. 1.9 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies are in some respects malnourished. That is the second reason why I believe the global food production system is broken. About 2 billion people are overweight and obese, of which about 650 million approximately is obese. And the non chronic diseases that results from that kind of lifestyle is putting untold pressures on the health care budgets of these governments. A UN Chicago Council of Business Affairs study shows that all the global economies put together will spend about $35 trillion by 2020 in terms of health care expenditure to take care of and tackle the non chronic diseases resulting from being overfed and undernourished. And that is the reason why Japan has now introduced the Metabol law. And in Japan as per this law, if you're overweight and obese, you have to go for compulsory dieting classes and exercise classes. And if you do not do that, you're going to be additionally taxed. And the province in which you live and reside will also be taxed. Hungary introduced the fatty foods tax. Seven additional countries now introduced a fatty foods tax. About 14 countries have introduced a sugar sweetened beverage tax. Now all of this is because of the effects of malnutrition in its various forms. That is the third reason why I believe the food and global agricultural system is broken. 25% of the world's children today are stunted. Many of them are wasted across the globe. This is the average world average. But if you look at the developing economies, nearly a third of the children and developing economies are stunted. And many of them are wasted. That is yet another reason why I believe the global food and agricultural system is broken. The fifth reason is that one third of the food that we produce roughly is wasted. And that is equivalent to the entire agricultural acreage in China. The food that is produced in a country of the size of China is being wasted. And the energy required to produce it, the water required to produce it, the greenhouse and carbon dioxide emissions required to produce that food is the travesty of justice. And if you look at the 550 million small farmer households, 500 to 550 million supporting about 2 billion people in terms of livelihoods dependent on agriculture, about 60% of the small-holder farmers fall under the 817 million people that go to bed every day. So it's a travesty of justice that the people who produce our food go hungry. And of the people who are poor, 836 million people fall below the poverty line of $1.90 per day, new threshold according to the World Bank of poverty. And there are about 836 million people below the poverty line. Well, we've done enormously well in reducing people under poverty by about 1.1 billion people from 1990. The fact that there are so many people below the poverty line, a large proportion of the people below the poverty line are also small-holder farmers. And one of the other reasons why I believe the world food production and agricultural system is broken is the cost of producing this food is not truly costed today. So FAO commissioned true cost to do a study on what is the cost of externalities in producing food. And they asked them to study the cost of externalities, the true cost of producing food in the four major cereal crops of food crops, which is wheat, rice, corn and soybean. And they mapped out 80% of producing regions in the world, roughly 47 countries, which produce 80% of these four major food crops. And they established that the benefits derived from nature to produce 80% of those four major food crops was 1.15 trillion dollars. So that is the benefits that the food producers producing these four crops took from nature to produce those crops. But because nature's mother nature's back office was not set up, it didn't issue them those invoices. So we assume that to be free. Right. And they also asked them to study the cost, the externalities, the cost of externalities and the true cost of producing 80% of the world's four major protein items, poultry meat, lamb or sheep meat, pork meat and beef meat. And true cost established that the cost of externalities in producing that, which was not priced in, was 1.12 trillion dollars. Sorry, 1.82 trillion dollars. The combined cost of externalities was 2.97 trillion dollars. If you want to understand the enormity of that number, in the global financial crisis, we are estimated to have lost financial capital of the two of roughly 2.5 to 3 trillion dollars. But every year, the invisible cost of nature in terms of what we are consuming from nature, which is not being costed and accounted for, is staggering nearly 3 trillion dollars. Natural capital that is disappearing from under a very gnosis without us being able to be aware of. So the challenge for all of us is how do we feed a growing population which is going to grow from 7.45 billion people today to about 8.3 billion people by 2030 to roughly 9.5 billion people in the medium fertility scenario by 2050 and between 11 and 12 billion people by 2100. How we are going to feed them is the first question, but more importantly, can we feed them within the boundaries and limits of the one planet that we all inherit? We have just one planet, planet A, we do not have a planet B. And if you're going to continue to produce the food with 3 trillion dollars of externalities that are not being costed in and 3 trillion dollars of annualized invisible costs to nature, we are not having a sustainable food production system. And we need to therefore fundamentally reimagine global agriculture. And while that might sound a very big pronouncement, what I mean by reimagining global agriculture is how do you produce more food, feed, fiber, fuel to feed this growing population within the planetary boundaries? And let's therefore examine the planetary boundaries. A group of earth scientists have worked for over 60 years to crystallize the nine man-made precautionary boundaries in terms of climate, geochemical and geophysical processes, which if you breach those scientifically determined targets or boundaries, we could have very disruptive and cataclysmic climate change impacts. The first of these nine planetary boundaries is climate change. And that is measured in terms of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. According to the scientists, we cannot have more than 350 parts per million of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Against that precautionary boundary condition, we are today at about 415 million parts, parts per million, GAG concentrations in the atmosphere. So this first boundary condition we've already breached. And much of it is because of fossil use. We still depend 85% of our energy requirements on fossil fuel. Renewables is beginning to catch up. Much of the progress in renewable technologies are now attaining grid parity levels. So we expect adoption and take up of renewable energy to pick up. We look up in the atmosphere and you'll see this vast immense expanse of space above us. But when you look at the atmosphere from the space, from space, it is a very thin sliver. The atmosphere is a very thin sliver. Today we view that as an open sewer and we pump about 110 million tons of heat-warming, global warming, heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere every day of the year, 365 days of the year. And that is equivalent. The cumulative energy trapped in the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that we have emitted over the past is equivalent to exploding 400 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. 400 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs every day of the year, 365 days of the year. As a result, global temperatures have risen roughly one degree centigrade from the pre-industrial era, from the 1880s. And global temperatures are rising at 0.17 degrees centigrade every decade. And in 2015, 196 countries around the world with one now notable exception came together and committed to preventing global warming from exceeding two degrees centigrade by the end of the century. By 2100, but preferably to keep it under one and a half degrees centigrade. Now, the inter-government panel on climate change just last Monday two weeks ago issued a new report saying that there will be a huge difference in global climate between one and a half degrees centigrade and two degrees centigrade. And just the half a degree centigrade, higher temperature, global warming can result in catastrophic consequences. And they said that's the difference in sea level rise of 10 centimeters between one and a half degrees warming and two degrees warming. And they said it is a difference between the Arctic summer sea ice melting, a phenomenon that occurs today once in 100 years to a phenomenon at two degrees centigrade and one and a half degrees centigrade and a two degrees centigrade will occur once every decade. In the decade 1900 to 1910, the average extreme weather events average three in that decade per year. In 2017, we had 500. The floods in Kerala and India where I'm from, I hail from Kerala or Harvey and Irma and Florence and now Michael. Right. Every day, when you wake up and watch the TV or read a newspaper, it's like walking through the book of revelations. One nightmare extreme event after the other. On the 6th of August in the Academy of Science, there was a real provoking article that said that even by some miracle, we achieved the Paris Accord climate targets. In terms of all countries behaving themselves and fulfilling their commitments in terms of nationally determined intended contributions to reduce greenhouse gases. Even if you achieved it, there is a risk that we have now already set in motion a process that could lead to what they call a hot house earth scenario. The global temperatures could rise on an average four to five degrees centigrade. As a result of many events happening and the cumulative compounding effect of those events. So one of which is a thawing of the permafrost. The second is the loss of methane hydrates on the ocean floor. The third is the reduction of the carbon sinks in both the land and oceans. The fourth is the melting of the Arctic summer sea ice. The fifth is the melting of the Antarctic summer ice. The sixth is the reduction in the polar ice caps, the thickness of the polar ice caps. It's melting very rapidly. All of these are like dominoes, one falling on the other that can result in a major catastrophic climate change cumulilbum factor. So that's the first boundary condition under which we need to grow more food, feed, fiber and fuel, but within that boundary condition, not in excess of the boundary condition. Second boundary condition. The third scientist came up with this biodiversity and biosphere integrity, as they call it. So according to them, they have determined that we cannot lose more than 10 species for every million species that we own each year. That's a target. That's a precautionary boundary against the target. We're today losing a thousand species against the 10, a thousand species for every million species that we have each year. Every tiny totic fauna flora that is there in the global ecosystem has a specific role to play. We are in almond plantations in Australia, California. It has to be cross pollinated by bees. For every almond acre that we own, we need two and a half to three bee hives per acre. We buy billions of bees. Whoever thought the bee will issue as an invoice. We spend every year between eight and 20 million dollars on buying these bees. And then we realize that the bees are very finicky creatures, fragile creatures. They will fly only from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. They won't fly if you give them more overtime, more. They will not fly the wind speeds about 25 kilometers an hour. They will not fly the temperatures are below 15 degrees centigrade. And we have these mysterious illnesses across the globe. Disimulating bee colonies and bee populations. We have lost 50 percent of the world wildlife population since the 1970s. So we have dramatically exceeded the precautionary boundary. The third and we signed the biodiversity convention in 2010. 195 countries around the world committed to preserving biodiversity. We have to achieve those targets by 2020. We are in 2018 today. We have not even achieved a third of those targets that we all committed to achieve. So that is a problem there. The third boundary condition that we have breached is the biogeochemical loading, the nitrogen and phosphorus loading because of intensive form of agriculture. So China today applies about 430 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare. It's the highest per hectare application of fertilizer in the world. Germany, which is the most intensive user of fertilizer in Europe, applies about 138 kilograms in contrast and the US is about 109 kilograms. So China is applying three and a half times more fertilizer than the rest of the world to pursue its goal of being self-sufficient in food production, defined as producing 95 percent of the food they consume. Then according to the WHO, 80 to 90 percent of all Chinese surface water lakes, rivers and underground aquifers are contaminated in terms of the biological oxygen demand. Can China afford to produce more food with that kind of intensity? We know that in rice farming, there is methane emissions, but the toxicity of methane emissions is 34.5 percent. The toxicity of methane emissions is 34 times more toxic than carbon dioxide emissions. But nitrous oxide leaching and emissions because of fertilizer application is 290 times more harmful than carbon dioxide emissions. We cannot continue to produce more food with more and more input intensiveness. We have to reimagine global agriculture. According to the scientists, we cannot apply more than 6.2 million tons of phosphatic fertilizers into the soil as each year. Again, the 6.2 million tons we are currently applying 50 million tons in the divisive. According to the scientists, we cannot apply more than 62 million tons of nitrogenous fertilizers into the soil as each year. Again, the 62 million tons we are currently applying 170 million tons and it is good. The fourth boundary, planetary boundary that we have reached is land use change. According to the earth scientists, you need to keep at least 75 percent of your biomes intact, but we are now cutting down more forest to produce more food. And again, that 75 percent biome intactness standard of boundary, we are at 60 percent and falling fast. So that's the fourth boundary we have reached. There are five other planetary boundaries that the scientists have determined, which we have not yet reached, but we are accelerating and hurtling towards those boundaries. One of which is water and fresh water withdrawals. We have not reached the boundaries that the scientists have set for us, but we are already consuming about 4.9 trillion cubic meters of water on an annual basis. 71 percent of the water goes to agriculture. Rice consumes 2,500 liters of water to produce one kilogram of rice. It's very, very water intensive. We need about 7 trillion cubic meters of water to support 8.3 billion population. By 2030, where will we go for this water? If we can fight a war over oil, how much more would we fight wars over food and water? Each of you sitting in this room in Singapore, we consume 3,600 calories of food per capita here. That roughly means you consume a lot of water. It's not the one or two liters of water that you drink, or the 55 liters of water that you and says you need for your household chores and purposes, your bathing and brushing and shaving. But for every calorie of food that you consume, we need a liter of water to produce the food. We said to produce a kg of rice, we need 2,500 liters of water. To produce a kg of poultry meat, we need about 4,000 liters of water to 6,000 liters of water. To produce a kg of pork meat, we need 10,000 liters of water. And to produce a kg of beef meat, we need 17,000 liters of water. So remember when you next eat your 250 grams of filet mignon steak, how much water you're consuming. So water is another planetary boundary which we're hurtling towards reaching and reaching the boundary. The fifth is ocean acidification. We have again not reached the boundary, but the rate at which ocean acidification is occurring now is that the fastest pace in the last 65 million years. It's in terms of the calcium carbonate concentrations in the oceans. And while we're not reached it because of aerosol loading and all the energy trapped in the oceans, we are fast growing towards the boundary. The sixth boundary is really emission of pollutants, what they call novel entities. There is no scientific boundary that they have determined because the number of pollutants that industry emits is so different and very, very, that it is difficult to find an aggregate measure. So there is no measure for it, but pollution is increasing by the day. The next boundary condition is aerosol loading, the pumping of nitrates and sulfates and other particles suspended in the air because of more fleet population on the road and everything else. So today the US has about 800 cars per thousand population. China has just 55 cars per thousand people. India has just 16 cars per thousand people. Europe average is about 600 cars per thousand people. Imagine if China goes from 55 to 400 cars per thousand people. Or India goes from 16 to 100 cars per thousand people. For every car on the road, 0.070 hectares of land is lost in terms of building the garages and parking spaces to park those cars, the roads for those cars to run on. So you will have a lot of airable land being taken up and sucked up for having more urbanization and more cars on the road as an example. And all that creates aerosol loading. One of the reasons why China and India signed the Paris Accord, which is a miracle in itself, is that China and India understood while it was unfair for the West because US today consumes 300 gigajoules of energy per capita. One gigajoule requires one labor 365 days of the year. If he works, he generates one gigajoule of energy. So US's per capita consumption of energy is 300 gigajoules, which means to support every man in the US that 300 people supporting him in terms of the output that they produce. Europe has the same quality of life as the US but does it at an energy intensity per capita of 150 gigajoules. And Japan does it at 125 gigajoules. And all of the developing countries is a fraction of that. So they understand the unfairness of the rich developed countries running around and saying, don't need more meat because if you do that and follow our form and path of development, don't have same number of cars or big gas guzzling cars like we did, you become more responsible because if 2.7 billion people in India and China combine together, try and achieve what we in the West have achieved in terms of standard of life and quality of life, it'll destroy the planet. So you don't do it. But although they knew that it was unfair, they did it because in many parts of India you can hardly breathe. In Delhi, in many parts of the year, you can hardly breathe. In Beijing, you can't breathe in many parts of the year. So people are willing to go without food and water for some time, but if they're going to be suffocating, you're going to have a revolution on your hands. So emerging markets realize that it is a common good and that's the tragedy of the commons. All of us have to collectively pool our efforts, resources, capabilities to come together to try and solve for this intractable problem. There is one of the nine planetary boundaries which gives me optimism and confidence that although everything that I've given you frightens most of you in this room, you should be frightened. This year in Europe, summer, we had temperatures of 41-42 degrees centigrade. No scientist predicted that. We had fires and droughts in multiple European countries. We had 100 deaths in Greece in the summer of 2018. So there's no more about flying wolves. All of us this year have seen the wolves directly ourselves. Right? And we have to really act, particularly if the assumptions and predictions and the hypothesis that we had that at two degrees centigrade global warming, we will be safe. Firstly, I don't believe there's a chance in hell that we will achieve two degrees centigrade global warming and we'll keep within it because there are no sanctions if you don't achieve your intended contributions. So the three miracles that occurred this year, the Biodiversity Convention in 2010, 196 countries supporting it, almost 200 countries supporting the EU and sustainable development goals, which showed the kind of future that we want to build for all ourselves and our children. That was in 2015, it is a finite target of meeting those goals by 2030, 17 goals and 169 targets. The SSD and the solutions, sustainable solutions, development network of UN did a three-year study 2015-2018. What have we achieved against the commitments we made on the UN SDGs? We are trailing way behind where we should be in terms of milestones in 2018 compared to what we had set out to do. And the Paris Accord, we are nowhere near implementing any of the things that we said we will implement. But even if you implemented it, we are not going to prevent this new studies that are coming out, showing that we have never seen a two degrees warm global warming ever and therefore now the studies and the science shows that if you reach that, it could have catastrophic effects. Business as usual, if you continue with the energy intensity use that we have today, we are anyway going to destroy this plan because temperatures will rise 4 to 5 degrees centigrade and will have dramatic consequences for global food and agricultural production systems. That is on the supply side and the planetary boundary. On the demand side, the demand is growing. We are adding 75 million people to the world population each year, so we have more modes to feed. It's not a very difficult problem. We have tackled that quite admirably well in the past through science and technology and productivity improvements coming to RA. But they are growing now from a larger base. It took all of mankind to get to 1 billion population in 1800. Then in the next 130 years, we doubled it to 2 billion. In 1930, we had 2 billion. And then it took us 33 years to add the third billion. In 1963, we had 3 billion. Then it took 15, 14, 13 and 12 years to add the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh billion people on the planet. So growing at 1 percent, 0.9 percent population growth rates on that kind of a base, means 75 million people being added to the world every year and more modes to feed. The second part of the demand side of the equation is that we are consuming more calories per capita and that is because of progress and growth, economic growth. So as a rough rule of thumb, low income countries consume 2,600 calories of food per capita, middle income countries 3,000 and high income countries 3,600. So the difference between a middle income or a low income and high income country food capita per capita consumption is about 27 to 30 percent growth. That is because you have limited stomach space, just because you're richer and wealthier, you can't eat so much more. But that has a multiplied impact on the demand of food and feed raw materials. The third is the revolution in urbanization driving demand. We know that China is now 51 percent urbanized. India has reached a 30 percent urbanization rate. The revolution in urbanization has caused many developing emerging market countries. And as a result, we know that urban populations consume 2.5 times more meat than the rural population per capita. Three times more dairy products like milk than the rural population per capita. And about three and a half times more eggs per capita than the rural population. So as the urbanized, the food demand is also growing. The fourth demand side driver is the transition in dietary habits from carbohydrate, cereal-based diet to fat and protein-based diet. So China was consuming 15 kgs of meat per capita in the 1980s, mid-80s. From 15 kgs, they're now gone to 55 kgs. The Western world consumes 120 kgs of meat per capita. And we said Chinese will never consume as much meat as the Westerners do. But Hong Kong and Taiwan, greater parts of China today consume 100 kilograms of meat per capita already. So it's all about economics. If you can afford it, you want to have more proteins, fats, and perceive higher quality food. And there is a multiplier impact when that happens. To produce 1 kg of poultry meat, we need 2 kgs of feed grains to produce it. To produce 1 kg of pork meat, we need 4 kgs of feed grains. And to produce 1 kg of beef meat, we need 8 kgs of feed grains to produce 1 kg of beef. And as a result of all of this was not enough, we went and shot ourselves in the feet by diverting more food and feed raw materials to the 4th F fuel production. So 55% of the US sugarcane crop went into ethanol production last year. 40% of the US corn crop went into ethanol production. About 14% of all the world's oil seed production went into biodiesel manufacture. And that has taken and competed for food and feed and fiber production in terms of the 4th F coming into play, which is agricultural products being diverted to fuel production. So how do we reimagine global agriculture? How do we produce more food, feed, fiber with less resources, with less water intensity, with less greenhouse gas emissions, with less waste emissions? How many of you in this room representing the private sector, representing farmers and producers? No, your carbon footprint for what you produce. Or no, your water footprint for what you produce. Or no, your waste emissions for what you produce. And are you following pathways and programs and actions to reduce the intensity of this? I'll give you a very quick few examples of what we do in OLAM. We have now measured and footprinted our carbon footprint or water footprint, our waste footprint. For most of the commodities that we supply. And we have given out public hard targets of reducing the resource intensity for producing and delivering these various agricultural commodities publicly. And on an annual basis, we have been reporting through the CDP system and also the GRI system since 2013, where and how we have performed against those public targets. So in our onion growing and dehydration operations in California, where we have multiple manufacturing facilities, where we take these onions, grow these onions and take these onions for dehydration. We have over a 10 year period, bread and onion variety, which has improved the solid content in the onion from something like 12, 12.5% when we started 10 years ago to now 26.5%. As a result, we have saved 65 million cubic meters of water. Reduce the land and the cultivation of onions by about 7,400 hectares and realize cost savings of roughly 100 million dollars over the 10 year period. In our almond orchards and plantations in Australia, California, we now put IoT sensors on those trees, dendro meters. Because when the tree, the almond tree has got moisture stress and shrink in diameter, when it's got sufficient moisture, it'll expand in diameter. But these movements are tiny and infinitesimal, not visible to the naked eye. But these IoT sensors can pick these movements and then trigger our drip irrigation system and target the irrigation to the plant that require the water for the precise duration and quantum of water they require. And as a result, we have been able to improve water usage efficiencies between 20 and 25% as a result of that. So how do we try and produce more food with less water? Similarly, the scientists say that the rate at which we till our land and the overtilling of land, we lose a lot of the topsoil. We lost a substantial part of the very rich, nutritive topsoil in the intensive way that we till. So moving towards zero till or low till methods of farming to preserve the topsoil, soil health is a hugely important factor. So how do you do that? So at OLAM, we have now said that our core purpose, the reason why we come to work every day, the cost that we have, the problem that we are trying to solve as a company, is how do we produce more food with less resources? So our purpose is to reimagine global agriculture. And within that, we want to achieve three outcomes. The first outcome that we want to achieve is make sure that farmers are prosperous. The farming ecosystem, we built prosperous farmers and prosperous farming systems. We saw that the smallholder farmer is very, very vulnerable to climate change impacts. We saw that the smallholder farmer is barely able to produce food to eat himself. We saw many of the smallholder farmers are poor. We have seen enrollments in agricultural colleges dip in emerging market economies. The average age of the farmer in an emerging market economy is 63 years old. Amongst the oldest is the perfect. Because farming is seen as a drudgery, not very viable, not very attractive. So we have, in order to achieve this outcome, we are focusing on two material areas of focus illness. We want to provide safe and decent work and we want to provide economic opportunity to the farmers. And if we achieve those two material areas, if you realize those two material areas, we will impact many SDGs. SDG number one of reducing poverty or no poverty. SDG number two of reducing hunger or going towards zero hunger. SDG number eight of providing jobs in decent economic growth. The employer said 76,000 people and so those are the two material areas that we are focused on. The second outcome that we want to achieve in our purpose is to build thriving rural communities. And we have three focus areas of material areas there. The first is education and skills. The second is health and nutrition. And the third is inclusion and diversity. And again, to achieve and if we achieve these three material areas of focus areas, we look at the SDGs that will impact the sustainable development goals that will impact. So if you have education and skills, then it will impact goal number four, which is providing quality education. Goal number three is health and well-being. So the health and nutrition programs that we run will impact that UN SDG. And it will impact no hunger and no poverty as well. And then we have five material or focus areas to achieve the final outcome in reimagining global agriculture, which is regenerating the living world. And the five are climate action. The second one there is health and ecosystems. The third one is healthy soils. The fourth one is water. And the fifth one is reducing waste for waste. Now, if you achieve those, say for example, reducing food waste, we will impact SDG goal number two, 12, which is responsible production and consumption. And SDG goal number 12 target 12.3 is about managing food waste or reducing food waste. So for each of the material areas, we map the UN SDGs that is going to impact. And then we have programs and plans that we implement in those material areas and focus areas to achieve those UN SDGs. All of this together is what we mean by reimagining global agriculture. The global food and agriculture system is broken. OLAM cannot on its own transform that. But we can change this world collectively with everybody pulling together producers and farmers, supply chain managers and traders, brand owners, retailers, scientists, policy makers, NGOs, government, all coming together. I believe we can only change this world and this situation if five things happen concurrently. Firstly, we all change at an individual level. We have to be the chain that we want to see in others. So if you believe carbon is precious and we should not pollute water as precious, what are we doing in our individual lives to be the chain that we want to see in others? So do we brush our teeth, for example, with our taps running? Do we shave on a daily basis with our taps running? The water is precious. We won't do that. If you realize that we won't do that. If you do not change individually, nothing else is going to change. Secondly, our companies have to change. Our companies have to reduce our resource intensity, our carbon footprint, our water footprint, our basement to produce what we're producing and delivering to our customers. Thirdly, the sector has to change. The whole global agriculture sector in this example has to change. Because one company on its own cannot really change. But we are a very competitive industry. We hate each other's guts. We'll never come together on anything. We don't like each other. We might come to these grand meetings and 3,000 of us might interact, but when you go out of this room, we go out of the great place. We will not be able to change the world unless we can find sectoral pathways in having sustainable agriculture. And fourth, NGOs, civil society and private sector have to work together. NGOs and civil society see private sector as suspicion. Private sector sees civil society and NGOs as suspicion. We have to come together and work together. Multilateral agencies have to work with private sector. And private sector has to work with multilateral agencies. And finally, government and policy makers have to come to the party. We have to make it mandatory that people have to disclose their footprints, measure their footprints, report their footprints, externally get their footprints verified. And hold them and their feet to the fire to make sure that they're meeting their commitments on reducing their resource intensity. Countries have to have a carbon tax. We have to advocate for a carbon tax. Anything that is free in this world, we will use in discriminatory. If water is free, electricity is free, we will use it in discriminatory. Carbon is free, we will pollute in discriminatory. Which brings me to the last element of my talk very quickly. And that's about rice. Hugely important problem. 770 million tons of paddy is expected to be produced in 2018. 90% of that is going to be produced in Asia. It is going to support the diets of about 3.7 billion, 50% of the world's population, consumers. It provides most of the energy in the emerging markets, transition economies, particularly amongst the rural poor. The largest source of energy is from rice. It supports 150 small holder farming households. And if you assume each household has about 5 to 6 people, that's 750 to 900 million people, dependent on rice production systems. But at the same time, it is the world's most polluting crop because of methane emissions. And because of nitrogen oxide emissions. So in 2014, the study that I saw, rice accounted for 82 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, 84 billion tons of methane emissions. In Thailand, for example, the agricultural sector, the second most emitting sector amongst all the industrial sectors in Thailand. And 55% of the emissions in the agricultural sector in Thailand, which is the second largest contributor to emissions in Thailand, comes from rice cultivation, methane emissions. But nobody has really measured the nitrogen oxide emissions, which as I said is 290 times more toxic than even methane emissions, which is 34 times more toxic than just carbon dioxide emissions. Rice is a very high water intensity crop. 2500 liters of water to grow a kilogram of rice. We have to find ways of maximizing crop per drop of water. The rice has had the lowest productivity increases over the last 10, 15 years compared to corn wheat and soybean. It has lagged all of us. Rice is amongst the most significant range of productivity gaps between the low-producing countries and the high-producing countries. So immense promise and potential of producing more within the same land area with lower resource intensity. And that is why it's very important to support programs that is trying to solve for this big problem. One of the programs we are very proud to be part of and support, and which is a two multi-stakeholder program, is the Sustainable Rice Program Standard. This was a program which was initiated by EDE, by UN Environmental Program, by FAO, by GIZ and many other partners, including a lot of private sector partners. There are now 80 companies, organizations, institutions part of the program and 50% of the support from this program is now coming from the private sector. This is a great example for me of private, public, plural society partnerships to practically tackle a problem that is huge. So 2011 to 2015, they were focusing on developing the science-based targets. They were focusing on developing the performance indicators. And then 2015 to 2017, they started rolling this out in pilots across seven or eight countries. And then they got down and got deeper in different countries to get more traction. Early results are, yield improvements are between 10 and 20% in some countries like Nigeria, where we have applied some of these practices. The yield improvement is significantly more, 70% because of very low base of productivity then. Water usage efficiencies have improved 25%. Greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced by about 50%. And these are still early days as the program is being fine-tuned and applied and expanded. But competitors, all our competitors are in that program. And it is extremely encouraging for me to see that kind of cooperation. We need to extend that across the board, across many countries. Public sector is very good at policy making. But I know I'm going to be offending many people in this room, but quite hopeless in execution. Private sector is very good at execution, but doesn't think far or long term. If you're going to continue to operate in our silos to tackle such an intractable problem, we are failing our success of generations. Some of us in this room are blessed with environmental intelligence. According to multiple intelligence theory, there are eight intelligences that a person can have. And God in His infinite wisdom has given each of us only one or two. When I go into these kinds of conferences, I'm addressing a group of people who are converted, who believe in sustainability. And they always look at people outside and say, you guys don't get it. You get it because you have been blessed and born with the environmental intelligence. I have no environmental intelligence. 14 years ago, I was blissfully unaware of what all this means. My road to Damascus moment was through the eyes of my children. Fortunately for me, they took after the mother. The mother has environmental intelligence. And they told me your supply chain ecosystem has 4.7 million farmers. You operate in 70 countries. You have 2.47 million hectares of land under management. You have so much influence. But what is the point of all of this overwhelming effort? If you're not going to leave the world, a better place for all of us. Musical intelligence is one of the eight intelligences. I have no musical intelligence, but I can be moved to tears by good music. So all of us who do not have environmental intelligence, we can improve our sensibility on our environmental intelligence. But the time for action is now. The time for partnerships to make this difference is now. And I welcome and urge all of you to join each of us in this journey. Thank you.