 Andrea Ili, who is a visionary entrepreneur. He is not only the chairman of Ili Café, who is the jewel of the Italian food industry, but he's also the co-chairman of the Regenerative Society Foundation that he created together with Jeffrey Sachs that has a very interesting agenda to make our world more sustainable. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Beware that visionary vision without execution is only hallucination. I don't want to be hallucinated. So thank you for... I will give you a little bit of kind of a forward. We have been working since so many years about this topic and particularly in the last five years around regeneration. So I want to say just a few words about sustainability. The Broodland definition is satisfying the needs of the present without compromising second part, satisfying the need of the present second part without compromising the future generation one. So we first have to satisfy the needs of the present. This is a very important aspect because otherwise we cannot do it. So first, let's say implication of this. Let's say two sides, two parts is that there is an enormous social component. Either sustainability becomes the source of well-being and prosperity for everybody in the society, otherwise it will be voted out. So this introduces the concept of the triple bottom line. It needs to be economical, social, and environmental sustainability. And the three are intertwined. We tend to speak too much about the environment and not enough about the rest. And other aspect as far as sustainability is concerned is that there is no such thing as sustainability on planet Earth for now. Because the development model that we started with the Anthropocene, so the era, which became a geological era, at least it's not yet scientifically accepted, but in the perception is that the human impact on the world has been so gigantic to be comparable to a geological era, to have the same impact as the geological era. And this model, economical model, is intrinsically unsustainable, because not only it continues depleting planetary resources like they were infinite and they are not. As a matter of fact, everything comes to biosphere and the biosphere has a certain limited finite biocapacity. If we increase the number of seasons, the cake is becoming to be little and little for each of us. But most importantly, at the end of the life cycle, it creates only waste. So the implication is that if we really want to talk about sustainability, we have to seek a new model, which is regenerative, which works like nature works, because since 4 billion years, actually 3.6 billion years, life on planet Earth is completely regenerative and circular over and over and over again, to the point that it violates the second principle of thermodynamics, because it doesn't, let's say, create entropy, although planet Earth is an open system relative to the universe, closed system, closed. With that, let's talk about regeneration, which is my job. The regenerative model, we start to sum up what has been said until now, needs to start from well-being. Well-being meant as health and happiness, because the search of happiness, which is ultimately the reason why we are here, is the engine of the economy, consumption, and ultimately, the ecosystemic impact of human on planet Earth. And then we have a problem, because we are the only species ever existed with per capita consumption, which is 18 times higher than the biological needs. Any living species consumes for their basic, let's say, living needs, which is feeding themselves, surviving and reproduction. We, with all the activities, we consume 18 times more, and we have other big problems as far as our ecological footprint is concerned. So well-being first, because it really needs to enter in the consumer mind that well-being actually is about regeneration. In parallel, we need to work with businesses for the industrial transition from linear to circular. Waste is the new well. Probably the new oil well is the sky, because instead of pumping from underground, from the geosphere, we will pump carbon from the air in order to pull these resources. So waste is the resource. And we have to make a gigantic transition to that in order to simply recirculate and minimize every single, let's say, atom, and minimize to the lowest possible level fresh natural capital resources. But with circularity, we need to eradicate pollution, because the two, the ultimate goal is the spontaneous regeneration of the biosphere. Why that? Because life is biosphere. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, even the health we benefit from comes from the biosphere. This has been the stupid mistake we did during the Anthropocene, because this circular mistake, nature or culture, like science and technology, could replace or curb nature, which is not possible. So now that it's clear that it's not possible, we have just to change the from R into N, nature and culture, so that we put all our scientific and background knowledge and background and technology at disposal of spontaneous regeneration of the biosphere. How does circular economy link with the spontaneous regeneration of the biosphere in a way that the two factors hindering, limiting the spontaneous regeneration of the biosphere, are resource depletion, first of all, land. 50% of the habitat land now is agriculture. One century ago was one quarter of that. Two century ago was half of that. There is no more land that we can exploit for agriculture. It's finito. All the suitable land has been already consumed. We can only improve efficiency, no extra. Same for water. Out of these nine planetary boundaries, six has been already passed and two of them irreversible, like land and water. Why this? Because they are totally dependent on the fact that we are eight billion people now on planet Earth instead of one when we started all this exponential growth. So, the second aspect which really hinders the spontaneous regeneration is pollution. No matter if you talk about greenhouse gases, microplastic, chemical pollution, the biogeochemical cycle with nitrogen and phosphorus by a fertilizer, you name it, aerosols, also whatever pollution is the real, which has to be stopped. No matter if you prevent it or filter, sequestrate, no pollution. With that, as you have seen, all of you during COVID, we were locked down and the nature was flourishing because it was beautiful, you know, everything was, why this? Simply because there was lower pollution. Okay. So with that, next comment is complexity. What I'm describing is insanely complex because we are talking about three hyper complex systems like the society, like the economy and the biosphere and you want them to work together. Impossible to predict because complex systems do behave in a nonlinear way, unpredictable, impossible to modelize. So the only thing we can do is to extract knowledge from observation and the only possible observation is through big data. This is how nature and culture comes together because technology can help us gradually finding a new model. But we don't know which are the measurable and this is why we are here today. And this is now the time to speak about my topic, which is agriculture. So in 2018, I took a sabbatical myself as a chemist to go back to books and say, I want to find out a way to decarbonize the company in a circular way because offsetting is not a solution. Insetting could be, say, so we compress, minimize the minimum possible level in industrial emissions and then we fix the carbon in the same ecosystem where we grow our coffee because we are lucky to work with this half of the economy working with natural resources. So and I was lucky to discover this framework which has been brought at the Paris conference in 2015 of the four per mille in reaching soil organic carbon in order to regenerate the soil, increase fertility, increase resilience thanks to the soil biodiversity because you nourish literally by with organic carbon, you nourish the soil microbiota and discovering that the soil is a carbon sink three times bigger than the air. So it's very, very encouraging. He's even better than forests. So with that I kept studying and developing an idea of how to transition coffee agriculture and agriculture in general, because of course I had to study agriculture in general before to focus on coffee, how to transition from so-called conventional agriculture which is based on a few let's say facts which are monoculture, intensive usage of agrochemistry and very high productivity. Good. So non-conventional agriculture is one of the characteristics of conventional agriculture is that it's more important the plant science rather than the soil science which has been pretty much neglected. Soil science is kind of emerging. Non-conventional agriculture is kind of the opposite. You focus on soil science, biodiversity and intercropping very diversified. So in the model I let's say understood that as far as the food security which is the topic in the book we will not be able to ensure food security with the current trend because we have to consider that we have to produce in a more sustainable way so no deforestation. European Commission just for introducing a law forbidding importing food which is coming from deforested lands no matter if it is Indonesia, Brazil, whatever. So this is creating a lot of hurdles to continue increasing production as well as agricultural productivity is dramatically impacted by climate change. And then we have to keep improving production because we will be either 10 or 12 million billion at the end of the century but it doesn't change the figures because if it will be 10 it means that we would have been successful in eradicating poverty so there will be less people consuming more if it will be 12 billion still poor people consuming less but the same total consumption will be the same. The problem is you can take your calculator if we will be 10-12 billion from at the end of the century which is tomorrow that means that in 50 years we will need to double consumption once again to double current consumption so if you are in trouble now already with the difficulties even ensuring enough food I can imagine if we can double the capacity for the consumption 50 years from now it's not going to work. So we also need to have a dramatic change in our nutrition because 70% of agricultural inputs are for animal proteins which we need but we eat too much as a matter of fact we don't eat for nutrition in the contemporary society we eat for indulgence but maybe we have to go back and eat for nutrition and maybe indulge maybe over the weekend and no more than that okay so all this excess of for instance animal proteins which are number one cause of inflammation triggering non-communicable diseases which are number one cause of death in the contemporary society in the developed countries. If we scale down our animal protein consumption we will use less land less water and we will recoup the rest of this let's say resources for producing more and more diversified plant-based diet so this is what we need to do in agriculture okay and it works because whoever already started transforming their plant called plantation into regenerative they they they really find out that it is really regenerative also from the bio biodiversity point of view the point of my model has been according to the IPCC recommendation always seek a co-benefit so when you saw if we found a benefit for regenerative for the planet the ecosystem what could be the co-benefit of course human health so this idea of the dualism a soil head health leads to human health why that well first of all thanks to regenerative agriculture you use much less defensive agents agrochemistry pesticides herbicides which of course leave residues which are toxic for our metabolism so that means that if you have less of those residues you will have a healthier healthier meant as non-damaging okay foods but if you leave the plant in natural condition it will develop spontaneous defenses because they have them in this spontaneous defensive phytochemicals many many many times are extremely beneficial meant as good for health triggering a positive effect and this is the idea the idea is then as this virtuous agriculture model which I kind of conceived to try to figure out whether we can prove that that if you if you if you if you cultivate in a regenerative way you also have a benefit beneficial for for human health we need three large database one agricultural one one database for food chemistry you take the tomato produced in you know in in the Pianura padana and then you analyze you you have all the agriculture input water land composition climate you name it and then you compare with the chemical composition of this tomato and then you see if those people eating this particular tomato instead of the one made in china somewhere have a better health initially it will be based on on on on epidemiological data but eventually I'm sure that the omics the so-called omics genomics transcriptomics proteomics you name it metabolomics will give us the solution to have instantaneous let's say markers to instant immediately check where how do you react to the tomato cultivated in that way I'm 100 percent sure that this is where we are heading it's just a question of time because whatever works in the digital world as well as artificial intelligence and medical devices preventative medicine goes in that direction it's just a question of time and finding out which will be the data to be to be and last but not least as far as specifically what to measure I believe that the wonder is that this model seems to be too beautiful to be true because by enriching soil with soil organic carbon you sequestrate it from the air so that means that it's a carbon sink but also as I said you enrich the soil microbiota so the question is now to investigate kind of an integrated biodiversity model where you assess what's the impact of the soil microbiota so soil biodiversity for the intraspecific plant biodiversity you all read in the plan in the in the paper these olive trees in in in Puglia all gone why all gone simple because they are monocultivar the genesis can tell much better than me it has been selected in one lab this is the best plan for Puglia and then put the same one plant is sick all dead whereas in nature each plant is different and the intraspecific plant let's say biodiversity is a significant very strong contributor to resilience and food for the food security second how does soil and intraspecific soil by a plant biodiversity interact more than that third level what about inter specific biodiversity in the same field you cultivate not only olives but also many other plants and you find out that you need much less defenses because it's amazing what's happening I discovered in coffee that because there is no ants you have more leaf diseases from a totally different animal why that because ants eat the fungi which toxicates the the the the the past eating the the the leaves and so on and so forth we don't know but for sure we observe although we don't know that the more bio the interest inter specific biodiversity you have in ecosystem the better and last but not least the ecosystem biodiversity because for sure we know from the regenerative let's say experience that we must have a ratio a reasonable ratio between cultivated land and natural let's say reserves where you have as wild possible let's say biosphere and and and fauna as well let's say which are which are protected and this I think it would be one of the very first things which would aim of doing finding because eventually will be a model it will be a model and to finish my comments this guy at the european union they have a problem because they adopt the reductionistic approach because each and every direction say I'm the one of energy I'm the one of agriculture I'm the one of you know industry and pollution etc but they could come up with solutions which are linear and not complex and try to fix one problem maybe not succeeding fixing one problem or even worse possibly fixing one problem with many spillover effects that you cannot control everybody's debating now how good or bad I'm more on the good than the bad is mobility electrification but for sure mobility electrification has not has been not be assessed from the impact point of view considering discussion that like we are having with biodiversity thank you very much thanks a lot and we have time for questions and for your engagement in this all this stuff but my main concern is that it's not only a matter of time but it's a matter of political involvement and this is probably crucial and as far as I see we have not reached all of us who are deeply engaged in this area have not been able to communicate the tremendous impact that we have made on our earth and what is going to happen shortly and the political gone changing their mind and trying to do something but not are not really committed and would never say to the population that the recreation has finished and we have to do something completely different for the future it is true but if they punish the society they will be voted out go home and somebody else will come and say good to continue emitting carbon and so on so there is a limit to what you can do and this is why pragmatically in the regenerative society foundation which I have the privilege to co-chair with Jeffrey Sachs we said let's focus on business because politicians they have four years in their mind election win the election govern for one year to clean up what the professor did then govern for one year and then you are already in electoral campaign for the next term no way and they don't have the knowledge and the approach who could have a let's say a systemic view in a government like this so whereas businesses in competitive countries they represent at least 50 to 60 percent of the GDP so they do have the economical critical mass they do have the technology they do have the knowledge and the incentive because if they don't see if they neglect sustainability business they will be wiped out from the market and our model is to our business model is to assist companies colleagues we are a group of the big corpse and we want to engage our colleagues from the industry and help them transitioning the so-called ecological transition which is about energy agroecological transition for agriculture and the in the circular one with the best practices and and scientific knowledge whatever is needed for them to decide pragmatically short question please thank you sir for the presentation my question is straightforward I believe that applying by modification to increase food and nutrition is beneficial and from what you have said I think I've reaffirmed my belief in that and also monitoring strategies like sequestration of atmospheric co2 and biospheric carbon into soil plant environmental system have proven productive in Nigeria my institute have worked on that for years now and I think I also seek modalities from you in how to advance that across Africa and I also look at looking at a full movement into a type one civilization then what you talked about will come into full force especially in developing countries where our agricultural system is not as strong as the european system so I will like if you can please suggest few ways that this can be achieved ways we can quickly using the food system moving to full type one civilization and also type two possible type three and the rest types thank you yeah Africa is potentially the biggest agricultural let's say land but most of agriculture in Africa is subsistence agriculture so no systems the opportunity is to make a quantum leap to jump thanks to digitalization directly into a regenerative model for agriculture with a better nutrition for local communities as well as trade we are experimenting that so a group of XFO agronomies founded in Kenya a virtual cooperative assisting I think now 25 000 growers in finding all the resources knowledge let's say fertilizer any kind of agricultural inputs and also helping them selling the product on the trade so you're convening all the let's say physical hurdles and obstacles that you can find in the market but the good news is that recently european union committed to invest more in Africa so that because Africa is considered to be a potential limitless source of regenerative resources so in my opinion is promising thank you very much it was very interesting as an hypothesis of a possible future scenario I say an hypothesis because not everything you said has a scientific basis yet and I totally agree with you when you said that there is now that we need more knowledge in order to define and refine the actual scenario something that impressed me quite a lot was the fact that during covid and the lockdown where climatologists had the great opportunity to assess the impact of a dramatic reduction in the emission of carbon dioxide because no one was using the car or well there was a strong reduction in the use of cars flights were almost non-existing and there was an actual reduction of carbon emission which was well beyond the goals of the of the politicians in terms of reduction but looking at the emissions the actual data in the following years nothing changed and there is no actual explanation for this apparently the reduction in the emission was not able to change a trend in the emission in CO2 over the the lockdown and next after the lockdown this this is a paper published in PNAS so this clearly tells us that we our solutions might be wrong or might be right so actually we don't know enough about how our planet reacts to to our activities while there is I'm not denying that there is climate change and this is provoked but is due to human activities of course but clearly we do not understand everything it's too complicated and I agree with you that a reductionist approach might not be appropriate but at the very same time we need more data on specific areas of of research in order to be able to define whether increase in biodiversity is really reducing the impacts of diseases whether leaving plants to react themselves to pathogens will then lead to food which is better for us I have some doubts about this but anyway this is a personal opinion so yes it is really fascinating but I would like to see more data and the real problem we have as scientists as that at least in Italy we have a problem of not having these themes on the political agenda for climate change so thank you so much of course there are plenty of non-scientific assumptions observations but professor Morgan told that I'm a visionary so maybe there is a little bit of an hallucination we will see a few years ahead whether it is an hallucination but of course you mentioned the natural defenses plant natural defenses but of course there are many many toxicants which can be even more poisonous than the chemical ones but it is also proven that there are so many phytochemicals which are good for health so of course we have to be selective and this is the job of who this is the point I think we are opening a big big big chapter because the so-called scientific method is based on observation something making a model testing the model until you prove the model is confirmed nowadays if we are approaching this complexity of our world this will not be the way we can let's say produce knowledge any longer machines with big data are producing knowledge and most of the case these are non-causal relations we have to accept that so the question is are we accepting non-causal relations as knowledge yes or no and this is an enormous dilemma I tell you a story I tell you a story coffee was classified by IRC so World Health Organization as to be possibly cancerogenic 25 years later they reviewed the case and they reviewed fortunately they reviewed most of the scientific literally fortunately they created an interdisciplinary as interdisciplinary as possible commission and they concluded to reclassify coffee as non-classified as cancerogenic tree first time in the history that one product has been can you imagine the responsibility that this commission took so is there one scientific proof knowledge that the answer is no they only have epidemiological data observation tons of paper and they had to rely upon common sense and sense of responsibility to make the decision and I think this is welcome to the new science I think we will have to need a significant redefinition of the scientific method from from our part good for physicists thanks a lot again and now last but not least we'll hear the