 Welcome to book club with Jeff Sachs, and I'm absolutely delighted to be joined today by my colleague and friend and co-faculty member at Columbia University, Professor Glenn Denning, who actually directs the master's degree in development practice at Columbia University and has written a really wonderful book reflecting Decades of experience and and knowledge and the book is universal food security how to end hunger while protecting the planet and as we were chatting Glenn said well a modest title how to add hunger, but if anyone knows how to do it Glenn that's you you've been at this for for decades in fact working on Agriculture and hunger in I think around 50 countries if I have it right, but I know in all parts of the world It's a wonderful book. It's it's very comprehensive It tells also a lot of stories. I'm traveling as you know, so I actually don't have the hard copy though It's out and I'd like you to hold it up for people looking Looking at this not listening there is the book and it's a beautiful cover And what is that cover? What are we looking at that beautiful landscape? Okay, yeah, it's a it's a scene from Luopeng County in Yunnan province of China. Yeah, really you can see the agriculture coexisting with nature there and and that's a big part of The the theme of this book how to protect the planet Why should we think about agriculture and protecting the planet together? And is agriculture dangerous for the planet and in what way do these two themes go together? Well, uh, indeed agriculture is is dangerous for the planet ever since You know We humans came onto the planet We've been we've been modifying it in order to feed ourselves and particularly In the last 10,000 years or so when agriculture was introduced we've been expanding our footprint tremendously in in so many ways through deforestation through Utilization of of land resources and soil fertility by extracting water And most recently the impacts of the food system on climate change. So Uh, we we cannot envisage the sustainable food security Without ensuring protection of the planet. That's why they have to go together Maybe we uh one point uh a factoid that I learned many years ago that I think is roughly a true factoid Which is that for a mammalian species of our size and build? uh If you look at other such species in nature uh We normally might expect to have 25 or 50 million of us Homo sapiens Wandering the planet, but in fact, uh, as you know well and as I think many people Listening will know we reached the eight billionth person on the planet. So talk about Footprint, uh, that's a 16 billion feet On the planet roughly speaking and that's a lot of Organisms and we do eat a lot We do need to commandeer a lot of nature. I remember many years ago already Scholars calculated that we were taking Maybe something up to 50 percent of all the net photosynthesis on the planet So that footprint is is huge And glenn I think the reason why I so much admire the book and Think it's so important for people to read Is that this issue of how to Feed the planet how to end hunger And at the same time do it sustainably is really complicated You know, you and I have been around the Millennium development goals which aim to fight poverty The un goals between 2000 and 2015 now we have the sustainable development goals which Still aim to end poverty but also to bring in all of these critical environmental realities Into the picture I spent a lot of time on the energy system transformation because we know that to End the human made climate change. We have to stop the Burning of fossil fuels in the way we do it because the carbon dioxide that results from that is warming the planet Dangerously and I think that that's pretty complicated But when I think about the food Part of that story. It's worse. It's more complicated. It's harder because with the energy system There aren't that many ways to Generate electricity. There aren't that many ways to transmit electricity. There aren't that many ways to drive vehicles or to To to actually engineer vehicles, but when it comes to the food system It's an incredibly complex story now. You've been all over the world Tell us what you've seen and Can you am I am I right that it's complicated? Because it does seem that it's a different food system wherever you go different culture Different climate different soils different needs and you're trying to find solutions that somehow Can reach everybody Yeah, exactly. In fact really that was the That was the goal It to really try to come up with more of a unifying framework for thinking about Food security and and then acting on food security what what you will find in the literature over Literally over decades Are these ideas that there's some kind of a simple fix for solving agricultural problems and I call it all we need to do ism and you just fill in the gap all we need to do is Stop using fertilizers. Yeah, all we need to do is you know Reduce our food waste all we need to do is Shift to plant-based diet. So it's it's always It's it's this or this or this or that but what I've tried to do in this book is you know Such a complex problem Needs a really holistic uh and very nuanced context sensitive Set of solutions and that's where I ended up with those those big five Areas of intervention that Depending on the setting Whether it's new york city or rural malawi. You would need some different mix of technologies policies and institutional innovations to bring out The sort of transformation that we need in order to achieve food security So again, it's not I don't like to think of it as a kind of a blueprint rather This is the these are the types of interventions broad sets of activities that When considering local circumstances You could bring about positive transformations that would lead to both healthy diets And sustainable food systems And and and that's why they need to be together. Yeah How does one even get into this area this complicated area? You're you're you didn't come I don't maybe you did grow up in a farm, but I I'm not sure or not whether you did. I don't think so early on. I think uh Whether it was at university or your first job you already started On the path of looking at this question. What what led you to this actually and how did you get started? All right, so first of all, yes, I'm not personally I didn't grow up on a farm Uh, but I I I did my my father was a farmer before he was married and therefore He had a strong interest in plants and somehow that that Got to me as well. He used to grow orchids and I used to grow vegetables and all right in in in the backyard of suburban Brisbane in Australia, um and and This sort of infatuation with with plant growth uh, the outdoors uh It really it really made me want to work in that area and I thought well Look agriculture is a very practical way of doing that Um bringing all those ideas together. So I'll be perfectly honest I didn't start off on this journey with some kind of a noble vision to to end world hunger It was because I was really interested in how things grow And uh and and how we might be able to apply that, you know, kind of gainfully and and in interesting ways So yes, I I I took agriculture as an undergrad and master's degree as well um, and But the thing is my first job was in um An integrated rural development project In the southern Philippines and basically it was a road construction project Yeah, so explain what that means integrated rural development integrated rural development was the idea that you would you would invest in different sectors In order to bring some complementarities and result in better Outcomes so the idea in this case It was a very simple form of integrated development and the idea was we'll build roads in these areas that don't have roads And the farmers in those areas will now have access to markets And so I was brought in honestly as a kind of a token agriculturalist With all these engineers building the roads and they said see what you can do with these farmers You know if they can if they can produce more and so What what years what years was that when that was 77 to 80 in the southern philippines and uh, it was it was during a period of conflict but Really underdeveloped But but high potential agricultural areas that once you this this this stayed with me all my life the importance of of uh infrastructure and transport and the impact that that could just transform a village suddenly being able to adopt technologies and generate Surpluses and be able to sell them and and you know the school teachers would come in the health workers would come in It all the sort of services would come as well and and that's why when you know What is it 30 years later and and i'm working in the millenium villages project? It was sort of revisiting that original idea of the integrated development and the importance of complementary Investments across different sectors But in both settings it was rural and therefore agriculture and getting agriculture moving and more productive Was a central part of my work and was that already with the with the international rice research institute that No, no that was actually a part of australia's bilateral Development assistance program in the philippines. It was one of the first big rural development projects sort of multi-million dollar multi-year programs In in in the 70s and went on into the 80s I joined iri At the end of that I sort of went straight from mindanao to los baños in the northern part of the country to work Okay, so you stayed in the philippines exactly I stayed i just moved i i i remember exactly i i uh my last day In mindanao was friday july the fourth 1980 and i started at iri on monday july the 7th 1980 so i had the weekend off And went to a new job. Yeah, and and iri is a A famed Institute that's a big part of what you were part of then which was the the famous green revolution That was underway at the time and I think it's really important for people to hear about that what you saw And I want to bring in the experience in cambodi also, which is absolutely Mind-blowing what sure what happened and what agronomy was able to do there actually Right, right, right. Well, you know, it's you know, this this um this interview is isn't long enough but That the story in a nutshell is something like this. So I joined iri in 1980 But 14 years earlier and and before we get there. Sorry I One thing about uh sustainable agriculture. I need to tell all listeners is that it's the world of acronyms Actually a glens book not to not to scare you off starts out with five pages of acronyms At least in the pdf version meaning There are a lot of names and words that you have to learn so iri is international rice research institute By the way, another acronym part of the cgiar the consultative group on international agriculture research a phenomenal worldwide agriculture research network And this one that glenn is describing is the one in charge of rice So back to you glenn Right, right, right, right. And by the way, I cut a lot of the acronyms out to keep it like workable Um, but yes the international rice research institute iri. It was established in 1960 by the rocker fella foundation. It was part of a Really a movement that really began with norman borlaug And so we could possibly talk about that separately But it was really work that started off in mexico with high yielding wheats norman borlaug who ultimately won the the um Nobel peace prize in 1970 um And was a wonderful friend to us in our work of ours and we we we learned we learned so much from him and developing this sort of new plant architecture for high yields and uh, that you know led to eventually the those wheat varieties reaching india and and and pakistan and and really having a huge impact at a time when there were Very serious food shortages in that part of the world So just just to stop you for a moment because so interesting if you're not a specialist Not a specialist in this but plant architecture. That sounds odd Don't don't plants grow, but of course, uh, plant architecture Actually was key. So can you just describe what you mean by plant architecture because not a normal idea? I would say, uh If you're not in in the farm world Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of how the the biology of the plant is is is organized and i'll i'll i'll use the case of rice as as the example um, and that is that The traditional rice varieties were very tall and spindly with a small Relatively small number of stems or we call them tillers coming out from the seed. Uh that was planted And often with a small number of of of heads of of grain uh on the top of that So there was what they call the harvest index and that was the percentage Of of the grain as a you know the proportion of the grain as a percentage of the overall plant And one of the a lot of the plant was scam in other words A lot of the plant was not what we would eat a relatively small amount was grain So the key change in plant architecture with the rice crop was to make the rice crops shorter stiffer stemmed and um With a lot more grain and a much larger harvest index. So the harvest index went from 10 or 20 percent to 50 percent So much of the energy that we were getting from the sun and from the nutrients That could then be converted into grain so that was something quite fundamental about how the rice crop Looked it was much shorter. It had stronger stems. It had multiple stems multiple tillers coming out from the seed And as a result you were able to get um A much higher level of production per hectare. So that was that was the key the key innovation and and shorter duration Was another factor shorter shorter lifespan Yeah, and and obviously so central in this and and uh a theme running throughout the book How much knowledge went into that transformation because there was a great deal of experimentation physiology understanding the the plant growth dynamics in order to be able to create this But for a farmer they would then take the improved seed and plant it According to a new system and get a lot more grain and be able to feed a lot more people and that's You are there now in 1980 this this so-called green revolution has started with norm borlaug Now it's it's coming to asia and you're you're part of that drama Right, absolutely. And that um as I said I arrived in 1980 which was 14 years after Was 20 years after the start of eerie, but 14 years after A very important milestone was reached and that was the release of a variety called ir eight So again acronym ir short for eerie and then the number eight And that was the first green revolution rice variety that was released in uh In 1966 it was uh A major event president marcos furdan and marcos the father of the current president He was uh the president of the time he came out and saw this and he said I want the seed we we need to spread this seed in this country. Um, and and marcos ultimately He he had a he had a political slogan. He called it the three r's So was rice roads and the third one was arithmetic um, which was You know in place you need a denar, but it was really about schools And so it was essentially rice road and schools Roads and schools and this became a very powerful even, you know, political instrument Back in the 60s and and not just in in in the philippines, but in indonesia and in in other parts of southeast asia Because rice was so central To to survival To food security to lively hoods and even culturally it was incredibly important as well So, um, you know, even in that year october of that year. In fact, it was on my birthday It was the 26th of octobre wasn't you know, my actual birthday, but the 26th of october lbj linden vanes johnson came to eerie and he He he landed he was in a three day trip to the philippines And he went out to he wanted to see the rice varieties at eerie And of course everybody had sort of lined up and there's a wonderful video of it You can find amazing and and and he was on his way to vietnam And he wanted he wanted that seed. He said, you know, basically we can win the war in vietnam If we can get this seed to the farmers It was a very interesting sort of a side story on the history of the vietnam war now We know the history. It didn't work right in the end. It didn't it didn't win the war But you know, I have friends a good friend of mine tom hargrove. He worked in the maykong delta Spreading these seeds and and farmers absolutely loved it The only problem was that the vietcong at some point said well actually we were the ones who introduced these seeds And they want a lot of support for that. That's right. Right. Right. As I said in the book Rice rice was a hot issue in the cold war So it it it reminded me and it's actually stuck with me for a lot, you know, all through my career You know the importance of food security and politics as well and um, uh, you know Many leaders have risen and fallen In terms of their ability to be able to ensure food security I wanted to make one one more Biographical stop on the way to the present and that is after your work, uh introducing ir8 ir8 it is. Yes, uh, it it is it is jeff. But as I said by the time I got there There was a new variety in town like okay several generations and by then it was ir 36 Oh, there you go. Then okay the mega variety That that was going out all over asia replacing ir8. It had it was better. Yeah, you ended up on a Incredible assignment to cambodia after The horrors of the chimera ruche Which followed the horrors of the american bombing, you know, this was all part of the southeast asian disaster around the vietnam war and the aftermath But when the killing stopped You showed up because this was a place in hunger and devastation And it's remarkable to read how agronomic science was so central in getting cambodia To stay alive and to move forward again Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It uh, that that was a life changing assignment for me And i'm forever grateful to dr. M. S. Swaminathan who I didn't mention earlier But he he was the person on the other end of the green revolution making this all happen in india Yeah, he's another hero of 60s and 70s one of the one of the great heroes and great friend of ours and mentors for both of us as well Indeed and he he was the director general at that time and he Got a he got a request from a small NGO It we are working in cambodia because then there was no bilateral aid no un agencies nothing This is post war, but still Nobody came in You know the superpowers that they were not interested the west was not involved at all the un was not involved But this NGO said Um, you know the farmers have all been displaced as a result of the war They basically either they lost their seed or they had to eat their seed And and they were wondering whether eerie had any traditional rice varieties from cambodia in its gene bank amazing the the wonderful the wonderful um story is that Yes, indeed. They did they had 766 different distinct varieties cambodian rice varieties. Now why why is that what a gene bank is because that's also So unusual and and and amazing actually that there's the foresight to make it Yeah, the gene I mean the gene bank is you know, people talk about improving varieties, but You know the starting point of varietal improvement is is genetic diversity And in order to capture that genetic diversity There's various ways you can do that But one of the means and really one of the most common means is to actually collect the seeds and store them in these facilities like the eerie rice germ plasm center and to You know store them and then not just to leave them as sort of You know museum pieces, but to actually then use them in plant breeding programs And so what was a very special about the cambodia case was cambodia is agriculturally agro ecologically extremely diverse heterogeneous so you had Hundreds upon hundreds of varieties that had been naturally Evolved not naturally but by humans but by by farmers over time into these distinct types that were tolerant of Of floods and droughts and all kinds of other stresses that that would occur different soil types and the like so It just so happened, you know very cleverly Before the war before the the the vietnam war Well, the vietnam war was already going on but before the camea rouge period in in cambodia There had been a collection expedition at the end of 72 early 73 where Varieties traditional varieties were collected in cambodia Brought to the philippines and placed in the germ plasm bank. And so when that NGO asked for the seed The seed was available and we were able through a project that was funded by the australian government under the radar That's another story because we couldn't officially say that australia was supporting it because the united states and others Were basically saying there'll be no support there because The overthrow of the camea rouge was essentially done by vietnam And vietnam installed its own government which the un refused to accept because of You know the usual reasons it was done by force and so on even if it meant the end of genocide It still meant that it took about seven years Before any kinds of um, you know external assistance could start to flow And in the meantime people needed to eat and grow food and have livelihoods Can you imagine this cambodia was was actually exporting rice before the bombing started? Cambodia was exporting a significant amount of rice to other countries including two african countries before the war but It then went down to a level and i'll just sort of put this into perspective The country was producing in the last year of the Occupation or the the the camea rouge regime. They produced 540 000 tons of rice in the whole country and there was widespread famine starvation You know there was genocide, but there was also starvation and disease, right? So the number is 1.7 million people died Uh, it was about it was more than 20 of the population Perished during that three-year period of the camea rouge Right and and everybody was displaced because the camea rouge Basically said we don't want people where they're from we want to move them around And they had some rather crazy ideas about how traditional systems needed to be replaced by some Almost mythical Irrigated system which which was a complete failure. So imagine Half a million tons across the whole population. It was clearly not enough people starved um, we came in several years after as a result of uh, dr. Swaminathan's initiative And uh, and and support from australia as I said under the radar We called it the area no china project and kind of pretended that it was sort of mainly going into vietnam and laos But in fact it was there for the purpose of of supporting cambodia and um Within a few years production had increased to 2 million tons. So from 540 000 to 2 million tons four times and last year Cambodian rice production nationally is 11 million tons. Whoa The the country is 20 times significant It's it's it's a significant exporter of rice now Production levels per hectare has gone up from one ton per hectare to 3.8 tons per hectare so, you know when you're looking for Some kind of an inspiration As to you know, can we do something about food security at least at least on the production side? I think we should really look not only to the the broader green revolution Which which certainly had huge impacts across asia in both rice and wheat But when we think while it's too difficult like we say it's too difficult in africa It's too difficult in in these other more Sort of harsher environments. Take a look at cambodia and see what was done there It's it's really quite a remarkable story of genetic conservation Building human capacity was a key part of it. We've trained thousands of cambodians Every everything from sort of short One-week courses to phds outside of the country And the third part which which is something I certainly got from dr. Swaminathan was the importance of building national institutions And so we worked with the cambodians to establish the cambodian agricultural research and development institute Which was kind of a a little eerie if you like for cambodia But run by cambodians, you know, there was technical assistance in the early years tremendous technical assistance coming from various sources, but Now it's a national institution that can stand on its own do its own research And collaborate with that with with scientists from all over the world And when you think of what it was like with everything was was basically destroyed at the end of the Khmer Rouge period It gives you some sense of what might be possible And I look around the world and I see Somalia and I see afghanistan and south sudan and these places and we're thinking hopeless, right? Haiti, you know Why can't We think more positively about what opportunities, you know, there are and and use cambodia Not as a model, but as an at least as an inspiration And I think science and technology human resources And institution building and with with a decent dose of of external assistance There's no question about it. It took a long time before cambodia could afford to put its own resources Into this sort of development work well, I find it completely persuasive and uh You go on to many other adventures working in other parts of this knowledge system Including the world agroforestry center where we got to work together on on many things And it seems to me that one of the basic points of what you've just told us is when a farmer plants a seed It's really planting knowledge knowledge that goes way back In first types of cultivation scientific knowledge Lots of training There's nothing automatic about this process This is an tremendous investment in knowledge and infrastructure to make all of this work Now your book talks about this in the context of What I would say are three great challenges. You could define them as two, but I'd say three One is to feed the planet in a with a healthy diet everywhere the second is to Reduce or end a lot of the destructive side of agriculture that comes with Deforestation or depletion of groundwater or Pollutants and so forth and the third is resilience. So you talk about both the We sometimes use the word mitigation to reduce the The direct harms and this and then the third problem is that Whatever we do right now, there's still going to be a lot of climate change and a lot of stresses So we need to have resilient agriculture that's going to be able to face higher temperatures and rainfall Pattern changes and and so forth. So there's a lot there And you teach a whole semester course in it. So in in our talk today, we we can't get through this Just to highlight for listeners go read the book you will learn about soils water seeds climate change nutrition systems and I do want you to say a word about the Final chapter of that knowledge section if I could call it that which is the food system What does that mean a food system? It means in some sense putting all these pieces together But if you could say a word about that, I want us to turn to the solutions After you describe the food system and go to this big five idea and we'll go through those and Everyone will be charged up to go and hunger and protect the planet Yeah, yeah, so well the the food system simply It recognizes the interconnectedness of all of the processes and all of the players that are involved in producing distributing And ultimately consuming and even disposing of food So it's it's a it's a total system in that we have The term value chain is often used or or supply chains, but Production is one part of it Which is clearly The part that I've spent most of my life working on it's it's the production and the productivity side But there's also distribution, how do we move it from farm to consumer? And then we have all the issues around how food is processed consumed and ultimately wasted and disposed of Which is a major problem that we talk about as one of the big five But the food system is is really looking Beyond one single part of it and and this is I'd say this was really an important part of my education As an agriculturalist was to understand the connections To nutrition to understand the connections to infrastructure physical infrastructure investments To to understand the connection to education The whole idea of school meal programs and and how that could actually enhance Educational outcomes and of course thinking of the food system with respect to climate change as as you mentioned the food system really It it it is very important to see it as first of all Something that is impacted by climate change Not just agriculture, but it but it but supply chains and distribution systems are being Affected all the time particularly by catastrophic events, but we know agriculture, I mean agriculture has always been subject to Climate effects, right? I mean agriculture is the product of climatic adaptation So when the climate changes Then obviously agriculture has to change as well or it's out of sync, right with with what the what the climate is So that's one part of it So that means agriculturalists at the moment farmers and people concerned about the production end of it Are very sensitive to all of the changes that are occurring in terms of rainfall in terms of You know flooding and drought susceptibility In terms of temperature effects in terms of sea level rise and salinity Snow melts all of these affect the productivity side But the other part of the story is an important part and that is the one third of anthropogenic greenhouse gases come from the food system Now i'm not saying from agriculture person. Let me just unpack that for people Yes, let me just to make sure that everybody follows anthropogenic, of course means human caused And the greenhouse gases are the gases that warm the planet Carbon dioxide is the one we hear most about but there's also methane and nitrous oxide And all three carbon dioxide methane and nitrous oxide are heavily implicated in agriculture In other words agricultural processes release Emissions of all three of those major greenhouse gases from the burps of cows in methane release to Nitrous oxide from fertilizers and and so on so As as you were just saying and I think it's a shocking thing. I was shocked when I first Heard it many years ago that Agriculture is actually the largest source of the greenhouse emissions even more than than the cars even more than the energy sector So it's it's a big story Yeah, yeah, and it's I mean think of it as the You can you know in this business you chop it up in all sorts of different ways but if we think of the food system it's one third and and it's um Francisco to be yellow and and uh, and uh, syntia Rosenzweig and others have have shown the most recent numbers Validate that it's it's about one third. Yeah, but within that one third think of it within that one third Uh 20 percent is is land use change deforestation and the like 44 percent is from The production itself. So that's the the cows burps and the nitrogen applications and even the energy use On farms so the production part of it. That's 44 percent and the remaining 36 percent relates to activities that are Pre-production and post-production including food waste, right? So you've got these different components and what that gives you of course is an entry point to What could we do about it? you know, you know, obviously cutting back on deforestation Could have quite a significant effect if if if you're a um a rice farmer, uh, if you can work with improving the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizer and reducing the amount of nitrous oxide that comes from fertilizer applications you can contribute to to mitigation likewise all sorts of methods with respect to Cattle and and their digestion and so on. There's all kinds of innovations coming along there Including it can be driven by changes in diets as well So there's a lot that can be done in terms of mitigation, but always remember that All this is is not like controlled by some sort of Puppeteer in national governments. These are farmers, right? So if you want people to change you have to create some kinds of incentive systems for them to be able to change Right. These are farmers and like all of us consumers of food consumers and absolutely. Yeah We have to change and you know, uh people people will change my my sense is people will change when there's some kind of A viable like incentive that they're less likely to change and certainly my experience with farmers Is they're less likely to change for totally altruistic reasons that I want to help my future generations They they will first of all look for what can be done That can generate positive outcomes for me in terms of food security in terms of my income So that's why public policies are very important in terms of and technologies for sort of shifting the incentives Towards acting in ways that are positive For in terms of climate change mitigation The book is filled with the really a wonderful very clear Detailed discussion of all of these different components just to list the big five because time is so short Sustainable intensification of agriculture market infrastructure, which we've Mentioned post-harvard stewardship. Don't waste what you produce and don't lose it healthy diets eating better and social protection So all of this is part of that system. I want to ask you in the short period that we have about What is a very technical and important side crucial in this story though? They all are this sustainable intensification. What does that mean? Because as you mentioned Land use change and deforestation is a big part of this story and one of the approaches is to try to get And and actually achieve more Outputs sustainably on a given amount of land rather than expanding expanding expanding and taking up more and more of The earth surface and the habitats of other species Right, right, right. Well, I mean I won't go into it in detail, but You and and other viewers and listeners would realize that Malthus his ideas were based on Extensification, right the the concern that he had in terms of population And ability to grow food was all based on how much can we Physically expand our our agriculture So just for again for listeners Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus Was really the father of the dismal economics Or economics as the dismal science because he wrote in 1798 that we'd never really be able to stay ahead of population growth If I could simplify it and The idea that he had was we would have to just expand the amount of land coverage And it would go to worse and worse lands and so forth and you're saying no, that's that's actually not even the right way to think about this No, so I I think the the way to look at it is this way And I know some people when they hear the word sustainable intensification. They immediately think oxymoron here How can you intensify and be sustainable because there is a lot of certainly a lot of rhetoric around Green revolution and other intensification approaches intensification meaning getting more out of The effort and and the land area that we have So the general idea is to argue that much of the way in which we farm is is is relatively inefficient And there are lots of efficiencies that can be gained at all levels and now It doesn't always mean Putting more inputs on all right that that's sort of intensification. Um, it could mean Using your existing input levels could be fertilizer could be water But actually um producing more by being much more precise about how you apply those those inputs For example, a lot of the fertilizer just runs off or gets into a lot of it is runoff and and and sometimes it's applied when it's not needed It's applied. We often have kind of packaged fertilizers NPK when maybe we only need N and P Or just N and K Um, so nitrogen and potassium and phosphorus I'm using I'm using my acronyms too liberally here, but I think the you know the the point is and and You know Kind of farmers in rich industrialized settings are doing this already. They're much more precise About how they apply their their inputs. Why because it's more profitable, right? If you apply things now that needs to be extended to all food systems We have to be much more Careful about how we use our nutrients and our water and our land and our energy as well So all of these are critical inputs to the food system In some places I'm saying we probably need to get out of agriculture altogether. It's just inefficient And and you know, we're better off going back to forestry or or even grazing lands um, horticulture of some kind The point is to be able to do this you really need what I think about Is it kind of a portfolio? For me sustainable intensification should should be viewed in aggregate in aggregate what I mean is We're going to intensify some areas like look at sub-Saharan Africa Average yields of maize typically one To in some cases that have progressed Relatively well two tons per hectare In Iowa farmers get 11 tons per hectare Now I'm not saying we go to 11, but can we surely go to three or four or maybe five? So there is a double food production per hectare Easily easily you could throw a dart onto a map of Africa and most places I reckon you can double production It's technically possible, but you need the inputs. You need the finance You need the policies. You need the roads You need to be able to support that but it's entirely possible. So sustainable intensification We immediately think of these very intensive systems. I'm talking about Just getting a bag of fertilizer to as to a somebody who's essentially mining the soil. There's nothing sustainable about Mining the soil just just growing crops and putting nothing back in again Um, as I said some areas could go out of production And I think ultimately you can you can save land The the key point that some folks will tell you is that Ah, we already produce enough food. We just need to be able to redistribute it better I think every sense of wall evidence-based piece of research that I've looked at Has come to the conclusion that we are now eight billion people. We will move to 10 billion people probably by 2050 There is no sensible Conclusion that we don't need more food. We do need more food So we've got to produce it either through this intensification process But do it in a sustainable scientific way or we continue to move the land frontier Which is adversely affecting obviously the climate loss of biodiversity And the like so I I think that's entirely possible But again, it needs to be very nuanced and I'm saying some parts of the world can cut back on their input use Other parts should just improve their efficiency Other parts could should probably go out of agriculture and shouldn't be encouraged to be growing crops in any case So these are the sort of things that I would say think of it in a port and then combine it with policies and and um Incentives not to go into deforestation not to simply cut forests down or cut mangroves down and the like Glenn you go through and all of those knowledge chapters the fact that we have a a lot of know-how We have a lot of accumulated Technologies, we have a lot of potential high return investments then you turn On the basis of All of this at the beginning setting up the problem your own experience and seeing a country Cambodia go from 500,000 tons for the whole country to 11 million as you said so that it can be done Showing the range of solutions The last part of the book is how are we going to get this done? to improve To make sure that agriculture is sustainable resilient Healthy diets for all you talk about leadership at the core. Can we close with your thoughts about what what you call? Do how How are we actually going to do this? Yeah, yeah, no, I that that was the toughest part of the book actually as as everybody warned me about It's not just about the what it's about How do you actually bring this about and full credit to again ms. Swaminathan for coming up with this We need the know-how and the do-how we need both of them together, right? So absolutely the the the do-how Look, I I think what I've learned over time is that there are there are some key elements to Succeeding one is this notion that We need a multi-pronged approach. So the idea that we don't go for all we need to do is Our food waste or change our diets. We need to to to bring all of these areas together And and and be sensitive to local circumstances and local opportunities I think Something that I I mentioned in the book is the idea that it really requires a sort of a A whole of government and even a whole of society approach. It's not again It's not something that can be uniquely solved by the public sector Uh, it also requires the private sector. It requires individuals Uh, it requires nonprofit third sector organizations requires universities And that's where I started to come down to Yes, yes, I know it requires all these things. It needs to be done at the international level the national level the local level So it's multi-tiered. It's not just bottom up and it's certainly not just top down, right? You need you need to meet in the middle as well I think a lot of it can be done at the national level by the way I I I put something I have learned over the years is the importance of national level policies and plans and and actions But look, you know, when that when it finally comes down to it It it's its behavior of individuals its knowledge and behavior of individuals and that's why I really came down to that last chapter about the importance of leadership The ability to understand complexity and be able to work in in in complex settings to be able to bridge Uh complex institutional Arrangements the idea that we learn in in food systems is nobody's in charge Nobody's in charge Governments aren't in charge I mean the only people that they're somewhat in charge of their own little world might be the farmers But honestly when we try to make these transformations, we've got to recognize you need all kinds of Partnerships and you need to be able to negotiate and persuade Different behaviors We need finance obviously, uh, you know to to be able to and there's plenty of finance out there But it's just not being used. I mean, we're not we're not using it I you talked about this these international research centers, right the cgi are there's 15 centers You know the annual budget the last time I looked it was 2020 the annual budget of the whole cgi our system Was 737 million dollars how much was that sir 737 million dollars less than a billion right shame shame shame I used to advocate 20 years ago at least get it up to a billion dollars because we know the returns to r&d You know, you know pepsi And cope spend eight billion dollars a year on marketing and advertising If we can't find the same amount To achieve a food secure world. There's something wrong with our priorities as humanity, you know So I I I think so in the end who's going to make those decisions. I think it's going to be um informed Motivated leaders. I call them um practitioner leaders. I have this sort of theory of change And very much inspired by my own experience at columbia at sepa with the mpa in development practice the master's program in development practice to see What individuals can do not just in their own backyard but working in in all kinds of Organizations in this huge ecosystem that worked on food systems Everyone from sort of the the the the world bank and the un and and the private sector and and social Entrepreneurships and and all kinds of institutional arrangements And and they can be leaders and they can bring about the change. I see no other way I think we just can't sit and wait for it to happen. I think we've been doing that for too long and We haven't really moved forward all that well. I mean we have lots of good conferences and and there's lots As the secretary general said in 2021 said we have all the we have all the goals we need, you know stg2 The sustainable development goals. We don't need any more goals. We just need to do what we said we would do and that's why for me um starting with this vision of universal food security the notion that Every person on this planet Should have a healthy diet And that healthy diet should be derived from sustainable food systems to me if we all just embraced that And worked out what we can individually do with our our colleagues and with the institutions that we're working with I think we really could make make progress on that. So I'm you know, as I say in the book I'm I'm a pragmatic optimist. I'm not a crazy optimist. I'm an optimist based on um The the the the joy and and proof of each I've had to as I say Like Sir Isaac Newton to stand on the shoulders of giants and to be able to see things that are possible um to me that has been Crucially important in terms of motivating me to To do what I do. Well the book conveys that beautifully. You mentioned a What we need First is the commitment and the goals, but also how to navigate complexity Institutions financed and you said that requires informed leaders And fundamentally knowledge and glenn you've made a major contribution to that not only in your lifelong work But in your new book We've been speaking about a fantastic book. I really urge everyone to read it You'll you'll learn a tremendous amount Universal food security how to end hunger while protecting the planet. Thank you so much for writing this book Sharing your remarkable experience and knowledge and thank you so much for being on book club with jeffrey sacks Great to have you my pleasure. Thank you together. Thank you so much