 and companion is my favourite word. It breaks down the etymological origin of companion's comm is the Latin for with and pan of course is the Latin for bread. A companion is somebody you share food with and indeed it is a universal human behaviour that you can see in every country and every society all over the world that sharing food is a central piece of making friends, building community of creating society and we do that in both a very local and domestic level sharing food with the people that we live and live with and love but also on a national and international level the exchange of food has been a fundament indeed is the underlying thing that gives rise to civilisation the fact that you can have a farmer who produces enough food for more than just their own family is what gives rise to civilisation because it means you can have some people doing things that are not just food production. Tristram Stewart is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Tristram is an international award-winning author, speaker, campaigner and expert on the environmental and social impacts of food. His books have been described as a genuinely relevant story contribution to the history of human ideas by the times. The environmental organisation he founded feedback works to regenerate nature by transforming our food systems. He is also the founder of Toastdale which up cycles unsold fresh bread into award-winning craft beer. 100% of toasts' distributable profits go to feedback and other aligned charities worldwide. After three years of operations toasts save more than one million slices of bread from going to waste. Tristram is an official United Nations champion of SDG 12.3 to have food waste by 2030. He won the International Environmental Award in 2011, the Sophie Prize. He is an Ashok Fellow, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Welcome Tristram. Thank you so much for being on the show. I believe that your topics of food, environment and the big topics of what's the future are very much ones that we're aligned in. I believe that you're a thought leader and a thinker that has thought about many of the questions and the answers that I will ask you today. I'm almost afraid we don't have enough time in our wonderful discussion today to go into that because I think we're going to go down some rabbit holes or open up some doors that get into some depth and substance of the topics and the questions that I want to ask you. I would like to start out a little bit on a lighter note and ask you how have you weathered this pandemic, this time that the World Economic Forum's calling the Great Reset has been a social entrepreneur and someone who is concerned about food and environment and food waste helped you in any way to prepare to be resilient or sustainable to meet the challenges that we're faced with during this time of the pandemic. Gosh so many different layers from which to approach that question. In a professional capacity, absolutely both Toast Ale, the business I founded and Feedback, the charity that I founded though I no longer have any role in the organization, were set up to solve big global problems of food waste but really food systems, equality of access to food, all of those things became even more relevant at the time that lockdown and the COVID pandemic emerged than they were before. Toast Ale responded immediately by dedicating all of the proceeds and profits that we were making from our online sales to setting up and funding a mass feeding program for the many, many thousands of people who were locked down and unable to access a decent diet. So we helped set up a system that was feeding thousands of people in London, in other cities in the United Kingdom with food that they desperately needed and at the same time that was being wasted at a huge scale because of course all the restaurants and other businesses had been shut down. So there was a massive disruption and we did what we could and that was I think a really a move that people responded to. People increasingly want to be part of businesses that are cause connected that are mission driven and this was a time that people saw that simply by buying beer and having it delivered for free to your home plus the enjoyment that comes from that doing that in a way that contributes to solving the problem of food waste because we use waste bread to make our beer but also funding causes that were close to people's heart. I think that was it really connected to people. It certainly made me proud. Unfortunately of course we did have to furlough some of our team. The government continued to pay them their salary but they weren't able to work for toast. I'm immensely proud to say that those individuals volunteered for the very charities that were doing this work and became absolute linchpins in recruiting new volunteers and giving shape and organizing what was otherwise going to be a really chaotic situation and that really spoke to me about the individuals involved in the organizations that I found it being truly and at heart dedicated to solving the world's problems and being part of the change we need to see. On a personal level obviously I've had the anxieties and grief that many other people had held any relatives in horrible very limited vulnerable places but I have the immense privilege of being in the countryside in Britain in a place where I grew up in a place where I've always grown food and been connected to the land and I at first was very shy of admitting the truth which is that lockdown has been the best time in my life. Being in this place, hearing the owls watching the bats in skies that are quiet that are silent that haven't got plain exhaust and the the roar of aeroplanes flying over. You can't hear the roads I can't go anywhere. I've been in this place day in day out in a way that I've never given myself permission to live before. This is closer to how I've wanted to live all my life and never allowed myself because I've always felt I have to be off rushing around doing and saving and I've spent time with my closest friends and family. I live in a community there's 11 people in our house and kind of 20 in the wider kind of community that this piece of land supports. My vegetable garden has doubled in size. You know the kids have been at home it's been a special magical time. I've always been in love with this piece of the earth. I feel more deeply and closely in love with it than ever and that will always be a very very very special time. It's like we see what nature truly is without the the screen of pollution noise pollution sound pollution that we fill it with most of the time. Thank you that is so beautiful and I'm in full alignment. I kind of thought that would be your answer. It's almost like a reconnection with nature although you've always been connected in one way or the other but it's more deeper. I had the honor to speak with Tomas David Barrett from Oxford and he does a program called Human Beast and he did a special episode about the human zoo the zoos that we live in and from what I see and what you just explain it sounds like your human zoo where you live and your family lives that it's a beautiful place that's not only sustainable or provides food but provides that kind of health and environment that one would want to live in. Not all of us are fortunate during this time to to have these great human zoos that we've created for ourselves and we live in small apartments or twin homes or in in important conditions and now that we're in this or have been in this lockdown we're we're going stir crazy getting cabin fever domestic violence is up people are realizing hoarding and realizing that wow we're not prepared resiliently we're not very sustainable we uh have fear and risks during this time and so I really think it's I had a similar experience where it's provided me with because I've been talking about food and sustainability and resilience for years just as long as you have provided me to put me in a unique position not only to help people with my companies and advice and and food and services but also to reacquaint myself with my human zoo and nature and and and get back into that which is it's a beautiful thing and I appreciate you sharing that I want to go a little bit deeper into more the UK or Brexit thing so there is a lot of things around Brexit on top of the pandemic and the lockdown tied to food food waste do you have any insights or thoughts or feelings about this that you could share with us Brexit is is happening and we have to make what we can of it I remember when the Brexit referendum vote came in I was really depressed for a couple of weeks about what this said about the culture that had really become dominant in in Britain um um I then realised that it's probably the biggest political opportunity of my lifetime and I say that because um the survey suggests and Brexit is a symptom of this underlying factor that the vast majority of British people are not happy with the direction that this country is going in the UK ranks one of the lowest in terms of answers to that question that do you think your country is going in the right direction most British people don't think they're going in the right direction and with the Brexit vote you know now we've got half the country who are feeling disenfranchised because they didn't want Brexit to happen and the other half of the country voted for Brexit because they were feeling disenfranchised and they weren't going in the right direction and sure as fate that half are not going to have their needs met by Brexit Brexit is not going to solve those problems that is an awful lot of disenfranchised feeling out there now that's a really bad thing but if we can come up with a political settlement I believe we can that it really addresses the fundamental problems that Britain is having the British people are facing and convincingly puts that together into a political manifesto perhaps under the umbrella of a new political movement perhaps by shifting existing political institutions in new directions as so often happens that if we can if we can seize that opportunity it is a really huge opportunity to change direction in a very deep and fundamental way and speaking as somebody who has never felt politically represented never had a member of parliament that even vaguely aligns with my views about what we need to do in the world I see the opportunity for something new as being of huge importance would I undo the Brexit vote if I could of course it's here let's build what we can in its wake well one thing I brought the reason I brought it up not so much to get into the political aspects of it but the ripple effects that were caused from a decision that many people didn't think through what what the future would hold and what different scenarios would come of it with trade and especially with food so I've heard numbers before 200,000 clear up to 600,000 you would be more accurate to tell me the correct status and the truth behind it but that there's that many immigrant seasonal workers that come to the United Kingdom to harvest the foods that are grown on the farms and agriculture to get it into production and that there was a couple reports that I that I did see on some farms that were actually taking food and tilling it right back under instead of harvesting and packaging and disseminating it because they didn't have the migrant workers to pick and package and the processes in place that they were tilling it back under which is not only a waste it's a resource waste and it's actually an exponential waste in many ways that's one ripple effect that the other the other effect is I've also there was a recent study that was released on not only Earth Overshoot Day and footprints of food production that twice the size of the United Kingdom and food production is is done in other countries it's done and you've spoken on this before that a lot of products and foods come from other countries and shipped to the United Kingdom that was one the only thing that came in during this time the food came in but but also is really affected through this Brexit transaction can you tell me what your thoughts if you've ran into any of those what you know about that during this time well you've described accurately the shortfall in agricultural labor that the course is one of the side effects of or indeed intended effects of Brexit because of course many of the people that voted for Brexit were voting precisely on those migrant workers the highest rate of Brexit pro-Brexit voting so leave votes was precisely in those areas those rural areas that saw large influxes of Eastern European farm laborers that both culturally they had a resistance to we can call that xenophobia or whatever you like I mean whether one does or one doesn't one can also understand the very legitimate concerns that working people in Britain had of migrant labor if you are a farm laborer in Britain and you're British and you see that as a competition for jobs that you might want or a way of serving the capitalist machine by providing cheap labor and you would rather wages were at a higher rate you know whatever your views on the rights and wrongs of immigration you've got to understand that there are people who see that as a threat a threat to their income a threat to their house and home a threat to their welfare of their family and that is what motivated many people to vote for Brexit now if you look at a macroeconomic perspective it's very clear that immigration is good for the economy and that happens you know all over the world you look at any country immigrant labor has provided an essential and very valuable part of most countries labor their culture and all of those things but that isn't to say that there aren't winners and losers it's not to say that people who feel disenfranchised and anxious about it don't have any legitimacy in their points of view and I think whatever we say about it we need to address both of those concerns in terms of the food waste that arises of course that has been colossal feedback has one of the things that I set up at feedback was the gleaming network that's a team of volunteers who go to farms to harvest stuff that might otherwise not be harvested and get it to people who need it through the charity redistribution system and usually that's ugly fruits and vegetables that have been rejected by supermarkets or if the farmer has a glut and the market can't soak it all up or for whatever reason or does it cancel or changed or amended and farmers and all the crops in the present environment there's definitely a danger that huge amounts are not going to be harvested because there were a shortfall in labor and yeah I mean that's that's you know did you happen to see those who voted for the Brexit because of specifically of that that they were now taking opportunity to say now we'll jump into those positions because they're not here anymore and fix the problem or did it just it was just it was kind of it didn't happen that was more of a narrative than okay yeah the thing that happened indeed there was an initiative during lockdown for for a land army essentially modelled on the land armies that were raised during the Second World War to get people from cities on to farms and the response to that was firstly nothing like as good as people were hoping and secondly most people either didn't turn out for interview or didn't take jobs when they were offered it because that labor is hard labor it starts early in the morning it goes on all day long exactly people think of it as unskilled labor but I can tell you if you are picking cauliflower or fruit in competition with somebody who has done it day in day out and really knows what they're doing you will see the efficiency of harvesting I know this because I've trained volunteers after a day of training you cannot get even a small fraction of what a professional will pick in in the course of the day and and you know so we probably have to rethink what we mean by unskilled labor we certainly have to rethink how we value agricultural labor this is a chronically underfunded industry we don't pay for the real cost of food we don't pay a valuable you know proper reflection of how important this work is and the reason why we don't is precisely because of that globalized food system that you alluded to Mark we can always play farmers off each other because now we can get food from anywhere in the world and so our farmers in Britain have to compete with farmers all over the world that have lower labor costs and and you know this is what gives rise to pushing the value of food down and down and down until you get you know incentivization for mass industrial farming that doesn't involve labor at all but kind of leaves the in a in a place of utter wreckage and you know a whole host of other things I agree there we have a mutual friend Carolyn steel I think and she and I had a discussion as well on one of our podcasts but if you cheapen food you cheapen life and I believe that's basically what you just said you know if if we cheapen food we're cheapening life and and we really need to not only globally reform food and think of things differently but also on how we do that I want to go now a little bit more I gave you an introduction and I know probably didn't even scratch the surface on a quarter of what you've done in the past 20 plus years I've read your wonderful book bloodless revolution and wasted this is more than biblical proportions I have to have to say and you're not only well read you're well written well researched and in many aspects you have this cosmic perspective overview effect this big history picture food and and our world and and how it should be is there anything that I left out or maybe could you bring us up to speed on your journey of food reform and food waste to to this point well I understand mark that you're quite interested in the whole idea of global citizenship and and how do we go from where we are now to unlocking the global identity to my mind this is the big issue the big mountain that we must climb and we haven't even got to the foothills I'm referring to the emergence of a global identity of humans as one species on one planet and those institutions that stand in the way of that in particular the nation state institutions are what we need to supersede I'm not saying that we need to get rid of nation states far from it but there are some elements of our culture and our decision making that must transcend the nation state the nation state is currently perpetuating the tragedy of the commons we send our representatives into the international fora to fight for the biggest slice of cake that they can get for their electorate that is their job description it is no wonder therefore that they are very ill equipped indeed the entire machine is designed in such a way that it makes it almost impossible for them to come to good global decision-making which is why we see a failure of climate negotiations amongst many other things tax reform and indeed most relevant to to right now global health and these are issues that are global in nature and they need global decision-making processes so how do we how do we move towards a world in which we identify with all of our brothers and sisters and non-binary siblings all over the world and and act in ways that are in the interests of all of us and stop acting in ways that are contrary to the interests of most of us and indeed all the other species that inhabit and what role does food have in that I retrospectively look at my work I've never had a kind of spiritual practice I don't do yoga I don't do meditation I you know I don't do pilates I don't know any of those things but what I've realized is that I do have a practice it's called companionship and companion is my favorite word it breaks down the etymological origin of companion's com is the latin for with and pan of course is the latin for bread a companion is somebody you share food with and indeed it is a universal human behavior that you can see in every country in every society all over the world that sharing food is a central piece of making friends of building community of creating society and we do that in both a very local and domestic level sharing food with the people that we live and live with and love but also on a national and international level the exchange of food has been a fundament indeed is the underlying thing that gives rise to civilization the fact that you can have a farmer who produces enough food for more than just their own family is what gives rise to civilization because it means you can have some people doing things that are not just food production they can be priests and artists and artisans and inventors and soldiers and you know politicians and all of those things all the good and the bad elements of civilization you know underlying cultures agriculture so this idea of companionship as being both a personal practice sharing food as a way of building friendship but also on a geopolitical scale the idea of ensuring that everyone has had a proper share of the food both literal and metaphorical the idea of good companionship being you know an opportunity for translating food into something much more than that into our social fabric that I think is a wonderful way of bringing people together we're so divided in the world but food is one of the things that can and very often does unite us even some of the most xenophobic people are very happy to go down to the local curry house we come together over each other's food we like tasting each other's things and indeed it's not even just a human behavior this is actually a great ape behavior in all the species of the great apes the sharing of food is a is a very important part of the social dynamic my favorites are the bonobos the pygmy chimpanzees who are in fact our closest animal relative they're the ones that broke off from our biological line most recently um they have a wonderful practice of companionship if a bonobo has surplus food it will proactively go and find other bonobos to share that food with and very interestingly what they do is they will select a stranger over and above a friend if they have a choice to share that food with it's counterintuitive but in fact what they're doing is turning surplus food into social capital and making new friends and uh when I talk about food waste you know a third of the world's food being wasted this is not just a huge environmental and unnecessary impact you know the deforestation and carbon emissions it's not just a slap in the face to all the kind of one billion people in the world who are undernourished it is uh we want to waste a friendship think of all the friends we can make if instead of throwing that food away we shared it with other people again both on a domestic level if I have a slice of pizza left over maybe if I offer it at a social distance to the person sitting two meters away from me I might get a smile and when pandemic conditions are possibly even a huck as a result I might make a new friend and same on a on a geopolitical level if we in rich countries stop wasting all of that food and thereby in an indirect way make it and the resources that went into producing it available for everyone else to use instead of sequestering it into our landfill sites that would be an act of good companionship so I think food is both one of the biggest global problems the way in which we're producing food the way in which we waste it the way we consume too much and of the wrong kinds of food environmentally and for our own health but it's also potentially one of the most powerful tools to bring us together to do real environmental and social change at the same time um through the practice of good companionship and I said it better myself and similar with Carolyn Steele I said as well she she also has that feeling many of those who are global food reformists are moving in the food reform area are really bringing up that's our basic resource it's our humanities energy source if you look at maslow's hierarchy of needs it's definitely the bottom two layers are resources and food yet we've given that stewardship over to just a select few and we need to realize by sharing it that will connect us as global citizens you you mentioned that your un sustainable development go out about 12.1 for food waste do you believe that there is a plan an earth shot a climate shot a moonshot that will get us to 2030 that there that there is a plan that'll create an infrastructure for us to have a better future a sustainable future um sdg 12.3 of food waste by 2030 and connecting that to the question of do I think we have a plan so the sdgs are a great set of targets and uh I feel confident that many of them will be met and they're very very useful for that reason they do galvanize action and and people are mobilizing around them and and measuring progress against those targets I think they're they're the best we've got does that amount to having a plan to save the planet by 2030 no I'm afraid it does not is there a plan no one of the most striking things about the environmental and social justice movement globally is that there is no single issue on which anyone is unified around a plan or a strategy I mentioned the mountain we need to climb um people are not even in the habit of imagining what it's like to be on top of this mountain this is the the mountain that means at the top of it we we have a sustainable economy and society in which we have stopped destroying our home in the process of of running our our economy um and I think one of the reasons for that and I speak for myself here but I see it in so many other environmental entrepreneurs and campaigners and social justice activists particularly the environmental side is um um when the mountain is so big so daunting uh a concept it's very tempting to turn our back on it and look down on the beach and say oh there's something I can do I can clean up this this beach I can pick up all the rubbish I can show my impact on this little square whether it's food waste whether it's uh plastic pollution whether it's recycling whether you know all of these different pieces that we can genuinely have an impact on them that makes us feel good and and probably we can go to funders and say look I've measured my impact here it is and we can go to our followers and say look at this great impact I've had in the world um and and and you should follow me and I do not repudiate that work at all it's that's the domain in which my work has has operated and there are many many other great people and organizations who have had real positive and fantastic impact mobilized lots of people I mean food waste is a really good example when I started camping on food campaigning on food waste the idea of a global target which every country in the world would sign up to and the CEOs of some of the biggest companies I sit down with on an annual basis the CEO of the biggest supermarkets the CEO of Unilever the CEO of the world bank um you know all these big shots sitting around the table talking about food waste that was a very long way off there was nothing in the press about food waste supermarkets were brushing it under the carpet no government had dedicated budgets or plans to tackling this problem public awareness was more or less zero investment from the entrepreneurial and investment side was was a zero point this just wasn't even on the map and now it's seen as a global priority project door down has I draw down has identified food waste is one of the top three environmental things that we can do to tackle climate change among other environmental crises you cannot be a big food business without tackling food waste in some way and governments have raked millions if not billions now as have philanthropic organizations and investors and the entrepreneurial world is buzzing with new ideas to tackle food waste you know that is real impact that I and now hundreds of thousands of people around the world have participated in having has that got us any closer to getting to the top of that mountain huh I'm afraid to say that if you look at the trajectory we're still accelerating in the wrong direction from an environmental perspective global warming continues to grow you know emissions continue to grow we're still accelerating in the wrong direction we haven't slowed down and alone pivoted and found another direction deforestation is as high as it has ever been in some parts of the world species extinction extraction of water soil erosion you name it these big environmental trends are going the wrong way and what we see is all of these disaggregated organizations and individuals pulling in different directions we do need a global galvanizing strategy around even just one or two issues where we can start to emerge as the super organism we are waiting to become that is the way not in these separate organizational silos with our egos and our identities and our brands we need to start emerging around global strategies to take us to the top of that mountain and I think we need to do that with the awareness that most attempts will fail but every failure is a success every failure shows the people behind us okay we got stuck in a thicket this way or we fell down a canyon there so try another way but this is how we have to start thinking about our global strategy to save the planet boy you said that so eloquently and I want to kind of agree on on a few points and maybe also stimulate even deeper discussion so the 2015 the united nation sustainable development goals actually in september 24th were agreed upon more than 193 countries came together create agreed upon that road map to 2030 it's the it's the only plan we have there's no other global plan out there that the world leaders whether that we chose them or not who represented us at that time chose a roadmap to get us to 2030 to keep the planet below 1.5 degrees of warming to to draw us down but it is it was presented in the wrong way it wasn't understood a lot of people don't know is it for countries is it for cities is it for individuals or corporations who who's it for what's this with all these colorful 17 stgs and then the numerous targets and indicators how do we understand them they don't understand it's a very systemic approach to solving our global grand challenges it's not this linear or or silent approach and that it's virtually impossible just to pick one stg and say that's the one i'm working on um because if it's zero hunger or no poverty you're automatically going to touch on six to seven eight other stgs because they're so intrinsically tied together as a system but they're also relying upon each other in this multifaceted systemic approach i have been looking for a long time been doing this also longer than than um just 2015 for numerous years and there was no plan there's really no big global unified global citizen or earth plan to get us to this brighter brighter future instead of recreating the will or hoping that uh this civilization framework that we're in now or a new one will come i think we should take that unifying plan that's already in place it's pretty well thought out and it is achievable um to make it work by 2030 this year started out fabulous january 2020 the decade of action we're already five years behind and we've seen a lot of lag and not a lot happening with the sustainable development goals but at the beginning of this year not only at davos and and then moving on with the great historical precedences set by microsoft and and then by jeff bezos and then by amazon and delta and on and on ambitions and goals towards the stg's and the paris agreement i think we we started to take a step in the right direction in your response just a moment ago you you hit the nail on the head and i say this a lot in my discussions or in my presentations is we're only going slower in the wrong direction we still have emissions we still have global warming we'll still have pollution and plastic and when annual reports come out or companies come out and say we're reducing our carbon emissions we're reducing our plastic emissions they're only saying we're going slower in the wrong direction we're still doing harm or and that doesn't put us in the right direction so even if the entire world today were to follow the stg's or to stop and reverse the direction it's still not enough we need this whatever the term is uh social business or uh go in the positive step we need to actually clean up our planet and leave it better than it was founded or then then we found it and think about this circular economy principles this cradle to cradle principles living in in kind of this biological and technical and i i want to know one can i kind of sway you a little bit to that that's a unified global roadmap and plan for the stgs but two if we stop and reverse our direction we have this positive impact and move towards like circular economy principles regenerative agriculture permaculture no till the way we produce change that not produce more but be more efficient in our use of land and space and packaging and transport and logistics on and on um do you think those are some plans or solutions that are out there how do you feel about that yeah i i hope i said enough positive things about the stg i don't denigrate them in any way they're super useful um i think of them more as targets than as a plan per se and then it's the job of all the kind of working groups behind the targets to come up with a plan of how to achieve it just speaking from my little slice you know 12.3 there is a target the stgs have given us a target they haven't given us a plan of how to achieve that you know that with that we're making up as we go along from a corporate perspective from a government perspective where do we put the pressure what does it actually mean how do we measure it all of those things and and so that's why i fall short of saying yeah it's a plan um a bit like project draw drawn which is again a set of targets a set of like this is the direction that you should be going in um it's it's difficult to come up with plans that everyone agrees with or is ready to implement um and and i think that that's that's all i'm trying to kind of draw attention to there not in any way the stgs are not useful super useful i use them all the time um that what i've seen is that so i think that you've just pointed to which i fully uh fully agree with which is um creating the idea and momentum behind not just doing bad stuff more slowly but how do we create this idea of replenishment of renovation of regeneration that's absolutely what we need to do it happens also to be a very motivating and inspiring set of ideas if all we're doing is kind of putting fires out i mean i i actually put a fire out of forest fire that happened in my forest earlier this year it's exhausting you get sweaty eventually you have to rest and sit down but um if you talk about planting trees or creating habitat or you know filling fields with butterflies or you know replenishing water tables or or even getting carbon out of the atmosphere and then building soils uh with that carbon instead those are ideas that i think mobilize people and and i think um generally speaking i mean people often mistake me for an optimist i am one of the deepest darkest pessimists there are however i do believe there's hope i believe that focusing on that hope and creating visions around that hope is the way to go and one of the things that gives me most hope is that the entrepreneurial world particularly young people is out of control people are not coming out of you know education systems as much as they were and wanting to go into the next corporate job they're coming up with their own entrepreneurial ideas and very often whether they call themselves social businesses or not they're trying to crack big global problems and that is how i see a lot of momentum a lot of investment a lot of energy people dedicating their lives to the kinds of activities businesses that can help us can help us create the idea of building something new um some of the people that i admire most in the world have taken the view that we can fight the bad institutions and the bad corporations as much as we like we'll only be chipping away at the end of this life we put our energy into building something new something global something we can be part of creating that draws energy away from those uh those bad institutions and organizations ultimately transcends them we firstly we're building the world we want to see we're going to have a great time doing it because we're actually working in alignment with what we what our values are um and ultimately that's a better strategy than wasting our time just fighting i have a question that i ask everyone it's the burning question wtf most people think you know it's the swear word but it's what's the future i believe you would have a good answer for us i have two different answers to that question one is the pessimists answer and that is unfortunately if you do look at the trajectories right now from an environmental perspective the future is bleak um the mass species extinction event that we are right in the middle of this is not something that is going to happen in the future actually is happening right now and we participate in it as humans in the global economy every single day and following current trajectories uh most species on this planet will be extinct by the end of the century there will have been a massive reduction in uh the amount of wild forest and other natural environments and habitats greenhouse gas emissions will have continued to rise in global warming will be at a very dangerous level and probably some billions of people will be facing acute hardship as a result of that there will be scarcity of water there will be conflicts and those things are emerging now they're not even the future they're the present and unfortunately just on a statistical basis it looks that that is the likely future is it necessarily the future no it isn't we still have the power to turn this around we still have the power to reclaim our future to safeguard this beautiful green and blue emerald of a planet or ourselves and for future generations and for all the other inhabitants of this earth we have that power and all of our energy should be going into creating that and the reason why I start with pessimistic view is that I believe that if we only project the optimists view you might give people the impression that they can sit back and relax because somebody's got this sorted now we've got such a small chance of success that everyone needs to get up on their feet and put all of their energy into creating this unlikely potentially beautiful future that can displace the the very much less beautiful future that might otherwise take take form so I think about the kind you some of my friends that you meet them and it's almost like they've been in the future and they've come back and said this is the way we need to go so I don't know if you've interviewed um pia mancini or santi siria democracy earth you know these are the kinds of organization that are being built right now in readiness for a future in which we've realized that actually a liquid democratic global system of decision making is essential we need that as a piece of international oh global infrastructure and I need to be able to make decisions alongside my brothers and sisters and non-binary siblings in Peru and Mexico and South Africa and the rest of Europe and not just through the nation-state system that is is fighting for for the parochial cause my my kind of immediate interests and um and a future in which we have decided that certain issues need to have global decision-making processes that is a that is a future that I see emerging now so many people are working at it both on a cultural level institutional level and economic level um then I think the future will hold some um some of this and indeed it's just possible that alongside all these negative tipping points that we're so familiar with we are on the verge of a social tipping point we have to hope so in which global transformational change happens suddenly and really quite rapidly the emergence of of something that we can all without anyone's permission partake in and that's kind of where my current thinking um and and the start of a piece of work is is being directed is how can we build these things now that can be participated in by everyone in the world without anyone's permission without having to go through some kind of nation-state certified like uh system are you using emerging technologies for this or is there just a new new form a new civilization framework a new economic model what what can you give us more insight tease us a little bit I'm going to hold my time okay because things are at an early stage but suffice to say that I I I think there are many people now working with technology but also cultural tools to help a global citizenry emerge and I believe that being part of that being one mycelial cell in the emergence of that super organism is is certainly what I'm drawn towards and I find my mycelium connecting with many many others around the world who are trying to help this idea and this culture emerged I believe that our biome is suffering and has been suffering for for a long time and not only does our earth have a biome but we as individuals have a biome and been waging this war on antibacterial microbes and and viruses and you speak in the past or have even currently speak about biome monsanto and and all the big evils who are wreaking habit and destruction on our planet um I truly believe that the the bigger elephant in the room is is the climate crisis the environmental destruction that we're doing and that this whole COVID emerged initially as a seasonal flu type felt an umbrella of SARS and and the corona type viruses but it was cyclical and very strongly tied to agriculture and to cyanide air pollution spraying of chemicals and pesticides farming and especially around Wuhan province around the provinces around there where they use a lot of chemicals a lot of farming a lot of air pollution um that regardless of air travel and movement of human beings this would have spread the virus just normally because we all breathe the same air and the air moves all over our planet we drink the same waters and and eventually five to seven ten days later we would have experienced it on other parts of the planet the the bigger elephant is we've got to become not only global citizens but a form of homosymbiosis a sharing connection integral part of our symbiotic earth like Lynn Margulis said or or you you mentioned with your mycelium and and uh that we're an integral part of not only nature our earth other species and that we need to find that harmony that that is I believe the the the bigger operating system the bigger solution in the future to live within planetary boundaries so that we um so we can restore that uh there wasn't really a question framed in that but I believe some of the things you touched upon in your answers what the future uh really ties to that and one other thing that you mentioned earlier about the drawdown there are tools like the drawdown and the blue economy from gunter poly and there's now the drawdown review and there's continually new tools and updates of not only targets and indicators and goals that are out there that we can grab and use um Bertram McCards 1000 solutions innovations or other practices like you have used of gleaning which are old old practices used in farming that we can grasp on to to not only stop and reverse the problems that are going on on our planet but actually positively keep ourselves in a circular economy a closed system that we operate in organic and technical cycles where we realize that there is no throwing away on our planet everything remains here and um that's the hope and optimism that I have and that if everybody realizes that they're not just a global citizen but a member a crew member on spaceship earth that that no matter how big the action is they can take a hold of the steering wheel and guide the future that we will all live in but they'll also take part of the responsibility of where we will go if we don't reach it so that's not just on that burden and that responsibility is not just left on the shoulders of our politicians and our leaders it's left up to each individual as well um the the second big question and I believe you've already answered it in some respects with the burning question I would I would hope for a more optimistic answer but I it's up to you because it needs to be your answer what does a world that works for everyone look like for you well let's start with food I I see the the food production system as one of the biggest problems on earth it's by far the biggest cause of environmental damage it's the main cause of deforestation species extinction soil erosion by far the biggest use of fresh water and the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions and at the moment it produces enough food feed everyone but in fact it's not doing that job it's overfeeding a couple of billion people and underfeeding at least a billion and um you know you look at consumption patterns in rich countries people are eating way more than is good for them and certainly way too much of the things that are not good for them and um that is that is a global system that is clearly not working for everyone um it's of course got many complicated features but the overriding feature of the global food system is that it is led by a corporate profit most of the food being dealt with as part of that global system happens within the hands of of big corporations and corporations this isn't a criticism it's just a fact are machines that have been designed to generate the maximum financial return for their owners and shareholders and that means that the food systems function of feeding people is actually a almost like a byproduct of the machine that is actually designed to make a maximum profit for the shareholders and owners um I am not saying that we have to eliminate profit or shareholders from the food system I have a company myself but I am saying that we need to regulate our food system and indeed our system as a whole so as to ensure that it does work for everyone and not just that very very small number of owners and shareholders and there are multiple ways in which we can do that um in the most pragmatic and immediate way we need better regulation so a food system that works for everyone would for example not be deforesting the earth and causing runaway climate change as a result of part of its functions in order to stop that we need global regulation to prevent those things from happening climate change and deforestation um a food system at the works for everyone would not be resulting in obesity and diabetes and all the diseases of over consumption uh because hugely powerful corporations that have spent billions of dollars working out what makes people buy their products and thereby have marketing campaigns that very very successfully make human animals buy products and consume them in ways that are not healthy for their body and the uh the businesses in which people buy their food the high streets in which people buy their food are obesogenic they are they direct people towards patterns of consumption that of course with our free will theoretically speaking we have the power to withstand but in practice they are more powerful than us and they do make us buy more than we need eat more than is good for us throw away because we can't consume everything we bought these are very powerful forces and a system in which uh everyone's interests are being looked after would regulate that as well we won't allow uh Coca-Cola and Pepsi to manufacture a product who's got more sugar in it than is good for a child to eat in a day to lace that product with a semi-addictive drug called caffeine that we know is not appropriate for children we don't give them cups of coffee when they're six and yet we allow six-year-olds to go into grocery stores see this bright branded colorful uh you know product Mars bars Coca-Cola all of this stuff is clearly you know whether they market to children officially or not they're marketing to children because their products are at the eye height of children in every grocery store in in the western world they're brightly colored and there's no rules that protect children from that decision-making inevitable decision-making that they want to have it they either buy it themselves or they get their parents to through nagging that that is a that is really that's not looking after the interests of our own children alone of of everyone on earth so better regulation uh for these corporations to operate within would be a really good start um and then the other side of it is building these kinds of food system uh and indeed systems as a whole that align with our interests that align with our values um I believe that we are capable of of producing food and other products that are um within planetary boundaries and and accessible to all in ways that can actually enhance the environment and not just destroy it um and we all have a part to play in creating that system whether it's as producers there's consumers as commentators as you know strands in the social fabric and the good thing about that is that this is a kind of environmental and social dust justice activism that doesn't need to be bleak and make you burn out indeed it's beautiful and it's fun one of our mottos at toast ale is if you want to save the world you've got to throw a better party than the people destroying it if what we look at is environmental activism through the lens of also of almost a hedonistic approach we start to see that what we're talking about is how do we squeeze the last drop of enjoyment of joy out of uh the resources that the world has given us the people that inhabit this world and how do we create the kinds of businesses and the kinds of social contexts in which we really fully extract all the beauty and joy from these things um that is in full alignment with with environmental sustainability and a fair share uh for everyone so that's that's kind of that's how i've tried to create the organizations that i've been a part of is is make them fun make them enjoyable uh as well as being driving a sustainability change transformation you test upon a couple things in that answer that i would like to maybe dive deeper into the way we produce so you not only do toast ale i don't know in your past experience um i've i've said it before but i don't believe it's the brands or the products of the future that will have the biggest impact on human health in our environment i believe it's the way we produce i think that if we produce without harmful chemicals sugars flavors aromas pesticides preservatives that we do it using a regenerative renewable different type of resources maybe even non-finite resources we use space in efficient manners that it is virtually impossible to make bad food and that's also a better more efficient way so i i truly believe that it's the way we produce in the future everything but mainly food that will have the biggest impact and drawdown on not only health and well-being and but on our environment on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions that being said the entire industry is still kind of stuck in the industrial revolution or the dark ages they have outdated old systems they're not really thinking circular economy or cradle to get cradle or better more efficiencies they there was a big shift that occurred in 2008 so we had a big disruption about the market and and internet and housing and most investments switched the majority investments switched to food and food systems and i'm sure you've heard about this and with that shift it made food a commodity and in that transition to make food a commodity by people who were not farmers and who were not food producers we were cheapening food to produce it as cheap and fast and as much as possible didn't matter what the ingredients or how we produced it or what the impact was we're actually selling food cheaper than the true cost or the total environmental cost as percentage of EBITDA to produce that and that from then to today has excuse my French has fucked our world with the impacts the ripple effects on human health and nutrition and environmental impacts I truly believe that the way to fix it is to change the way we produce and get the agriculture seafood food and beverage industry is the least digitized industry in the world employs the most people it's the least educated it's the least paid industry in the world and it creates the most food waste and destruction just you've said it before I'm sure just a quarter of what we waste in our world will be enough to to feed everyone and solve malnutrition and get all sorts of solutions if we had other things in place so again that wasn't a question but I want to know your thoughts or feelings if you agree if you have any solutions moving forward you teased a little bit that you're working on something are you working on any other things with ToastL to improve I know you work with craft brewers and different things so that's kind of a co-packing and filling situation I don't know how that works to optimize cleaning process techniques to optimize water processes to optimize where you get your electricity and and on all the other different processes of production that could ease the efficiencies on what the end product is that comes out yes so many things that you unpack there um oh yeah that global um scarcity in food modalities particularly the the staples wheat and rice and and other grains in 2008 that was the context in which I was writing my book Waste and I visited Pakistan as part of my research I saw people who were being pushed over the poverty line into into genuine hunger daughters not being fed enough food because of the global spike in the price of wheat and at the same time you know seeing huge mountains of wheat being wasted in the UK and other rich countries that juxtaposition really motivated a lot of the arguments in my book that actually we are contributing to that global scarcity and therefore to the hunger of Pakistani girls by wasting so much food because wheat is a globally traded commodity and when we take it off the world market in rich countries we're literally buying in the same buying and selling in the same market places people in Africa and Asia we are actually directly taking food out of the hungries at the mouth of the hungry and um that works in both a direct way but also an indirect way because we're using resources that could otherwise have been used by people to grow food that they could have fed their daughters with um and and that's the argument I made there and indeed the anger that I experienced on seeing in a sandwich manufacturer 13,000 slices of day fresh bread I mean literally baked that day being thrown away every single day because they but the end slices of the loaf which the supermarkets didn't include in their sandwiches and in fact they were throwing away not just the end slice but the slice inside that because it was somebody sometimes a slightly different shape or size to the ones uh in the middle and and they were wasting four slices for every loaf that's 17% of every loaf and seeing that oh it made me grieve and and so angry having met these Pakistani girls who are hungry and this wheat was like globally traded wheat um and that actually is what stuck in me and eventually became Tosei when I discovered that you could turn that waste bread into craft beer using actually the ancient original recipes for beer the ancient Babylonians created beer fermentation is first and foremost a preservation technology the inebriation that results is a happy side effect it's all about me creating a shelf stable long shelf life product out of a product that might otherwise go bad and um and bring the brewing industry back to its origins to be part of solving a global problem we have this industrially produced bread being wasted on a on a colossal scale and sure our number one objective is to try to reduce that food waste wherever possible but where it arises let's at least use that stuff rather than plowing up more fields to grow more barley to make beer in the conventional way and land use as you no doubt know is the single biggest way in which food production has a negative impact on the environment of course you know packaging and transport and water and pollution those are all really significant in yes we work hard to minimize wherever possible in that set in that way and and kind of drive the industry towards change in that direction but the biggest thing is land use and if we can reduce the land use requirements of the beer industry then we've made a massive impact and toast is not just a brand it's a methodology we open sourced our recipe everyone all our investors said oh you know what are the barriers to entry to your competitors like well any barriers that the were we've deliberately taken down because the whole point about this company is we want everyone to do this ideally we want them to do it with us co-branding with us creating the brand and the idea as well as generating profit that goes to charities fighting for a better food system and a better system overall but if you don't want to do it with us here you go here's the recipe here's how it's done we're working with one of the biggest beer craft beer companies in the world right now on a recipe that they will use and we'll probably have nothing to do with it as a company and we will take that off as massive impact in the right direction you know we have seen hundreds of copycats all over the world using our recipe using this idea of bread that would otherwise be wasted and we're like well we got the idea from somewhere the Brussels beer project and they got the idea from the ancient Babylonians so let's spread this idea as fast as we possibly can because it's all going in the right direction there is a massive opportunity for the reformation of how we produce and it lies in the farm subsidy budgets that Europe and America and other countries around the world currently gather from the taxpayers and then miss spend in the most colossal misdirection of public funds that exists we currently pay taxes that fund support and encourage exactly the kind of farming that we need less of the kind of farming that's leaving the planet in a depleted devastated state and the kind of farming that is producing more and more of the kind of food that's making us unhealthy there is every possibility that with a properly galvanized public campaign we can overturn the entrenched interests that support these policies that spend the money in these in these ridiculous ways and instead spend that money encouraging farmers to practice farming in ways that are both regenerative for the earth and healthy for the human population and that decision can be made by our policymakers right now if we can encourage them vociferously and persistently enough to make that change at the moment there are big agricultural industrial interests in keeping things as they are some people are making a lot of money from the way things are and the way the money is currently being spent but it is not in our interests to perpetuate this farming system the food and land use coalition recently calculated that i can't remember how many many many billions of dollars are being spent every year on climate devastating farming and we could spend that money financing farmers to sequester carbon in their soils creating habitat putting water back into the water table these are things that we know how to do we can measure them and that would be the right use of public funding and it could help to push agriculture into one of the biggest problem solving areas to the biggest problem creating ones food is definitely not a commodity it's uh as we said at the beginning to cheapen food is to cheapen life i strongly believe that we need to not have a universal basic right of food and and water and resources be controlled by especially bad politicians the trump aqua ellipses the bolts and arrows the shays the putans the duarte's the erd ones and i could go on and on i i probably that's the one place i'm not optimistic in a pessimist is that our vote can can bring us the right type of leaders to make the right type of decisions or that the human will or vote has the strength to fight against the policies and lobbyists and the food industry that have turned it into a commodity and so i'm i'm not sure i i have that that optimism that that we could have that influence although my voice and i do fight for that that one day they will see the light of how important these these long term decisions are on regenerative agriculture agriculture the way we have stewardship over our resources and that that cannot be in the hands of chemical companies or big ag or big big food producers that it needs to be something that levels the playing field for global citizens to make it equitable for all basic resources trish jam has been absolutely fabulous i'm so glad that you've been on the show i'd like to have you again and go in a deeper dive whenever you have updates or new things coming your way please let our listeners and me speak to you again we want to follow that and and see what progress is you're doing i'm glad you're doing well and i thank you again for your time and being on inside ideas thank you it's been really interesting conversation mark and yeah i certainly look forward to hearing the conversations you've had with other people around the world so thank you for doing this work i appreciate it you take care bye bye