Let me tell you why I'm here.
For one thing, I'm here because Thomas Hartung said
I must be here.
And when Thomas tells me something like that, I'm here.
But I'm here because of who you are and what you can do.
You are the voices of good food.
You are the voice of good food.
And we need that voice now more than ever before.
You're also chefs and writers, your chemists,
your artists, your engineers, your entrepreneurs,
and your prophets, your prophets of this age.
And this is an age of radical transparency.
So speaking of influence, this community here today
has tremendous influence in the world in which I live.
And so I'm going to tell you two stories.
One story where chefs and those of you who speak
for good food made a big difference in my life.
And another story where that influence was missing.
And that story's taken much longer to come to fruition.
I was trained as a vegetable breeder.
Actually, I headed into science at an early age
because I was interested in health
and I was interested in the environment.
I launched off in a very elite graduate program
and saw the light and went into agriculture
at a time when that was not fashionable.
I'm a geneticist, I picked vegetables
for many of the reasons that you all pick vegetables
as your media.
Vegetables gave me a chance to combine my science
with arts to recognize the aesthetic
and the complexities of taste and appearance in a food.
In a food of great importance in your cuisines
and in a food that is incredibly important
in the developing world and underused
and underinvested all over this earth.
So as a vegetable breeder, I went to a university
and had the good fortune of, among other things,
inheriting an incredible legacy from others
who'd worked over decades before me.
Now one thing that man taught me as a vegetable breeder
is it's good to eat what it is you're turning over
to the likes of you.
Most breeders in those days and still today
didn't eat what they bred.
Kinda shows, doesn't it?
We ate the vegetables we bred and they tasted better.
We selected for taste and as a consequence,
by about 10 years in, I had something,
every plant breeder, at least in the US,
but it's a global award wanted.
I had an all America variety.
I also had one little brown packet of 100 seeds.
And it was at that moment that I realized
I worked in partnership.
I worked in partnership with the people
that were gonna take that little brown packet of seed
and turn it into a variety with the story
connected to that variety.
It was a squash variety, a winter squash variety,
a bush delicata, delicious.
Weaving together the best flavors from an heirloom
with modern characteristics such as disease resistance.
And it was through that variety,
two important things happened.
Number one, I realized as a public sector plant breeder,
I needed the seed industry because that's who took
that variety out to impact.
And number two, this variety was especially suited
for production in organic environments.
And so I did something that was unfashionable
or actually quite impossible at the time.
And that was to begin to recognize the importance
of breeding in and for organically managed agriculture.
At the time, our university had no organically
managed production fields, so guess what I had to do?
I had to work with organic farmers.
I thought we just wouldn't spray, be fine.
Actually, what I'd learned from those years
working on those farms was how incredibly important
systems thinking is.
It's important in every field of science.
It's critically important in this century
as we find our way forward.
So through those breeding efforts,
yes, we had some new varieties.
We're especially proud of one that came out last year
called Peacework after the farm and the farmer
who brought us into this community.
Chefs caught sight of the work we were doing.
It was in upstate New York, near some big markets.
Chefs are the ones that called for those varieties.
Farmers grew them.
They had characteristics that were desirable
for farmers like disease resistance
and compact plant habits.
But they also tasted delicious and were beautiful.
And that system set up a cycle that eventually
allowed me to recognize that even though the commercial seed
sector was not extremely well developed
for organic agriculture, we could put together a partnership.
A partnership we called the organic seed partnership
to ensure that not only these varieties were available,
but that organically grown seed was available.
We did it as a network, and it's been a very successful
adventure in the United States.
Chefs played a critically important part
in creating the demand that made that healthy food system.
Good food comes from healthy food systems.
Well, the question then was, what would this
look like at scale?
And interestingly, a university in the heartland,
not necessarily famous for its innovation in agriculture,
at least in your community, but actually a place
where a great deal of 20th century agriculture
was invented, looked around and spotted our work,
and invited me to come and be dean of a large Midwestern
College of Agriculture.
That was unusual behavior, and it allowed
us to do some critically important experiments at scale.
What if we took what I learned from organic agriculture?
That is that here affects there, and now affects later.
And we applied those principles at scale in agriculture.
By this time, we were understanding
some things about agriculture that
are critically important in this century.
Agriculture globally is estimated
to emit about one third of the greenhouse gas emissions
on the planet.
Agriculture is potentially a very important tool or process
in the mitigation of climate change,
but it's also the choices we make in agriculture
have profound consequences on the air,
on the water, on the condition of our planet.
So when I got to Wisconsin, there was another experiment
underway that had been underway for quite some time.
And it was led by some of the people
who understood both the limitations of agriculture
and the vulnerabilities they faced as agricultural producers.
The central part of Wisconsin is a sandy, beautiful soil.
In fact, every Wisconsin school child
knows the Wisconsin state soil is anago loam.
In that beautiful soil, they grow potatoes.
20 years ago, they realized we were having pesticide issues.
We were having groundwater quality and quantity issues.
There's a signature crane species in this part of the country
called the sandhill crane, whose numbers had plummeted
dramatically in the mid-part of the 20th century.
And so it was the potato farmers who took the initiative
to tackle these environmental problems.
These are large-scale potato farmers.
They grow for McDonald's.
They grow for McCain's.
They grow for big industrial food purveyors.
They didn't have what they needed,
so they called on the science community
to guide them forward in these commitments.
And through that community, another network
was Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association.
World Wildlife Fund came in.
International Crane Foundation came in.
And the University of Wisconsin came in
and set a series of practices, including crane corridors,
habitat restoration, very stringent IPM and monitoring.
In fact, they created a standard to which World Wildlife Fund
certified potato production that was so stringent
with respect to characteristics like toxicity
that even organic agriculture left in its ordinary state
couldn't meet those standards.
And so this was a pioneering effort driven by producers
because who cares more about their long-term viability
as a business than them?
Well, this story didn't have chefs.
And so when I entered the state, people
said, you know, we have this fabulous project,
and it's a failure.
Why?
Because those producers expected that this behavior would
be rewarded in the marketplace with a premium,
and they were disappointed.
There was no premium there.
When I said, so that's too bad, what are we going to do about it?
We went to various large food companies and retailers.
Nope, sorry, we're all for better produce,
but we're not going to pay anymore.
Turns out, a couple of years later, guess what?
Those producers are still following those standards,
even though they cost money.
And that was the signal that there was value in that effort,
not value recognized at that time with a premium
in terms of product price, but value for the producers
themselves, pride and a knowledge that they
were doing the right thing.
Earlier this year, we checked up again,
and actually turns out there was an economic value as well,
and that was in increased market share.
So over the five or seven years, and meanwhile,
the certification standard has lapsed,
but the producers are still following those practices.
When there's a choice, those who buy potatoes
are buying these potatoes, healthy grown potatoes.
Today, that healthy grown example is serving as a template
for other national level producer-driven sustainability
initiatives.
And we expect this November, supported
by a sort of a network of academic scientists
to convene as many as nine or 10 or 11 or 12 major commodity
groups in the US who have stepped outside of the supply chain
accounting that is the standard in this area,
and they're moving to science-based, producer-driven,
producer-led sustainability initiatives.
You as chefs make purchase decisions
that aggregate together to make choice,
to make important incentives, but more than that,
you as people who care and know about good food
can tell the story about where you find your food
and who grows it.
You can talk, as you've just seen in dialogue,
with those who produce the beautiful things you put
on tables and those to whom you serve the food.
So that healthy grown story is a very significant story,
because it shows us about value.
The producers have brought us into an age,
I call the age of dissonance, where
the best behavior with respect to an agricultural operation
can, in fact, lead a business to places that cost,
that literally cost.
And what this means is that it is time
for an economic revolution.
An economic revolution we've discussed already
in this meeting that puts a complete balance sheet
for agriculture on the planet, monetized outcomes,
monetized inputs, monetized outputs,
and the resources we use, the benefits
that a healthy agricultural economy creates in a community,
and integration of those three features that's so intimate,
you really can hardly separate them.
That is really an economic transformation
of a very profound type.
In fact, as I've looked at this in the various roles
I've played in government and in academia,
I find only one economic transformation
as profound as the one we need to undertake that will
incentivize care of this earth.
And that is the recognition in 1785
of the need to abolish human bondage in our economy.
The recognition, the concept, was first put forward in 1785.
We didn't get around to even fighting the US Civil War
for 70 years.
That's how radical an idea it was to have an economy
without human bondage.
It's estimated at the time that idea came forward,
three quarters of the Earth's population
were in some type of bondage.
And Adam Smith was alive.
That's how long ago it was.
And Adam Smith said, you can't have an economy
without human bondage.
Well, it was, and there were economic arguments,
but there were moral arguments as to why
we needed to make a profound transition to a different way
of valuing our species.
As you've heard, plants as a kingdom
have values and biological attributes
were just beginning to understand.
The earth and the way the earth's systems work,
we are just beginning to understand.
But we now understand that holistic framing
that I first learned standing in Liz Henderson's Pepper
Field on Peacework Farm.
That holistic framing is complicated,
but it's within reach in an age of radical transparency.
And my world, the science world,
has a very important obligation to step in and work
to establish a concept of what a safe operating space
for this planet and our species looks like.
That work is well underway.
You heard a beautiful illustration of it
in Jackie's talk yesterday.
There are many of us globally committed
to bringing the best science forward
in new relationships where agriculture and earth
observations, where food, health, and diet choices
are connected to your environment and economy.
That's the revolution we are part of.
That's the revolution in which you are prophets,
because you talk about good food.
You talk about healthy food systems,
because that's where good food comes from.
Now, I do sit in rooms with people
who command a lot of power and have great influence
in the 20th century food system in which we live.
That is true.
And in fact, one thing as I have progressed
into these conversations at scale that I've found
is it's difficult for us in a 20th century economy
to value the comments.
We now understand something very obvious and very important,
which is our earth is a commons.
That's what sustainability means.
Our current economy is notoriously bad at dealing with commons.
We devalue or deeply discount commons.
And what we need to look forward to is a system
that does a better job.
The good news is there are wonderful examples
of successes embedded in lots of failures.
And in fact, the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics
was awarded to someone who has studied
exactly how it has studied systems that do deliver
benefits individually and collectively.
As some economists friends of mine point out,
she was not an economist.
But maybe that's how these dialogues will go, partnerships.
She's become an important teacher.
To me, her name is Lynn Ostrom.
And she studies decision making and the role
of communities like mine in decision making,
the role of communities like yours in decision making.
Because it turns out information is
the currency of this century.
And you are the voices of good food.
So I want to conclude by pointing out
that while we have placed our planet
in some very significant forms of jeopardy,
there's hope in my world.
And it's not hope because we're all
going to just magically sit down and do the right thing.
It's hope because we are finally developing
tools and sophistication to understand the risk
that we have created.
In fact, my new best friends are actuaries.
You may not even know who actuaries are.
And as they said to me on a conference call on Friday,
we actuaries are a reserved lot.
What they do is they value risk.
They value risk.
They're conversant and monetized risk.
But they also understand risk that is not yet monetized.
And that is where I see the hope.
That is the conversation we can have with any of us
because we live on one Earth.
It's all of our Earth.
And our local decisions aggregates.
And we understand that now in this age
of radical transparency.
And so we're learning.
You're learning as you walk your ingredients to the field.
You're learning as you talk to those who sit at your tables.
We're learning.
We're learning about systems.
And as one of my tribal colleagues said to me,
he said, you know, Molly, in this century,
you, Western white people, or Western culture,
need to understand what my culture has never.
He said, in our culture, our ethos
is to live within our means.
It's about enough, not more.
Those instructions are incredibly profound.
They involve a reorienting of the entire sort
of agricultural science establishment.
And to take the messages you learn
as you pioneer your craft, your art, your business
in this century.
In some ways, this is all very obvious.
We have learned blindness in the 20th century.
We took the world apart.
We did very well in segments.
And now it's time to put that world back together again.
And that's why I emphasize partnerships.
Through the medium of good food, your medium,
you will bring messages of critical importance
in this century.
While you're doing that, please don't
forget those who are not privileged to be
able to come to your tables.
And please remember the magnitude of the task before us.
And resist the temptation to indulge in vilification
or dismissal of people who are also learning with you.
We share a planet that recognition
is accessible to all of us, including
some who are deeply committed, at least financially,
to the system and to the way we produce food as it is now.
Please remember, we need all hands on deck in this century.
And you are the prophets as we move towards a new age, which
I hope will exemplify a commitment to balance,
to justice, and to harmony.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
