What we'll eat on a warmer planet

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0:43Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Hello, everybody. How are we doing? So recently, I went to a pretty unusual event. I'm really excited to be here. This was a dinner and TED Talk given by former White House chef Sam Kass, who presented us with a four-course meal. Let's start with the crab cakes. Crab cakes with crispy capers. Let's turn to fruit. Then came mini tarts. That beautiful little peach jam in the little mozzarella cup you had. Seared Atlantic salmon with new potatoes and some focaccia on the side. Wine. All along, our wine glasses were topped off.

1:32Yes, wine is definitely a fruit, people. Until the end, when we were presented with chocolate cake and coffee. I mean, I'll say, it was very good. But Sam calls this meal the last supper. Not like in the Bible. More because many of these dishes are under threat because of climate change. Now, this menu has been put together with ingredients that experts and models predict will not be around for our kids and our grandkids. And you'll see that it's many of the foods that we hold dear. Sam first gave this dinner nearly a decade ago at the Paris Climate Accords. when he realized that food and agriculture were not on the agenda.

2:20When we say the words climate change, what do the words climate change actually mean? The point here is not to depress you or to scare you. It's not. It's not. It's to try to make an emotional connection in a way that I think food, only food can, to understand really what's at stake when we're having these conversations. Now, the good news is On Our Plates really does hold some of the biggest both problems, but also potential to solve these challenges of anywhere that we have. And that's the part that gives me a ton of hope. There's a movement afoot to change the way we grow our food and eat. Because right now, global food production is a huge contributor to climate change.

3:05And the warming planet is making it harder for farmers to grow ingredients we take for granted. We've learned that eating local and organic foods are good for us and the environment. But it's just not enough. Agriculture needs to change drastically if we want to continue eating the foods we know and love and nourish the planet's billions of inhabitants. And so today on the show, figuring out the complicated future of food. A chef, a farmer, and a biotechnologist share how they're searching for solutions. So back to Sam Cass. He was cooking for the Obama family in the White House when he started working with them to get Americans to rethink how they eat.

3:52And ended up getting into food policy as well. Most people didn't even have a basic connection at that point to their health and well-being in food.

4:04We hadn't connected those dots. And it was a lot of work to do to just try to say, like, how do we shift the culture and put these issues and how we're feeding ourselves sort of front and center? You may remember some of their campaigns to make school lunches more nutritious. Wait a minute! Are you First Lady Mrs. Michelle Obama? Michelle Obama on Sesame Street, motivating kids to move more and eat healthier. What are you doing here on Sesame Street? I'm about to have this nice, healthy breakfast. The idea was, one, can we start to shift the culture? Can we really elevate these issues on people's minds and start to shift our core values?

4:43And that we care about the health of food and the impact that food is having on our society and our culture. But here we are now, a decade later, and you have moved on to another pressing food problem. Tell me about that transition. Well, I think the health of ourselves as humans and the health of the planet are inextricably linked. And climate change, which of course food and agriculture is a major driver of, is starting to decimate our capacity to feed ourselves. And the future is pretty scary when you start to see what the models look like in terms of our ability to grow the basic foods that we consume every day and some of the implications behind that.

5:27So for me, it's one big set of issues that we have to grapple with. But if we don't solve climate, all of the other things we care about in food are going to be just deeply impacted. And a lot of the progress that we've made is going to be undermined by climate. Sam Kass picks up again from his last supper dinner. Our oceans are really on the front lines of climate change. In the Pacific Northwest, two years ago, they closed the snow crab fishery for the first time in its history. They did that because that fishery had gone from 11.7 billion crabs in 2018 to 1.9 billion last year. That's over an 80 % collapse of that population in just five years.

6:12Now, there was hope that, you know, nature is resilient and that population will rebound. but just about a month ago, officials announced that that fishery would be closed for the second straight year because the population just had not recovered. That absolutely decimates those fishermen who have depended on that fishing grounds for a generation. Now, let's turn to fruit, that beautiful little peach jam in the little mozzarella cup you had. Last year, we lost 95 % of the Georgia peach crop. 95%. And when you start to look at the models and how our environment is changing, in our lifetimes, I don't believe we'll be growing peaches in Georgia at all.

7:00And what's Georgia without a peach? But I'm going to go to a fruit that is even more important, at least to me. And this is where these issues start to get pretty serious for me. That fruit is wine. The National Academy of Sciences predicts that by 2040, assuming we hit two degrees or if and when we hit two degrees, the world's wine growing regions will be cut in about half in terms of what can sustain wine. Just a few weeks ago, one of the largest cava producers in Spain announced that they were laying off 80 % of their workforce, about 615 people for big operation, because they simply were not going to have grapes to harvest this year.

7:42There are producers in Champagne that are buying land in England because they do not believe they will be able to make Champagne in Champagne in the foreseeable future. Now, you know things are really bad when the French are buying land in England to make Champagne. It's like sound, the alarm, we got a problem here. There are going to be some people listening who are like, well, boo-hoo, you and your fancy friends can't have your champagne, your kava, and your crab cakes. How do you explain the stakes to them? Why do you think this is an effective way to show people? Oh, I wish I could stop there.

8:24So let's keep going. Okay. Let's talk about wheat and rice. Staples. Staples. So the world, 60 % of the world's calories comes from wheat, rice, and corn. 60 % from those three crops. Those three crops keep life on planet Earth going. So the warmer we get, the worse it's going to be for yield. The other part is, right now, about 15 % of the world's wheat is grown in persistent drought conditions. By 2040, that number will be 60%. So you're going to see massive collapses season over season in different parts of the world of full crops that just fail. And remember, the population is going to continue to grow.

9:10So it's not just sort of the current 7 billion. All the models show we'll get to be about 10 billion people by mid-century. So we have to feed a lot more people in a much more challenging climate as the yields are declining. It is a pretty serious situation. So what can we do? Well, Sam says we need to tackle three areas to turn that situation around. First, let's talk about the consumer. He says we need to show companies that we want climate-friendly products. Only then will those companies truly invest in making products that are both sustainable and affordable. We as consumers have to start choosing foods that are produced in a more climate-friendly and environmental-friendly way.

10:00And however we can do that by supporting companies that are making any kind of claim, even if it's not true, we have to start moving the market so that all companies know that if they want to grow and they want to hold on to their consumer base, they have to start taking the environment into account. What do you mean, even if it's not true? Meaning that right now, there's work to do to hold these companies accountable. because there's plenty of companies who are saying these things, and it's just nonsense. It's not real. Greenwashing. It's greenwashing. There's some companies that are really trying to figure it out.

10:28So there's a bunch of nascent emerging brands that are doing a great job and trying to prove like it's possible. But the big companies right now, people aren't buying climate-friendly. It's not a driver of sales. So right now for them, they look at their math. They're like, I need to invest how much money in changing my whole supply chain? And the CMO is like, I can't sell that. I can't market that. The mass market's not buying that. And presumably it's at a premium as well. Right, there's a premium. There's a cost to this transition. And one thing we haven't figured out is who's going to pay for it.

10:59And consumers have to start sending a very strong signal to these big companies, especially, that I'm going to choose products that are at least claiming to try to do a better job with the environment. Next, more foods need to be developed that don't increase global warming, but actually help reduce it. So with the right practices and some tools, food and agriculture can be sequestering megatons and gigatons of carbon, like really bend the global emissions curve. So you start doing practices like cover cropping and no-tilling so you're not turning up the soil and you're helping to build the ecological health around.

11:34That ecosystem, those microbes in the soil will start pulling down carbon through the plants and storing it in the soil. One company I'm very excited about has fungi microbes, like little fungi, that you coat seeds with. and they're pulling down like three tons of carbon per acre per year and storing that carbon more permanently in the soil. So shifting our practices with a different mindset and starting to incentivize and pay farmers to solve some of these big problems is the answer. The problem right now is like we're asking farmers to make all these changes and take on all the risk in those changes and with no real short-term economic benefit to them.

12:16Finally, as more climate-friendly farming practices and products become available, our culture around what we eat on a daily basis has to change too, he says. This is the one place in our daily lives that we can collectively have a really big impact. And how we eat gives us a shot every single day to try to do a better job. And it doesn't have to be some big overhaul. Little by little, it can have a big impact. Not to be stressed about it, not to get all worked up about it. And if you have a steak every once in a while, I have a steak every once in a while. It's a treat. It's a treat. It's a treat.

12:46I love a ribeye. Like, I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to pretend. Like, anybody who tells you a ribeye doesn't taste good, I think it's insane. Like, I just don't think they know what they're talking about. But, like, that's okay. We just can't eat giant portions and we can't eat it all the time. When we come back, we wrap up the Last Supper with some dessert and coffee. And chef-turned-food-policy-wonk Sam Cass predicts what happens next for food and climate. On the show today, the future of food. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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15:33And boy, did I need this conversation. Maybe you do, too. Well, it's coming on Thursday. Not a Plus supporter yet? Join your fellow listeners for bonus content and all our episodes sponsor-free. Just go to plus.npr.org slash TED or give it a try right in the Apple Podcasts app. And thanks. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the complicated future of food. We were just talking to former Obama White House chef Sam Kass, who is now a food policy guy and hosts dinners that he calls the Last Supper. On the menu, dishes that are in jeopardy because of our changing climate.

16:22This is not some far out future challenge. I attended his most recent Last Supper, where he also delivered his TED Talk. Now, I wish I could tell you, you know, you're still going to have your dessert and everything is fine. Alongside coffee and chocolate cake for dessert. And in some ways, chocolate is faring the worst. So there's probably, you've never probably had a bite of chocolate that wasn't grown within about 10 degrees of the equator by smallholder farmers. And there is not a single model that shows that if and when we hit two degrees, any of that region will be suitable for chocolate production.

17:00It will be too dry and too hot. And again, this year, chocolate prices are up by 50 % because those production ecosystems have been hammered by drought and extreme weather. Raise your hand if you've had a cup of coffee today or a cup of tea. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I know. Just similar to wine, if and when we hit two degrees, about half of the regions that are currently growing coffee will no longer be suitable for coffee production. About 75 of the 124 wild varieties of coffee are on the verge of extinction right now. And that's really a problem because much of the genetic material that we will need to try to produce hybrid varieties that could thrive in a much more volatile climate are going to be lost.

17:52You said earlier that back when you were in the Obama White House, that there was sort of a sense that people were ready for a change when it came to how they thought about their food, the cultural implications, the way that they understood how it related to their neighborhood, to their community. Are we ready for this next sort of way of thinking about food? Do we still have a lot of work to do before these changes happen? There's mixed signals. When we were in the Obama administration, the big ag groups, first of all, did not engage with us. And if you said the word climate change, it was like you were spitting in their face.

18:29It was like the greatest offense. There's no discussion. Now you have the biggest, most conservative ag groups sitting down and forming formal coalitions with some of the most well-known environmental groups to figure out how to galvanize agriculture to start solving these problems. And I would have bet every dollar I would ever make that that would never happen. On the other hand, you know, you still don't see the mass consumer rallying on this. You see parts of politics starting wanting to still go backwards on these things, which is like, you know, there's reasons to feel good and there's reasons to feel concerned.

19:08I think we have no choice but to figure out how to galvanize more people. and I'm a father of two boys, Si and Rafa, they're six and five. And our ability to hand to the next generation the quality of life, the richness and deliciousness of life that we were given is truly at stake. And that's why these issues matter. And that's why we're going to make some better food choices matter. That's why voting matters. That's why advocacy in your church or your business that you either run or work at, In your schools, wherever you are, putting these issues forward matters. Asking the questions matters.

19:49That's Sam Kass. He's the author of Eat a Little Better. Great flavor, good health, better world. On the show today, the future of food. So that question of how to incentivize farmers to change how they grow staple crops so that they're better for the environment and make money? Well, there's a family farm getting closer to an answer here in the U.S. I recently met up for coffee with Jim Whitaker and his daughter, Jessica Whitaker-Allen, to hear their somewhat radical approach to growing rice. So rice is the single largest calorie consumed around the world every day. It feeds more people than any other crop.

20:37When we harvest it, it goes straight to the meal. We take the husk off and it's ready to eat. Rice is calorie dense, a good source of protein. It stores well, which is why about half of the world eats it every day. The Whitaker family has been growing rice for six generations. Yeah, we've been in Arkansas for over 130 or 140 years. And sometimes I wonder, why did they stop here? Did their wagon break or what happened? But there's not many of us left. We're just only a few, me and my brother. And, I mean, I didn't even know that there was rice farming in Arkansas in the United States. So Arkansas is the largest rice-growing state in the country.

21:22We have six rice-growing states. It's the largest one. About half of our rice is exported and about half of it is eaten inside the U.S. So if I go to the grocery store and buy, like, Uncle Ben's or something like that, it could be from you? If, well, if you bought Uncle Ben's ready to eat rice, there's a strong chance one in every three of those come off our farm. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

21:53So let's go back to how you got to be such a big supplier of rice in this country. You tell a story about how you were 22 and you were like, OK, grown up, I'm going to start my own farm. But not that easy. No, it's not. I mean, I remember it like it was yesterday. We drove to the bank and didn't have two nickels to rub together. And we got a FHA beginning farmer loan and took off. So my brother and I rented a farm. Here's Jim Whitaker on the TED stage. Farming is a very capital-intensive business. My dad couldn't help us. He didn't have the finances. He could not help us get started. And let me tell you something about renting a farm when you're 22 years old.

22:39No one rents you a farm unless no one else wants to rent it.

22:47It was a big piece of land. It was cash rent. I mean, the states were set. We were doomed to fail. And we weren't focused on environmental sustainability back then. We were focused on economic sustainability. How do we make higher yield? How do we use less fertilizer? How do we get to the next year and feed our family? In my mind, I mean, when you say rice farming, I mean, sorry, it's such a cliche, but I'm picturing, you know, rice fields in Vietnam or, you know, where there's water everywhere and people picking the rice. And is that what it looks like? Okay, so rice around the world is grown in a flooded environment.

23:29This is for weed control purposes. When they plant the rice in the water, grasses don't grow well in the water. So that's why people use water all these thousands of years to grow rice is for weed control. Now, you know, I was in Bangkok a few months ago and a farmer was on his back porch. I'm like, well, how do you know if that's right? He said, well, that's the way we've always done it. I say I'm a fifth-generation farmer. He's probably a hundredth-generation farmer. I mean, they've probably been farming rice there for 2 ,000 years in that same field. It's just the way he's always done it. For thousands of years, rice has been grown in tiers of flooded fields.

24:11You've probably seen the photos. They look like massive green staircases. But about 20 years ago, Jim and his family started wondering what would happen if they didn't grow rice this way. They started experimenting with different methods, like getting rid of those tears. So one of the first things we did on our rice fields, we adopted a technique that's a little different. We leveled our fields completely flat. This is called zero grade. Rice all over the world has grown in a flooded environment. And most people use the natural contour of the earth to cascade the water down and let the water flow downhill.

24:56We call it continuous flood. They continuously put water on their fields. And we leveled ours flat with a perimeter road. And what that perimeter road lets us do is capture rainfall. So we're actually pumped less water. We're actually able to use less water. We have less runoff, less erosion, less nutrients leaving our field. Nothing leaves our field unless we want it to. So it happens that economic and environmental sustainability go hand in hand, along with social sustainability. As we use less fertilizer, use less water, our yields start going up. By flattening the rice fields, the Whitakers gave rain and fertilizer more time to soak into the soil.

25:43And that road they built around the fields, it collected excess water that they could reuse. So using less resources was good for the environment and the Whitakers' finances. Jessica Whitaker Allen, Jim's daughter, remembers helping out with those early experiments as a teenager. I guess I was around 16, 17 years old, and we had a project one year to see and monitor our water use on our farm. And I would actually go monitor and record that data weekly after rain events just to make sure, you know, we've got this. And that's really when we started tracking this. We saw that our water use was down, and so we really started recording all this stuff by hand in just an Excel spreadsheet.

26:28We didn't know what we were doing. But you knew you were on to something. Yes, so we started recording everything. Let's add more data points to that. Let's add our fertilizer. Let's add our fuel usage. And so we didn't know what was important or how it would be important. That's when Jim and Jessica began to question the other fundamental tenet of growing rice, keeping the fields flooded. They decided to cycle the fields between flooding and letting them go dry. So, okay, that's what's counterintuitive, right? Is because people think that rice needs to be in water all the time? It's got to be submerged all the time, and it doesn't.