There's a fundamental truth which most people just don't want to hear
which is that the greatest threat to life on Earth is... Farming.
Farming? No, no, no, hang on a moment it can't be Farming?
Farming is the greatest cause of habitat destruction,
the greatest cause of biodiversity loss, the greatest cause of Extinction,
one of the greatest causes of climate breakdown.
One of the greatest causes of water pollution,
the greatest cause of soil destruction of water loss.
Tick, tick, tick all those boxes it's farming which comes out
either right on top or very near the top.
Because every hectare of land that you're using for an extractive industry
like farming is land not used for forests, Wetlands, Savannahs,
for all the other crucial habitats which are essential to prevent the collapse
of our ecosystems which will also lead to our destruction.
For example on one estimate with just one more degree of heating
we'd see 32% off the surface of the planet drying out.
We would see simultaneous droughts hitting an entire arc
from Portugal to Pakistan at the same time.
We're looking at enormous rates of soil loss
and without soil there is no farming we are totally reliant
on this thin cushion between rock and air
that gives us 99% of our calories.
And yet we are ripping into it as if there's no tomorrow.
The projections for future crop productivity are entirely dependent
on using more irrigation water just one problem there isn't any.
It's already maxed out the aquifers are shrinking because so much water
is being drawn out of the ground the snow caps and the glaciers
from which mountain water comes those are shrinking
because of global heating the water is not there.
So we're going to need a whole new way of doing farming
a way which is both highly productive and low impact.
One really thrilling new approach is to replace our annual crops
in other words crops which grow just in one year and produce food
for just one season with perennial crops.
Crops which last from one year to the next where you don't have to
plow up the ground every year and re-sew them and start them off with
lots of fertiliser and kill all the other plants which might compete with them.
But can be well established and keep giving us grain year after year.
And already as a result of work by the land Institute in Kansas
and Yunnan University in China there are strains of rice
which have been harvested continuously now for 6 years
without replanting which are providing the same yields
as annual rice ordinary rice provides.
This is incredibly exciting it's potentially transformative
and this could be one of the Technologies which allows us
with the right political support to get through the rest of this century
and those that follow.
There's also enormous potential in taking fat and protein production out of
farming altogether and producing it through Brewing through microbial fermentation with
a tiny fraction of the land area that you need for farming of the water of the fertilizer of all the
other impacts and basically we need to get out of farming animals most animal farming is dependent
on public money we're pouring money into one of the most destructive Industries on Earth which is
also abominably cruel to the 75 billion animals that we kill for food every year we could stop
that altogether and still be much better nourished than we are today at much lower environmental cost
if we switch from animal farming to Precision fermentation instead I was the first person on
Earth outside the laboratory to eat a pancake made from microbial protein and the really shocking
disturbing weird thing about it it tasted just like a pancake this is the beginning of a whole
new world of food a whole new Cuisine but it needs public support we need to get the farm subsidies
out of animal farming and instead use that money to support this whole new way of producing food
and there's something else very exciting as well work being pioneered in particular by
a remarkable farmer called Ian tolerhurst who has found ways of greatly increasing the fertility of
his land and the production of the vegetables that he grows without any fertilizer or any
manure it looks like magic but it's not it's a way of using the amazing properties of soil
and mediating the relationship between the plants he grows and the bacteria and fungi in the soil
which deliver nutrients to the plants and we need loads of research and development to start to roll
out the sort of techniques that Tully is using and to make them available to anyone who wants to use
them we're trembling on the edge of a whole new way of producing our food it's very exciting it's
urgently needed and to protect life on Earth which includes our own lives we need to get behind it
I've tried to explain and convey this potential Agricultural Revolution this
Greener revolution in my book Regenesis feeding the world without devouring the
planet you can buy the book or you can borrow it or you can steal it I don't care just read
it because it gives us some of the keys we need some of the tools we need to change the world