Translator: Laura Argüeso Reviewer: sann tint
Have you ever tried growing tomatoes?
You know, actually planting a seed and seeing it grow,
and then keeping it alive for more than a month?
Well, I did, or I tried, and this was the result.
Not all that impressive, right?
I mean, if people like me are responsible for feeding the world, we're in trouble.
But then there's my neighbor
who did this.
You know, it can be done:
same seed, same conditions, vastly different results here.
I mean we could have expect that I guess,
he's an agronomist
and I'm just a marketing guy,
(Laughter)
But today I want to tell you a story
of how gardening can change the world,
not just grow a few extra vegetables for the kitchen,
but how it becomes this powerful engine
of economic transformation for a country like Myanmar,
and how it can unleash economic success
on a scale that would put Silicon Valley to shame.
When I talk about gardening, of course I do mean agriculture, right?
and typically what you see is
that agriculture plays a role of outsized importance
for many countries at an early stage of economic development,
and in this Myanmar's no different, right?
I mean you have a fast growing population, most of whom are in the countryside,
and you can just see the importance of the agricultural sector
to the overall country's economy.
The interesting thing about Myanmar, though,
is the vast potential that we have:
that agriculture can be this driver of the economy going forwards
and we have this large land mass,
we have fantastically fertile soil and an amazing climate,
which means you can cultivate any number of crops all year round,
But it's funny, right, because there's this perception
that if your country's economy is based on farming,
well. you going to be a poor country.
Or this general belief that agriculture
you know, pinning your hopes on agriculture
to develop the economy is not a smart thing to do,
or it's because of this that Myanmar is a poor country.
I say that is nonsense, that's just not right,
And what we learn from examining the development of economies
throughout the 20th century is this:
you can't become a rich country until you've got agriculture right.
Now, it's funny because all the time we kind of ignore agriculture.
In many countries it's this implicit urban bias, right?
The presumed superiority of the city over the countryside,
of the urban over the rural, and governments, not just here,
but governments all around the world,
they make policies that make perfect sense if you're a city dweller,
but no sense at all if you are a farmer in the countryside,
which is where everybody is.
So if we understand just the fundamental importance of agriculture
for our success and the success of many other countries,
I mean we can't ignore it, we can't afford to ignore it.
We need to be taking pride in our agriculture,
we need to be proud of our farms and our farming,
of the wealth, of the beauty of these fantastic natural conditions.
It's funny because all too often the reality of agriculture
just doesn't live up to the potential.
I mean here we are in Southeast Asia,
it's the land of the smallholder farmer, right?
so that means you have millions of small small plots of land,
which need to feed a family
and also to provide them with some kind of an income.
It's pretty tough.
Let me give you an example: This is Ma Zin.
Now Ma Zin cultivates a three-acre plot of land
just outside Magway, in central Myanmar, right?
She grows peanuts and maybe some sesame
if she thinks that the rains are going to be kind to her this year.
Her farm isn't irrigated, which means that half the year it lies empty,
because there's no water.
In her village pretty much everyone's a farmer,
pretty much everyone's poor.
Now life here is precarious:
Ma Zin knows that if she doesn't get the yield from the crop she needs
or the crop price dips,
she's not going to have enough money
to pay back the money lender who lent her money
to buy the seed and the fertiliser,
and to send her child to school.
Now, if that happens, then she may well lose the farm.
Now it's the same story again and again throughout the country.
You know these are the two biggest crops here in Myanmar,
we've got rice and we've got corn,
and if you are comparing the average performance, right?
the average yield from these farms,
Myanmar here in red
is consistantly underperforming our neighbours or the best in class.
I mean If you go back to what I said before about,
you know, taking pride in agriculture,
we see these numbers and we think we've got so much work to do here, right?
And you say, "OK, so If I asked you;
To say, what does agriculture look like to you if it makes you proud, right?
What is agriculture that we can be proud of?
What does it look like?
You might think of something like this, right ?
This is pivot irrigation in Midwest of the US
or maybe something like this: this is a 20,000 acre mega-farm in Argentina.
You know all these things: big machines, big scale.
Remember the economists always tell us the importance of scale
and it's about efficiency, right?
a higher scale you can be more efficient, you can make more money.
But these sorts of things have actually sparked revolutions in the past, right?
Just think about the Soviet Union or China:
I mean they have this vision of agriculture, right?
the Marxists and Chairman Mao hated these small small farms
that you still see today throughout much of Asia.
They wanted to knock all the walls down,
pull all the resources and set everyone to work in these huge state farms.
You know this was going to be the model of progressive agriculture
that we can all be proud of.
Well, we've moved on a little from these state farms,
but the thinking is largely the same,
the received wisdom we have for agriculture is scale, big farms,
as few people as possible.
So this chap here in Iowa, he farms a 500-acre farm just him and his father,
and, well, some rather large machinery behind him as well.
So is this the model of agriculture that we are waiting for here in Myanmar?
Is this what we want to recreate?
Is this the panacea of productivity and efficiency that we need?
Well, actually no,
And all the data we have says exactly the opposite.
If you're talking about growing food producing food from one patch of land,
how Ma Zin farms is vastly more productive than our friend from Iowa.
It doesn't make sense, right?
If you've got a farm like this, it's not the most productive one you can get,
actually the most productive farm looks like this.
What's going on?
Well, the thinking is this:
the more you can pay attention to each of the individual plants,
the more it will reward you.
Let's go back to gardening:
Your field is your garden,
your crops are individual plants that need to be nourished.
When you have a five-acre patch of land, you can actually go up into your field
and you can see: "Yeah, we need more water here
because the plants are a bit bigger,
over here well, yeah, I need a little bit more nutrition,
but over here there's a bit of flooding
and maybe the soil temperature needs some changes".
All these tiny tiny details that you can change and when you fix it,
you can access these phenomenal yield increases.
You can't do that if you've got a 20,000 acre mega farm.
So what's interesting is,
when you can compare smallholder agriculture
with a large scale agriculture side-by-side, what we notice,
well, I'll show you some data in just a moment,
but go back to those state farms alongside the big collective,
you actually had these micro plots of land which served as a vegetable garden
for the guys who were working on the farm, they produced food for them to eat
so they could get through the day of hacking away at the rice.
What you see is the productivity between these micro plots and the rest of the farm
I mean it's staggering,
So in China, 5 % of the state farm was actually these micro plots,
and it produced 20 % of the food.
In the Soviet Union same thing:
2 % of the land were these micro plots and it produces 30 %,
I mean, we've got data from many other places:
from India, from Brazil, from other parts of Europe.
It all says the same thing:
there's no correlation between the size of a farm and its productivity.
So, I mean it's the same thing, right?
how can you pay the most attention to your plants when they look like this
then if they're in a two-acre plot of land just outside your village?
Think of the plantation.
This here is a professional plantation in Malaysia
and they're growing oil palm.
What you see is that at the edge of the plantation you tend to get smallholders
who are growing the same crop
and consistently, these small holders will have better
and more productive farms than the plantation.
That's a pretty difficult message to deliver to this guy,
who's running a multinational corporation, and say:
"I'm sorry but you're running a less productive farm than this guy in a cap".
But it's worth me just clarifying
that if we're talking about productivity and efficiency
it's really important to understand
that the definition of efficiency depends entirely on what your objective is,
what you're trying to do.
These smallholders can produce the most amount of food for a patch of land,
that's clear.
But what if your objective is return on investment?
So you know: for the money and the resources you put in,
what's the money you get back?
Well, you get a vastly different picture,
and if you get it right,
large-scale agriculture can be incredibly attractive,
But it's not enough to say:
"well, which one makes me the most money and let's go and do that".
You're missing the point.
If you're running a country,
your objectives cannot be the same
as if you're running a business.
It's not about the money,
it's about people
and the work that they do.
Large-scale agriculture tries to minimize labor,
tries to minimize people,
just because people tend to be expensive
and in many economies there's something more productive for them to be doing.
Now, for returns from the farm if there's a small holder system
that's spread liberally across millions of farming families,
Now, when you have large-scale agriculture,
returns, the money form the farm,
goes into the pockets of just a few people.
Great news if you own that farm,
not so great news if you're a farmer working on that farm.
So if you're running a developing country
your objective can't possibly be to use as few people as possible.
I mean you've got a whole countryside full of them,
and honestly, what else are they going to do?
Where are we going to find jobs for them to do?
How are we going to create these jobs in the cities?
And can we really accommodate another few million people coming to these cities?
I mean It already feels
as if we're reaching some kind of infrastructural crisis in some cities,
and it's just not right
that we should be encouraging a few more million people
to be coming to the city to try and find a job.
Think about those whole communities
who, after decades of conflict, finally laid down their arms.
They don't want to live a marginal existence in the cities.
They want to go back to their village,
they want to go home.
So you encourage people to stay in the countryside
and be as productive as they can in doing
what they're doing,
which is agriculture.
Now I said at the beginning,
I said you know,
no country can become a rich country
until it's got agriculture right,
Now I want to take that just a step further
and say that actually how you do agriculture is just as important.
So it's either smallholder based or it's not.
Most interesting is that here in East Asia
over the last 50-70 years
you've got broadly two groupings of countries:
Now Northeast Asia you've got some of the richest countries in the world, right?
Now they implemented land redistribution
and had smallholde- friendly policies for agriculture
after the Second World War.
Now in Southeast Asia,
typically they went for larger scale plantation based agriculture,
mostly as a hangover from the colonial experience.
It's hard to escape the conclusion
that Southeast is lagging behind Northeast Asia
in this respect.
At this point I have to admit, you know
that it's not enough for me to stand here and say to all the farmers:
"You can be wildly productive if you put your head down
and focus on growing better tomatoes, cabbages, or whatever you're growing."
There's some significant infrastructure
that you need to make this transformation happen.
Now, this first question of land,
it's a thorny one, okay,
and I'm not going to go into it today but just suffice to say,
if you have an asset, your land,
you're not going to invest in your asset unless you know it's your asset.
Training: growing a better crop.
I mean, if there's people like me growing the food,
guys, we're in a lot of trouble.
Financing: how do you get the cash to buy the seed and the fertiliser,
and what you need to grow a crop.
And finally, when you've grown a great crop,
how do you know that you can get it to market or get a fair price for it?
So let's assume that our venerable leaders are here today or they're big fans of TED,
they see the talk and they say:
"Huh, let's do what the British guy said".
So they do all of this. Great!
Okay, fast-forward a few years,
actually what you see is that as the productivity goes up,
the number of people you need actually goes down.
So people are freed up, and now they have a choice.
Well, maybe they want to go to the city and find a job,
you know, they can come back to the farm at harvest time,
they get twin streams of income,
one from the farm and one from the city,
if they lose their job in the factory,
weil, they can come back to a productive smallholder farm
and await the next opportunity.
Just think of the resilience that that creates for a rural economy.
Or, alternatively, they stay where they are,
I mean, just because you're in the countryside
doesn't mean you need to grow stuff,
doesn't mean you need to be a farmer.
There are many things you can do, right?
from breeding ducks to selling fertilizer to milling rice
and using the profits from a farm to invest in your rural enterprise.
People, this is rural entrepreneurship.
This is where it starts.
Let's be clear:
farmers are the ultimate entrepreneurs,
I mean they're not sitting down tapping away on their laptop
No, but effectively, they're doing exactly the same thing, right?
They're using their assets, land and their labor to run their small business.
Now many of us see the plight of these smallholder farmers.
And you know we feel we want to help them,
we want to donate, we wan to do something,
but let me tell you: farmers don't need that,
They just want to get on and run their business.
One final thought:
In many countries we've reached the stage of development,
where we simply do not understand the value of our farmers. right?
We delegate the most fundamental responsibility of our lives,
which is to feed our family, to a group of people
who live in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable.
We are free to live our lives
and chase our goals and our ambitions
simply because we don't have to worry about growing food every day.
These farmers are not to be pitied, they're not to be ignored.
They are to be recognised
as a fundamentally important part of society,
the foundation on which all of our success is based.
Let's face it:
without farmers,
we would all be naked, hungry and sober,
And I say that's a sad place to be.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)