Translator: Jim Taylor Reviewer: Denise RQ
I love food.
Actually, I love it so much I just had some not too long ago.
Joke aside, I bet it is a safe bet to say that you all love food.
And not just that, we depend on it.
It is the very basic of human needs.
With all its importance, in my belief,
the industry, for the most part, is doing a terrible job
at producing healthy food,
especially in a sustainable way.
Within the next few minutes,
I'm going to share with you
my vision of food and beverage production but also what I mean,
and how big and many facets,
food and beverage production play in our lives and in our world.
I live in Germany now, but I used to live in the US
and loved to go with my kids to amusement parks.
As you can see here, back then I used to be a lot bigger.
No, I'm not Buzz Lightyear. I'm the one wearing the white hat.
I told you I love food.
As you can see, it loved me back.
(Laughter)
The difference between then and now
is that now I just love healthy food.
This whole thing is a very wicked problem
and has many, many facets.
Only by working together
can we solve all the issues that are surrounding this.
In March of this year,
my wife Anja and I took a trip through California
in conjunction with our attendance
at the Natural Products Expo West, in Anaheim, California
looking for healthy food
that was produced in a sustainable way.
We were excited and hopeful to see
what new things were coming out, what products in the industry,
and how the industry on a whole was developing.
My main takeaway from this Expo, one of the largest in the world,
was a lot different than I had hoped for.
This whole trip turned out to be a lot different than I had hoped for.
All the products at the Expo had sugars, sweeteners,
preservatives, aromas, fillers, and probably 20 other things I could list.
They were not produced in a sustainable way,
and they did not use recyclable packaging.
I left the Expo with some good ideas of what the world needs
as well as some great partners I met who also share this vision with me.
I personally believe in hydration,
in hydrating the body, keeping fluids going through
which has many great benefits,
but also the need to frequently visit the restroom.
This is when my first epiphany,
or my first noticeable difference on this trip occurred.
All of the public restrooms that I visited along this trip
had red Sharps containers.
These Sharps containers are for syringes and medical waste.
But there is a reason
why they are showing up more and more in public places
especially, at amusement parks, expos, and so on.
There are 347 million reasons,
because there are that many diabetics in the world,
there are 500 million people in the world who have obesity-related disorders,
and 235 million people in the world that have asthma.
We have a simultaneous epidemic
of obesity and starvation.
I don't know if anybody has put the two together,
but if you have the solution or can tell me why,
I would sure like to know.
How can we have obesity and starvation in the same world?
We are sick, and we are suffering
as well as our health, agriculture, and the industry,
especially the industry of food production
which is still in the Industrial Revolution.
We left Los Angeles
and continued our trip through the Central Valley
along Interstate 5 to San Francisco
which is a 311-mile stretch of highway.
The Central Valley contains lots of farmland,
natural products, plenty of groves,
but this is what we saw.
We noticed something different on this trip.
It is not allowed to advertise
with billboards or any other media
along Interstate 5; it's a law.
But yet, this is what we saw.
A crisis: farmers, agriculturists, activists
making us aware that there is a problem.
This is not something new.
Along the Central Valley, we have known about the drought
and there's been drought awareness since 2006.
Yet, farmers dig deeper wells
and continue to use water resources.
It is sad what is occurring in this area,
and what this drought is causing for environment,
and climate, and global changes.
A little bit more down the road on this trip,
a little more than half way on the Central Valley,
I was hit in the face with a stench of pure manure
that choked me up I almost wanted to vomit.
About three minutes after the smell appeared,
I saw this.
[Cowschwitz]
The smell lingered in the car for hours,
in my clothes for hours,
but will linger in my memory and remain there forever.
I came to my senses, and I googled,
and found out that so many people have passed this area
that they went to Google, tagged it,
and left their comments, and named it Cowschwitz.
It's not the name of the spot,
but that's what they've named it and left their comments
of their own experiences as they passed this.
You can see from the cloudiness of the picture
that this smell is not something that I only experienced.
This occurs every single day.
And it's not just the smell,
it is dirty emissions.
These dirty emissions affect
our health, our air, our water, and our climate.
This area, the Central Valley,
not only has farmlands, natural crops, beef,
Cowschwitz, that we just saw,
is licensed to hold 100,000 head of cattle a day
and every year they produce 150 million pounds of beef.
This is a chart to show you
the efficiency of water, food, and beverage production.
For one pound of beef
it is 2,100 gallons or 8,000 liters for one pound of beef.
Two almonds is two gallons.
This is absurd.
The imbalance of water, greenhouse gases
that is occurring in our world and food production
is out of control.
The energy used,
the greenhouse gases, the water,
all go into food production,
and we are running out of resources.
We need to be more efficient and figure out the imbalance.
This ends my trip,
but the trip is not completed yet
because there is another aspect that I want to talk about,
and that is food waste.
In the US, in the world,
30% of all food that is produced in a production facility is wasted.
That means that it never makes it to a plate
and it is thrown out in the garbage.
100% wasted.
We just saw in the slide prior how much water goes into production,
so now, we've not only wasted that water
but we've wasted the farmers' time, the marketing time,
the processing, the logistics,
all the other natural processes that go into food production.
This waste is out of control.
The way we can reduce the waste is by using your energy,
being efficient with water.
I want to tell you
who the primary offenders are of food waste:
gastronomy, grocery,
and consumers who don't want to buy ugly food.
Just because a fruit is ugly doesn't mean it can not be eaten.
Just because there's some expiration date on it
doesn't mean that it can not be eaten.
All these problems aside -
drought, water resources, resources in general,
the imbalance of use of our resources in food production
as well as food waste -
these are just all facets.
I believe in human kindness, human goodness,
and the goodness of us all.
We're at a time of exponential growth and change in our world.
There are a lot of positive things happening.
For example, this year
is the world famous World Expo in Milan, Italy,
and it carries the theme, "Feeding the planet, energy for life,"
displaying food innovations and solutions
for how we can feed 9 billion people by the year 2050.
Also, this coming November, next month, is COP21.
It's taken us 21 times to discuss climate change,
but now we're bringing the world together in France
for immediate action on climate change.
The food and beverage industry
is part of every one of our basic needs
and fills a very important role in our lives.
Therefore, my vision and my dream is to change and turn
the current food and beverage production industry on its head
and change how we produce food.
I have an example that I like to think of with my kids in the tours
of a modern-day, healthy Willy Wonka factory,
except without all the environmental problems and safety issues.
And actually, thinking about that, all the sugar and secrecy,
maybe I should strike that.
We don't want to do the Willy Wonka example.
What we want to do is have a transparent, open system.
The current production that we have is with smoke stacks, very secretive,
you don't know what's going into your product,
they don't grow exclusively with rain water,
they're not CO2 neutral,
they don't have an energy balance of net zero,
and this is what we want to turn on its head
by using technology, innovation,
renewable energy, and resource recycling,
not only rain water, water but our energy that we use
from renewable resources, and saving them to Tesla Powerpacks,
that is my vision.
But also, having a transparent and open system
where every day,
we can give tours, samples, and show people our facility
and how we produce, and how things are done.
We also want to use a complete water management system
where we recycle to 100% rain water.
We filter our ground water with reverse osmosis,
we recycle our greywater and our blackwater,
and we reduce the imbalance
in water use period in certain products.
We also want to use 100% rain water
in our vertical farming system to save on space, energy,
using all the machines in our facility off of renewable energy:
solar, wind, sun, power
to process our whole facility.
It is the truly green system.
I hope that you will join me in my vision
to change the food and beverage industry in your own way.
I would ask entrepreneurs, businesses, small and big,
no matter how small or how big your effort,
we all have the need for food, and this food is cost us something.
I would ask that you take the money that you would normally give to someone
and only invest it in those who care about your health,
your home, and your future
not those that provide you
with sugar water and unsustainable products.
Thank you.
(Applause)
[A time is now for a sustainable food revolution]