so imagine for a moment that you have
the opportunity to
go for dinner with any american
living or not
who would you choose
george washington
abraham lincoln
rosa parks
i am i'm a food guy
and for a food guy like me
i would choose norman borlaug
now if you don't know who norm borlaug
is it's a real shame
because
norman was a botanist from iowa
who developed semi-dwarf
high-yield disease-resisting
wheat varieties in the mid-20th century
his methods transformed food production
in mexico india and pakistan
and his methods were followed across the
world in many different places he was
awarded the nobel prize in 1970 the
nobel peace prize in 1970 for his work
and it really is not an exaggeration to
say that he was a man that saved a
billion lives
now we've had major advancements in food
over the last hundred years my parents
told me about world war ii and
post-world war ii when ration books were
the order of the day when there was
limits on the amount of meat and eggs
and butter that you could access ration
books and you would only get a limited
amount for your family
now think where we are today the
advancements that have transformed
where food production is
and that's been fantastic but as we sit
today
we need to make much much much more
progress in the future we need to double
food production by the year 2050 and the
current systems and infrastructure are
just not capable of producing the amount
of food that we're going to need in the
year 2050
so this challenge the challenge of food
production is something that walmart
thinks a lot about
take a commodity like bananas which is
our number one item we sell over 1.1
billion pounds of bananas in our stores
and
it's astonishing the amount of water
that's used to produce that banana those
bananas the amount of fertilizers are
used to produce those bananas
and the cost associated with that so we
really feel that we face the same
challenges that the world faces and that
challenge effectively is how do we
produce
more foods sustainably because the
practices we have today one banana we
sell a billion pounds one banana
27 gallons of water
it's not sustainable as we try and grow
the food for the planet and as we try
and double the production that's going
to have to happen in that period of time
and at the same time as doubling
production we need to produce food
that's safe
food that's affordable
and food that is sustainable to the
planet it is the only way forward
the challenge as we think about the food
industry is very much about taking a
holistic view the interdependency of the
food industry is something i come across
a lot i've got i've got a really great
job and i get the opportunity to visit
some fantastic places and really
interesting places one of the things i
did not long ago was down in mississippi
spending some time with some farmers who
spent who produced an inordinate amount
of soy and corn for helping
feed people around the world and
the next day we went out on a louisiana
fishing boat
to see the gulf of mexico
and it was really interesting for a
scotsman to try and communicate with two
louisiana fishermen let me tell you
um
we didn't really understand i think we
were both speaking english but
at the they
really ended we almost didn't need to
communicate because what you could see
was a dead zone
where there's no fish
and probably no fish because the
fertilizer runoff from where we'd been
the day before is creating those dead
zones so the economic efficiency of
producing in mississippi
is creating economic problems
and sustainability problems in the gulf
of mexico so how do we resolve these
things first of all we've got to use
less fertilizer and what's really
encouraging is those two progressive
farmers that i spoke we spent some time
with in mississippi using really good
technology to try and improve how they
use how they use fertilizer using really
good tilling techniques to enable them
to to be more productive on the land
that the they're
farming
so less fertilizer we also need to use a
lot less water and when you go to a
country like israel it again is
astonishing when you see is really for
israeli scientists who are developing
really sophisticated drip irrigation
techniques that can drip one drip on the
root that needs the water and misses the
bit millimeters away that doesn't need
the water
and that those kind of techniques are
making are transforming production into
many many arid places around the world
we can do a lot more
as we think about the challenges going
forward of producing more efficiently
there are also some opportunities to
source products in new and more
interesting and different places
peru's somewhere we've been spending a
lot of time recently peru lots of water
in the andes relatively temperate
climate for an equatorial country for
the southern winds coming through and
soil that can be can be fertile but it's
a country that hasn't got a lot of ports
or harbors hasn't got a lot of roads so
the kind of public service private
service um
interfaces to height try and challenge
these things we've opened an office in
lima we really believe that there's
opportunities to produce a lot more
great product there that can help to
feed the world
so we've got to produce food more
efficiently but as well as producing
food more efficiently we really do have
to solve the problem of food waste let's
use the food that we do produce
much more effectively it's a moral
imperative
for us to all of us to challenge the
food waste that exists across the system
not only is that a moral imperative it's
really good business as well
we were in washington
looking at the apple amazing apple
orchards in washington and you see the
number of apples that are not harvested
and they drop down onto the ground and
you walk around you see apples lying on
the ground you think why can that be
comes to comes to it that most of the
apple juice that we sell here in the
united states is imported
because the economics make it more
sensible to import it
so what are the opportunities what we've
been doing is we've tried to work with
some processors we've we've just
launched a us apple juice we really do
think there's opportunities to do a lot
more
processing capacity to help use that the
resources that have been created for the
for those those crops
so in india 40 of all the produce
produced in india it's a wonderfully
fertile country 40 of all the produce
wastes
and it wastes because the infrastructure
isn't there to get it to the marketplace
and get it to people's mouths
again we're investing a lot in india we
think there's opportunities in that
country and and something it's got to be
about more chilled distribution facility
better roads better distribution
capabilities to enable that food to get
to market
cashews is another really interesting
thing cashews a lot of our countries
globally sell a lot of cashews globally
a lot of them are produced in west
africa what happens to them is they get
shipped to vietnam where they're
they're grown in west africa shipped to
west uh to vietnam to be processed then
sent back to the united states to be
sold it just doesn't make a lot of sense
so there's lots of things going on in
the food system that we think we can
work on to really reduce waste and we're
quite excited about some of the work
that's going on there
so
as we move on
i really do have an optimistic future
we have to produce safe
affordable and sustainable food
because it's good business
it's good business for walmart it's good
business for the food system and it's
very much
at the heart of how we're going to solve
the food problem going forward the
challenge of producing double the amount
of production by the year 2050
by working together
and it really is no one company no
matter how large can solve this problem
on their own it really is about the food
system working together and transforming
some of the practices that are out there
to try and improve where we are today
we really can produce bananas using less
water
we really can grow blueberries and
quinoa in peru really effectively we
really can get apple juice use the
apples that are being produced in
washington we really can get india to
get more of its food to its to
population
and really as my hero norman borlaug
said
man can and must prevent the tragedy of
famine in the future instead of merely
trying with pious regret to salvage the
human wreckage of that famine
let's all get together and get after
this big challenge thank you