Translator: Misha Vorotyntsev Reviewer: Hélène Vernet
I'm Julien Le Breton and as my name doesn't suggest,
I was born and live in New Caledonia.
Here, I'd like to introduce you to Leptomyrmex
and here, Rhytidoponera.
These are two ant species native to New Caledonia.
I've had the opportunity to study ants for a number of years,
and the thing that fascinated me with ants,
like with many of you I guess,
was their self-organization.
Ants do not have leaders, yet all of them, wherever they are
and with the information available to them in their immediate environment,
do well, so consequently the collective progresses well.
After a few years, I earned a PhD in Community Ecology
on the subject of invasive ants.
These ants, when introduced into areas, see their populations exploding,
and they have a major impact on biodiversity.
Here is the yellow crazy ant, originated in India,
and the awful fire ant, a monster of 1.5 mm in size
but with such a violent sting
that in the areas it lives, everyone ends up leaving.
In New Caledonia, invasive ants are considered
one of the biggest threats to our biodiversity.
Convinced by the need to protect this biodiversity,
my first reflex has been to fight them,
and I've been involved in many extensive eradication programs
in which we were using helicopters to spread poison bait over the forests.
However, when I looked closely at my data, my years of observations,
the tens of thousands of remarks collected from all over the country,
I realized that these ants are only present and only truly invasive,
in areas disturbed or damaged by humans -
and we know well how to do this! -
in the areas where we throw our waste,
in the places that we destroy in order to take the resources,
in environments burnt down by fires.
I took this photo yesterday, in my community in Païta
where 1,600 hectares of vegetation disappeared in just one day.
And the craziest part
is that it's in the environments where we produce our own food
that we have the least biodiversity:
a single plant species and almost no animals.
I started to ask myself, does the ants really deserve this fight?
Was eradicating invasive ants really going to have a positive impact
on the biodiversity on our island?
When I was a child, I imagined that the future was like this,
full of technology,
and that all this technology was going to help us in our development.
However, when we look at resource consumption,
we see that we're arriving at a peak.
At the energy level resources will run out,
but also the other resources.
And in New Caledonia, we know that we'll have to choose
between exploiting these resources and protecting our environment.
Numerous signs are showing that now,
our civilization is on the verge of collapse.
It has already happened in the past and it might come true again.
And what is likely to happen won't be like Star Trek but more like Mad Max.
And in that case,
the strongest will fight for control of resources,
and I'll surely play no part in that.
So, I wanted to make a change, do something different,
something more resilient for Nature.
After having fought against the ants at first,
I fought against the perpetrators or rather those I held responsible:
the big multinationals, the media, certain political entities...
And throughout meetings where I met other activists -
I was one myself -
I realized that many people who were fighting
wanted the decision-makers to impose policies
for them to change their own lives.
And some of them had been waiting for thirty years
for these policies to take place.
I'm not a big fan of waiting.
So, I started to act independently
and decided to regain the control over the fulfillment of my needs.
And my needs, what are they? They're the same as most animals.
The first one is the need for water and food;
the second is a suitable habitat;
and the third, strong social relationships.
We are social animals; without these social relationships, we'd wither.
So my family and I decided to buy a plot of land in the forest
and go back to a more autonomous lifestyle.
The problem was I wasn't from an agricultural background.
But I studied ecology, so I thought that'd be enough.
When we found ourselves in this forest,
our first thought was to cut all the trees down,
loosen the soil, plant some seeds and water them.
The first year, results were amazing,
the second year, a bit less, and the third year, nothing.
We had managed to destroy the soil despite being in a forest.
That's when, thanks to the internet,
and especially to all the discussions of those experimenting in the world
and sharing their knowledge on YouTube through videos,
we then discovered permaculture, the concept of permaculture.
Permaculture's mantra is to take Nature as a model.
We thought, "Why not, in our fields, our agricultural world,
draw inspiration from Nature too?"
Indeed, when we look at a forest,
it definitely doesn't need humans to function.
It doesn't need watering, fertilizer,
nor someone to take care of its seeds, yet everything works.
Even in the city, just look at the neglected uncultivated lands:
withing a few months, the vegetation comes back on its own.
So why not apply that when we work on a field?
What motivated me most are all these before-and-after images.
In a few months, we can come up with something greatly productive,
either in a small scale or a bigger scale.
In Nature, basically,
plants are what will create the first bricks of life.
Through photosynthesis, they capture light energy, CO2,
and create the first building blocks that will then feed the entire system.
That's what we've done in our gardens.
Everything we typically call "green waste",
hop! we lay it on the ground.
It allows us to cover the ground,
and covering the ground is very, very important!
A bare land is like a house without a roof.
From afar, it all sounds good, but you can't live in it.
Sun's rays would roast anything inside it,
and if it rained, everything would be flooded.
So, covering the ground is crucial.
Further more, covering it will bring lots of fungi
and other insects that will work at breaking it down
and convert it into humus, just like in forests,
a layer of humus on the ground's surface.
We see humus all over the forests but never in our fields.
Here it is, this is our field.
As you can see there's no bare ground - everything is covered -
and there is also a wide diversity of plants.
Now, I'd like you to meet all my co-workers,
from the smallest to the biggest!
And in many fields including organic ones,
animals are separated into two main categories.
On one side we have our helpers who are beneficial and desirable,
and on the other side, the harmful pests, those we never want to see there.
But if we give forests a closer look,
these harmful pests are in fact decomposers.
They are the ones that support natural selection,
that will remove all the weak plants
and ensure that the grand cycle of Nature runs on its own.
If we take them out, the system stops working.
And since our goal is to produce food in the most natural way,
we use all these animals, especially pests,
as assistants to natural selection.
Now they are the best helpers
to select the plants that are best suited to our environment.
Something else I learned during all these years
is that previously, when I'd put a plant in the ground,
I'd think it will be able to make it on its own,
it will manage to find resources where it was and grow.
However, what modern science and agroecology show us,
is that the organism isn't the plant we grow.
In Nature, the organism is the entire forest,
and each plant is just an organ within it.
Each plant serves a purpose.
Our heart, if it is removed from us, if it's not nourished,
if there is no water, no vitamins, on its own, it can't stay alive.
That's exactly what happens in our agricultural system:
when we isolate a tree, we must water it, add fertilizer,
and take care of it because it's disconnected from the other trees.
In Europe's big forests, it's been shown that in the fall,
when the deciduous trees lose their leaves, they become weak.
And the conifers are the ones, via their roots and fungi network,
that feed them to help them through this difficult period.
At springtime, when the deciduous trees regain life and grow leaves again,
they give back to the conifers the nutrition given earlier.
And that is very important.
Here is the fungus mycelium
that provides the connections between all these plants.
This mycelium is found in the humus layer, hence the importance of having this layer.
Everything happens on the surface.
We often think that it happens underneath,
but a large amount of things happen on the surface.
Here is the field.
In recent months, my colleague and I have been putting
fresh wood on the ground to encourage all these myceliums
and the interconnection between all the plants.
We joke saying we're working for "Plant Telecom".
We install an optical fiber between all our plants
through which they'll on their own be able to exchange food,
water, and most importantly, information.
Yes, plants exchange information,
particularly when one of them is attacked by,
let's say, the pest.
In fact, it will transmit the information to all the rest,
so the other plants can prepare.
All of this has also been an opportunity to rediscover a lot of vegetables
that I didn't know from Europe
but have been present in the Pacific for thousands of years.
All those plants have been selected by our friends the pests,
so they're particularly adapted to our area.
Because a major problem in Caledonia
is that our stomachs were often left behind in Europe,
meaning that we eat European vegetables
and we haven't transitioned to all these plants.
Yet, these plants have many advantages.
Here is the "chou kanak," a type of edible hibiscus.
The WHO has said that it's the first vegetable we should give to young babies.
Well, the WHO is no small fish; I think it can be trusted.
After a few years,
since we started producing slightly more than our consumption,
we decided we're going to go to the markets
to showcase all these vegetables to consume-actors,
trade and start living from it.
The first time, we came back home with all our vegetables
because people didn't know them.
They didn't really feel like eating them.
So we figured that we needed to process them.
We started by making flour
with the different taros, yams, and pigeon peas.
And at the markets,
here is what we offer.
Apart from the salt and oil, everything is from our field,
even the banana leaf packaging.
What is awesome with this
is that we've increased the value of these vegetables four-fold, if not eight-fold.
It means that we started to have an economic system that works,
and that's very important!
Another economic system
is the permacultural farm called Bec Hellouin, in France.
Maybe some of you have heard of it.
The INRA has just proved that by using this kind of agriculture on 1;000 m2,
a vegetable producer can have an income that matches or even exceeds
what could be earn using other agricultural systems.
Another example of abundance is in an place in Brazil
that shares the same environmental conditions with Caledonia
regarding the soil and the climate.
Ernst Gotsch developed a system called "syntropy," 25 years ago.
It's also agroecology, but he called it syntropy.
In this system, you can produce up to 66 tons per hectare per year
without any input from external elements.
It means the whole system produces food for the whole system to work.
And that's very important in New Caledonia.
The administrative services did a 10-year study
that shows that here,
in order to maintain a steady agricultural production,
double the amount of fertilizer was necessary.
It's an indicator that our soils are truly exhausted,
and that if we don't act quickly, we will encounter major problems.
No matter the agricultural policies we apply to achieve food autonomy,
it won't do any good if we need outside fertilizer.
So, we really need to develop systems able to function internally.
And this is one of them, and it is important..
I assure you that once these principles are implemented,
everybody can start to produce naturally as of tomorrow.
Once our bellies are full, we can think about housing.
Once again, we took our responsibilities and were ahead of the rules at the time,
and we decided to build our house ourselves,
with ecological materials that were recyclable for the most part:
wood, earth, and stone.
This house is completely bioclimatic,
and autonomous in electricity; it doesn't need air conditioning;
and only 200 watts are needed to turn on all the lights.
That was how much we used for a single room when I was a child.
We also collect rainwater
and use a phytopurification system and dry toilets,
that way, we integrate our entire system in the cycle.
We live in a relatively isolated place,
but thanks to social media, we're able to organize workshops very quickly,
to which we invite people we don't know.
We send our offers to social networks, people respond, attend,
and it allows us to experiment, exchange ideas,
and allows people who come to take a step towards change
because oftentimes, daring is difficult at home
whereas it is less risky at someone else's place.
So, it's an awesome system!
It enables us to stay in touch
because I'm no longer working outside from Monday to Friday.
Like I said, if I stay all alone self-reliant, in my corner,
I don't see the appeal.
So, this type of workshop is very, very important.
Permaculture is about common sense.
People use that word "permaculture" but otherwise, it's common sense,
a common sense that ties in with Nature's major balances
and not with administrative rules.
Permaculture can also be viewed as a flower,
whose first petal, that of the belly, represents agroecology which we just saw.
But this shift, permaculture's mantra is to take example from Nature.
It can be applied to various aspects of our lives,
such as our housing which we also spoke about,
tools and technologies:
the internet has been key
to gather useful information for us to move forward.
But technology can also take this form too:
Do you see this leaf? It's a wild mulberry that grows everywhere.
We can replace all badges with this leaf after today.
That's technology too!
Culture and education:
by living this now, we are somehow actors of culture.
And since we have some time,
I've been able to focus a bit more on music.
As for education, we've taken back the responsibility of educating our children.
Since I almost no longer live in a stressful system,
you could say I feel healthier,
and we've become more in tune with Nature and all its medicinal plants.
Finance and economy:
when taking up alternative systems, we don't think much about it,
yet money is a very important form of energy.
It's even primordial.
If we don't have enough of it, we can't leave the system.
We'll be stuck, it always bring us back.
You've to move past it, just like passing the break of whitewater in surf.
It's the same: you need to earn enough money to get there,
then this money is redistributed once your system is abundant enough.
That's exactly what happens in Nature,
with water or other things: everything is shared.
And finally, living this way keeps alive both our heritage -
for real, since we're in it -
and our communities because we create plenty of connections
through our workshops and presence at the markets in particular.
We create a kind of little network
through which we exchange lots of information.
A network where you exchange lots of information
sounds a bit like what I said about plants and the fungi.
And this, right here, is a network of fungi
that organized itself in a box.
And here is another network you'll recognize right away:
the internet.
When we put these two networks side by side, we see how similar they are.
It is rules similar to the ants' self-organization,
that are doing all this and enabling the useful information to flow.
Today, when people ask me, "Julien, what do you do in life?"
I have trouble defining it
because we often define ourselves by the job we have,
and me, actually, I do all this.
I'm a farmer, a professor,
a builder, an electrician, an active citizen, a herbalist...
And all this gives more meaning to my life.
It's what enables me to be happy today.
Thank you.
(Applause)