Translator: Nathaly Carolina Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Growing food.
This is a red tomato - well-balanced, well-shaped,
no taste,
no flavour.
Maybe a bit of residue of pesticides.
It's a good example and symbol of our food industry
and the way the agrosystems work.
Well, here you have industrial farming -
destruction of the soil, pollution of the air,
pollution of the water -
very bad produce.
Do you know that in Europe
endocrine disruptors account for more than 126 billion a year.
This is to say, cancer, Parkinson's disease,
obesity, infertility, diabetes...
We are what we eat.
Bad news.
So we have to change the issue.
This is becoming a waste.
Waste accounts for up to 50% of what we produce
and what we storage,
including in our fridge.
That means that we can't afford it.
That means that we have to invent another model,
one that is economically feasible,
ecologically sound and healthy.
For that, we have to be grounded on the floor.
That's the reason why I very often go barefoot.
So, I want to explore an alternative.
The alternative could be microfarming, and I think we have a lead there.
Microfarming started from my youth.
I was brought up in Normandy,
and to give you the root of my involvement,
that started with a head gardener that told me three things:
Producing food is autonomy.
Sharing the one that you don't use and taking that to the people that need it
is a very strong social link and very powerful.
Preparing a meal, cooking all together, is a fantastic experience.
From there, I became a banker.
(Laughter)
Nobody's perfect.
I'm sure there are no bankers here.
We'll come back maybe to that later.
But...
25 years ago,
leaving investment banking, India, Latin America...
I bought an estate in Loire Valley
and started to plant hundreds of vegetables and fruits.
This led me to plant tomatoes -
10, 30, 100.
Today is 600, and it is recognised as a National Tomato Conservatory.
Well, this is very powerful diversity.
But that led me to discover two things.
First,
the food industry had no clue about this diversity, they ignore it.
They were trapped in this little round, red, well-shaped,
with-no-taste sort of production.
Two,
the seed companies, they only wanted to patent the living,
the evolution,
what should be free for people to grow their food and share it.
Nonsense. How to change it?
I thought, there is one thing that can change the world: education.
So I bought in 2001 the oldest natural science company, called Deyrolle.
The one that was famous for the charts that were all over the world,
in 128 countries, on zoology, botanics, chemistry, physics...
explaining the Earth to the youngest.
Later, in 2007, I discovered that we should go ahead
and do a whole series on how to preserve the Earth
which went "Deyrolle pour l'avenir", Deyrolle for the future,
and joined Maxime de Rostolan, an engineer in environment,
with a lot of convictions, like I guess I have.
And we both questioned ourselves about many different aspects.
The collection was on waste, water,
energy, micro credits and other social issues.
But then we said: agriculture.
How come we come to a situation where...
Another figure:
In the '40s, to grow one calorie of food,
we needed a half a calorie of fossil energy.
Today, to grow one calorie of food,
we need seven to ten calories of fossil energy.
It's ridiculous, it's insane.
Back to being a banker.
You be a farmer.
You'll come in the state and you say to the banker,
"I want to start a farm."
What would you do?
Well I would ask, "What is your business model?"
And you would say, "Very simple, my business model...
I'm going to degrade the soil,
destroy the ecosystem,
pollute the air, pollute the water,
I'm going to sell under cost,
live on subsidy, I'm going to be in debt.
I'm going to be sick.
I'm going to sell things that are going to be sick
for the people who are going to eat them,
save this one.
Maybe I'll commit suicide at the end of the day."
This is the model we have exported for the last 60 years.
Check on the website.
It's terrifying in growing countries.
So we had to think of an alternative model,
soft in energy.
Getting the people together, not letting anybody behind.
And we explored different sorts of farming,
agroecology, and we discovered an inspiration called permaculture.
So we said: We have to start from scratch,
because all what we saw was the horizon of success, with amazing [fears].
So from scratch we found 1.4 hectares
next to the Tomato Observatory in La Bourdaisière.
And we planted on prairie. Why on prairie?
Because it's flat, there's nothing that has been there before
and we could measure every step towards...
something.
So, something is next door.
It's only six months later we planted 3000 square metres.
A year after, 2014, there were 6000 square metres,
500 different plants,
500 times more than conventional farming, industrial farming.
So that was a glamorous time,
but we said to ourselves: we need a business model.
So we registered an association, an NGO,
called ‘Fermes d’Avenir' - 'Farm for the Future'.
And here we said: We are going to study a business model.
Within four years we have to make sure that it's all at equilibrium.
First year we're going to employ two farmers,
second year three farmers.
Within four years, with an investment of less than €100,000,
we are going to produce €100,000.
It's not even the cost of a tractor as investment.
But for that, we said, business model, we have to go to something else.
What else? In the land of 'what else'.
Well, basically, we had to find indicators.
Before I go into these indicators, let me summarise a few words.
Micro farming: small farm that you can put up even in a city,
because nobody cares for some of the land,
that economically doesn't seem like being cultivated.
Agronomy and agroecology.
Well, combining symbiosis of plants,
you know, with one using the other ones.
For example, [basil] is going to help against predators for the tomato.
Natural, evolution has done that.
Permaculture...
I like the words of Bill [Mollison], the founder of permaculture.
He says: "Working with nature and not against nature".
Cooperation rather than competition.
That's a philosophy, that's an art, a design.
We talk about design because we talk about designing ecosystems
that are self-sustainable, resilient.
Caring for the people, caring for nature, sharing.
This is the philosophy of permaculture.
So, we thought the four indicators that should be assigned are going to be...
the externalities.
So you're going to ask me, what externalities, positive, negative?
This is a negative externality because you have to pay.
If you're sick, you go to the doctor.
If you destroy the Earth you have to pay for the replacement,
and the pollution and the degradation of the soil that's petrolised.
We all pay for it, you all pay for it. We pay for it.
So we're going to study agronomy.
That's production per surface,
that's even protein crop per hectare.
That is also another indicator, ecology.
Ecology is obviously the biomass performance,
the number of species cultivated on an hectare, their rotation,
the input, and basically, the irrigation avoided, but also the filtration of water.
Human health: we talked about it -
zero pesticides per hectare.
Education: very important - how you get all the nation together.
You get the schools on farms;
you get people connecting with themselves on the farm;
you train people on the farm.
Jobs: how you create direct and indirect jobs, and local economy.
All that, at the end of the day, is to make sure that we produce,
and we transform, and we recreate an economy of its own, locally.
And we make sure that people want to live in places where the landscape is beautiful
and then they can get proper food.
So, that is local economy.
Now, the big question is: What were the figures which were amazing?
A few of them, that we were working on because of the old idea that we have
a scientific committee, that is also treating social issues
as well as ecological issues.
And this committee is there to try to put a value to the externalities.
But the other figure which was mind-boggling for us
was the number of people that got interested to put up farms,
like you.
Cities, individuals, companies...
And came along these first experimentations,
a very large institution - the Europe and the Regional [Centres]
have been financing the educational program.
The large corporations have been financing the farm.
The ones that you see here
which are the agrobusiness, or the financial people,
financial world.
And what do they say?
We want to understand one thing:
How does it work?
We want to finance the toolbox. What is the toolbox?
The toolbox is exactly what you're asking in your mind.
What do we have to do to achieve a farm in our territory?
To be trained,
to get the finance,
to get the planification of crops,
to be helped to do the selling part of it, the marking part of it.
And all the stupid details which are going to take a lot of time.
So these companies are trying to understand
what is going to be the change with the local agriculture,
with the way we consume?
So, with Fermes d'Avenir, with Maxime, we said:
How are we going to be ambitious?
Why do we have to be ambitious?
Simply because we've all heard about what COP 22[1] said.
COP [10] 21 in December gave a clear objective:
We have to limit the emission of carbon dioxide,
by 2 degrees, by 1.5 degrees. And it has to be very quick.
There was another report called the Shift Project, in France,
as how to tackle the climate change.
And the first one was decarbonate the economy, that is, the agriculture.
Agriculture accounts, in France, for more than 33%, cultivation and transport,
of the emission of carbon dioxide.
So how do we do this?
We have to create more and more farms.
But then, we have to understand the famous externalities we referred to.
We have to put a price.
Why would cities, companies, individuals, start a farm
if they think that it is not going to make enough money?
And that's where we have to address a very strong message,
to the leaders, to the politicians and say,
if this is degrading the soil, if this is degrading the ecosystem,
we have to put a value on that.
We have to say that if we produce €100,000 on the farm,
and the positive externalities are worth €150,000...
Well, that has to be put in the accounting,
because that is only way we are going to fight the idea
that the negative externalities, we pay for it and we don't discuss it.
So, with Fermes d'Avenir, Farm for the Future,
we are trying to put up a way, a gimmick,
so when you start a farm, around, you start six, seven other farms,
up to ten farms,
and for each and every single farm, I mean, groups of ten farms, sorry,
you would have an individual entrepreneur.
We call him a payculteur, the one that will cultivate your territory,
and help all of the other ones, the small growers,
to tackle their problems of finance, training, planification, selling things,
and, of course, of succeeding in their work.
So, now you wonder why I threw this tomato away.
This tomato, as per the words of Bill [Mollison], is a problem.
But he says very generally: 'The problem is a solution'.
And I say, planting, and you should go for it, is a political act.
Planting a garden, planting an orchard,
is for the future.
It's for future resilience.
It's for the next generation.
Thank you.
(Applause)