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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-05
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWTLsVwU0Fk
I want to start off and share with you my new favorite word who she UT Keanu I know it's a mouth full it's a mouthful but once you get into this word it's it's unforgettable actually wish I'll just say it right now anything ready who she read chiaro all this is untamed cum laude Lucy used to ya know it feels good right remember this word because
this word can change everything to come from a family where food is a very central gathering and family traditions we always have our family gatherings where we're stuffing dozens of hand made rag is all in preparation for the family and friends to come over in times of certainly changed since then our technology has really enabled us to be hyper connected and yet in many ways were
more separated from each other than we ever have been a day doesn't go by without reading headlines of new emerging technologies that promise to give us everything that we need at the press of a button three D. printing in driverless cars and even lab grown meat so in a world of all of these innovations why is it that some people still have problems accessing enough food
I mean the technology clearly exists right so what is it that were missing our food system has changed a lot whew are bonded by community food and togetherness and traditionally what has happened is large scale industrialized agriculture has really kind of pushed aside the small family farm and with an intensified focus on one single crop production it's really come with a lot of challenges for food
system it removes the natural checks and balances that are present in a healthy ecosystem and instead we have to put in fertilizers and pesticides and specialized seeds in order to make sure that we're maintaining that production and all of that put a big strain on our natural resources so when we're talking about global food production usually it's these big dust realized farms to get all of
the attention but it's the little guys that are the very backbone of our food supply they're five hundred million family farmers in the world producing more than half of the food that we consume but the challenge is most of them are subsistence farmers so they're barely producing enough for themselves their families let alone be able to have a reliable livelihood without the infrastructure to be able
to really support and stabilize their growth there also the first to be hit with economic and environmental shocks which means they end up fleeing rural areas and rushing into cities in search of work or to go hungry so how is it that we can revitalize rural communities and really strengthen our local food production several years ago my business partner and I were working on a project
in Kenya when we had no idea we thought what if we took a shipping container and outfitted it with all of the tools and components needed to be able to grow food right there and this is what we came up with farm from a box we like to call it the Swiss army knife of sustainable farming no our intention with this was to re unite production
and consumption at the community level by providing the infrastructure to really support it so each one of these units is powered by renewable energies here not dependent on a grid access it has drip irrigation to be able to save water and and sustain crops throughout drought conditions internal cold storage unit keeps those crops fresher longer while reducing post harvest losses by up to eighty percent wifi
connectivity helps with information access in exchange and a cloud based bio T. system helps of monitoring and tracking everything that's going on the farm no as much as I love technology we've found that there's something else to it so our first farm Adam was on a school site in cinema and I should tell you all right now to that we'd like to have the farmer's name
the farms they how little soul to them in a really owned by the community so when we landed Adam we were all fired up about the technology like I can do this city can do this and look at the wifi connectivity miss integrated sensor network contract everything that you're doing it wasn't until crops were planted and started growing that we really saw the other side of
all of that yes the technologies grade and really efficient and helped with productivity but it was the wonder that was in the eyes of the students that revitalized interest in farming the real that we all got by going down the aisles and picking up a fresh tomato fresh off of the vine taking a bite literally having our eyes roll back into our head thinking I got
deserted tomatoes supposed to taste like it was a technologically enabled reunion with our roots let me tell you how powerful this can be we just launched another farm with the international rescue committee supporting resettle the refugees from Bhutan and Nepal now as many of you probably know the United States has a very long tradition of offering refuge to people that are fleeing war and persecution and
of the eight twenty million refugees that we currently have in the world less than one percent is actually considered for resettlement so this is a very fortunate few that were talking about now via I or seize new routes program is really brilliant because it helps resettle refugees get back on their feet through community farming and business training and we're coming in to offer the infrastructure to
be able to support all of that and the interesting thing to his not that this is hard to imagine but for refugees they're coming in from Bhutan and Nepal an urban subdivision in west Sacramento California isn't exactly gonna feel like home right so through nourishing themselves and their surrounding neighbors through farming they're able to rebuild their lives can really start being self sufficient again and that's
where the transformation takes place plus the surrounding communities no longer looking at a vacant lot instead they see this beautiful farm where they can go and buy fresh crops and local restaurants come and buy food farm to fork they're able to try out new flavors on their menu so it's an interesting way be able to see this connection of food and business in farming and dignity
returns as a result not entire community can really be strengthened by that but obviously this isn't just for refugees right this can also be transformative for returning veterans coming home after conflicts like those that were working with in Virginia it can be transformative for urban food deserts and for vulnerable communities are for connecting schools with healthy food access it also creates local jobs and helps build
local economies there's a lot of different potentials that are happening with this now about two months ago my business partner and I were in Tanzania we're working with the United Nations world food program and Tanzania since the nineteen seventies has actually housed refugees coming in fleeing violence from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi so this particular refugee camp is called Niagara Russo and it's
the third largest refugee camp in the world housing a hundred and forty thousand refugees which is actually three times the amount that it was built to house so quite literally this camp is bursting at the seams of the surrounding area around the camp is also one of the most impoverished and malnourished of the entire country well Tanzania has a lot of agricultural potential eighty percent of
the population or subsistence farmers so that can create a lot of tensions between the camp and the surrounding host community so we're coming and working with the world food program to deploy one of our units just outside of the refugee camp so that we can bridge that divide and serve both populations collectively so the day arrives when we're having this big meeting in the village of
telling mom Goma and all of the local leaders are there world vision is there Oxfam is there and of course the refugee leaders and and community leaders where they're explaining the technology in what could happen what what it can enable in a moment in time comes when we offer them the opportunity to name the box so they gather around this table and the deliberate for a
little while and then they walk over and they hand us this Sally moon Goma Fushigi Keanu and we stopped we look up so what does it mean its Swahili for the spirit of togetherness it was in that moment that I was stunned what about the farming it wasn't about the technology it was the togetherness that they honored she technology can be incredibly empowering it can increase
efficiencies that can help us do more with less it can shatter previously held paradigms of what we even think is possible but I truly believe that if we continue to approach things the way that we are we will keep having societal and environmental challenges unless we approach things through the lens of togetherness in our small way we're trying to bring in the infrastructure that can support
smallholder farming from the community level up and really build that resilience but imagine what we could all do if we collectively put together our creativity and our ingenuity to really solve some of the world's most pressing challenges technology it's great and there's such a focus on it right now and there's a duality so rather than focusing solely on exponential technologies let's pair that together with exponential
togetherness because it's the union of the two where were ultimately going to transform the world it's night I invite you to renegotiate the Keanu this word that you've been introduced to into your lives and into your work look for the commonalities that we all share honor the diversity that we have because it makes us all stronger together as a unit technology is an enabling mechanism and
