Food is culture, food is life — it’s part of who we are and the magic that binds us together. But here’s the twist: the way we eat is pushing the climate to the brink, with a third of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from the way we grow, process and waste food. Through TED Talks and conversations with chefs, scientists, activists and more, this film explores a recipe for change — and how shifting to plant-rich diets, embracing innovations like lab-grown meat and reimagining farming's regenerative future can help us feed the world without frying the planet. (Hosted by Manoush Zomorodi and featuring Jonathan Foley, Sam Kass, Pinky Cole, Jasmine Crowe-Houston, Dana Gunders, Uma Valeti, Hiroki Koga, Helianti Hilman, Peter Dawe, June Jo Lee, Gonzalo Muñoz, Agnes Kalibata, Marcelo Mena, Andy Jarvis and Anthony Myint) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of TED Explores: Food for the Future?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. When it comes to food, we often ask, is this healthy for me? But it's also worth asking, is this healthy for the planet? Today, we're featuring a special audio version of our short film, TED Explores, Food for the Future.
Hosted by TED Radio Hour's Manoush Zomorodi, the film explores how to turn the world's food system, currently one of the major causes of global warming, into a part of the climate solution.
Food is very important because it's part of our daily life.
Food is culture. Food is life. It's part of who we are. You remember the moments that you share over food. It's magic. This is what binds people together.
What we eat really shapes our world.
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Chapter 2: How does our food system contribute to climate change?
When we think about the environment and climate change and things like that, we usually think about smokestacks and tailpipes and burning fossil fuels, and that's fair. But it turns out agriculture and our food system are actually one of the biggest things we've ever done to the planet. And it's only number two to fossil fuels when it comes to climate change.
Every day, we make hundreds of decisions about food. What should I eat for dinner? Will it taste good? Is it healthy? But we also need to ask, what's it doing to the planet? I'm Manoush Zomorodi, a longtime journalist, a TED speaker, and a mom. I care about the planet. I'm well-informed.
But I didn't know until recently that as much as a third of emissions that are warming the globe come from food. A third. The way we grow, process, package, transport, all we eat and throw away is a problem for the climate. But changing what we eat can go a long way. Food can also be a solution.
On this show, we are talking to chefs, climate experts and scientists, all kinds of people who are finding ways to help us eat sustainably and make sure it's still delicious. And to understand exactly what that means, we need to start with why things have to change.
Chapter 3: Why do we need a second agricultural revolution?
About 10,000 years ago, humans began to farm. This agricultural revolution was a turning point in our history that enabled people to settle, build, and create. In short, agriculture enabled the existence of civilization. Today, approximately 40% of our planet is farmland. In the future, how can we feed every member of a growing population a healthy diet?
Meeting this goal will require nothing short of a second agricultural revolution. The first agricultural revolution was characterized by expansion and exploitation, feeding people at the expense of forests, wildlife and water, and destabilizing the climate in the process. That's not an option the next time around.
Agriculture depends on a stable climate with predictable seasons and weather patterns. This means we can't keep expanding our agricultural lands because doing so will undermine the environmental conditions that make agriculture possible in the first place. We can feed humanity within the environmental limits of the Earth, but there's a very small margin of error.
So we know food contributes a lot to climate change. But a third of all emissions? How did we get to such a huge number? Jonathan Foley, an environmental scientist from Project Drawdown, breaks it down by the numbers.
Chapter 4: What are the main sources of food-related emissions?
We find that agriculture, land use, and the food system as a whole contribute about 22% of global emissions. Let's look under the hood and see what's involved in this. The first is deforestation. That's about half of all those food emissions at 11% of global emissions. To put that in perspective, the entire U.S. economy emits 10 to 11%. Deforestation is even bigger.
Second is methane from livestock. Now, we hear a lot of jokes about what cows do and all that kind of thing, but the science is actually really clear. Livestock are a huge emitter of methane, and methane is a very big driver of climate change, and we have to make that connection.
Third is basically industrial farming methods, especially overusing chemicals like fertilizers and treating soil really badly. We have to think about that too. And then finally, we have rice production, another methane producer at around 2%. But that's not all. Beyond these direct emissions of food, that 22%, there are some indirect ways the food system emits greenhouse gas as well.
For example, discarded food might end up in a landfill somewhere, rotting and producing methane. And then we have to think about all the energy and materials it takes to grow food, and then later to process, transport, package and prepare it.
So when we look at these data, it tells us that, yes, food releases 22 percent of greenhouse gases directly, but when we add all the other sources, it grows to something like 34 percent, roughly a third of all the greenhouse gases on Earth. In other words, we cannot solve climate change unless we also address the problems of food alongside fossil fuels and energy. We also need to look at diets.
Now, this one gets a little bit tricky, and people don't like to talk about it, but we're going to need to, because it turns out some foods end up emitting a lot more greenhouse gases than others. What do they all have in common? They're all animal products. Beef at the top of the list is literally off the chart.
So this is kind of a big deal, and that's one of the reasons among many that shifting diets towards more plant-rich options is a good idea for climate.
So the way we produce food and the food we choose to eat certainly affects our climate. But it's also a two-way street. Our warming climate is already affecting our ability to grow food in more dramatic and personal ways than you might think. To learn more, I went to a very unusual dinner party with chef Sam Kass.
A decade ago, Sam was both a White House chef and senior policy advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives. Then, in 2015, frustrated that food wasn't on the global climate agenda, he hosted a much-talked-about Last Supper featuring foods threatened by climate change. He's been hosting these dinners ever since.
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Chapter 5: How is climate change affecting our food supply?
Let's start with the crab cakes. In the Pacific Northwest, two years ago, they closed the snow crab fishery for the first time in its history. That fishery had gone from 11.7 billion crabs to 1.9 billion last year. That's over an 80% collapse of that population in just five years. Let's turn to fruit. Last year, we lost 95%. of the Georgia peach crop.
In our lifetimes, I don't believe we'll be growing peaches in Georgia at all.
There are going to be some people listening who are like, well, boo-hoo, you and your fancy friends can't have your champagne, your cava, and your crab cakes. Exactly. How do you explain the stakes to them?
Oh, well, I wish I could stop there. So let's keep going. Let's talk about wheat and rice and chickpeas.
Staples.
Staples. 60% of the world's calories comes from wheat, rice, and corn. 60% from those three crops. The models on wheat. So wheat will be around for our kids. It's just going to become more expensive. For one degree of warming, we'll see about a 7.5% decline in yields. That's also true in rice. They go up to 40% declines of yields for rice if we start to hit the two degrees warming.
Three and a half billion, with a B, people rely on rice for a daily part, if not the majority of their calories. It is impossible to comprehend, genuinely, the economic implications of declines of staples on that magnitude, the malnutrition and food insecurity implications of those commodities getting disrupted like that, and the political instability that that will bring.
How soon?
I mean, in some ways it's already starting to happen, but you start to get into those numbers in the next 15 years? Like, that's not that far away.
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Chapter 6: What role does diet play in reducing climate impact?
Atlanta entrepreneur Pinky Cole is famous for a chain of fast food restaurants called Slutty Vegan.
Hello to all my fellow sluts in the audience.
Yes, you heard that right. At a recent event, the crowd went crazy for her because she's done the seemingly impossible, made the idea of eating vegan fun.
When you come into the doors of Slutty Vegan, the first thing that you're going to hear is, we got a slut in the building! Ha ha ha ha ha!
I went to check out the secret behind the slut sauce for myself.
Okay, what are we making? Okay, so we are making the Hollywood hooker. Okay. And the secret to this is, like, you just put your mayonnaise on the side, and you have to, like, gooey it with mayonnaise.
I mean, let's be clear. This is not, like, health food, right? Technically, no. Pinky grew up in a vegan, Rastafarian household, but she's taken pains to create a brand that doesn't equate going vegan with anything remotely pious or righteous. Taste, she believes, has to come first.
It's delicious. People love that sandwich. They go crazy over it.
This is Fun Food.
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Chapter 7: How can plant-based diets be made more appealing?
This is Fun Food. This is the brand where every single time somebody comes through the door, they want to take pictures.
OK, the weird part is, like, fun, sexy, vegan?
Fun, sexy, vegan. Because historically, vegan has always been looked at as boring, very green, it's a salad. And I'm like, I want to debunk that myth. I want to add some razzle-dazzle to vegan food. Because people identify to cool. Yeah. And if I can make it cool, then I can teach you about the planet. Then I can teach you why it's good for you.
Then I can teach you why you need to do this because this is the wave.
Is that what we need to do in other parts of dealing with climate change?
We do because the minute people hear climate change, they like check out. The average person in America is not thinking about climate change. So I think that the messaging and how we as a people navigate through this is make it relatable for people to understand. If that's what it takes to get there, if we can get to the finish line, then again, it's a win for everybody.
70%?
70%. A lot of people come up to me and say, hey, Pinky, if it wasn't for you, I never would have even knew what vegan food was. People don't even realize you eat vegan food every day. Most of your sides are vegan, right? What we do is we hold out the hand, we grab your hand, and we bring you into this community. And then you look up and you don't even realize, like, oh, I'm vegan.
And oh, I love this movement. And then we can begin to start having those conversations. And I feel like it is my responsibility as a vegan restaurateur in this hospitality space and a space where it's still this, you know, people are still trying to figure it out. It is my responsibility to be that change agent in this space.
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