Thank you very much professor Chan,
he is actually a dear friend,
we have developed a good friendship over the years.
I would also like to say,
I am really pleased to be back here in Taiwan.
You...
You know, to me, this is such a wonderful place.
I enjoy coming here.
You are, you are blessed here with your mountains,
the water, the scenery,
the climate
and the food. So...
and also, I first came actually here in 1993,
so, I have seen great changes and great progress.
I also wanna thank the organizers for putting this conference on.
It's... this is a, a really important conference.
You know I think it's so important
to reconnect agriculture with the environment
and realize that, you know,
at the moment in agriculture the environment is the enemy.
We are poisoning, we are flying planes over that poison it, that kill it,
do everything possible to kill the environment
when actually it's our friend.
And we need to look at how
we can work with the environment to increase productivity!
And I found
the presentations yesterday to be very inspiring.
I was really glad I set through the day and I learnt a lot
so thank you.
Now,
Ok... Let's make sure I got this right.
First thing about "Regeneration International".
We are, we are a relatively new organization, about 3 years old.
Dr. Hans Herren who spoke yesterday
he is one of our founding steering committee members,
along with Dr. Vandana Shiva,
Ronnie Cummins coming from this organic consumers association in the USA
and Steve Rye from Mercola.
And the five of us founded it
and we are now,
we have got a much bigger steering committee now but we,
we have something like 130 partnership organizations in 40 countries now.
We have grown very very quickly. The word regeneration
is resonating around the planet.
The, what we want to do is promote food and farming systems
and land-use.
And we are using the words food, farming and land use very deliberately.
We want to regenerate and stabilize climate systems
that help the planet, people, communities, culture,
local economies,
democracy and peace.
Farming is more than just producing food,
farmers live in communities and in an environment we wanna working in that
and we wanna empower farmers as well.
The... What I am going to talk about today,
is contrast 2 majors' issues.
Pesticides,
we had a lot of talks about pesticides
in the environment yesterday
but what we need to really talk about is pesticides in us
and particularly our children and what they are doing.
We are told by our regulators
that the pesticides residues in our food
are safe, they are based on good science.
The reality is the complete opposite.
What farmers use
is a formulation of different chemicals as a pesticide.
There is one nominate ingredient called the active ingredient
that has some testing
and believe me that testing is completely inadequate
and then mixed into that there are...
there are other toxic ingredients such as solvents,
most of them are petrochemicals
and many of them are carcinogens
and surfactants and other toxic ingredients.
It's a cocktail of toxins.
And yet the assumption is made
that this cocktail of toxins
has the same toxicity as the one nominates ingredient.
Now, this cocktail of toxins
is added to it
to make the pesticide more effective, i.e. more toxic.
Tell me,
what is the logic? How can it be scientifically valid
that something is more toxic
is not more toxic?
The assumption is made that it is not more toxic
so there is no need for testing.
That is a nonsense.
It's actually a scientific fraud.
The... there is some to... testing of this formulated ingredients,
formulated pesticides for acute toxicity.
In other words, how much would kill you in 2 weeks.
I said some, not all are tested for this.
But that tells you nothing about chronic diseases.
Chronic diseases like heart disease, liver disease, cancer...
They take more than 2 weeks to develop.
There is absolutely no requirement
and no testing for the long-term life time exposure
that all of us get from pesticides.
Every one of us has a cocktail of pesticides in our systems.
There are thousands of registered pesticides around the world,
not you know, and these are formulated compounds.
Not one is tested.
When we look at things like children health which I want to talk more about it,
reproductive effects, organ damage, cancer, development neurotoxicity
which I'll talk more about.
Endocrine disruption which Tyrone will talk about.
He is one of the experts
on this metabolic disruption epigenetic mutations and more.
No testing.
In fact,
in the literature there is only one peer reviewed paper
that tests animals for life time exposure at the normal levels
that we are exposed at.
And this is by Professor Seralini.
And this study found
that the majority of the treated animals
had mammary and other tumors,
liver damage
and kidney damage.
And, and it was caused by exposure to small amounts of glyphosate.
The amounts that virtually all of us now
that we can test for have in our system
and we are told is safe.
The ..., this slide here,
this is one if I...
I am trying to work on how to use the laser, ok,
you can actually see
the areas of necrosis, or dead areas.
Scarring in the tissues caused by exposure.
This particular study was actually done on roundup ready GMO,
roundup and then a combination of both.
And found that all 3, cause damage.
The pesticide industry you could imagine didn't like this study
and did everything possible to suppress it.
But it got republished
and this study will always be regarded as a landmark study,
a game changer
because it's the first ever done on an actual pesticide
that is used over a lifetime,
at the rates that we are exposed to these pesticides.
The other really important issue is children.
There is no requirement to test specifically for children.
If you look at things like the OECD,
the organization for economic development,
their guidelines which regards as best practices for testing.
It says use young healthy adults
so
the most vulnerable time of exposure
the phases grown children and up into puberty
there is no testing for that.
And so,
the fact is
that there is no evidence,
no consideration in any of the regulatory process
for special requirements for children.
Yet,
when we look at the independent, peer reviewed literature,
which is ignored by the regulators,
the regulators only look at what is submitted by the pesticide's companies,
we find the opposite,
we find a lot of evidence
and that these children are particularly vulnerable
to the smallest amounts of pesticides.
So in the literature there is a...
some of the diseases were found that huge amount of pesticides would cause,
lower IQ,
attention deficient, hyperactivity disorder,
the autism spectrum of disorders, which is an epidemic,
organ damages,
kidney, liver lungs, reproductive tract,
autoimmune diseases like asthma...
lack of physical coordination, loss of temper, anger management,
the whole bipolar／schizophrenia spectrum of illnesses,
also depression,
child／youth suicide which is, is a major issue
and childhood obesity you know in part is cause by endocrine disruption
from pesticides changing the metabolic processes.
This is a graph,
I am one of the co-authors, it's a peer reviewed paper.
And what we look at is over 20 diseases in the USA
that we got the data from the centre of disease control, which is the CDC.
And we tracked that against the increase in glyphosate or roundup,
you know which is increased dramatically in the USA
because of roundup ready crops, GMO crops.
And you see that the red line is the roundup or the glyphosate
the, and the yellow line is the increase in autism...
generally speaking,
when you do a correlation study,
it's agreed that correlation is not causation,
for instance,
mobile phone cells in Finland could track maybe in the same way,
in a way that is not related,
but one of the tools you use in statistic
is called a Pearson correlation coefficient.
And there we look at the probability that they are linked,
in other word one causes the other, what is the probability.
And each of one of these ones
we selected them because the probability was one in ten thousand
that they were not linked.
That's a very high probability.
If we had done this study
with a medication it would have been taken off the market.
Because the, the probability was so high,
because the pesticide they are safe so we don't need to worry about that.
After that,
we have been criticized by Monsanto,
now that, you know, this is just, no evidence,
it's just correlation it's not causation,
it couldn't happen.
Ok so, you have people saying there is no evidence
that glyphosate causes autism.
This paper came out not long afterwards
and it shows that the smallest amounts of glyphosate
damage the normal development of nerve cells.
So
there is the control, there is the normal development.
This is the different divisions or stages as the nerves develops.
So you see it's underdeveloped human with the glyphosate.
The next stage you see the control developing
and this one here
is just starting to catch up to the first stage
and then if you have a look here
you see this one here
actually hasn't even caught up with the second division.
In other words,
what is happening is that the nerves haven't developed properly.
And remember that the biggest bundle of nerves we have is our brain.
This is happening in the brains of children
getting small amount of glyphosate
because it crosses the placenta into the developing fetus
at their most vulnerable stage.
The really sad thing here is that
the effect is not reversible.
The only thing I wanna say,
what we do know now with brain plasticity
that it is possible to build new neurons.
These neurons are damaged
but we know by changing,
stopping the exposure,
you know, we can build new neurons
and help children who have been damaged by this to have normal lives.
The cancer is another one.
Childhood cancers or all cancers have grown.
And it's an epidemic around the world.
All of us, knows people close to us who got cancer.
All of us are affected by cancer.
Either individually or you know by people we know.
The probably most important report ever done on cancer
was by the United States president's cancer panel under the president Obama.
He got over 30 of the world's best cancer specialists together
and they analyzed all the data on what causes cancer.
And 80% of cancers, actually more than 80 percent
are caused by environmental factors, lifestyle factors
such as
smoking, you know alcohol but you know,
in this case they really point heavily towards pesticides,
radiations.
There is a whole range of factors that cause cancer.
What, you know, should have been celebrated in this,
is that, that 80% of cancers we could stop tomorrow,
by getting rid of these negative environmental factors that cause it.
What are the medical intervention, public medical intervention,
could make such a difference to a major epidemic?
We could change cancer tomorrow by getting rid of these factors.
But it's ignored.
They make us to use the funding to work on the other 20 percent.
We could get rid of cancer as an epidemic.
But
it's not much money to be made in it so it gets ignored.
I think what is really important here is when you are talking about children,
you know the amount of children cancer rates are increasing.
They pointed it out in this study
but also last year the world health organization shows that
you know there is a 13% increase.
Children cancers are still increasing
and we have very good evidence
of pesticides causing it, causing cancers.
Now, going back to this study that we did,
we looked at quite a few cancers in the US
and the red line is the amount of glyphosate,
the blue line is the increase in GMOs
because this GMOs are roundup ready
that's why there is so much glyphosate is used,
and the green line
is what the trend line was
the trend for the disease
before the increase in glyphosate.
Once again,
it's a one in ten thousand chance to these chemicals,
so that glyphosate
is not linked to the cancer.
Similarly, with this one,
the same thing again.
You actually have a look on the trend line
on urinary／bladder cancer was actually gone down
until the introduction of roundup ready crops
and increase of glyphosate in the food supply.
We were criticized for that but not long afterwards
the world health organization comes out classifying glyphosate
as the second highest level for cancer.
To explain that the highest level is,
you know, is categorized as a level one.
And that is for about a hundred compounds
where there is a lot of evidence of it causing cancer in humans
like alcohol, tobacco,
some of the petroleum products.
2A means the evidence in animals is clear;
it's, you know,
it's sufficient evidence in animals to show that it causes cancer.
What it means is now you know,
that there is limited evidence in humans
but the one that did actually have a lot of evidence was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
And there was a court case last week
that Monsanto lost where they were sued for causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
and the plaintiff was awarded just down the 300 million USD.
So,
another I wanna talk about to you
is the issue of what we call neuro toxicity.
Developmental neuro toxicity.
Where pesticides develop damage to developing nerves.
I showed you the example with glyphosate
and how that develops you know damages the developing nerves.
There is a lot of pesticides that are nerve poisons.
Things like organophosphates,
neonicotinoids are,
the carbonates,
the pyrethroids,
they damage nerves.
And actually, damage the development of nerves.
And what,
you know,
studies have also found when it comes to children
there is really no safe level
because as adults, we have enzymes in our liver
that can actually detoxify small amount of these chemicals.
The fetus
and the new born young children don't have these enzymes.
In other words, they have no way of detoxifying
the smallest amount of pesticides.
And so,
they
can be damaged by the smallest amounts.
That's what this means is,
you know, immediate direct effects on neural cells replication,
in other words, immediate effects on the growth of nerves. They...,
and don't forget that the brain is the biggest collection of nerves.
So, this is a very good example of this
by doctor Elizabeth Guillette,
it's looking at two groups of children in Sonora in Mexico.
One group lives in the valley
where there is farming and pesticide drift,
the other group lives in the mountain where,
where it's still traditional farming and no pesticides.
So, these are 4-year-old girls,
hese are the girls in the mountain, they got,
they drew picture of people just as
you expect 4-year-old girls to draw them, lovely pictures.
Look at these girls, same age,
they can't even do anything closely resembling a person.
That shows brain damage.
And that is because of pesticides exposure.
The regulatory authorities dismissed it
saying oh that's anecdotal that's not scientific,
it's no proof pesticides do that. But
since then in the literature
there is a lot of studies now that show very clearly
that smallest amount of pesticides
damages the development of brains in children, lower their IQs.
One of them,
try to find the lowest level, the threshold that was safe
and couldn't find a level that was safe.
In other words,
there is no level that is safe for children.
And I think what,
what is really important here
is that most people get their residues through the pesticides in food
and these cross the placenta and affect the growing fetus, the growing baby.
And it goes through breast milk.
So, this is an example of, of one very good study in
and where this is an important one is
they now use much more sophisticated techniques
to look at damage.
It's traditionally it was done by feeding animals
and slaughtering them and then cutting them up and looking at pieces of
their tissues under a microscope and comparing them.
And that still is a valid way of doing it but
you know, it's basically science from the early 40's and 50's
we, we actually... you know come along a lot further with science
and we can't really do that with children.
You can't really feed them, slaughter them
and then start looking at their organs under a microscope
to see what, what damage is being done
but there are techniques like, you know MRI scans, non-invasive ones
where we can look very clearly and see the differences.
So, this one here,
is a very good example of where they have looked at the MRI scans of new born
and actually found areas where there is brain damage.
And that brain damage has come
from pesticides that have crossed the placenta from the mothers
that have eaten what they consider is a normal American diet.
It's come from, in particular, in this case
they have tested one pesticide called Pyrophos,
which we are trying to ban for years
and Trump undid the ban recently but last week a judge,
actually this week I should say,
a judge in the US has ordered the ban being reinstated
and the Pyrophos is banned
it's long overdue when you see this.
But what I wanna say here is
what sort of society are we
that we grow food that damages the brains of our children,
gives cancer to people.
What idiotic society are we?
You know the romans used to
you know have lead line their vessels and drink lead
and of course that you know wasn't good for their health
but they didn't know it was damage. You know that, that was toxic.
The Chinese used to give immortality pills
to their emperor made of mercury.
That might have made their bodies immortal because they didn't decay
but didn't give them a much longer life span.
But they didn't know mercury was poisonous.
But we know these things are poisonous
we're using them because they are poison, poisonous,
and we are trying to pretend they are safe.
When the peer reviewed science shows, it's clearly not safe!
I think the saddest thing I wanna talk about, this is,
there is absolutely no need for these pesticides in farming.
It's the biggest mythology of all
"if we don't have pesticides we will starve"
it's actually the other way around.
If we continue using pesticides,
we will destroy our society.
What's you know, what is the future of our society
when you see the increase in autism, increases the cancer in children.
What are we doing?
We have to change if we are gonna survive.
This is an existential threat to our existence. And yet
we know enough that we can grow good healthy food
without using any of these poisons.
So, I just wanna go through this,
showing you why is it we are doing, studies of the soil.
Soil health is the basis of all.
And most pest and diseases are opportunistic.
If you build healthy soils,
we heard it yesterday with Hans,
healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy people, healthy planet.
And to give you an example
this is in Ethiopia
and this is wheat grown of compost; this is wheat with chemical fertilizers.
Now, they get wheat rust, stripe rust.
The composted wheat doesn't have it,
the chemical wheat has it.
That's the same soil,
the same climate,
the same level of disease spores—
everything is the same
except for one has a healthy soil using compost
instead of chemical fertilizers.
The chemical,
chemically fertilized wheat now needs to be sprayed with pesticides.
This is abnormal...
they are showing how conventional farms use you know have more pest then organic
spraying pesticides, you know,
does, how to say,
well it doesn't really get rid of pest but
those farms have to do it
because their plants are no longer resistant to pest and diseases.
This particular wheat was spread with fungicide,
had a rate of 1.6 tons per hectare,
it's the extra cost of fertilizer and extra cost of fungicide
for the farmer and a lower yield.
The one grown with compost it gave 6.5 tons per hectare
higher yield better quality.
The other one I suppose I would like to say
would be a healthy soil, healthy plants
which is healthy food for healthy people.
You know if you had a choice which wheat would you rather eat?
This one here
or this one here that is sick and has to be sprayed with fungicides?
That's the other issue I wanna get across.
What sort of food are we making in terms of our choices?
I think most people prefer to eat that.
The, you know,
I give you, this is an example, this is my own farm,
I am growing tropical fruits.
One of the fruits I grow is all sort of papayas
and here you see damage from one of the worst papaya pest in the Australia:
a fruit spotting bug.
And for years and years our farmers thought the key was the last toxic
Organochlorids, relatives of DDT called Endosulfan.
Very dangerous chemical.
It says the only one we can use to get rid of this bug.
And if you ban it we will get bankrupted.
That's what you hear all the time from farmers.
I wanna show you this.
So, this here is where it's fixed up,
you see the new papaya are growing, it's flowering,
it looks really healthy.
I didn't spray anything on it,
I have fixed up the soil nutrition.
And a plant has its own defense system.
What's clearly interesting here is that
I can actually,
the fruit spotting bugs
in the sick plants are really fast and virtually impossible to get.
When they are on a healthy plant,
the plant poisons them
and they are slow so I can pick them off,
so it means the birds can come in
and now pick them off really easily.
And that's how, you know, I can have clean and healthy papayas.
So,
we have heard a bit about this yesterday we had some really good examples
of putting flowers and functional biodiversity
into agricultural systems, agro-ecosystems.
And the word which I would really like to use is agro-ecology.
We heard Hans talked about it yesterday.
We got to move away from chemical science to ecological sciences.
What would the ecology, to give us our ecosystem functions?
And yesterday was very inspiring to hear the amount of talks about it.
So we talk about the beneficial insects. The natural enemies of pests.
The reason why we need flowers
is that many of them,
it's their larva stage that is the predator.
And in a lot of cases the adult stage they, they turn into vegans.
They live on nectar and pollen.
But very importantly
is when they emerge from being a larva to become adult,
they actually need the nectar and pollen
to reach sexual maturity.
They don't get that
they can't make the next generation of babies.
This is really important.
So,
for instance
in normal farms where all is spread out because it's a weed.
If any of these beneficial actually got in there
and they did breed the next generation won't breed
because they can't reach sexual maturity.
So we actually need this here for...
to help them grow and become sexual mature to get the next generation.
Then what they do, the mother would then lay the eggs on the pest
and then they hatch sometimes outside sometimes inside
if you have seen the film Alien
where, you know, the larva of alien emerges out of the stomach,
that's based on these parasitic wasps, these parasitoids.
But there are million species such as hoverflies, lacewings
that need flowers,
so we put as many flowers as we can into the system.
This is my own farm and what I have done underneath.
My neighbors think I am really messy
cause I am letting all these uncontrolled plants
but I actually think that looks quite beautiful myself,
and most of those sort of natives.
Some I've introduced for ecosystem services.
There is a different model,
this is in the USA
where you can actually put barriers of different flowers and plants
along the sides of your fields,
windbreaks.
Another really good way of managing, and creating Insectaries,
this is the word we use for these flowers and plants, insectaries,
is strip mowing.
So instead of mowing everything down and,
you know in the... we leave refugees of
tore plants flower and plants
for the beneficial insects
so for instance by leaving these refugees
we can double the amount of the beneficial in our system.
So in my own farm again, when I mow
I don't mow once I leave these strips like this, deliberately,
as a refuge, as insectary.
Cause if I mow this down,
and mowing all at once,
I destroy the homes of my beneficial.
I want to always have a refuge, somewhere for them.
So if I mow this,
mow that down, leave this,
when this is growing up at the same stage I'll mow that
but I'll have another area here that is growing up.
So always got somewhere on my farm
that is a home insectary full of biodiversity, functional biodiversity, that
I can use for pest control.
And doctor Chen talked about how I export, their export,
they export all around the world, they export rambutans to japan.
And my rambutans to go to japan they have to be perfect,
never had to spray because of this
This is an example in Bhutan,
and most farms have this sort of margin areas
that you know people regards as weeds.
You can start thinking about redesigning the system,
agro-ecology is about redesigning to bring in functional biodiversity.
And the word, when we use the word eco-intensification,
it's that we want to intensify these eco-functions by bringing in
more and more functional biodiversity into the system.
So, here
we have got different insectary plants,
these trees here, mostly have been used as fodder for feeding animals.
But you know as well as being for insects
these are great places for the little birds.
We heard yesterday about how good small birds are
at, you know,
feeding on pests.
Also, you know, frogs and lizards there is so many....
We provide a refuge for them.
The other one is, these systems provide biomass for compost.
And, which we can actually then use to put on our fields.
This is an example in Kenya
we have these,
they have these sorts of ways of a mixture of plants
and they do the same thing provide habitat for birds, frogs, lizards, insects.
They also act as barriers,
barriers are really important thing for pest and diseases.
If pest comes in, most likely it's gonna be eaten before it goes out
because of all the beneficial in there. All the little birds
and our beneficial insects.
It's a windbreak,
believe me
the benefits of windbreaks are increasing crop production are huge.
Stock feed again,
it can be harvested a lot of legumes, a lot of valuable plants in them.
Legumes provide free nitrogen
and, they are actually sustainably harvested.
This is for a field compost but also for biogas, for energy.
This is in Sichuan,
outside you know, few hours outside Chengdu
based on the old Chinese system.
I don't know, people read Farmers of 40 Centuries
hope you have because you guys are in the book.
It looks at traditional Chinese systems, and Korean systems.
And how they have been sustainable for 4 thousand years.
And,
this is a very good example:
really small little flowering plants that people regard as weeds.
The parasitic wasps,
they are very small, and actually prefer the really small flowers
because, the bees take the big flowers, they are like bully girls
and they bully the little wasps away
so they got these little insignificant flowers
that the bees aren't interested in,
they are very happy!
The other one is these sorts of little flowers that people regard as weeds
they are locally endemic.
So, they already have their locally endemic parasitoids,
beneficial with them.
You know, don't spray them out, don't remove them,
they are not doing any harm,
when we look at them as lovely little flowers and plants,
they are absolutely beautiful!
Change your aesthetics.
It's, you know...
But also, a plant of bamboo along the edges, barriers for pests.
You know there's so many things that you could do in these systems,
and they have also high biodiversity, in the planting system as well.
All of these add up
to some of the most high-efficient function.
These traditional systems, 4000 years old
are more productive than any of the broad monocultures
in the USA, Australia or Europe.
They produce more nutrition per hectare, health per acre
than any other system.
I went back a year later there,
and they cleared it all and planting tea trees for tea-tree oil
because that's a cash crop.
They have destroyed what you know,
what as far as I concerned was a highly productive well proven system.
This is my own farm;
I took this picture because I actually wanted to explain more
what we are doing with farming.
You know, faming we are actually collecting solar energy,
that's what leaves do, they are collecting solar energy,
convert it into glucose,
which is the basic building block of life.
And, I took this, because
I just wanted to show what I am doing here is collecting the light
that my cash crop,
this is my cash crop, rambutans.
And this is light that it's not using,
and I could use that light or that energy now for my ecosystem services.
This is a legume
and provides nitrogen
it has flowers that attracts the beneficial insects,
it dips in the soil it brings up trace elements in the soil cause
actually its roots go down meters and meters,
it works as a good green manure, increases the soil carbon,
it conserves water.
The other thing, these are living mulches,
what did I do then,
and well living mulches
it changes the ground so it's dry so It's not like here
I have a monsoon season and I have a dry season,
and having a living mulch stopping the sun from baking the ground
keeps the soil moist.
And you may have noticed that I am the messiest farmer, but the fact is
this is, what I would call, is good ecological practice.
I am using every bit of sunlight
to power my farm, to give the ecosystem services
so I don't have to use things,
you know chemical fertilizers and pesticides,
solar energy.
This is an example of the same in Italy, but
in, you know,
so what they are doing here is these are apricots,
and really important thing once again is that the cash crop
is getting the sunlight first, but
here in this space now this is where we use, this really is the cover crop
is using all the sunlight that
the cash crop isn't using for ecosystem services.
So, it's fixing nitrogen and carbon, we can use it as a green manure,
flowers attract beneficial insects so we get pest control
it's a living mulch, it conserves water.
You know, it's an example of best practice.
And so, then you have got one example of
what is regarded as best practice in conventional.
This is Spain, but if I would in California, or in my country
this is what I would see.
You know, this is the idea that anything that is not your crop is a weed
so you need to get rid of it, in any way you can.
And so, you want bare soil,
dead soil.
So, if you look at that, there is minimal solar capture.
Most of the solar energy falling on that farm is being wasted.
There is no fix of nitrogen or soil carbon
so you have to buy nitrogen-fertilizers-to put in,
no green manure, you know green manure
provides virtually all the nutrients you need
so you've got to buy all your fertilizers to put into this system.
You can't grow it,
you can't use solar energy to produce it for free.
No flowers to attract beneficial,
so what do you do? You have to use pesticides don't you.
Does not conserve water. You know,
nowadays you tell farmers to do this because weeds take water,
it's actually the other way around,
that bare soil gets heated up
and the capillary reaction puts all the water out.
You keep the right ground cover,
you would conserve water.
These systems I have showed before conserve water, these loose it.
And it's subject to wind and water control. So, look at the color of that soil,
it's lost its top soil,
it's lost all its soil carbon that's growing in the subsoil,
its lost, you know, the top soil is where all the fertility is,
it's gone.
They have to bring in synthetic fertility in forms of chemical fertilizers
because this system gets rid of it.
It's actually an example of worse practices in weed and soil management,
in every bit of management.
And yet that is regarded as best practice.
Yet this,
some would say that's full of weeds, she is a really bad farmer,
well she is actually best practice.
This one here
is what we need to avoid.
And what I wanna end on,
unfortunately this is corrupted, it doesn't matter...
what I wanna end on here is that
we have good evidences of organic yields are higher
than industrial agriculture.
And for instance, the Wisconsin integrated trials,
showed that the organic systems, after a few years,
had higher yields than the conventional industrial systems.
The Rodale farm system trials
actually showed up a 30 percent higher for organic, especially in drought years.
This is where they really, really do well.
The, this one here, Iowa state University,
some bushels
but you can see clearly that the organic
always got higher than the conventional.
Washington state, you know their yields for apples
were much the same.
I wanted to show these data from the United states
cause most people would regard conventional agriculture,
industrial agriculture of the united states
is the benchmark of a high yield.
That's what Hans showed yesterday,
that was regarded as the benchmark,
but the fact is now, we research,
we are getting higher yields from our organic
and agro-ecological regenerative systems.
Now I want you to take note of that
because that's one of the things that you can do as researchers,
is starting putting money into it.
As Hans said yesterday
less than one percent of all the billions of dollars
put in agriculture funding goes into agro-ecological systems.
And yet with that one percent
we can show we are already getting higher yields.
I would argue that the trillions of dollars
that have been spent on conventional agriculture being a waste of money
that largely subsidized the pesticides and agricultural companies.
If we could get a fraction of that money,
look what we have done with less than one percent
we increased that to 5 percent—
we would have a highly productive agriculture,
much more productive than it is now with no pesticides.
The, ok this has been corrupted again but anyway,
just wanna end on this one here, this is a looking at you know at
Africa,
and, you know people say you know say oh if we go organic,
we are not gonna be able to feed the world.
The majority of the people who are food insecure,
who need nourishment
live in the developing world.
And getting example of Africa,
this is a study done by two United Nation organization,
the United State conference on trade and development.
And you know United Nation food and agriculture organization.
And what they did is looking at 114 projects on 24 African countries.
It's actually 2 million hectares, 1.9 million farmers,
and on average the yields
were 116 percent higher than the traditional systems.
I think this is really important to say you know,
taking farmers in the developing world
from basically their traditional systems to organic by design,
agro-ecology by design,
we can more than double yields.
The, another really important thing,
we heard it yesterday that 75% of the world's food
comes from small farmers in the developing world,
according to the Food and Agricultural Organization,
80% of the food comes from the small farmers.
80% in the developing world.
You know,
we can double that easily with today's technology,
with what we know now, without even needing further research
we can double that,
so it's a myth we can't feed the world.
We can do it.
And I think I mean that's a really important thing to get across and also
because the majority of the world's food insecure people
live in the developing world.
We need to increase production there not grow more GMOs in Kansas
or in Australia and export to them.
We need to do that locally, with their systems,
and empower them to do it, and give them the knowledge.
That's really training.
It's pretty easy to do, and not a lot of money
and we could feed the world.
So especially what I wanna end on,
is really this again.
We've got 2 pathways.
One where we can make a better world, work with the ecology,
work with the environment,
and produce healthy food,
without any poisons,
work with nature,
bringing biodiversity into our systems,
and be more productive than we are now.
Or, continue down this path,
and kill our future.
You know, honestly,
the current path of industrial agriculture is a price we can't pay.
I hear people saying to me, oh organic food is too expensive,
well, how expensive is this?
How expensive is the...you're eating
fresh food and vegetables that are grown conventionally,
grown from industrial agriculture,
you think you are being healthy
and you are doing this to your children.
And what about the diseases that we have?
Now in the United States and the UK, life expectances are going down.
So I want to end on this. It's the...
the cost of this is too much, it has to stop.
And so, what I would say that,
going over to organic and regenerative systems,
that is our future and that is what we have to do.
So thank you.
