Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish

353,245 views ・ 2010-03-10

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:16
So, I've known a lot of fish in my life.
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I've loved only two.
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That first one,
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it was more like a passionate affair.
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It was a beautiful fish:
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flavorful, textured, meaty,
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a bestseller on the menu.
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What a fish.
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00:37
(Laughter)
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Even better,
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it was farm-raised to the supposed highest standards
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of sustainability.
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So you could feel good about selling it.
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I was in a relationship with this beauty
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for several months.
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One day, the head of the company called
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and asked if I'd speak at an event
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about the farm's sustainability.
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"Absolutely," I said.
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Here was a company trying to solve
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what's become this unimaginable problem for us chefs:
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How do we keep fish on our menus?
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01:17
For the past 50 years,
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we've been fishing the seas
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like we clear-cut forests.
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It's hard to overstate the destruction.
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Ninety percent of large fish, the ones we love --
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the tunas, the halibuts, the salmons, swordfish --
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they've collapsed.
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There's almost nothing left.
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So, for better or for worse,
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aquaculture, fish farming, is going to be a part of our future.
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A lot of arguments against it:
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Fish farms pollute -- most of them do anyway --
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and they're inefficient. Take tuna,
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a major drawback.
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It's got a feed conversion ratio
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of 15 to one.
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That means it takes fifteen pounds of wild fish
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to get you one pound of farm tuna.
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Not very sustainable.
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It doesn't taste very good either.
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So here, finally,
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was a company trying to do it right.
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I wanted to support them.
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02:18
The day before the event,
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I called the head of P.R. for the company.
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Let's call him Don.
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02:27
"Don," I said, "just to get the facts straight, you guys are famous
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for farming so far out to sea, you don't pollute."
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"That's right," he said. "We're so far out,
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the waste from our fish gets distributed,
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not concentrated."
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And then he added,
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"We're basically a world unto ourselves.
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That feed conversion ratio? 2.5 to one," he said.
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"Best in the business."
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2.5 to one, great.
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02:54
"2.5 what? What are you feeding?"
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02:56
"Sustainable proteins," he said.
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"Great," I said. Got off the phone.
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And that night, I was lying in bed, and I thought:
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What the hell is a sustainable protein?
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(Laughter)
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So the next day, just before the event, I called Don.
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03:14
I said, "Don, what are some examples of sustainable proteins?"
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He said he didn't know. He would ask around.
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03:21
Well, I got on the phone with a few people in the company;
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no one could give me a straight answer
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until finally, I got on the phone
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with the head biologist.
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Let's call him Don too.
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03:33
(Laughter)
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"Don," I said,
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03:39
"what are some examples of sustainable proteins?"
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Well, he mentioned some algaes
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and some fish meals,
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and then he said chicken pellets.
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I said, "Chicken pellets?"
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He said, "Yeah, feathers, skin,
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bone meal, scraps,
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dried and processed into feed."
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I said, "What percentage
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of your feed is chicken?"
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Thinking, you know, two percent.
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"Well, it's about 30 percent," he said.
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I said, "Don, what's sustainable
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about feeding chicken to fish?"
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(Laughter)
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There was a long pause on the line,
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and he said, "There's just too much chicken in the world."
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04:24
(Laughter)
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I fell out of love with this fish.
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04:32
(Laughter)
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04:34
No, not because I'm some self-righteous,
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goody-two shoes foodie.
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I actually am.
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04:41
(Laughter)
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No, I actually fell out of love with this fish because, I swear to God,
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after that conversation, the fish tasted like chicken.
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(Laughter)
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This second fish,
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it's a different kind of love story.
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It's the romantic kind,
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the kind where the more you get to know your fish,
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you love the fish.
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I first ate it at a restaurant
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in southern Spain.
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05:17
A journalist friend had been talking about this fish for a long time.
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She kind of set us up.
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(Laughter)
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It came to the table
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a bright, almost shimmering, white color.
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The chef had overcooked it.
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Like twice over.
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05:37
Amazingly, it was still delicious.
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05:40
Who can make a fish taste good
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after it's been overcooked?
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I can't,
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but this guy can.
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05:50
Let's call him Miguel --
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actually his name is Miguel.
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05:54
(Laughter)
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And no, he didn't cook the fish, and he's not a chef,
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at least in the way that you and I understand it.
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06:03
He's a biologist
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at Veta La Palma.
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It's a fish farm in the southwestern corner of Spain.
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It's at the tip of the Guadalquivir river.
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Until the 1980s,
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the farm was in the hands of the Argentinians.
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They raised beef cattle
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on what was essentially wetlands.
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They did it by draining the land.
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They built this intricate series of canals,
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and they pushed water off the land and out into the river.
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Well, they couldn't make it work,
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not economically.
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And ecologically, it was a disaster.
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It killed like 90 percent of the birds,
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which, for this place, is a lot of birds.
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And so in 1982,
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a Spanish company with an environmental conscience
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purchased the land.
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What did they do?
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They reversed the flow of water.
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They literally flipped the switch.
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Instead of pushing water out,
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they used the channels to pull water back in.
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They flooded the canals.
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They created a 27,000-acre fish farm --
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bass, mullet,
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shrimp, eel --
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and in the process, Miguel and this company
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completely reversed the ecological destruction.
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The farm's incredible.
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I mean, you've never seen anything like this.
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You stare out at a horizon
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that is a million miles away,
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and all you see are flooded canals
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and this thick, rich marshland.
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I was there not long ago with Miguel.
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He's an amazing guy,
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like three parts Charles Darwin and one part Crocodile Dundee.
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(Laughter)
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Okay? There we are slogging through the wetlands,
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and I'm panting and sweating, got mud up to my knees,
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and Miguel's calmly conducting a biology lecture.
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Here, he's pointing out a rare Black-shouldered Kite.
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Now, he's mentioning the mineral needs of phytoplankton.
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And here, here he sees a grouping pattern
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that reminds him of the Tanzanian Giraffe.
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It turns out, Miguel spent the better part of his career
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in the Mikumi National Park in Africa.
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I asked him how he became
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such an expert on fish.
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He said, "Fish? I didn't know anything about fish.
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I'm an expert in relationships."
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And then he's off, launching into more talk
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about rare birds and algaes
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and strange aquatic plants.
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And don't get me wrong, that was really fascinating, you know,
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the biotic community unplugged, kind of thing.
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It's great, but I was in love.
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And my head was swooning over that
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overcooked piece of delicious fish I had the night before.
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So I interrupted him. I said,
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"Miguel, what makes your fish taste so good?"
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He pointed at the algae.
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"I know, dude, the algae, the phytoplankton,
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the relationships: It's amazing.
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But what are your fish eating?
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What's the feed conversion ratio?"
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Well, he goes on to tell me
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it's such a rich system
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that the fish are eating what they'd be eating in the wild.
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The plant biomass, the phytoplankton,
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the zooplankton, it's what feeds the fish.
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The system is so healthy,
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it's totally self-renewing.
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There is no feed.
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Ever heard of a farm that doesn't feed its animals?
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09:33
Later that day, I was driving around this property with Miguel,
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and I asked him, I said, "For a place that seems so natural,
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unlike like any farm I'd ever been at,
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how do you measure success?"
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At that moment, it was as if
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a film director called for a set change.
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And we rounded the corner
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and saw the most amazing sight:
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thousands and thousands of pink flamingos,
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a literal pink carpet for as far as you could see.
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10:03
"That's success," he said.
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"Look at their bellies, pink.
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They're feasting."
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Feasting? I was totally confused.
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I said, "Miguel, aren't they feasting on your fish?"
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10:14
(Laughter)
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"Yes," he said.
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10:18
(Laughter)
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"We lose 20 percent of our fish
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and fish eggs to birds.
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Well, last year, this property
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had 600,000 birds on it,
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more than 250 different species.
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It's become, today, the largest
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and one of the most important
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private bird sanctuaries in all of Europe."
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I said, "Miguel, isn't a thriving bird population
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like the last thing you want on a fish farm?"
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10:51
(Laughter)
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10:53
He shook his head, no.
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10:55
He said, "We farm extensively,
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not intensively.
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This is an ecological network.
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The flamingos eat the shrimp.
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The shrimp eat the phytoplankton.
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So the pinker the belly,
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the better the system."
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Okay, so let's review:
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a farm that doesn't feed its animals,
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and a farm that measures its success
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on the health of its predators.
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A fish farm, but also a bird sanctuary.
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Oh, and by the way, those flamingos,
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they shouldn't even be there in the first place.
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They brood in a town
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150 miles away,
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where the soil conditions
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are better for building nests.
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Every morning, they fly
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150 miles into the farm.
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And every evening, they fly 150 miles back.
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(Laughter)
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They do that because they're able to follow
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the broken white line
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of highway A92.
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12:01
(Laughter)
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12:03
No kidding.
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12:05
I was imagining a "March of the Penguins" thing,
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so I looked at Miguel.
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I said, "Miguel, do they fly
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150 miles to the farm,
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and then do they fly
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150 miles back at night?
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Do they do that for the children?"
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He looked at me like I had just quoted a Whitney Houston song.
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(Laughter)
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He said, "No; they do it because the food's better."
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12:31
(Laughter)
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I didn't mention the skin of my beloved fish,
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which was delicious -- and I don't like fish skin;
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I don't like it seared, I don't like it crispy.
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It's that acrid, tar-like flavor.
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I almost never cook with it.
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Yet, when I tasted it at that restaurant in southern Spain,
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it tasted not at all like fish skin.
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It tasted sweet and clean,
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like you were taking a bite of the ocean.
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I mentioned that to Miguel, and he nodded.
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He said, "The skin acts like a sponge.
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It's the last defense before anything enters the body.
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It evolved to soak up impurities."
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And then he added,
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"But our water has no impurities."
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OK. A farm that doesn't feed its fish,
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a farm that measures its success
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by the success of its predators.
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And then I realized when he says,
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"A farm that has no impurities,"
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he made a big understatement,
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because the water that flows through that farm
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comes in from the Guadalquivir River.
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It's a river that carries with it
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all the things that rivers tend to carry these days:
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chemical contaminants,
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pesticide runoff.
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And when it works its way through the system
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and leaves,
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the water is cleaner than when it entered.
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The system is so healthy, it purifies the water.
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So, not just a farm that doesn't feed its animals,
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not just a farm that measures its success
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by the health of its predators,
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but a farm that's literally a water purification plant --
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and not just for those fish,
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but for you and me as well.
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Because when that water leaves, it dumps out into the Atlantic.
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A drop in the ocean, I know,
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but I'll take it, and so should you,
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because this love story,
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however romantic,
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is also instructive.
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You might say it's a recipe
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for the future of good food,
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whether we're talking about bass or beef cattle.
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What we need now is
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a radically new conception of agriculture,
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one in which the food actually tastes good.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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But for a lot people,
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that's a bit too radical.
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We're not realists, us foodies;
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we're lovers.
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We love farmers' markets,
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we love small family farms,
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we talk about local food,
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we eat organic.
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And when you suggest these are the things
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that will ensure the future of good food,
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someone, somewhere stands up and says,
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"Hey guy, I love pink flamingos,
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but how are you going to feed the world?"
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How are you going to feed the world?
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Can I be honest?
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I don't love that question.
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No, not because we already produce
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enough calories to more than feed the world.
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One billion people will go hungry today.
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One billion -- that's more than ever before --
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because of gross inequalities in distribution,
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not tonnage.
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Now, I don't love this question because it's determined the logic
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of our food system for the last 50 years.
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Feed grain to herbivores,
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pesticides to monocultures, chemicals to soil,
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chicken to fish,
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and all along agribusiness
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has simply asked,
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"If we're feeding more people more cheaply,
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how terrible could that be?"
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That's been the motivation,
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it's been the justification:
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it's been the business plan
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of American agriculture.
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We should call it what it is:
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a business in liquidation,
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a business that's quickly eroding
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ecological capital that makes that very production possible.
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That's not a business,
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and it isn't agriculture.
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Our breadbasket is threatened today,
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not because of diminishing supply,
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but because of diminishing resources.
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Not by the latest combine and tractor invention,
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but by fertile land;
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not by pumps, but by fresh water;
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not by chainsaws, but by forests;
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and not by fishing boats and nets, but by fish in the sea.
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Want to feed the world?
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Let's start by asking: How are we going to feed ourselves?
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Or better: How can we create conditions
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that enable every community
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to feed itself?
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(Applause)
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To do that,
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don't look at the agribusiness model for the future.
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It's really old, and it's tired.
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It's high on capital, chemistry and machines,
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and it's never produced anything really good to eat.
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Instead, let's look to the ecological model.
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That's the one that relies on two billion years
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of on-the-job experience.
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Look to Miguel,
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farmers like Miguel.
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Farms that aren't worlds unto themselves;
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farms that restore instead of deplete;
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farms that farm extensively
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instead of just intensively;
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farmers that are not just producers,
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but experts in relationships.
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Because they're the ones
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that are experts in flavor, too.
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And if I'm going to be really honest,
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they're a better chef than I'll ever be.
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You know, I'm okay with that,
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because if that's the future of good food, it's going to be delicious.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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