The future of good food in China | Matilda Ho

I was six when I had the first chance to learn what patience means.

My grandmother gave me a magic box as a birthday present,

which neither of us knew would become a gift for life.

I became obsessed with magic,

and at 20, I became an amateur dove magician.

This act of magic requires that I train my doves

to sit and wait inside my clothing.

As a young magician, I was always in a rush to make them appear,

but my teacher told me

the secret to the success of this magical act

is to make my doves appear only after they've waited patiently

in my tuxedo.

It has to be a mindful kind of patience,

the kind that took me some years to master.

When life took me to Shanghai seven years ago,

the mindful patience I learned became almost impossible to practice.

In China, where everyone and everything is in a hurry,

you need to outperform over 1.3 billion other people

to build a better life.

You hack the system, bend the rules,

circumvent the boundaries.

It is the same when it comes to food ...

except that when it comes to food,

impatience can have dire consequences.

In the haste to grow more, sell more,

4,000 years of agriculture in a country of rich natural resources

is spoiled by the overuse of chemicals and pesticides.

In 2016, the Chinese government revealed

half a million food safety violations in just nine months.

Alarmingly, one in every four diabetics in the world

now comes from China.

The stories around food

are scary and somewhat overwhelming,

and I told myself it's time to bring a mindful patience into the impatience.

When I say mindful patience,

I don't mean the ability to wait.

I mean knowing how to act while waiting.

And so, while I wait for the day

when a sustainable food system becomes a reality in China,

I launched one of China's first online farmers market

to bring local, organically grown produce to families.

When we went live, 18 months ago,

the food we could sell then was somewhat dismal.

We had no fruit and hardly any meat to sell,

as none that was sent to the lab passed our zero tolerance test

towards pesticides, chemicals, antibiotics and hormones.

I told our very anxious employees

that we would not give up until we've met every local farmer in China.

Today, we supply 240 types of produce

from 57 local farmers.

After almost one year of searching,

we finally found chemical-free bananas

grown in the backyards of villagers on Hainan Island.

And only two hours away from Shanghai,

on an island that even Google Maps does not have coordinates for,

we found a place where cows eat grass

and roam free under the blue sky.

We also work hard on logistics.

We deliver our customers' orders in as fast as three hours

on electric vehicles,

and we use biodegradable, reusable boxes

to minimize our environmental footprint.

I have no doubt that our offerings will continue to grow,

but it will take time,

and I know a lot more people are needed to shape the future of good food.

So last year, I founded China's first food tech accelerator and VC platform

to help start-ups to shape the future of good food

the way they want,

be that through using edible insects as a more sustainable source of protein

or using essential oils to keep food fresh for longer.

So, you may still ask:

Why are you trying to build a sustainable food system

by driving a patient movement

in a country where it's almost a crime to take it slow?

Because, for me,

the real secret to success is patience --

a mindful kind of patience

that requires knowing how to act while waiting,

the kind of patience I learned with my grandmother's magic box.

After all, we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors.

We borrow it from our children.

Thank you.

(Applause)