A Cleaner World Could Start in a Rice Field | Jim Whitaker and Jessica Whitaker Allen | TED

Jim Whitaker: I grew up on a family farm.

My family's been farming for 130 years in southeast Arkansas,

and I'm a fifth generation farmer.

We raise cotton, rice, corn and soybeans,

along with my brother Sam,

our extended families

and a lot of great coworkers, could not do it without them.

So when I was 16 years old,

I came home from school one day.

It was my dad's birthday.

My birthday was three days later.

I expected in some type of party event.

But my dad had just went through the historic 1980 drought,

and when I got home that day, my mom was crying,

my dad was trying to console her,

and there's a foreclosure letter on the bar.

We thought we were going to lose the family farm

that we had had in our family for generations.

Luckily, we did not lose the farm,

but he still struggled financially.

When I was 22 years old, after a little time in the army,

I decided I was going to start farming.

So my brother and I rented a farm.

My dad couldn't help us, he didn't have the finances.

He could not help us get started.

Farming is very capital-intensive business.

And so we got an FHA beginning farmer loan.

And let me tell you something about renting a farm

when you're 22 years old.

No one rents you a farm unless no one else wants to rent it.

(Laughter)

It was a big piece of land, it was cash rent.

I mean, the stakes were set.

We were doomed to fail.

And we weren't focused on environmental sustainability back then.

We were focused on economic sustainability.

How do we make higher yield, how do we use less fertilizer?

How do we get to the next year and feed our family?

And ...

It happens that economic and environmental sustainability go hand in hand

along with social sustainability.

As we used less fertilizer, used less water,

our yields started going up.

It was just a great thing.

So one of the first things we did on our rice fields,

we adopted a technique that's a little different.

We leveled our fields completely flat.

This is called zero-grade.

Rice all over the world is grown in a flooded environment.

Everywhere.

And most people use the natural contour of the Earth

to cascade the water down and let the water flow downhill.

And there are always, we call it continuous flood.

They continuously put water on their fields.

And we leveled ours flat with a perimeter road.

And what that perimeter road lets us do is capture rainfall.

So we actually pump less water, we are able to use less water,

we have less runoff, less erosion, less nutrients leaving our field.

Nothing leaves our field unless we want it to.

So I get around farmers

and I tell them about potential carbon credits and other things,

and our family was lucky,

we were one of the first ever in the world

to sell agricultural carbon credits in 2016 to Microsoft using this protocol

that we've designed on rice.

And I got that --

Let me just back up a little bit and tell you how I got that.

I didn't get that on my own.

I met two very instrumental people.

One was Dr. Merle Anders.

He is the world-renowned greenhouse gas expert,

and he started mentoring me.

The other was a buyer from Mars Foods,

and we were in a leadership class together.

And we started talking and we started thinking about sustainability.

So that's how my journey started.

But you know, when I tell other farmers

that they could potentially sell carbon credit,

they could help companies reduce their scope 3 emissions,

they could save money,

possibly enroll in environmental climate-smart practices

for the government,

they say, "I'm just trying to get by."

Farming is a generational business.

People have been doing things, passed down father to son, father to son.

And you'll see, father to daughter, here in a minute.

It's passed down generationally,

and we only get one chance a year to make a mistake.

So when you tell people about doing things that are outside their norm,

it scares the heck out of them.

So I found a different way of talking to them about it.

I say, "Well, you know, you could save 40 to 50 dollars

on your pumping cost.

You could sell a carbon credit.

You could get paid more by a company for doing the right thing."

This starts to pique their interest.

Risk mitigation is how we're going to get farmers involved.

We are a for-profit industry,

so they're not going to do anything that they think hurts their yields.

So Jessica,

went to college, got a business degree, a sustainability minor,

went on to get her MBA, emphasis on finance.

Now she's back helping me.

Not all the time on the family farm.

She works for Ducks Unlimited,

one of the most aggressive conservationists in the rice industry.

They are an awesome partner to work with.

She's back working with Ducks Unlimited,

but she's been helping me with protocols and data collection.

One of the things that I wanted to figure out was,

number one: What’s important?

How are we going to quantify it?

And then how are we going to sell that data?

Because everyone here wants to know, "Can we have your data?"

No, you can't.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Anyway, so we're trying to figure out how to quantify that.

So we established what is called the Smart Rice protocol.

We partner with a global seed company, RiceTec,

and we have one of the first ever --

there's a couple more --

I promise you it's the most rigorous,

but we have one of the first ever third-party verified,

sustainable rice packages that hit the market a few months ago,

and we’re trying to get in retail locations.

And then we’re also helping some major end users with their scope 3.

And I think that's going to be the future.

But Jessica's role in growing rice is much different than mine,

and she's part of the next generation to come take over our family farm.

(Applause)

Jessica Whitaker Allen: I'm a sixth generation farmer.

Growing up, I remember running around outside barefoot,

catching as many snakes, turtles, frogs as possible,

and then trying to convince my parents to let me keep them inside as pets.

(Laughter)

Eventually, my dad bought me an aquarium,

and we had fun with that for a little while inside

until a few of the snakes got lost in our house

and we never found them.

Sorry.

(Laughter)

We live and work in southeast Arkansas.

McGehee, specifically.

Our town has 4,000 residents and one stoplight.

The nearest airport, Starbucks, shopping mall, Whole Foods,

is two hours away in any direction.

Without places like this and farmers like us,

you'd be hungry, naked and sober.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

I sometimes jokingly say that I have three,

sometimes four full-time jobs,

but I really have three or four full-time jobs.

My day job is as a conservation coordinator with Ducks Unlimited

under the Rice Stewardship Partnership.

I work alongside rice farmers to protect,

restore and manage wetlands for waterfowl.

Waterfowl spend a lot of time in rice fields, by the way.

I’m also a wife, mother,

and I do anything and everything I can for our family farm.

The last one doesn't pay the bills,

but it's hard to say no to my dad.

So when he sent me an email about a grant he was interested in

a little over a year ago, I got to work.

My dad releases the butterflies and I have to catch them.

I have to figure out how to do what's going on,

whatever is in his mind.

He's the thinker, I'm the doer.

This grant specifically was the USDA's partnerships

for climate-smart commodities.

I submitted a proposal on behalf of our farm,

and it was successfully selected.

We are going to work with farmers in southeast Arkansas

to educate them about the benefits of growing sustainable rice.

We're going to work with veterans, immigrants,

limited-resource and socially disadvantaged farmers.

Farmers that aren't so different from my family just a few generations ago.

We will then implement pay-for-practices

such as alternate wetting and drying, cover crop, no till and low till.

We will then help them learn about

and document their greenhouse gas benefits.

Monitor, measure, report and verify them.

Then market and sell that rice, at a premium,

to help them realize the benefits of producing sustainable rice.

The economic advantage.

I'm a farmer, but not in the way you might think.

I don’t drive the tractors, and I don’t plant the rice.

But I know how to take what my dad has learned

and what he is doing and share that with others.

I know how to interpret the data

and see the reduction in inputs

that has both an economic and an environmental impact.

I don't know if that alone is enough to stop climate change,

but I'm surrounded by farmers that are doing everything they can

to be more sustainable.

I think my brother and I will take over the farm someday

if my dad lets us.

And hopefully when my son is old enough,

I'll take him out on the farm and show him what I do.

I'll tell him he can go do whatever he wants to do,

and hopefully one day I'll see him back on the farm,

the seventh generation.

But for that to happen,

we need a sustainable farming industry,

one that rewards trailblazers and early adopters

instead of penalizing them.

Farmers like my family

who are on the front lines of sustainable rice production.

JW: So Jessica mentioned alternate wetting and drying.

And I think in my haste, I left it out.

So let me tell you what it is.

It is when we flood a rice field continuously, like my dad taught us,

we put four inches of water on it.

We have an evaporation rate of about a quarter inch a day,

so we have about 16 days of available water.

Rice is an anaerobic crop.

It's grown in flooded conditions.

When the soil starts to dry,

the microbial community goes dormant,

and the field stops emitting methane emissions.

Let me tell you why that's important.

There are 400 million acres of rice grown globally.

It is the largest emitter of methane gas.

It is the largest user of irrigation water,

and our methods, if used, can reduce greenhouse gas by 50 percent,

reduce water use by 50 percent,

increase yields to feed a hungry world.

(Applause)

JWA: If our protocols were adopted more widely,

can you imagine the benefits?

If you take care of the planet, it will take care of you.

That's true for farmers and for all of us.

Farmers take care of consumers,

take care of all of you every single day.

It's time for you to start taking care of farmers.

Thank you.

JW: Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)