Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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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. For bioengineer Karsten Temme, it all starts with a simple jar of soil and the belief that the future of farming is already alive and well beneath our feet.
In his talk, he shares how re-engineering microbes could allow us to replace much of the world's synthetic fertilizer. It would open up the huge potential to cut down on costs and environmental harm, all while increasing yields from large farms in the U.S. and Brazil to the smallholder plots in Kenya and beyond.
This jar contains a few ounces of soil, but what you can't see is that it's teeming with life. The microbes inside are poised to become farmers' greatest tool and transform how we feed humanity. I'm Karsten Temme, founder of PivotBio, and I have dedicated my career to studying these microbes. They can and will revolutionize agriculture.
So from the plow to the grain combine, humans have invented tools to grow more on the same amount of land. Fertilizer is the greatest of these, all those nutrients that a plant combines with sunlight to grow. Here's an example. In the 1950s, American farmers produced 2,600 kilos of corn per hectare.
Today, there are yield competitions where the winners can generate more than 32,000 kilos on the same amount of land, in a large part because of the fertilizers they can use to fuel that crop. It's just amazing. But for all the good it does, fertilizer is an inelegant solution. Last year, farmers around the globe spent more than $200 billion on nitrogen fertilizers alone.
they spray it on their fields and then pray that roots can find it before it's lost. Because if that fertilizer is lost, the crop can end up starved of its nutrients and stunted in its yields. Those losses also translate to unintended consequences. Some becomes nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that's 265 times more potent than CO2.
Some seeps into our groundwater, and some runs into our rivers and oceans, creating more than 500 dead zones around the planet. So there's got to be a better way. And I'm here today to tell you that there is, and it's rooted in biology. You see, 78 percent of the air around us is nitrogen gas.
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Chapter 2: What ancient partnership is crucial for crop growth?
We made it our mission to get those genes working again. So here's how that went. We collected soil samples from farms across the United States. We extracted the microbes, we reprogrammed their DNA and we cranked that nitrogen-fixing function to 11. Then one day in the lab, we saw there was a test tube with a tiny corn seed germinating.
Our microbes were living along the roots of that plant, producing nitrogen and sharing it with that tiny plant. That test tube represented a breakthrough. We had shown that we could create microbes that could sense and respond to the plant's nutrient needs in real time. We thought we had just solved agriculture. Well, spoiler alert, not quite.
Across the last 15 years, we have been working to transform this breakthrough into a system that serves farmers on three continents today. I believe that across the next decade, we can help farmers reduce half of the fertilizer that they need.
Chapter 3: How can re-engineering microbes reduce synthetic fertilizer use?
So what I want to do is take you on a quick little journey to meet three of the farmers that are using these microbes right now. So meet John. He's a corn farmer in Michigan who runs a 1,295-hectare farm. Now, it's a complex operation, and he's got a lot of variables to manage, so he doesn't need any more. John's turned to Pivot for the last five years to simplify his life.
Each year, we've sent him a little less than four kilograms of freeze-dried powdered microbes, and he's coated his seeds with the microbes, planted them as normal. Once in the ground, those microbes have gone to work. They eat sugars from the crop, they fix nitrogen and share it back with the plants. And then when the crop's harvested, those microbes die, ensuring they only do what we intend.
Now, they're operating at the cutting edge, alongside satellite mapping and soil monitoring, slow-release fertilizers and precision machinery. It means that yields at John's farm have boomed. His dad regularly applied more than 225 kilos of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare and generated about 8,500 kilos of corn.
Today, John's able to apply less than 140 kilos of fertilizer, and yields have risen to 11,500 kilos on that same land. It's amazing, and what gives me the most pride is that our microbes are helping make his job easier while increasing his bottom-line profitability. And John's not alone. Our microbes have been used on as much as 5 percent of the US corn crop.
So if you'll zoom with me about 7,000 kilometers south, I'd like to introduce you to Charles. Now, Charles runs a large farm in Brazil. Brazil is an agricultural powerhouse. It's one of the world's top three corn producers. Yet yields average just about 6,000 kilos per hectare, so there's a lot of room for upside improvement. One of the biggest limiting factors is nitrogen fertilizer.
Brazil imported more than 80 percent of its nitrogen fertilizers last year, and that's something it's looking to reverse through microbes, both with us and others. So Pivot's been working with the Ministry of Agriculture to test and adapt our products ahead of commercial sales.
And I'd like to give you a little bit of a look into Charles' farm, where he's counting on those microbes to supply about 30 kilos of nitrogen alongside the 120 kilos of nitrogen fertilizer he's applying every acre. That's about 25 percent less than he normally would use.
Now, the crop's a couple weeks away from harvest, but what you'll see is the plants are larger, greener, they're healthier, they've got bigger root systems. All that sets up the crop to be more resilient in the face of an unpredictable climate. It also means that's a bigger factory for producing higher yields at better profitability. This is a boon for Charles' operation.
It's also an opportunity for Brazil to have strategic independence, because these microbes can be brewed like beer close to the farm. That means no more reliance on foreign chemicals or global supply chains. We're also working in Kenya, and I'd like to introduce you to Margaret. Now, every morning, Margaret wakes at 4 a.m. and she walks five kilometers to reach her small plot of land.
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