Join forward-looking discussions at Davos 2026 on bold food innovations from personalized nutrition to sustainable supply chains and smarter agriculture.
At Davos 2026’s “Food @ the Edge,” leaders argued that food must become the next major frontier for technology, not as novelty but as necessity. Shiru CEO Jasmin Hume framed the stakes bluntly: “we already need 1.7 Earths,” and food decisions “impact our climate three times a day.” Her company uses AI to “turn the lights on” in a vast “library” of 77 million natural proteins, but she warned that scaling deep food tech is colliding with collapsing capital: investment fell from $20.7B in 2021 to $1.7B by mid-2025.
Illycaffè Chairman Andrea Illy emphasized climate resilience and farmer livelihoods, noting coffee could lose “50% of the suitable land,” while 12.5 million micro-growers—many below poverty—produce most supply. His prescription: pair technology with cultural change, shifting from “nature or culture” to “nature and culture,” and communicate benefits with “simple messages.”
AGRA President Alice Ruhweza highlighted women farmers’ barriers—especially finance—and pointed to credit scoring via satellite and transaction data, mobile advisory, and predictive models that make regenerative transitions tangible. Farmers, said WFO’s Arnold R.D. Isaac, see AI as competitiveness, but worry about power: “who owns the AI?” The session ended with a shared conclusion: trust, governance, and measurable outcomes will determine whether innovation delivers equity and food security.
A very good morning to us all. I hope we've had enough coffee this morning to be ready for a great conversation. We're asking together what bold innovations will redefine the consumer experience. We have farmers in the room because I'm going to include redefine the the farmer experience as well. Making food systems smarter, sustainable and equitable at scale and at scale is a key point here. So I'm really grateful to you for agreeing to speak and inspire us with why do we need to ask that question? What can we do about it? And really, how do we how do we trust that system as well and scale it up so we all benefit? So let me introduce our our amazing speakers this morning. And let me introduce also how we're going to run this session. So first to my right Jasmine. Jasmine Hume is a serial innovator. You're the founder and CEO of Shiru, which is a company which has been recognized by time as one of the best innovations in 2024, or even the best innovation in 2024. One of. Okay, okay. You focus currently on AI protein discovery. And you're also a partner at X Factor Ventures. So I'm really excited to hear what you think. The future can look like. To my left, Andrea Eley, is chairman of Illy Cafe, of course, and Illy cafe. I mean, you're the the the innovation started in the 30s and 40s with pressurized packaging and has gone all the way through, and the most recent thing that I have tried to read in Italian, but I'm looking forward to reading in, in English when it comes out in the spring. Is your book on regenerative society? And I'm really interested to to hear how innovation fits into that. Alice Ruiz, you are president of Agra, an amazing organization. And prior to that, of course, history as regional director at the World Wildlife Fund, UNDP, you know, so a really broad experience of how we apply innovation and build together at scale. So thank you for for taking the time out this morning to explore the way we're going to run this is that we are going to hear from our speakers and then open the floor to questions. I am thrilled that in the audience we have Arnold. R d Isac excuse me, I'll get that correct. Who is, of course, president of the World Farmers Organization. And because farmers need to be at the center of this conversation, we will bring you in early. So I hope you're going to be ready, even if you hadn't prepared for that. So, Jasmine, as an NGO and a consumer advocate, sometimes I'm like, but but food systems. Why, why why do we need to be talking about technology at the edge? Can't we make this work through other means? Help me understand what brought you into, applying your technological brilliance to the food system. Why? And then what can we do? Help inspire me.
Okay, good. Good. Prompt. So I am a futurist, and I'm a technologist at heart. My background is not in food science. It's in biomedical science. But once I started to understand and really think about how we're utilizing the resources on our planet today to sustain our existing population, we already need 1.7 Earths. We are growing the population and the food system contributes to the majority of land use, water use, energy use. I think that it's often not talked about that we make decisions that impact our climate three times a day when we eat food. And so thinking about these problems and being a technologist, I've always thought about what are the most efficient, most powerful, most impactful ways to be able to improve people's lives, but also do that in a way that doesn't come at a cost to our planetary resources? For me, the answer to that is actually in technology and science. It's a tough, you know, road to path to walk, because in many industries, including, you know, our smartphone technologies and wearables to our cars and trains and digital resources, technology is viewed as a huge benefit to our lives in those ways. It is much more complicated to involve science and technology in the same discussion as food. The average consumer doesn't have the understanding of that. Science can actually create products that are healthier, more shelf stable, more scalable, lower the costs of the food that are healthy and that provide nutrition at a global scale. But in fact, that's true. And so we are really excited to be able to apply technologies that might have been born to solve challenges originally in other industries and to provide those advanced solutions into solving massive challenges within the food systems. We think specifically about how we can better leverage our planetary resources, including compounds from plants and agriculture. Basically shining a light on what the most functional molecules and compounds are within crops that already support the global food system. So if you think about kind of walking into a library and you're trying to find the book that you're looking for, it's like doing that with the lights off. And when you're using AI and advanced technologies, you've turned the lights on and you can find what you need now. And so we're doing that at scale with a database of 77 million natural proteins to create peptides, proteins that can act as health impacting beneficial compounds to help the food system.
Brilliant. Now setting up a new company is incredibly difficult. I mean, you're fighting against an existing system. Can you? What would help you scale? What for? You would unlock the ability for your organization to actually provide those technologies at scale.
Yeah. So we have very intentionally decided to be a B2B company. I think that in the food space it's really hard to do both like very, very deep technology as an early stage company and also have brand presence and recognition on the shelves. And so we've always thought that the best way for us to create massive impact is by supporting the large food companies that don't go all the way into innovation on ingredients. And so, you know, these are everything about it is challenging. Frankly, we're operating in a business model where we're essentially licensing technology to large CPG players and ingredients businesses. And so this is a business model that's familiar in the pharmaceutical space. It is much less familiar in the food space. So there's innovation on the business model. You have to incentivize these corporates to be able to take innovation risk, which isn't always embedded. And then I think also, you know, having to address the financial requirements of scaling a deep tech company to address food, in 2021, food tech investments were at $20.7 billion globally. Halfway into 2025, that number came down to 1.7 billion. Without investment in technology, we are going to continue to have strains on our supply chains. We're going to not be able to create healthy products at scale, and it's going to have detrimental effects in terms of health span and also environmental resourcing.
Yeah. Let me turn to you, Andrea. I'm going to ask you the same sort of why what does this look like? I'm going to quote from your book actually in English I apologize, but change requires both technological and even more profound cultural and institutional transformation. Okay, tell me a bit more about that. What are we heading towards? What is your your vision? How does technology fit into that and what does it.
Absolutely. So I will start from coffee. Please do. Why is because coffee makes you live better and longer. So it's essential for our life. My life starts every day after the first cup of Ely. So and so. Therefore we need to definitely do whatever it takes to improve this industry. And, second way is that the two major things to improve are, climate resilience, because we are going to lose 50% of the suitable land for coffee agriculture, climate resilience is possible with climate smart agronomic practices, with irrigation, with the plant renovation, with even developing new area production at higher altitudes or latitudes. But it needs to mobilize capital and knowledge. And this is what we are trying to do. And the second, the third way in coffee is that 85% of the coffee land is cultivated by micro growers. 12.5 million micro growers owning on average less than one hectare each, and half of them living below the threshold of poverty, which I consider unacceptable from the ethical point of view that the product of our well-being actually is extracted from a poor ecosystems. So we need that. We need to fix that, these two problems in order to maximize the benefit. It's a virtuous cycle. It's a commitment that all the coffee community took by signing a statement, which is now an official paper at the United Nations, the so-called Milan Coffee legacy at the time of the Expo. Milan, you know, remember that when it comes to agriculture, the why is even we don't speak so much. But if you consider a systemic approach, no climate but environment, because the climate crisis is a consequence of the environmental one, and then you take the double impact, also the social one. So you start considering land use, land use, water depletion, biodiversity loss, pollution emissions, health, inclusivity and prosperity. Agriculture number 11122111, etc.. So by far the priority number one, because it's existential for us at least at the same level of priority as energy. And this is not at that high level in, in the, let's say, priority list. Why is not this high level? Because we miss a systemic approach in the way we, let's say, approach the so-called green transition. So this is, there are some paradoxes, like having two cups, one from climate and one from biodiversity when the two things come together. So I think that there has been an enormous, dualism between nature, forgetting that it provides 100% of our living factors and culture, pretending that culture meant a science. Technology can replace nature. We need to re reconvene, let's say, the two factors, and replace the conjunction, not nature or culture, but nature and culture. And this is why also to, let's say, accelerate the corrective actions we would need to maximize the use of any possible technology, starting with AI, biotechnology, food tech, in order to create this, prosperous and healthy, agricultural ecosystem that you're referring to.
Alice, let me come to you next. 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer. That's particularly important, on the African continent. Can you tell me a little bit about. You know what that means? Why? Why is innovation important for the woman farmer? How do you approach innovation? And, what do you think is the most important innovation that we could drive in 2026?
Yeah. Tough questions. Right. Okay. So, so in terms of the women, I mean, I'll start with my own experience because I grew up with parents who were farmers. And naturally, the role of a woman is to feed her family, and therefore, they are the ones who are really cultivating that land. I think 60% in Africa, are responsible for producing the food and the the legislation and the policies are not always in favor for for them because they are not at the table when those policies are being made and they don't always get the right price for the good, they don't always get access to finance. Actually, that's really the toughest part. They struggle to access, the loans or to access finance. It's much harder for them than anybody else because they don't have those opportunities. And so the International Year for a woman farmer is very important in that respect. But also the fact that technology, technology, we've seen technology come in, especially in terms of the credit scoring, because we've seen, for example, the platforms that are using transaction data, satellite imagery to assess credit worthiness and to unlock, they are able to unlock finance for farmers who've never even had a credit score. So we're seeing more and more uptake of those. And for women, that is very important because they are the ones who are always left behind. We're seeing more mobile based advisory services reaching people faster. SMS has been very, very powerful in terms of voice based platforms that deliver weather alerts in terms of pest outbreak warnings, market prices in local languages. That's all been exciting. And again, women are at the center of all of this. And when we talk also about regenerative and we've talked about regenerative practices, I think one of the biggest challenges that we don't talk about is the transition challenges. How long does it take to see the benefits from regenerative agriculture? It takes up 2 to 3 seasons to do that. But now with technology, with predictive modeling, farmers can see that trajectory. They can start to see that, okay, I'm doing this and it will take me two years to to see the benefits. We are piloting satellite based monitoring in places like Ghana and Mali. And we're looking at soil health indicators that tell us that yields need 3 to 5 years timelines to increase. So when the farmer sees your soil, organic matter will increase by 15% in year three, it makes the transition more tangible. And I can actually can actually go and get a loan for that. You can get access to finance. And I think the transition pathway to be able to say to see these, the modeling to show that these are the these are regenerative practices that will deliver the highest returns, and these are the ones that will not. So information is power information where it wasn't existing before. The data is power. And the data also enables women to play a more equal role now in the market because they have information and they have power. So that is extremely important.
Thank you. Let me bring Arnold. Let me bring you in because we've started exploring from the farmer perspective how important, you know, as we talk here about innovation, what are the types of innovations that farmers will benefit from in your view?
You know, the farmer need to be competitive always. And AI is a tool to improve our competitiveness and to keep affordable price for the consumer. And, efficiency of all the actions we make on the farm, you know, the weather forecast, the analyze of the weather forecast, the, the analysis of the of the market, is it time to sell or not? Is it time to grow or not? Is it time to, fight a pest or, risk of drought? Is it we have if we have a risk of flood, it's time to harvest earlier. Really, AI can be very useful, but it starts already. We use AI more and more if you have a tractor. Now, with the GPS, it's AI will drive your tractor in your field, and you increase your efficiency, you diminish, your cost of production, and we have to to. And we do that more and more and more. And the new robot, who milked the cow? The the robot will kill the weed by burning, the weed or low till it's it's a high. And when the people want to do that, when it's too expensive to use manual, things when you have any more. The pesticide for, doing this job. AI is a tool, for helping the farmer and serving the consumers at the same time. I know you are very interesting, but.
I'm going to bring it.
Back to the consumer. And I'm always a farmer looking at the demands of the consumers.
Brilliant. Thank you. All right. So we've started that first round. Why. And we've talked about a range of different types of technologies and what we could do. I'm going to bring it back to the consumer because this is now how do we build trust in that. How do we make sure this is equitable. How do we make sure. Because, you know, if we don't have that pull from the farmer to the consumer, you know, the system in between is not is not going to work. So I'll come back to you, Jasmine, as you develop these technologies, what would you want in place to to know that okay, those are going to get then trusted. And you're going to get that pull into the marketplace and that they're going to work for us.
Yeah. So we work hand in hand with large food and beverage companies to be able to make sure that, we are really addressing the major challenges that they're facing. Right now, the food industry is under an unprecedented amount of stress. There are increasing and ever evolving consumer expectations in terms of the foods that they're purchasing and prioritizing. There are improvements that are required on the health and nutrition of these products that are being delivered to the market. And, of course, from a corporate responsibility perspective, it's also considering how we're impacting the supply chains and the environment in bringing those foods to market in the United States. There's been a lot of talk recently from Make America Healthy Again and how we need to take a really close look at some compounds, like synthetic additives and dyes, that have been in the food system for many decades now in the United States, maybe not in other countries that are now coming under scrutiny. Walmart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States. Last year, in October announced that in their private brand products, they were going to be removing about 30 different ingredient additives from formulation. Do you want to know the timeline for that? January 2027, a year from now is their target for that? I can't even imagine the reformulation scrambling that's happening in the team right now, and I would love to know what tools those teams are relying on to be able to innovate and reformulate at that speed. I can tell you they're underequipped. It's really, really difficult to be able to do that level of reformulation and not to mention the regulation that has to happen at the same pace. So if you're taking all these ingredients out of these food products, what are you going to put in in the United States now, simultaneously, this is governed by the FDA under the generally regarded as safe the grass process. And, the administration is evaluating whether we are going to remove the opportunity for private companies to self-regulate ingredients, which has been the case up until now. And so if that's true, there's going to be a deluge of ingredients that have been self approved, self-regulated through the grass process that are going to need to go into the official grass process. That's going to create a massive backlog in regulatory, capabilities and review that I can't even understand or fathom how they're going to get through that. It is going to impact the consumer. The consumer is going to suffer here because the foods are not going to be delivering the nutrition and value that we expect and require, and it's going to injure industry. It's going to injure the planet as well. So personally, I don't know how these bottlenecks are relieved without investment in technologies that are going to enable that and more kind of ecosystem partnership and thinking. If you think about the regulatory process and like as a futurist and technologist, a lot of this can be compressed by technology. The regulatory process is the regulatory process for now, it is governed differently in different geographies in the world. And so what the US does is different than what we do in Europe with Efsa and is different in the Middle East and Asia, etc., etc.. So there has to be dialogue, I believe, between these agencies in terms of we do a lot of work to approve ingredients in one geography. How does that translate to the needs of other geographies as well?
Thank you, Andrea, to you, building trust in this, both with the consumer and with farmers. I'd like you to address those two things, because you're in the middle and we we need you to deliver on both.
So I think messages needs to be simple. And, resonating with the the expectation in food in general in life, consumers look for health, number one, well-being, which is beyond health. Number two. And then, you know, indulgence in and then saving money in their pockets. So simple messages like this food is better for you because it is a contaminant free. Because it is, you know, sugar or low sugar content, etc.. They understand it requires a certain level of education. But I think we are already there because we shall take into account the existing success of what organic food, organic food has been successful, and it did educate substantially the consumers. When it comes to the relationship between our health, our benefit as a consumer and the environment, we are happy to feel good caring for the environment. So trying to be able to correlate the way you grow is the way that you can get the consumer benefit. So it's a double benefit for the consumer. Happy with that even let's say, accepting to pay a premium for that, which I think on average is 10% for organic food. So these kind of messages are, are good, are effective, should be given not necessarily by the food industry because all the food industry needs to be seen as bias. All these certification schemes, they are also they lost a little bit credibility many times. So I think that it should be kind of a, a public, let me say commitment to, in school, in broadcasting, whatever, to raise the level of education.
And also.
It.
Sounds good. Absolutely. But I'm interested by your point that, we've done enough to give good information to consumers because I think many people are completely.
Yeah, we need to we need to give very simple messages, because at the end of the day, you show the big picture, you get, you lose the attention immediately. Instead, if you give a you know, when I tell you that coffee makes you live better and longer, it makes you live better because it is inspiring dynamic it it prevents diseases. Why? It makes you live longer because, it prevents the diseases which eventually shorten your life, like cancers, like cardiovascular, like neurodegenerative, like diabetes. Everybody can understand that. The problem is take times because there are so many prejudices and so many fake news that it takes a lot of time to have this, culture, let's say sentiment. And in the, in the society, in my opinion, this kind of general, knowledge is increasing, skyrocketing in the last decades.
All right, let me, Alice, let me come to you. Okay. So for technology to scale and we're talking about scale as well. So you can talk about other aspects that you think would actually scale these technologies to the, to the extent we need them to.
Okay. So three points for me. One is of course the policies, you know, the policy and institutional frameworks that people feel are, are supporting them and are protecting them. For example, Rwanda has pioneered legislation which is requiring tech companies to share anonymized insights back to farmer cooperatives. So there is already a process where the government is protecting you. Who owns the data, who controls the data, who benefits from that? That's one on the technology. The second one, of course, it must solve a problem. No one is interested in AI, no one is interested in anything unless it's going to solve the immediate problem. So the uptake is really based on the fact that is it solving my problem. Because if it's not, forget it. But the last one and the important one for me is about the social capital. I remember when I was growing up, my mom would say, I'm sending you to the market, you're going to buy tomatoes, but I need you to buy them from that this person, because they are the ones who bring good tomatoes. It's it's how you build that social capital. When you look at the, the savings and cooperatives organizations, community groups in Africa, they have the highest payback rate in microfinance because they've built trust, they've built their community, they borrow from each other, they pay back from each other. It sounds very simple, but it's so important that social capital matters in building trust. And when you talk about the International Year of the Woman Farmer, this is something that women have pioneered. Women have made these groups, they lend each other, they borrow from each other, they give each other. And I think even with technology, if then if I'm a member of that group and I bring an idea, they will trust it because we've built the trust. So policy, I think solving the problem and having that social capital will matter.
At this point. I would like to invite any questions from the floor or comments. We're talking here about technology and within the food system and how we bring that to scale in a way that works. And I couldn't agree more. We need to see the outcomes of that. Nobody's measuring every time we talk about technologies. It's sort of, you know, okay, it's X trillion. You know, in terms of the size of the industry, I okay for what, you know, where are the outcomes. Is there. Yes. Could you introduce yourself and and yeah okay.
Good day everyone. Anna Karolina Zimmermann Brazilian farmer. So I would like to bring a different perspective from the global South, especially when we come when we talk about consumers and ask a question. So you're saying we need to educate people to choose better and to choose the food. But to be very honest, I think it's in a very privileged position in which people can actually choose to afford for a premium or something. So especially in the Global South, people cannot even afford food. So that's also a matter of food security and how we can provide that for them. And also efficiency plays an important part and also trade, because if we're not efficient and if we don't have trade, how can we afford food security? So organic is one of the ways and I think it's a good way. But we cannot forget what happened, for example, with Sri Lanka, in which they did have this massive program and they wanted to turn everything into organic. But the farmers got lost in the way and they got bankrupt. So it was this massive crisis in food security. So my question is, how can we handle different systems in which different systems can actually tackle different things? But there's a place for everybody, and we can design different ways in which we can, have better livelihoods and also better, environment. But we don't forget food security.
Are there other questions from the floor that we can. Good. Okay. Let's bring that back in. And, thank you for in from a consumer perspective, Edek, is the consumer organization in Brazil. Really sort of focused in, on, on as part of their work, nutrition, labeling and information, you know, how information comes to consumers in different ways around the world is, is is so important and so nuanced. Let's bring that back to the room. Would anybody like to answer that question about information and trade and making sure that this works across the world, that technology, technological development works across the world as well?
I think I missed the question. Can you say that again?
This is about I think there were two parts to that question. One is about making sure that consumers are receive information in ways that is relevant to them. Second was about how we make sure that trade supports that technological development. Am I right in that?
I mean, even when consumers cannot afford food?
So on the first one, I'll talk about what I've seen being piloted in extension AI for extension using the local language models. So we've seen that, in some places where they're doing that is that I am able to send a question, to a chatbot or whatever they call them. I'm using the language and it responds in my language, which means I'm able to get information customized for my location. So I think that's one way I think AI, if it gets once it gets further developed, we're seeing some of that that's going to happen. And you know for Africa it's one one extension farmer to ten farmers. You don't get to see this person. Maybe you can't see them frequently as frequently as you as you like. So the the AI if we can get that working it will reduce the cost. It will not only reduce the cost, but it will also provide information localized to your context. So I think that is one way, the trade. So I mean in I now experience when Agra started 20 years ago now, our first bet was on seeds and so we wanted to make sure the farmer would get the right seed. And when they have the right seed, they will produce and they will get they will be able to produce enough to feed their family and sell some of it and trade in some of it. But the seeds were not enough, because in the end there was land and the land was degraded and the soils were not good. So we had to have work on soil health, eventually worked on soil health, but then they produce much more. They needed they needed markets. We worked on markets and and trade. So I think the food system is a food. It is a system. It has to have seeds. It has to have markets. It has to have policies. It has to have soils that are working. It has to have trade. I think that trade fits very well into that system because you're trading amongst one another. In fact, one of our very interesting projects we have in Africa is called Food Baskets, where we've identified and said, okay, the West Africa is the rice food basket, southern Africa is the maize food basket. And so let's trade Intra-africa trade. We want to triple intra-africa trade and to really build that. And I think it will handle the food security problem that you're talking about. Because we have African countries tend to have a very large import bill. We're importing rice from so many other places. But if we can amongst, even within the continent, provide better pathways and better corridors for intra-africa trade and get these food baskets working, we can solve the food security problem. So that would be my shot at that one. Thanks.
Yeah, I would like to to add one two perspective. One is food waste because we waste one third of the food which is produced along the value chain. And this is all, let me say, taking away from food security. On the other side, there is a totally unequal food balance because there are an equal amount of, people suffering for undernutrition or malnutrition, as there are people from suffering from overnutrition like you. Look, some countries like the United States, there is a serious problem of diseases due to, let's say malnutrition, overnutrition malnutrition. Let me say, so rebalancing that would be, would be great. And there are programs. And then, second perspective is the one of, farmers productivity because, yes, the farmer looks for productivity. Whatever can increase productivity. First of all, climate resilience. This is why my experience in coffee we are running a Coffee Global adaptation plan, which is centered around, you know, improving the economical practices, as I said, renovating the plantation. This requires investments, but eventually the productivity increase are substantial, up to 50, 60, 80%. This has something that needs to be done. And also being careful not to destruct land from food, because there are still some land use for, let's say, products, raw materials which are different from food. And this is something that it is limited. It's capped because already agriculture, occupies 50% of the habitable land, 5 billion hectares in the suitable land for agriculture is finished. There is no way that we can increase. The only possibility we have is to use it better and therefore increasing productivity. This is a new agenda that should be, prioritized and addressed in a proper way. My opinion.
Thank you.
Post-harvest loss. Sorry, because that's also important. It's so you talked about food waste, but actually 40% in Africa. The overall food produced actually sometimes gets lost after harvest because you need to have the storage. You know, you need you need to have those cold storage. You need to have technology that allows that or even a warehouse receipting system that allows farmers to store their food until they can get the better price. So that's extremely important.
And technology across all these dimensions and priority is an enabling factor. No matter if you talk increasing resilience through AI or productivity through AI or conservation through other technology, etc., or even increasing the nutritional power of foods thanks to technology like yours from, from, Jasmine.
So just to build on that, I think, you know, when it comes to global food security, there was a paper that I read a couple of years ago that kind of like really shocked me and scared me to action on this because, you know, we need to use technology to better understand first what the problems are. So the study showed that, due to a two degree increase in global temperature, the protein content in staple crops in the developing world, including rice, lentils, soy had decreased by around 12%. Now, we might think of these as in the Western world, maybe as like additions to the protein, the core protein in our diet. That is not the case in many of these developing countries. And so those types of changes, first of all, technology can provide us the insight of what is actually happening as our climate is evolving and changing. And then to your point, Andrea, we can use these tools to be able to inform how to optimize and protect against those things so that we maintain the nutrition and the stability that the ecosystem desires.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We have another question from the audience. Please introduce yourself.
Hi, everybody. Sam Kass, recovering chef, coffee lover. So my question is, Mr.. And I do all my work is on the food and climate, and coffee being a huge, maybe one of my most important crops as well. But also really on the frontlines of climate. So my question is, and, and a venture investor in early stage technology. So a lot of what we're starting to see are these replacements for these core foods. I've tasted a bunch of, you know, future coffee, fake coffee. How do you see that application? Because obviously we can use technology in lots of different ways, but from a values perspective from like a the chef side of me feels like fake. I don't want a future where even though it's a, you know, really smart, interesting technology where we're starting to drink coffee from a factory as opposed to from a tree. So how do you think about the tension there when obviously the pressures from climate on coffee are extreme? Coffee prices are going up. How do you square the, the intersection of of what it means to eat, and, and how technology is intersecting with that.
Okay.
So I think that I acknowledge let me say, there is a terrible cultural resistance from consumer to accept, tech foods. But in my opinion, they represent the way forward. If you look at it from the ecological perspective, maybe we have to be selective because we know from statistics. Correct me if I'm wrong, that 70% of the ecological footprint of agriculture is due to animal proteins. And then on the other side, the kind of physiological we know that an excessive consumption of animal proteins is the first cause of non-communicable diseases, which are the number one health problem in the Western society. So what about reducing the animal protein to the level which is healthy and increasing? Also optimizing the environmental impact one day, because we know that as far as meat consumption is concerned, is going to explode in the world because the very first thing population do by exiting poverty is eating more meat. And when you discover it, you tend to eat too much because it's pleasurable. So I'm personally, from the medical point of view, there are some good parts for our nutrition, good proteins and some others are not. Why should I, you know, use animals when I can cultivate meat and get only the best part of this? This. I know it's a kind of a cultural revolution. It will take decades. But definitely to answer the question I'm not against as far as plant based, let's say, agriculture, the view is a little bit different. I see an integration with nature because there is when it comes to regenerative agriculture or all climate smart agriculture, which are all based on nourishing the soil with organic carbon and using the soil as the number one ecological resource, enhancing biodiversity, and etc. and they use definitely less hectares there. I see less necessary to focus on artificial coffee. For example, coffee is only 11 million hectares out of 5 billion. It's ridiculously, let's say small land occupied with coffee, and there's still room for substantial increased productivity. Why? Let's say distracting ourselves in focusing on artificial coffee when there are many, many more higher, let's say priorities.
Okay. Do you feel you've got an answer with that? You love that answer. Interesting. Do a quick root last. Arnold, let me come back to you. Is there anything that we've missed in this conversation that would help build trust in technology from the farmer perspective?
You know, the farmer discovered this new world with AI. It's a an artificial world behind, beside, world. Who will have the power in the AI? Everybody will furnish data to this AI. But, you have somebody who will lead the AI. In the past, the farmer have discovered that sometimes it's the industry who have too much power. Sometimes it's the the weather, sometimes it's, They are afraid by by by a leader who will not be the farmer. They, they want to share and to co-lead, their job. But they're afraid that somebody has too much power in the food chain and around that, who owns the AI? It's my question.
It's our question to in this we are going to have to close. But we've opened so many different questions. I suppose I think we're all clear on the why there's a climate challenge, there's a societal challenge. We need to make a shift. We have all explored different things that, from a technological standpoint, we can do from soil health through to data in the supply chain. There is a lot that we can do. We've started to unpick some of the ways in which we can build trust in the way those technologies, technologies are built, either information or governance or how we but we haven't solved it. And that's the biggest trust in technology and how we apply it and then measure the outcomes is the biggest challenge facing us. And I hope we can continue this conversation together. Lots of work for Tanya and the team to help us with that. Let me thank you very, very much indeed for exploring such a complex and important topic this morning and wish you very the very best for the rest of your time here in Davos. Thank you so much for those who participated and brought questions. Take care.
Thank you. Thank you.