Fertile ground: why food is the new Internet | Kimbal Musk | TEDxMemphis

We don’t need to feed the world, we need to get smarter about food. The Industrial food system built in the 60s and 70s has left us simultaneously fat and starving and it’s time for it to die. There’s an opportunity for smart young entrepreneurs to build a new smart food system that supplies the natural, local food people are demanding. Farmland is available, new technologies have created new possibilities and investors are flooding into the sector.

Kimbal Musk is an investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a chef. He is on the board for Tesla Motors, SpaceX, The Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and Chipotle Mexican Grill. His personal mission is to get communities rapidly thriving by improving every part of the food culture. Kimbal is a co-founder of The Kitchen, a growing family of restaurants that sources directly from local farmers, stimulating the local farm economy to the tune of millions of dollars a year, and creating quality jobs. In 2011, Kimbal co-founded The Kitchen Community, a complementary non-profit organization. The Kitchen Community has already built 225 Learning Gardens reaching over 135,000 students every school day, improving their vegetable intake and academic achievements. Follow Kimbal on Twitter @Kimbal.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at

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Comment (8)

  1. How to feed 7 billion people (and restore the environment…!): Permaculture.

    "Permaculture (PERMAnent agriCULTURE) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of stable social order.

    Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all forms.

    The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolution."

    – Bill Mollison, "Permaculture – A Designers' Manual" p. ix (Look him up!)

    Another starting point: David Holmgren

  2. This is an amazing talk! In holistic farming, I do believe we are sort of in an era like the internet was maybe back in the early '70s where a few people were starting to realize we would one day have hand held portable devices.

    And I concur with Kimbal's analysis of the problems and the opportunities.

    What I see differently are the best solutions. Instead of billion dollar companies, why not empower the middle class and middle America through workers co-ops, and other hyper local collaborative farms and enterprises?

    And nice tillable farmland is fine, but the real value for holistic agriculture today is in marginal crop land, especially areas like the hill country of Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and the great plains.

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