I've been fascinated with crop diversity for about 35 years from now, ever since I stumbled across a fairly obscure academic article by a guy named Jack Harlan. And he described the diversity within crops -- all the different kinds of wheat and rice and such -- as a genetic resource. And he said, "This genetic resource," -- and I'll never forget the words -- "stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine."
我著迷於作物的多樣性已經有35年之久, 因為我偶然讀了一篇傑克卡蘭 所寫的艱澀的學術論文。 他是這樣來描述作物的多樣性的 -- 小麥和稻米等等的所有品種-- 都是一種基因資源。 他說到,“基因資源” -- 而我從來沒有忘記這些話 -- “我們和災難性饑餓間 的距離是我們無法想像的。”
I figured he was either really on to something, or he was one of these academic nutcases. So, I looked a little further, and what I figured out was that he wasn't a nutcase. He was the most respected scientist in the field. What he understood was that biological diversity -- crop diversity -- is the biological foundation of agriculture. It's the raw material, the stuff, of evolution in our agricultural crops. Not a trivial matter. And he also understood that that foundation was crumbling, literally crumbling. That indeed, a mass extinction was underway in our fields, in our agricultural system. And that this mass extinction was taking place with very few people noticing and even fewer caring.
我想他一定是有所執著, 或者他只是個書呆子。 所以,我再往下看, 然後我發現他並不是書呆子, 他是這領域最受尊敬的科學家。 他所理解的生物多樣性 -- 作物多樣性 -- 是農業的生物學基礎, 是農作物進化的原材料, 這不是微不足道的事情。 他也體認到到這基礎搖搖欲墜, 真的是搖搖欲墜。 農作物的確在我們的農業系統、 在我們的農地裡大量地滅絕。 但很少人注意到 農作物正在滅絕, 更沒人在乎。
Now, I know that many of you don't stop to think about diversity in agricultural systems and, let's face it, that's logical. You don't see it in the newspaper every day. And when you go into the supermarket, you certainly don't see a lot of choices there. You see apples that are red, yellow, and green and that's about it.
現在,我知道你們還有很多人在不停地 思考這農業系統中的多樣性, 承認吧,這很合理。 你不會每天在報紙上看到它, 而當你去超市時,你當然不會察覺到那裏有多少選擇。 你看到紅的、黃的、綠的蘋果,就只是這些了。
So, let me show you a picture of one form of diversity. Here's some beans, and there are about 35 or 40 different varieties of beans on this picture. Now, imagine each one of these varieties as being distinct from another about the same way as a poodle from a Great Dane. If I wanted to show you a picture of all the dog breeds in the world, and I put 30 or 40 of them on a slide, it would take about 10 slides because there about 400 breeds of dogs in the world. But there are 35 to 40,000 different varieties of beans. So if I were to going to show you all the beans in the world, and I had a slide like this, and I switched it every second, it would take up my entire TED talk, and I wouldn't have to say anything.
所以,讓我來給你們看看代表多樣性的照片, 這裏有一些豆子, 照片上顯示了大概有35-40種 不同的豆子。 現在,想像一下,這些品種中的每一種 都可以像我們區分獅子狗和大丹狗一樣,被區分出來。 如果我想給你們看看世界上所有狗的品種, 每一張投影片放上30-40個品種,會用去10張投影片, 因為世界上有大概400種狗。 但是世界上有3萬5千到4萬種不同種類的豆子, 如果我要向你們展示世界上所有的豆子, 運用同樣的投影片,每1秒放一張, 光這就會用去我所有的TED演講時間, 更不用說演講了。
But the interesting thing is that this diversity -- and the tragic thing is -- that this diversity is being lost. We have about 200,000 different varieties of wheat, and we have about 2 to 400,000 different varieties of rice, but it's being lost. And I want to give you an example of that. It's a bit of a personal example, in fact. In the United States, in the 1800s -- that's where we have the best data -- farmers and gardeners were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples. Imagine that. 7,100 apples with names. Today, 6,800 of those are extinct, no longer to be seen again.
但是多樣性有其有趣又可悲的地方-- 多樣性正在消失。 世界上大概有20萬種不同的麥子品種、 20萬至40萬種不同的稻米品種, 但是正在消失。 我想給你們看個例子, 實際上,是我親身的體驗。 在美國,在18世紀 --從那時開始我們才開始紀錄 -- 農民和園藝工作者曾種植著7千1百種 不同名稱的蘋果。 想像一下,7千1百種不同名字的蘋果。 現在,有6千8百種已經滅絕了, 再也看不到了。
I used to have a list of these extinct apples, and when I would go out and give a presentation, I would pass the list out in the audience. I wouldn't tell them what it was, but it was in alphabetical order, and I would tell them to look for their names, their family names, their mother's maiden name. And at the end of the speech, I would ask, "How many people have found a name?" And I never had fewer than two-thirds of an audience hold up their hand. And I said, "You know what? These apples come from your ancestors, and your ancestors gave them the greatest honor they could give them. They gave them their name. The bad news is they're extinct. The good news is a third of you didn't hold up your hand. Your apple's still out there. Find it. Make sure it doesn't join the list."
我平常有一份滅絕蘋果的清單, 當我出去要辦講座的時候, 我就會把名單分給聽眾。 我不會告訴他們這是什麼,但是這是按字母排列的, 我會讓他們去找找自己的名字,他們自己的姓, 他們母親的姓。 就在講座結束的時候,我會問,”有多少人找到自己的名字?“ 每次至少有三分之二的人舉了手。 然後我說道,”你們知道嗎?這些蘋果是從你們祖先傳下來的, 而且你們的祖先把他們最寶貴的東西給了它們, 他們用自己的名字為蘋果命名, 不幸的是,它們已經滅絕了。 好消息是, 還有三分之一的人沒有舉手,你們的蘋果還存在世上。 找找看,確定他們不會加入這份清單。“
So, I want to tell you that the piece of the good news is that the Fowler apple is still out there. And there's an old book back here, and I want to read a piece from it. This book was published in 1904. It's called "The Apples of New York" and this is the second volume. See, we used to have a lot of apples. And the Fowler apple is described in here -- I hope this doesn't surprise you -- as, "a beautiful fruit." (Laughter) I don't know if we named the apple or if the apple named us, but ... but, to be honest, the description goes on and it says that it "doesn't rank high in quality, however." And then he has to go even further. It sounds like it was written by an old school teacher of mine. "As grown in New York, the fruit usually fails to develop properly in size and quality and is, on the whole, unsatisfactory."
所以我想告訴你們的好消息是, 福勒蘋果還存在。 而且這裏有一本很古老的書, 我想唸其中一段給你們聽, 這本書出版於1904年, 叫做”紐約的蘋果“,這是第二卷, 所以,我們以前還是有很多蘋果品種的。 它是這樣描寫福勒蘋果的 -- 我希望不要嚇著你 -- ”一種美麗的水果“ (笑) 我真不知道是我們幫蘋果命名,還是蘋果幫我們命名,但是... 但是,說實話,這個描述還有下半段, 它說,”但是品質並不好,“ 然後這本書還說得更深入, 聽起來像是我以前學校老師給我的評語一樣, ”生長在紐約,這種水果不論在大小或品質上, 都發展得不好,總的來說,不讓人滿意。“
(Laughter)
(笑)
And I guess there's a lesson to be learned here, and the lesson is: so why save it? I get this question all the time. Why don't we just save the best one? And there are a couple of answers to that question. One thing is that there is no such thing as a best one. Today's best variety is tomorrow's lunch for insects or pests or disease. The other thing is that maybe that Fowler apple or maybe a variety of wheat that's not economical right now has disease or pest resistance or some quality that we're going to need for climate change that the others don't. So it's not necessary, thank God, that the Fowler apple is the best apple in the world. It's just necessary or interesting that it might have one good, unique trait. And for that reason, we ought to be saving it. Why? As a raw material, as a trait we can use in the future. Think of diversity as giving us options. And options, of course, are exactly what we need in an era of climate change.
我想這裏我們學到了一課, 那就是:那為什麼還挽救它? 我一直被問到這個問題,為什麼我們不只保留最好的? 針對這個問題,我準備了幾個答案, 其中之一是,沒有什麼所謂最好的品種, 今天最好的品種就是明天害蟲或疾病的午餐; 另外一個原因,就是也許福勒蘋果 或麥子的其它品種在今天來說沒有價值, 但未來可能有著別的品種沒有的 對疾病害蟲免疫或對氣候變化的適應性的特性。 所以福勒蘋果沒有必要 成為世界上最好的蘋果,感謝上帝。 它也許包含一個好的,特殊的特性,這就值得引起我們的興趣了。 就為這個原因,我們就應該挽救它。 為什麼?因為我們在未來可以用到這種特性。 把多樣性看作是我們的選擇, 顯然這些選擇正是我們面對氣候變遷所需要的。
I want to show you two slides, but first, I want to tell you that we've been working at the Global Crop Diversity Trust with a number of scientists -- particularly at Stanford and University of Washington -- to ask the question: What's going to happen to agriculture in an era of climate change and what kind of traits and characteristics do we need in our agricultural crops to be able to adapt to this? In short, the answer is that in the future, in many countries, the coldest growing seasons are going to be hotter than anything those crops have seen in the past. The coldest growing seasons of the future, hotter than the hottest of the past. Is agriculture adapted to that? I don't know. Can fish play the piano? If agriculture hasn't experienced that, how could it be adapted?
我想給你們看兩張投影片, 但是,首先,我想告訴你們,我們是在全球作物多樣性信託機構 和一些科學家一起工作--他們主要是來自史丹福大學和華盛頓大學-- 我們通常會問:在氣候變遷的年代裡,農業會變得怎樣? 我們的農作物需要什麼樣的特性和特質 才能適應這個變化? 長話短說,答案就是,未來在許多國家裡, 目前最冷的生長季節將會變暖、變熱, 變得比這些作物過去所遇到的氣候還要熱。 未來的最冷的生長季節, 將會變得比過去最熱的季節還要熱。 農作物能適應嗎? 我不知道。魚能彈鋼琴嗎? 如果農作物沒有經歷過這種氣候,又怎麼能夠適應呢?
Now, the highest concentration of poor and hungry people in the world, and the place where climate change, ironically, is going to be the worst is in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. So I've picked two examples here, and I want to show you. In the histogram before you now, the blue bars represent the historical range of temperatures, going back about far as we have temperature data. And you can see that there's some difference between one growing season and another. Some are colder, some are hotter and it's a bell shaped curve. The tallest bar is the average temperature for the most number of growing seasons. In the future, later this century, it's going to look like the red, totally out of bounds. The agricultural system and, more importantly, the crops in the field in India have never experienced this before.
現在,世界上貧窮和饑餓人口最集中的地區, 諷刺的是,也將會是氣候變化最糟糕的地區, 就在南亞和撒哈拉以南非洲。 所以,我要挑選兩個例子給你們看, 現在在你面前的長條圖裏, 藍色的代表著過去的氣溫範圍, 記錄著我們有紀錄以來的資料。 你可以看到在每一個生長季節間, 都有一些不同, 有時冷一點,有時熱一點,形成了一個鐘形的曲線。 最長的那條線,代表大部分生長季節的平均溫度。 在未來,這個世紀末期,氣溫會像這些紅色線條一樣, 完全超出範圍。 我們的農業,最重要的是,在印度農田裏的作物 從沒有經歷過這些;
Here's South Africa. The same story. But the most interesting thing about South Africa is we don't have to wait for 2070 for there to be trouble. By 2030, if the maize, or corn, varieties, which is the dominant crop -- 50 percent of the nutrition in Southern Africa are still in the field -- in 2030, we'll have a 30 percent decrease in production of maize because of the climate change already in 2030. 30 percent decrease of production in the context of increasing population, that's a food crisis. It's global in nature. We will watch children starve to death on TV. Now, you may say that 20 years is a long way off. It's two breeding cycles for maize. We have two rolls of the dice to get this right. We have to get climate-ready crops in the field, and we have to do that rather quickly.
這是南非,同樣的情況。 但是在南非,最有趣的事情是, 我們不用等到2070年才會遇到這些問題。 在2030年,玉蜀黍、玉米的各種品種,也就是主流作物 -- 50%的品種還會存在南非的田地裏 -- 在2030年,我們將會遭遇玉米30%的減產, 因為氣候在2030年時已經變化了。 30%的糧食減產,但人口卻在增長, 這是食物危機,也是全球的問題, 我們將會在電視裏看到兒童們饑餓而死。 現在,你也許可以說20年還早得很, 但這也只不過是兩個玉米育種週期而已。 我們有兩輪的機會來賭一把, 我們必須在田裡種植可以適應氣候變遷的農作物, 我們得要快點做。
Now, the good news is that we have conserved. We have collected and conserved a great deal of biological diversity, agricultural diversity, mostly in the form of seed, and we put it in seed banks, which is a fancy way of saying a freezer. If you want to conserve seed for a long term and you want to make it available to plant breeders and researchers, you dry it and then you freeze it. Unfortunately, these seed banks are located around the world in buildings and they're vulnerable. Disasters have happened. In recent years we lost the gene bank, the seed bank in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can guess why. In Rwanda, in the Solomon Islands. And then there are just daily disasters that take place in these buildings, financial problems and mismanagement and equipment failures, and all kinds of things, and every time something like this happens, it means extinction. We lose diversity. And I'm not talking about losing diversity in the same way that you lose your car keys. I'm talking about losing it in the same way that we lost the dinosaurs: actually losing it, never to be seen again.
現在,好消息是我們已經開始儲藏了, 我們已經開始蒐集不同種類的生物、不同品種的農作物, 並儲藏起來,大多數是以種子的形態儲存, 我們把種子放進種子銀行,其實就是冷藏起來。 如果你想長時間儲藏種子, 然後再讓人種入土裡繁殖或研究, 你得先把種子乾燥後再冷藏。 不幸的是,這些種子銀行散布在世界各地的一般建築裡, 很容易出問題。 災難時有發生。在最近幾年裏,我們失去了在伊拉克和 阿富汗的基因銀行、種子銀行。你們應該知道為什麼。 盧安達及所羅門群島的銀行也不保。 還有一些是發生在些建築物裏的日常災難, 像是財務問題、管理不當或設備故障等, 這類事件層出不窮,每次只要發生這種災難, 就意味著滅絕,我們又損失了一些品種。 我指的損失可不像你們說的丟了車鑰匙一樣, 我指的損失是像恐龍消失了一樣, 真的沒有了,再也看不見了。
So, a number of us got together and decided that, you know, enough is enough and we need to do something about that and we need to have a facility that can really offer protection for our biological diversity of -- maybe not the most charismatic diversity. You don't look in the eyes of a carrot seed quite in the way you do a panda bear, but it's very important diversity. So we needed a really safe place, and we went quite far north to find it. To Svalbard, in fact. This is above mainland Norway. You can see Greenland there. That's at 78 degrees north. It's as far as you can fly on a regularly scheduled airplane. It's a remarkably beautiful landscape. I can't even begin to describe it to you. It's otherworldly, beautiful. We worked with the Norwegian government and with the NorGen, the Norwegian Genetic Resources Program, to design this facility. What you see is an artist's conception of this facility, which is built in a mountain in Svalbard. The idea of Svalbard was that it's cold, so we get natural freezing temperatures. But it's remote. It's remote and accessible so it's safe and we don't depend on mechanical refrigeration.
所以,我們這一群人聚集在一起決定,不能再這樣了, 我們必須做些什麼,我們必須建造一個機構, 來保護不同種類的生物-- 或許你並不覺得這些物種有什麼了不起。 你不會用看待貓熊的態度來看待紅蘿蔔, 但是紅蘿蔔也是重要的品種。 所以我們需要一個真正安全的地方,我們在很北邊找到了這個地方, 在斯瓦爾巴。 這是在挪威的上方,你在這裏可以看到格陵蘭島, 這是在北緯78度。 這是你乘坐民用航空飛機可以飛到的最遠的地方。 這是一個十分美麗的地方,我無法用語言來描述, 像世外桃源,真的很美。 我們和挪威政府、 挪威基因資源計畫一起合作, 共同設計這個建築。 你現在看到的是一個藝術家構想中的建築, 建造在斯瓦爾巴山區。 會選在這個地點是因為當地很冷, 所以我們就運用了自然的冷藏溫度。 但是這個地方很偏僻,偏僻但還算方便到達, 所以很安全,而且我們完全不需依靠機械冷藏系統。
This is more than just an artist's dream, it's now a reality. And this next picture shows it in context, in Svalbard. And here's the front door of this facility. When you open up the front door, this is what you're looking at. It's pretty simple. It's a hole in the ground. It's a tunnel, and you go into the tunnel, chiseled in solid rock, about 130 meters. There are now a couple of security doors, so you won't see it quite like this. Again, when you get to the back, you get into an area that's really my favorite place. I think of it as sort of a cathedral. And I know that this tags me as a bit of a nerd, but ... (Laughter) Some of the happiest days of my life have been spent ... (Laughter) in this place there.
那不僅僅是一個藝術家的夢想,那是真的。 下一張照片是這個在斯瓦爾巴的建築的外部環境。 這是這棟建築的正門, 當你打開正門後, 你會看到這個。十分簡單,就是地下的一個洞。 這是一個通道,你可以走進通道裡, 這個通道開鑿在岩石裏,大概有130米長。 現在那裏已經設有安檢哨,所以和你們現在看的會有一點不同。 這是建築物的後面,也是我最喜歡的地方。 為什麼?我想是因為這就像大教堂一樣。 我想你們一定認為我是書呆子,但是... (笑) 我生命中最美好的幾天, (笑) 就是在這裏度過的。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
If you were to walk into one of these rooms, you would see this. It's not very exciting, but if you know what's there, it's pretty emotional. We have now about 425,000 samples of unique crop varieties. There's 70,000 samples of different varieties of rice in this facility right now. About a year from now, we'll have over half a million samples. We're going up to over a million, and someday we'll basically have samples -- about 500 seeds -- of every variety of agricultural crop that can be stored in a frozen state in this facility. This is a backup system for world agriculture. It's a backup system for all the seed banks. Storage is free. It operates like a safety deposit box. Norway owns the mountain and the facility, but the depositors own the seed. And if anything happens, then they can come back and get it. This particular picture that you see shows the national collection of the United States, of Canada, and an international institution from Syria.
如果你走進這其中一個房間,你就會看到這個。 不會很令人興奮,但是如果你知道這些是什麼,你會很激動的。 我們現在有大約42萬5千種 不同的作物品種的樣本。 在這個建築裏,大約有7萬種 不同的稻米品種樣本。 大約再過一年,我們將會有超過50萬種樣本, 終究有一天我們會有超過100萬種品種。我們的樣本是 每一種作物 取500顆種子,冷藏在這個 建築裏。 這是我們的農作物備份系統, 也是所有種子銀行的備份,儲存完全免費, 這就像保險箱一樣。 挪威擁有這座山和這棟建築,但是存戶擁有種子。 而且如果發生了什麼事,他們可以來這裏取回種子。 這張照片裡的是美國、加拿大的國家收藏品, 以及一個來自敍利亞國際機構的收藏品。
I think it's interesting in that this facility, I think, is almost the only thing I can think of these days where countries, literally, every country in the world -- because we have seeds from every country in the world -- all the countries of the world have gotten together to do something that's both long term, sustainable and positive. I can't think of anything else that's happened in my lifetime that way.
我想,我這幾天一直在想這件事, 就是這個機構有趣的地方在於,這些國家, 真的,在這個世界上的每一個國家 -- 因為我們有從這個世界上每一個國家取得的種子 -- 世界上所有的國家齊聚在一起, 一起做這件既長期、可持久,也很積極正面的事。 在我一生中,我想不出我曾經做過比這個更有意義的事。
I can't look you in the eyes and tell you that I have a solution for climate change, for the water crisis. Agriculture takes 70 percent of fresh water supplies on earth. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you that there is such a solution for those things, or the energy crisis, or world hunger, or peace in conflict. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you that I have a simple solution for that, but I can look you in the eyes and tell you that we can't solve any of those problems if we don't have crop diversity. Because I challenge you to think of an effective, efficient, sustainable solution to climate change if we don't have crop diversity. Because, quite literally, if agriculture doesn't adapt to climate change, neither will we. And if crops don't adapt to climate change, neither will agriculture, neither will we.
我不能看著你們的眼睛,然後告訴你們,我有一個辦法 可以解決氣候變化和水資源危機。 農業灌溉用去了地球上70%的乾淨水源。 我不能看著你們的眼睛,然後告訴你們,我有一個辦法 可以解決這些事情,解決能源危機、饑荒、或戰爭。 我不能看著你們的眼睛,然後告訴你們,我有一個辦法, 但是,我可以看著你們的眼睛,告訴你們,如果不能保存不同的作物品種, 就不能解決這些問題。 你們想想,如果沒有不同的作物品種,你是否還能提出 有效、快速、又能持久的解決氣候變遷的方法? 因為,如果農業無法適應氣候變遷, 我們也不能。 如果農作物不能適應氣候變遷,農業也不能, 我們也不能。
So, this is not something pretty and nice to do. There are a lot of people who would love to have this diversity exist just for the existence value of it. It is, I agree, a nice thing to do. But it's a necessary thing to do. So, in a very real sense, I believe that we, as an international community, should get organized to complete the task. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a wonderful gift that Norway and others have given us, but it's not the complete answer. We need to collect the remaining diversity that's out there. We need to put it into good seed banks that can offer those seeds to researchers in the future. We need to catalog it. It's a library of life, but right now I would say we don't have a card catalog for it. And we need to support it financially.
所以,這不是一件做了很好,不做也沒關係的事。 有很多人希望能保有不同的物種, 只因為看重各物種存在的價值。 我承認這沒錯,這樣做很好, 但這是必須要去做的事情。 所以,我非常認真地相信,作為一個國際機構, 我們應該有組織地完成這個任務。 斯瓦爾巴全球種子保鮮庫是一個神奇的禮物, 是挪威和其他國家給我們的, 但是這不是完整的答案。 我們還需要去蒐集我們還沒有蒐集到的物種樣本, 我們需要將他們放進好的種子銀行裡保存, 一個可以在未來為研究者提供種子的銀行。 我們需要目錄,這是生命的圖書館, 但是現在我們還沒有這個目錄; 而且我們還必須有資金上的支持。
My big idea would be that while we think of it as commonplace to endow an art museum or endow a chair at a university, we really ought to be thinking about endowing wheat. 30 million dollars in an endowment would take care of preserving all the diversity in wheat forever. So we need to be thinking a little bit in those terms.
我的想法是,如果我們把捐助某個大學建造藝術博物館, 或捐贈課桌椅視為十分平常的事情時, 我們也應該去想想捐助麥子的保存計畫。 3千萬美元的捐助金額,就足以保證 永遠保存所有的小麥品種, 所以我們必須在這方面想一想。
And my final thought is that we, of course, by conserving wheat, rice, potatoes, and the other crops, we may, quite simply, end up saving ourselves.
我最後想說的是,藉由保存麥子、 稻米、馬鈴薯和其他農作物, 我們也許可以拯救我們自己。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)