The future of good food in China Matilda Ho
I was six when I had the first chance
to learn what patience means.
My grandmother gave me a magic box
as a birthday present,
which neither of us knew
would become a gift for life.
I became obsessed with magic,
and at 20, I became
an amateur dove magician.
This act of magic
requires that I train my doves
to sit and wait inside my clothing.
As a young magician, I was always
in a rush to make them appear,
but my teacher told me
the secret to the success
of this magical act
is to make my doves appear
only after they’ve waited patiently
in my tuxedo.
It has to be a mindful kind of patience,
the kind that took me
some years to master.
When life took me to Shanghai
seven years ago,
the mindful patience I learned
became almost impossible to practice.
In China, where everyone
and everything is in a hurry,
you need to outperform
over 1.3 billion other people
to build a better life.
You hack the system, bend the rules,
circumvent the boundaries.
It is the same when it comes to food …
except that when it comes to food,
impatience can have dire consequences.
In the haste to grow more, sell more,
4,000 years of agriculture
in a country of rich natural resources
is spoiled by the overuse
of chemicals and pesticides.
In 2016, the Chinese government revealed
half a million food safety violations
in just nine months.
Alarmingly, one in every four
diabetics in the world
now comes from China.
The stories around food
are scary and somewhat overwhelming,
and I told myself it’s time to bring
a mindful patience into the impatience.
When I say mindful patience,
I don’t mean the ability to wait.
I mean knowing how to act while waiting.
And so, while I wait for the day
when a sustainable food system
becomes a reality in China,
I launched one of China’s first
online farmers market
to bring local, organically grown
produce to families.
When we went live, 18 months ago,
the food we could sell then
was somewhat dismal.
We had no fruit
and hardly any meat to sell,
as none that was sent to the lab
passed our zero tolerance test
towards pesticides, chemicals,
antibiotics and hormones.
I told our very anxious employees
that we would not give up until we’ve met
every local farmer in China.
Today, we supply 240 types of produce
from 57 local farmers.
After almost one year of searching,
we finally found chemical-free bananas
grown in the backyards
of villagers on Hainan Island.
And only two hours away from Shanghai,
on an island that even Google Maps
does not have coordinates for,
we found a place where cows eat grass
and roam free under the blue sky.
We also work hard on logistics.
We deliver our customers' orders
in as fast as three hours
on electric vehicles,
and we use biodegradable, reusable boxes
to minimize our environmental footprint.
I have no doubt that our offerings
will continue to grow,
but it will take time,
and I know a lot more people are needed
to shape the future of good food.
So last year, I founded China’s first
food tech accelerator and VC platform
to help start-ups to shape
the future of good food
the way they want,
be that through using edible insects
as a more sustainable source of protein
or using essential oils
to keep food fresh for longer.
So, you may still ask:
Why are you trying to build
a sustainable food system
by driving a patient movement
in a country where it’s almost
a crime to take it slow?
Because, for me,
the real secret to success is patience –
a mindful kind of patience
that requires knowing
how to act while waiting,
the kind of patience I learned
with my grandmother’s magic box.
After all, we do not inherit
the earth from our ancestors.
We borrow it from our children.
Thank you.
(Applause)