This TED Talk features agriculturalist and social entrepreneur Sue Cahumbo,

recorded live at TED Global 2017.

I want to introduce you to my badass friends.

Meet Thelma and Louise.

I'm passionate about cows,

and although they've been getting into a lot of crap lately

due to methane emissions and climate change, I hope that I can redeem their reputation in part

by showing you how incredibly important they are in solving one of the world's biggest problems,

food security, but more importantly for Africa, its resultant childhood stunting.

Stunting, nutritional stunting, manifests itself in a reduction of growth rate in human development.

And according to UNICEF, stunting doesn't come easy.

It doesn't come quickly.

It happens over a long period of time during which a child endured painful and debilitating

cycles of illness,

depressed appetite, insufficient nutrition and inadequate care. And most kids simply can't endure such

rigors. But those that do survive, they carry forward long-term cognitive problems as well as losses of stature.

The numbers of stunted children under the age of five in most regions of the world has been declining,

and I really hate to say this, but the only place where they haven't been declining is here in Africa.

Here, 59 million children,

three in ten, in that age group, struggle to meet their genetic potential, their full genetic potential.

Protein is one of our most important dietary requirements,

and evidence shows that lack of essential amino acids are building blocks of proteins in young children's diets

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