You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity

every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. For bioengineer Karsten Temi, it all starts with a simple jar of

soil and the belief that the future of farming is already alive and

well beneath our feet. In his talk, he shares how re-engineering microbes could allow us to

replace much of the world's synthetic fertilizer. It would open up the huge potential to cut down on

costs and environmental harm, all while increasing yields from large farms in the U.S.

in Brazil to the smallholder plots in Kenya and beyond.

This jar contains a few ounces of soil, but what you can't see is that it's teeming with life. The microbes inside

are poised to become farmers' greatest tool and transform how we feed humanity. I'm Carson

Temi, founder of Pivot Bio, and I have dedicated my career to studying these microbes. They can and

will revolutionize agriculture.

So from the plow to the grain combine, humans have invented tools to grow more on the same amount of land.

Fertilizer is the greatest of these, all those nutrients that a plant combines with sunlight to grow.

Here's an example.

In the 1950s, American farmers produced 2,600 kilos of corn per hectare.

Today, there are yield competitions where the winners can generate more than 32,000 kilos on the same amount of land,

in a large part because of the fertilizers they can use to fuel that crop. It's just amazing.

But for all the good it does, fertilizer is an

inelegant solution. Last year, farmers around the globe spent more than $200 billion on nitrogen

fertilizers alone. They spray it on their fields and then pray that roots can find it before it's lost.

Because if that fertilizer is lost,

the crop can end up starved of its nutrients and stunted in its yields.

...