Rise of the Asian middle class and the competition for animal protein

November 29, 2011

The size of the world population is among the most significant changes for the future. There are many challenges, as the media tell us on a daily basis, but there are opportunities. The first and the main of these opportunities is the population increase itself. In the coming four decades, there will be two billion more people to feed. Never before, has humanity seen such a demand increase. This means that farmers and food suppliers do not have to worry about a lack of market opportunities. Not only the number of people will increase, but the consumption pattern will change, too.

Until recently, most of the consumption took place in industrial countries, mostly the USA, the EU and Japan. For the coming decades, food consumption in these areas will not increase. There are simple reasons for this. One is the demographic stagnation of industrialized regions. Another reason is that people of these regions already eat too much. They have no room for more consumption. At best, they can replace one food by another. Before the economic crisis of 2008, the average daily intake of calories per American was on average of 3,800. This amount is about 50% more calories higher than a normal human being needs on a daily basis. Nobody should be surprised that in such conditions a third of Americans are obese.

In emerging countries, the economic growth results in the rise of a new middle class. A change of diet is the first change that takes place when the standard of living increases. People switch from staple foods such as rice or wheat to higher quantities of animal protein and more fruit and vegetables. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) looked at the future evolution of the respective shares of consumption by the middle class, between different regions of the world. Their study was for consumption goods at large. The graph is simply amazing.

Click on the picture see the enlarged version

The relative consumption of Western countries will shrink dramatically. While the USA represented about 5% of the world population in 2000 and consumed about 25% of the world resources, they will represent only about 4% of the population and consume about 4% as well. A similar evolution will take place in the EU and in Japan. China and India show the opposite trend. With a share of the total world consumption close to negligible percentages a few years ago, their economic development and the size of their middle classes will transform markets dramatically. Estimates are that the middle class from China and India combined will represent about 45% of the world middle class by 2030! Market demand and therefore world prices will be dictated by the demand from these two countries and not by Western countries anymore.

While the graph covers all consumption items, the situation for food alone might show some differences, but the trend would show a similar pattern. The demand for food in emerging countries will grow strongly. This will not affect only the consumption volumes but also the type of food. The change of the type of food that consumers of the middle class of emerging countries will demand will go beyond switching from a starch-based diet to an animal-protein-rich diet. The type of animal protein that they will eat will change, too. A couple of decades ago, China would import many of the low quality animal products that Western consumers did not want to eat. China used to import products such as chicken feet, chicken wingtips, sow uteri or fish heads. The new middle class is no longer much hungry about those products. They want the prime cuts, too. Instead of being complementary, emerging markets and developed countries will be in competition with each other for the better animal products. This will have profound consequences for the future. It will make the sale of the low-quality products more difficult and affect negatively the profitability of meat producers. At the same time, it will make the demand for prime products literally explode, pushing prices up. Western consumers and Western markets used to set the prices. In the future, Western consumers will have to buy food based on the price set in Asia. Their alternative will be to not have access to these prime products anymore and have a choice between changing their diets or eat less animal products.

This change will make producers and buyers look at business opportunities in a completely different manner than they currently do. All emerging countries show the same trend. Brazil now sees domestic demand for chicken meat increase faster than export markets. Brazilians eat more meat because they become wealthier. Chilean salmon farmers see growing possibilities in the Brazilian market. While their traditional market for Atlantic salmon was the US market, this may change. Since air transport from Chile to the USA is quite expensive, at least more expensive than transport to Brazil, the flow of trade will change from the past. Norwegian salmon might become a better alternative, but the Chinese are now buying increasing quantities. American buyers must prepare themselves to pay much more than in the past to get salmon products.

It becomes clear that the challenge of feeding the world depends for a large part on future consumption of animal protein.

To understand the effect of the increase of consumption of meat in China, a few numbers are helpful. When 1.5 billion people eat on average 1 kg more of chicken meat, world production needs to increase by about 750 million chickens. That represents about 2% of the world production. Similarly, when the Chinese consume on average 1 kg of pork more, the world must produce 15 million pigs more. That number represents 1.5% of the world pig production. The meat consumption in China has already passed the milestone of 50 kg per capita per year, and projections indicate that it would reach 8o kg per capita per year in 2030. Clearly, consumption increase will be much more than just 1 kg. An increase of 10 kg of chicken meat per capita per year in China means that chicken production would have to increase by 20% to meet the new demand! This represents almost the US chicken production volume, and more than Brazilian production. In the case of pork, an increase of consumption of 10 kg per capita means that world pig production would have to increase by 15%. That is 5 times the current pig production of Iowa. That is 60% of the EU production. For beef, the world production would have to increase by 24% to meet an increase of 10 kg per capita per year! This number also represents about 25% more than the current total beef US production.

The Indian population, although still largely vegetarian, is also changing its eating habits. Meat production is increasing there, but not in such dramatic proportions as in China. Nonetheless, with a population of 1.2 billion people, any incremental meat consumption will have consequences.

Different animal productions have different levels of feed efficiency. It takes about 1.8 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of chicken meat. It takes about 3 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of pig meat. For beef, depending on how much grass the animals are fed, the amount of grain used to produce 1 kg of beef varies. With a population of 1.5 billion, an increase of meat consumption of 30 kg would result in the need to produce 3 times 30 times 1.5 billion. The need for feed, excluding grass, would be between 100 and 150 million tons of grains.

Human consumption of grains increase rather limited. Considering that in 2011, animal feed uses about a third of all grains produced, more production of animal protein will put much more pressure on the markets of agricultural commodity. Producing enough to meet the desires of a more affluent world population is actually about allowing the luxury of more meat than people really need. There is no doubt that the “meat question” will become more and more vivid in the future.

My next book, We Will Reap What We Sow, will get in depth about this topic and many others, and discuss the pros and cons of different future scenarios. Stay tuned!

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

Just for fun, a bit of science fiction

October 15, 2011

One of the issues that I regularly raise during my presentations is the one of the farmers of the future. As about everywhere in the world, the average age of farmers is increasing, this brings the question of who will take over and what effect it will have on the future of agriculture and future production systems.

One topic that generates interest from audiences is the possibility of having farming robots. Surprisingly, the same intrigued enthusiasm comes from audiences that have a bias against industrial large-scale agriculture. Yet, the prospect of robots roaming the fields does not seem to be a cause for concern.

Because of the lack of interest by the youth to take over farms, the Japanese are actively working on setting up farms that could be run by robots, instead of humans. In many other countries the aging farming population with the limited interest from younger people to become farmers, also linked to the rising price of agricultural land, raises the question of how big farms might become, and how to manage them.

Currently, the many developments in the field of robotics, of satellite applications, of field sensors and of computer programs make a futuristic picture of farming become more realistic.

With the expected rise of the cost of energy and of the price of all compounds made with massive use of fossil fuels, precision agriculture is the future. The name of the game will be zero-waste. Future economics will not allow for wasting energy, water or fertilizers or any other input. It will be imperative to get the most out of the least, not just simply producing more with less.

The use of satellites to map fields and indicate the variation of the content of fertilizing elements in the soil is already a reality. The use of GPS for harvest is now common with modern equipment. We are really only one step away from having computers processing all this data and operating fertilizer spreaders by automatically regulating the distribution of fertilizer on the field, based on the soil scan assessment. This will avoid overuse of fertilizer in zones that already contain enough nutrients. With the expected exhaustion of phosphate mines, and the large variation of phosphate contents in soil, it will pay off.

We are also only one step away from having tractors, harvesters and other agricultural equipment doing the fieldwork without drivers. A company in Iowa is already developing such a technology by linking the position of a tractor to the harvester via GPS. Such an approach makes the use of human operators less of a need than it used to be. This would allow farmers to manage much larger areas from one remote location. Their role would become more one of process controller, monitoring and steering the fieldwork by ways of cameras and remote control. This also would require less physical work, thus allowing aging farmers to manage at least as much production as they would have at a younger age. This would become even more of a possibility, as farming robots would be developed to replace humans for the physically more demanding activities.

Developments in the area of sensors also offer many possibilities in terms of farm and risk management. The ability of monitoring variations of temperature, humidity, plant growth, the presence of diseases, fungi and other pests in real-time would help make use of resources much more efficiently. Current developments of biosensors used in food packaging are amazing. Some of such sensors have the ability to turn fluorescent in presence of food pathogens. They can help prevent risks of food poising. Sensors help to detect undesirable “visitors”. Sensors also would help farmers detect potential threats at an earlier stage, even before they actually become visible by the human eye. This would allow starting treatment before problems could take proportions that would threaten production. This has the potential to help farmers produce more optimally, and to produce higher yields than they would otherwise. Linking such sensors to devices that can release the necessary amounts of water, nutrients, pesticides and possibly herbicides would help produce quite efficiently, and would reduce the use of inputs. This would help reduce waste, work towards more sustainable farming methods and reduce the use of chemicals, as they would be used only at the right time, at the right place and in the right quantities, instead of being applied systematically to the whole fields, including areas where they are not needed. The use of airplanes to spread chemicals could be eliminated, which would also reduce the use of fossil fuels. Instead of airplanes, it is possible to envision the use of drones that would have a “patrolling” function to detect anomalies or the extension of pests in the fields. By bringing the huge amount of data that these robots, sensors and drones would produce, fields would be monitored on a 24/7 basis and decision-making would be faster than today. Corrective action could be implemented automatically just as well.

By adding more monitoring functions and developing ecological modeling, this futuristic approach would be a way of managing the interaction between the crop itself, which is the purpose of food production, and the need to manage the ecosystem surrounding the fields, to ensure that production is carried out in an environmentally sustainable manner. Monitoring living organisms in and outside the fields would help optimizing production. The farmer would know the status of soil organisms, mostly worms, insects and microorganisms. He would be able to deal with pests in a targeted manner, almost in a similar way as the images of surgical strikes that we can see in the news. Mapping the extent of weeds through such devices would also allow their control in a targeted manner and with minimal use of potentially harmful compounds. The emphasis would be about control and management, not on killing out everything that seems a threat.

Further, monitoring fields as described above would support the environmental steward’s role of farmers, while making it easier to execute as well. Farmers would be informed timely about production effects on groundwater quality and possible residues in the soil and the crops.

Of course, all of the above sounds like a bit of science fiction, but considering the amazing innovations taking place in the all the areas mentioned, together with the constant miniaturization of devices and the increased processing abilities of computers, it might not be as far-fetched as it may sound today. Although many of these developments are not taking place in the agriculture sector as such, they are real and happening faster than one could imagine. Farming in 50 years from now will probably look different from it does today.

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

No shortage of action points for the future

August 5, 2011

The path to feeding the growing world population and to preserve agriculture’s ability to provide adequate volumes is paved with many challenges. Leaders will have to show how to resolve the many issues food production is facing or will face in the coming decades, and how to create a viable future.

As the population increases, the need for energy increases, too. Oil reserves are finite and new oilfields are becoming more and more difficult and expensive to exploit. It is only logical that oil will become more and more expensive in the future. This will call for more fuel-efficient equipment and vehicles. At the same time, oil that is more expensive also means that the relative price for alternative energy sources will become more competitive. In March 2011, an analyst from the bank HSBC published a report announcing that oil will no longer be available in 2060. In its future projections, the International Energy Agency (IEA) describes our energy sources as more diverse than they are now. They also mention that oil will not be the main source of energy anymore. Natural gas will take over. We should expect some significant changes in the way agriculture uses energy, the type of machinery that farmers will use and how future logistics will be organized.

The change of economics in energy will affect fertilizers, too. Especially, the production of nitrogen fertilizers uses large amounts of fossil fuel, essentially natural gas. On average, half of the nitrogen spread on fields is lost because of leaching. We can expect the focus to be on efficiency and on strategies of applications that are more efficient. This is already happening with precision agriculture techniques. Next to this, the focus of the fertilizer industry should be on developing nitrogen fertilizers that are less sensitive to leaching. Imagine a nitrogen fertilizer that may cost twice the price of the current ones, but for which there is no loss. Farmers would use only half the quantities that they currently do. The money to spend would be the same, but the use of fossil fuel to produce the fertilizer would be much less. There would be an environmental advantage to do so.

In the area of environmental issues, climate change needs to be addressed more effectively than it has been so far. Regardless whether people believe in it, or believe it is caused by human activity or it is only a natural phenomenon, the number of severe climatic events is reason to consider counter measures, just in case. The debate should not be about whether climate change is real or not. It is not about who may be responsible for it. True leaders take care of their people, and in this case, they should at least come with scenarios, contingency plans and emergency preparedness plans. That is the least we must expect from those in position of power and responsibility. In this case, the saying “the failure of the preparation is the preparation of failure” takes all its meaning.

Linked to climate to some extent, and a precious resource in all cases, water needs to be managed properly and carefully. For instance, all major river systems in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers. If the glaciers were to disappear, which is a possibility, the source of water that sustains 2.5 billion people would be depleted, even if water used for agriculture also comes from other sources, the monsoon especially. The consequences would be catastrophic. Further, as agriculture uses 70% of all fresh water resources, growing food production will require more efficient water usage techniques. The focus must be on efficiency and on reduction of waste of water resources. Such objectives will require substantial financial resources and solid planning.

In the area of waste, food losses must be reduced as much and as diligently as possible. The moral issue of food being thrown away by the wealthy is obvious. The wealthy are not just in developed countries. In emerging countries, similar behavior is appearing. It is interesting to know that the Indian government is considering fines for those who discard edible food. It is even more interesting to notice that in Western countries where the percentage of food thrown away is the highest, governments are not investigating this possibility of fines. The other food waste scandal is the post-harvest losses. The food is produced. It is edible, but because of a lack of proper infrastructure, it is left to rot. What a waste of seeds, land, water, money, labor and all other necessary inputs. I have mentioned this problem in previous articles, as I have shown that the financial return to fix the problem is actually high and quick. There is plenty of work in this area for leaders. The first step to succeed in this is to recognize that no organization can fix this on its own. There is a need for collaborative leadership, because all the stakeholders in the food chains must participate, and they all will reap the financial benefits of fixing post-harvest problems.

Food production is not a hobby. It is of the utmost importance for the stability and the prosperity of societies. Well-fed and happy people do not riot. The need to improve infrastructure and logistics is obvious. Food must be brought to those who need it. A proper transportation infrastructure is necessary. The choice of transportation methods has consequences for the cost of food supply, and for the environmental cost as well. Road transport is relatively expensive and produces the highest amounts of greenhouse gases. Rail transport is already much better, and barge transport even better. The distance between production areas and consumption centers also needs to be looked at, together with the efficiency of logistics. Optimization will be the name of the game. Completing the cycle of food and organic matter will become even more important than today, as the world population is expected to concentrate further into urban centers. As humans are at the end of the food chain, many nutrients and organic matter accumulates where the human settlements are. These nutrients, as well as the organic matter, will have to be brought back to the land. This is essential if we want to maintain soil fertility. As phosphates mines are gradually running out, sewage and manure are going to play a pivotal role in soil fertility management. The concentration of the population in urban centers, together with the change of economics in energy, will require a very different look on economic zoning, and in urban planning in particular.

Special attention will be necessary to inform and educate consumers to eat better. Overconsumption, and the health problems that result from it, is already becoming a time bomb. Overweight is not only a Western problem. The same trend is appearing in many developing countries as well. Overweight is on the rise all over the world. The number of obesity cases in China, and even in some African countries, is increasing. The cost of fixing health is high, and it will be even more so in countries with an aging population, as age-related ailment add up to eating-habits-related problems. Healthy societies are more productive and cost less to maintain.

As the economy grows, and wealth increases in more and more countries, diets are changing. Consumers shift from carbohydrate-based meals to a higher consumption of animal products, as well as fruit and vegetables. The “meat question” will not go away. Since it takes more than one kg of feed to produce one kg of animal product, increasing animal production puts even more pressure to produce the adequate volumes of food. The question that will arise is how many animals can we -or should we- keep to produce animal protein, and what species should they be? Levels of production, and of demand, will result in price trends that will regulate production volumes to some extent, but government intervention to set production and consumption quotas cannot be excluded, either.

Similar questions will arise about biofuel production, especially the type of biofuel produced. There will be debates about moral, economic, social and practical aspects of biofuels. The consequences on the price of food and animal feed are not negligible. The function of subsidies in the production of biofuels adds to this debate and there are strongly divergent points of view between the various stakeholders.

One of the most important issues in the discussion about feeding the increasing world population is food affordability. Producing more, and producing enough, is not enough. The food produced must be affordable, too. When this is not the case, people cannot eat, and this is the main reason for malnourishment. To make food affordable, food production must be efficient. The costs of production need to be kept under control to avoid either food inflation and/or farmers bankruptcies.

In agriculture, just like in any other human activity, money always talks. Money is a powerful incentive, and when used properly, it is a powerful driver for improvement. Strategic use of financial incentive is part of policies. To meet the future challenges, leaders will have to develop the right kind of incentives. The focus will have to be on efficiency, on long-term continuity of production potential as well as on short-term performance. The financial incentives can be subsidies. Although the debates tend to make believe subsidies are all bad, there are good and useful subsidies. Another area of incentives to think about is the type of bonuses paid to executives. Just imagine what would happen if, instead of just profit, the carbon footprint per $1000 of sales was factored in the bonus? Gas emissions would be high on the priority of management teams.

If the way executives are paid matters, the type of financial structure of businesses could influence the way they operate, too. Now, it may sound surprising, but in the future, expect the question whether food companies should be listed on the stock exchange to arise. Short-term focus on the share price can be quite distracting from the long-term necessities. If we find that elected officials are short-term-oriented because elections take place every four or five years, how short-term quarterly financial results to the stock markets influence CEOs? The pressure by investors on companies’ Executive Boards to deliver value is high. They expect some results within a relatively short period, while what happens to the companies, their employees and long-term effect on the environment after they took their profits is irrelevant to them. This brings the question of the functioning of financial markets as a whole. What derivatives are acceptable? Who should be allowed to have access to which ones? What quantity could they be allowed to buy and sell? Many questions will arise more and more loudly every time food prices will jump up again the future, and as social unrest may result from it.

To prepare the future, it is important to prepare the generations of the future. Education will play a critical role in the success of societies. Only by helping future generations to have access to knowledge, to develop skills and to train to fill in the jobs of the future, will countries develop a strong middle class. Thanks to education, people can get better paying jobs. This allows them to buy adequate quantities of food for themselves and their families. Education is an investment to fight poverty and hunger. In the agricultural sector, it will be important to attract more young people to work in the food and agricultural sector. In many countries, farmers are getting old and replacement is scarce.

These are just a few of the issues that the current and future leadership will have to solve, if we want the feed and preserve the world. There will be many discussions about which systems are the best suited to ensure prosperity and stability. The respective roles of governments, businesses, non-profits and of the people will certainly be reviewed with scrutiny.

During the writing of Future Harvests, it became obvious to me how crucial the role of leadership is for our chances of success. In the course of a number of assignments with my company, this observation has grown even stronger.

For these reasons, I have decided to start writing another book focused on the role of leadership to develop long-term development of food production and food supply. It will be a reflection about the tough calls that leaders need to make. The final objective is to ensure viable food production systems and proper infrastructure, while ensuring the continuity of food supply in the long-term, through a successful interaction between all stakeholders.

Tentatively, the publication date is fixed for the summer or the fall of 2012.

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

Future Harvests now also available as an ebook

August 2, 2011

Following up on a number of requests, and as ebooks are increasingly becoming the preferred choice for many readers, I listened to the market.

From this day, Future Harvests – The Next Agricultural Revolution is available as an ebook. You can find it on amazon.com, as a Kindle edition.

Both the paperback book as the ebook are an updated edition of the original book published last year.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

Believing in the future

June 24, 2011

The recent economic crisis gives an example of how the perception of the future can change, and how the level of economic security affects our behavior.

While before the economic crisis, many people preferred to spend rather than save, since the economic perspectives have changed, so has the behavior. A similar behavior, but at business level, is the reluctance of companies to hire when the economic outlook is uncertain.

Readiness to act to build the future depends greatly on people’s perception of what that very word means to them. Some have such comfortable lives that they actually do not think much about the future. They consider it a given, and take the current situation for granted. They have not much incentive to change. They might be in for a surprise someday, though. On the opposite end of this, there are those who have no expectation of the future. For them, life is so insecure because of famine, disease or violence, that all that matters is the here and now. Thinking ahead is almost impossible, and all that matters is the immediate. The future is irrelevant.

For those who live between these two extremes, the goal is to see life conditions improve. However, how this can be achieved, and whether it seems realistic depends greatly on the resources available.

Although many areas of the food and agriculture value chain need to be improved and can be improved, it is important to notice how much resistance many food security plans are facing during their execution. Obviously not all participants agree on the objectives and on the steps to follow. This is especially important in developing countries where  many problems affect food security, such as limited financial resources, limited water availability, post-harvest losses or difficult access to market to name a few.

To get people to believe in “the” future, the first step is to connect to their sense of how far the future is. When you are 20 in a country where the life expectancy is 80, thinking about the future is quite normal, and the life expectancy gives an indication of the period that the privileged ones have in mind. In regions where life prospects are dire, thinking even a couple of years ahead will probably be irrelevant to many. When presenting a vision of the future, one must consider this way of thinking. The acceptance and the commitment to implement actions will depend largely on whether the timeline is perceived as reasonable. People are more inclined to participate when they think that they will be able to see the results in their lifetime.

On the way to the future, actions are always more convincing than words. Positive results need to appear soon. Otherwise, the momentum in favor of the promised changes might slow down. This is why a good strategy is to start with the simplest and the easiest projects. They will deliver results faster. As success breeds success, they will generate more enthusiasm for the more difficult projects that require more time and more resources to be completed. This approach is a good way to build credibility and defuse criticism. Another advantage is that the participants will become more aware of what they can achieve as they achieve success. This gain in confidence will boost the morale to pursue with the further improvements. Often, this creates very healthy bottom-up dynamics that generates newer ideas on how to achieve the goals better and faster, or even exceed them.

Clearly, increasing confidence requires actions at many different levels. In the case of food security, the scope needs to go beyond agricultural development alone. Producing more food will not feed people if the hungry ones still do not make enough money to pay for food. Agriculture is only one of the economic sectors, and it will not produce miracles if it is not included in a more ambitious and broader goal.

Of all activities carried out to improve food security, I find the Chinese policies rather interesting. They are a long-term oriented culture. They are very patient and persistent, as many episodes of their history demonstrate. Their development activities in Africa are comprehensive. Next to all their work to develop agricultural production, they also invest heavily in the development of small businesses. They are working to develop the local economy beyond simply food production. Possibly, they experience of the last 30 years in developing the economy in China explains their approach. They know that social stability depends on people having at least the bare necessities. In the 1990s, I remember when we, in Europe, started to realize that China’s goal was to feed its people first. Imports of agricultural commodities into China started to increase. In particular, their demand for wheat and for what Europeans considered animal by-products was strongly on the rise. They seem to have a similar approach with Africa. They understand that their food supply will be more secure if the countries where they invest are economically and socially stable. It is worth noting that China invests more money in Africa than all G8 countries together do. It would appear that, to follow through with these policies, not having elections every few years allows them to execute a long-term vision without having to sacrifice it through short-term distraction.

On the other end of the spectrum, in terms of making people lose faith in the future, I could mention Libyan land purchases in Mali. The farmers, who had been working the land for themselves, although the land did not belong to them, have received notice that they will have to leave at the end of this year. This is exactly the kind of practice that could lead a country into civil war.

Businesses and non-profits that are active to develop food production need to take into account the same aspects that increase confidence in the execution of their plans. The owners, shareholders and fund providers must take a long-term approach to succeed. In such projects, the day-to-day share price on the stock exchange is not relevant. Such projects are long-term investments that will deliver a return only after many years. Among the most important investments, I would give a special mention to health and education. Without them, people can simply not get any fulfilling occupation, and economic development will be stuck in low gear.

At my modest level, I once inherited a project to get a fish processing plant operational. This project was a taking place in one of British Columbia’s Central Coast First Nations communities, which was plagued by a staggering 80% unemployment rate. Apart from the fact that there had been no budget allocated, I faced another problem. The local Economic Development Corporation in charge of their end of the project was never carrying out what they were supposed to do. Being my old little me, I never accepted this situation as a reality, and I made sure that all parties would do what they agreed to do. Only after a couple of years did I get the explanation for their dragging their feet. Many projects had taken place in this community before, but they all failed. The locals had concluded that no project would ever succeed, and they were not adamant to invest much in the future. The initial agreement had been signed between the salmon farming company and the leaders of the community, but time was necessary to get the lower levels of the village to be convinced. At some point in time, I was told that if it had not been for my indestructible faith in the project’s success, my persistence and my sometimes quasi-obnoxious insistence, this project would have had the same fate as the other previous ones. I had to deal with many heated discussions, a small social upheaval and death threats, but I quite alive to say proudly that, 11 years after I started it, the plant still is operational today, for the benefit of the community and its residents!

Long-term vision, empathy, sharing the value, strong leadership (even some dose of benevolent dictatorship) are all critical elements to make developing nations believe in the future.

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

Food security in Paradise

June 20, 2011

Many Hawaiian residents express their concern about their dependence on food that comes from far away. Actually, there are more and more conferences and workshops about the topic of food security for Hawaii. With this in mind, I went to the Big Island of Hawaii for a vacation last April. I certainly would recommend to everyone to do the same if they ever have the chance.

Since Hawaii is part of the USA, food security will be guaranteed from the mainland. However, looking at the situation as if Hawaii was an independent country makes the debate about food dependence from other
regions quite interesting. The Islands of the State of Hawaii are isolated, as they lay in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles away from any significant continental mass.

During my stay, I was reminded about food security and environmental issues in several occasions. On Earth Day, I came across an event that was interesting in many regards. Apart from the more militant speeches about mostly the big bad oil, and the fact that “Lady Green” touched me with a sunflower, I spent some time engaging in conversations with a number of exhibitors, from government organizations to renewable energy systems (solar makes a lot of sense in Hawaii to me). One booth where I spent more time was
the one of the University of Hawaii’s Pacific Aquaculture& Coastal Resources Center. There, I had a good conversation with PACRC’s Director Kevin Hopkins, a very knowledgeable man with extensive experience in aquaculture, not only in the USA, but also in Asian and African countries. Thanks to him, I got a better idea of the challenge to integrate a sustainable aquaculture in the Hawaiian environment. Living in Vancouver, BC, and having worked in the salmon farming industry, this is not a new topic for me. Aquaculture faces similar concerns in both places.

Click on picture to enlarge

With this in mind, I continued my vacation. At the Kaloko-Honokohau Historic Park, I found a sign showing a comparison of food security between today and 300 years ago. By then, there were 150,000 inhabitants on the Big Island of Hawaii, 100% of the food was produced on the island, 0% was imported, and they were producing 300,000-500,000 lbs. of fish in stone fishponds. Today, for a similar population, only 18% of the food is produced locally, and the Kaloko fishponds do not produce any fish at all (see picture). Of course, these numbers do not take the number of tourists to feed into account. Moreover, the current food consumption per capita is probably substantially richer in calories than 300 years ago, too. However, this history could be a good basis for more constructive discussions about aquaculture. Clearly, aquaculture was a traditional way of improving food security for ancient Hawaiians. The old fishponds were made of walls built with the volcanic rocks, and the fish was passing though a gate made of vertical bars. The small fish could enter, but as they grew bigger, they were unable to pass the gates and leave. This system made me think of a hybrid form of closed containment. In BC, where many discussions are about producing salmon on land, the Hawaiian fishponds are actually a quasi-closed containment on the seabed. It does not require all the land-based infrastructure and equipment, as is the case for land-based closed containment systems. What I saw at this park tells me that the useful could meet the historical, cultural and the modern just to help develop a responsible and productive aquaculture to increase food self-sufficiency for Hawaii. In a region where the ocean space available is as vast as this is the case around Hawaii, I am convinced that there have to be plenty of locations where aquaculture can be conducted without harming the environment, and there have to be more than enough adequate production techniques to do it right.

In the same park, there were remnants of pits in which rocks were set up in many individual planters. In these planters, called mala’ai, the ancient Hawaiians used to grow food plants. This is an ingenious system, because in that area, the fields are covered by lava. There is no soil to be used for open field crops, such as wheat, for instance. On the other hand, there would be plenty of acreage to set up such planters. This would be labor intensive, though.

At the Kaimu-Kalapana black sand beach, I read on a sign that ancient Hawaiians used to harvest seaweed and that apparently, their methods were sustainable. It is only after commercial harvesting by European settlers started that the seaweed quantities plummeted because of excessive harvest volumes. Just like for fish production, researchers from all sides should work on restoring such a seaweed production in a sustainable manner. This example, like all other examples of unsustainable human practices, simply demonstrates that we must produce or harvest what we can, instead of trying to produce or harvest always more while ignoring the signals that we are passing a breaking point.

I spent time only on the Big Island, and I did not visit the other islands. Probably, I do not have the whole picture, especially considering that more than two-thirds of Hawaii’s population lives in the State capital, Honolulu. According to the latest US population census, Hawaii’s total population is of about 1.3 million people, out of which more than 900,000 live in Honolulu. To get a more accurate picture of how much food needs to be produced to meet demand, it is necessary to add the visitors. Per year, the number of visitors is about 7.4 million people, who stay on average 9.15 days. This number expressed in average outside visitors staying in Hawaii per year is 7.4 x 9.15 / 365 = 186,000 people. To simplify, I will estimate the number of mouths to feed at 1.5 million.

For the Hawaiians concerned by the food security or, better said, the low food self-sufficiency of their state (less than 15 %!), what are the possibilities?

Just like in most of the rest of the USA, the local food movement is growing. More and more people are trying to grow some food on their balconies. Of course, this will not be enough to reverse the situation, but it will contribute. Farmers’ markets are gaining in popularity, and I have to say rightly so. Unlike what I am used to in my neighborhood, the food sold on the farmers markets that I came across on the Big Island offer many affordable and actually cheaper foods than in the large supermarket chains. At the farmers markets, I could notice that many more generic vegetables such as onions, tomatoes or bell peppers were shipped from the West Coast of continental US, mainly Washington State. On the other hand, I found quite interesting to notice that the big retailers are also trying to source local products. I only visited a Wal-Mart and a Safeway. From what I have been told, the selling of local products at their outlets is a recent change.

This is interesting, because these retailers will try to be able to source larger volumes, and they actually maybe in a position to stimulate more local food, agriculture and aquaculture production.

The quality of the local food is quite good, although when on vacation everything tends to taste better for some reason. Although I am not much of a beef eater, I was tempted by a “Hawaiian” local grass-fed beef burger recipe, and I have to admit this was the best burger that I ever tasted. It was so good that we went back to the same pub the next evening and I had another burger, while my spouse had a steak. Her steak was simply stunning. And the price was actually cheaper than similar generic beef dishes here in Vancouver.

When it comes to justifying more local food production, I have seen very interesting numbers about the amount of money that Hawaiians spend on food, and therefore to producers outside of their state. According to the same studies, local production would also result in more local jobs. However, I would not develop a plan based on such numbers, not because I doubt them, but because the business must be financially viable as well. I find all the reports that I have read too general or too academic for my liking. Moreover, I am not convinced that the politicians are committed to take the necessary steps to increase food self-sufficiency in Hawaii. They give it quite some lip service, but I miss signs that this topic might be on top of their priority list.

Personally, my first step to see what needs to be done would be to look at how many farms are required to produce what is needed: how many eggs, how much milk, how many chickens, how many pigs, how much fish, how many fruit and vegetables, how much wheat, rice, potatoes, and so on. Once I would have identified the size of the local market for all the food items, I would calculate how many farms are needed to meet that demand. After all, there cannot be food security if there are not enough farms.

For instance, every 10 kg consumption per capita of chicken meat means a production volume of 1.5 million x 10 kg = 15 million kg of chicken. As a chicken weighs about 2 kg, this would correspond to 7.5 million chickens per year. With an average of six flocks per year in a chicken house, this would mean a production capacity of 1.250 million places. This represents about 60 chicken houses. Depending on the size of the farm, my guess would be that 10 to 20 farms are necessary to cover a consumption of 10 kg per capita per year. If consumption were 40 kg per capita per year, Hawaii would potentially need up to 80 farms. Do they have the farmers and the locations for all of them? That is what I would like to determine.

Similarly, in the case of marine fish farms, every 10 kg consumption per capita per year of fish requires 15 million kg of fish, or close to 30,000 tons of live fish. If we were to imagine the containment system from Hawaii Oceanic Technology that I mentioned in “High-tech fish farm”, it almost could be produced on one farm. Of course, it would not be wise to put all the eggs in the same basket. If production volumes were comparable to a salmon farm, the 30,000 tons could require 10 farming sites. This is just theoretic in order to give an idea of the production space needed. There would be different species produced, but the calculation method remains the same for each of them.

With such an approach, for all the relevant food products, it can appear very quickly if being self-sufficient for the various food items is realistic or desirable.

The final exercise, which is also the most important, is the business plan per farm, to assess the viability of the individual projects. Even local, food production must be competitive. The example of Hawaiian sugar cane shows that this is not necessarily the case.

Next to farmers, food producers and market outlets, the Hawaiian government can stimulate more local production if it wishes to do so by setting the appropriate policies. Developing such a thorough review of how to reduce food dependency on outside sources in a market-driven and viable manner for the long term would be quite enjoyable to carry out in paradise!

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

Wisdom in poetry

April 21, 2011

The more discussions about future food production and food security in which I participate, the more I discover the amazing number of dimensions this issue contains. This makes it even more fascinating to investigate and to reflect upon it.

Meeting the food demand of an increasing world population goes much further than agriculture. Some like to see it as a matter of science and technology, others as a social issue, others as an economic problem and so on. This is all true, but isolating the various pieces of the puzzle is not satisfactory. At least, it is not to me. When I listen to the many points of views, it becomes increasingly obvious to me that we will need to integrate all these dimensions: the science, the technology, the finance, the social, the environmental, the cultural, the religious, the spiritual, the philosophical and the moral. I probably even forget to mention some dimensions in this list.

As human beings, we have the privilege of the thinking and of setting the rules to ensure our prosperity. The human genius is amazing, and we have been able to develop an astonishing amount of tools to improve our lives. However, tools are only an extension of our understanding and of our perception of the world around us.

The drivers of our societies have changed in the course of time. In ancient Greece, philosophy and science played a central role in our effort to understand the world. During the Middle Ages, science became a threat to religious leaders. Galileo experienced the pressure. Science did not make much progress in these dark centuries. With the Renaissance, the arts and the curiosity to understand the world came back in fashion, supported by a number of enlightened rulers. Leonardo da Vinci could experiment and let his genial mind at work without fear. For a couple of centuries, science, arts and philosophy were considered equally important. Personally I am a great admirer of the 18th century philosophers/scientists whose curiosity helped develop many theories and research that are still useful today. During the course of the 20th century, a shift occurred. Science gradually took a dominant position, and the philosophical, the spiritual and the arts lost quite a bit of their lustre. I can understand that the feeling of “exactness” in science offers an apparent sense of security, although, the use we make of science is not always that exact. Some of our societies seem to reject anything that has not been proven scientifically. They tend to reject the point of views of those who search answers in other areas of human sciences. Pragmatism, which I strongly advocate, requires that we consider all possibilities, before choosing which ones offer the best answers to our problems. Science is not a judge for what should be allowed or not. For eons, farmers have applied successful techniques without having any scientific explanations, simply because science was not advanced enough. That does not take away that certain things worked. Similarly, we need to keep an open mind about yet scientifically unproven techniques. If we had to know how everything works before we could do anything, we would be stuck in inaction. I believe that technical sciences and human sciences have much to benefit from each other. Only by considering all aspects of our knowledge, technical as well as human, will we be able to achieve the most in future years.

Recently, I remembered a poem I had to learn in school. Although the topic has some agricultural background, the theme is more about the true values in life and the true riches. It is about fulfillment and achievement, but it also gives a nice reference to what motivates most of us. I believe it could serve as a useful tool to think about what will or should really matter for the future.

Here I give you Jean de la Fontaine’s “Le Laboureur et ses Enfants” that he published in 1668, first in French, and then translated in English.

French version:

Le laboureur et ses enfants

Travaillez, prenez de la peine :
C’est le fonds qui manque le moins.
Un riche Laboureur, sentant sa mort prochaine,
Fit venir ses enfants, leur parla sans témoins.
Gardez-vous, leur dit-il, de vendre l’héritage
Que nous ont laissé nos parents.
Un trésor est caché dedans.
Je ne sais pas l’endroit ; mais un peu de courage
Vous le fera trouver, vous en viendrez à bout.
Remuez votre champ dès qu’on aura fait l’Oût.
Creusez, fouiller, bêchez ; ne laissez nulle place
Où la main ne passe et repasse.
Le père mort, les fils vous retournent le champ
Deçà, delà, partout ; si bien qu’au bout de l’an
Il en rapporta davantage.
D’argent, point de caché. Mais le père fut sage
De leur montrer avant sa mort
Que le travail est un trésor.

English translation:

The farmers and his children

Work hard, sweat all you can:
Riches is what counts the least.
A rich farmer, sensing his impending death,
Called for his children, and spoke to them without witnesses.
Do not sell the inheritance left by our parents, he said,
As a treasure is hidden in it.
I do not know where, but with a bit of courage
You will find it, you will figure it out.
Go search the field when summer ends.
Dig, scratch, plow, do not leave no earth unturned
Anywhere your hands can reach.
After the father’s death, the sons worked the field
Everywhere, over and over again, so that within a year
It produced more than ever before.
There was no money to be found, but the father had been wise
To show them before his death
That work is a treasure.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

The fertilizer of the future

March 12, 2011

Among the many challenges that the agriculture of the future faces, soil fertility ranks high on the list of priorities.

Originally, most farms were mixed. They had land to grow crops and they had animals for milk, eggs and meat. Markets were mostly local, and food was consumed in the villages and towns near the farms. Food waste was fed to farm animals; the manure produced was mixed with straw and returned to the fields where the crops had been grown. Over time, farming has evolved. Agriculture has become much larger scale, global and specialized. This evolution has been driven by the use of oil, mechanization, and by the development of mineral fertilizers.

That model, which has been greatly based on cheap energy and resources, needs to be looked at critically as the economic environment changes. Energy is no longer cheap and, like oil, the resources used for the production of fertilizers have been depleted. New solutions are required to be able to produce optimally.

The production of nitrogen fertilizers requires a lot of energy. According to estimates, it uses 5% of the world’s natural gas production, and half the fossil fuels used in agriculture. Because nitrogen is quite mobile when dissolved, as this happens when it rains, a large amount of these high-energy-consumption compounds are lost. An estimated 50% of the nitrogen spread on crops leaches through the soil. It ends up in the water system. The reserves of phosphates, another important mineral fertilizer, are facing depletion. This might happen in 20 years from now. With the development of precision agriculture, the waste of minerals can be reduced. With the development of satellite imaging indicating the mineral status of a field, and the local variations within the field, it has become possible for farmers to bring just the right amount of the right mineral at the right time and at the right place. This follows somehow a similar thinking as fertilizing plants in hydroponics operations where crops are produced without soil and fed a mineral solution drop by drop.

A consequence of the specialization between crop farms and intensive animal farms is the rupture of the organic matter cycle. Large monoculture farms have suffered soil erosion because of a lack of organic matter, among other reasons. In soils, the presence of organic matter increases moisture retention, increases minerals retention and enhances the multiplication of microorganisms. All these characteristics disappear when the quantity of organic matter decreases. A solution to alleviate this problem is the practice of no-tillage together with leaving vegetal debris turn into organic matter to enrich the soil. This has helped restore the content of organic matter in the soil, although one can wonder if this practice has only positive effects. Tillage helps eliminating weeds. It also helps break the superficial structure of the soil, which can develop a hard crust, depending on the precipitations and the clay content of the soil. Possibly, in the future the use of superficial tillage could become the norm. Deep tillage, as it has been carried out when agriculture became mechanized, has the disadvantage of diluting the thin layer of organic matter in a much deepen layer of soil. This dilution seriously reduces the moisture and mineral retention capacity of soils, thus contributing to erosion as well, even in organic matter-rich soils.

The removal of farm animals from specialized crop farms requires the systematic use of mineral fertilizers because farmers do not have access to manure and the minerals it contains, even though most of these minerals originate from the crops farms.

At the other end of this interrupted cycle of manure, intensive animal farms do not suffer a lack of organic matter and minerals. They have the opposite problem. They have too much of it, and not enough acreage, if any, where to spread it. This leads to accumulation of manure and other related problems, such as stench, high concentrations of minerals in the soil and eventually in the waterways and drinking water reserves.

Since nothing is lost, what has happened to the minerals from fields and from fertilizers? They have been transferred to other places via the global trade of agricultural commodities. Many of these commodities are used to produce animal feed. Phosphate in European pig manure may come from Asian manioc farms. Therefore, the best way to find out where the minerals are is to look at where intensive animal husbandry farms are. As mentioned earlier, nitrogen is washed away into the water system because of its mobility. Unlike nitrogen, phosphates are not mobile in the soil. They will accumulate, which also leads to a loss of soil fertility, eventually. The other area of concentrations of these minerals is in city sewers, and in the soil of slums. Since the purpose of agriculture is to produce food, and since consumers are increasingly concentrated in urban centers, the exportation of minerals is actually gathering momentum out of rural areas.

In the future, we are going to see a new look at fertilization. The economics of agriculture will change. This is inevitable, because the cost of inputs will increase. This will be a direct consequence of the increase of the price of oil, and of the depletion of phosphates reserves. This change of economics will drive renewed interest for manure, and for sewage. These sources will become attractive and competitive, as they contain large amounts of minerals directly available. Because of their nature, they have a high content of organic matter. One of the most efficient ways to remove nitrates from water is to grow plants with it. One of the main sources of phosphates will be manure.

There is little indication that the human population will return to the land, but animal farms can be moved rather easily. After all, they already are segregated from vegetal production. The increased need for manure will call for a relocation of animal productions. In an expensive-energy economy, having the “fertilizer factory” on site, or at least much closer than today makes a lot of sense. This is especially true because manure contains a lot of water, although there are substantial differences between productions. Transporting water is expensive. Mixing crops and animal productions again on farms will also allow the inclusion of vegetal debris together again with the feces and urine, producing a higher dry matter content, with limited transport costs between the field and the “fertilizer factory”. Regardless of the size of the farms, I expect to see a relocation of animal production units on agricultural land. They will be spread more evenly in the landscape than today. This will decrease the density of farm animals in currently high-density areas to levels that will allow a better control of environmental issues, as well as reduce partly the risks of transmission of animal diseases. Animal production units will reappear in areas where they had disappeared because of the fertilizer that they will provide.

This evolution will also come together with a new approach of manure storage and treatment. Open-air lagoons like those that we know today will simply cease to exist. The changed economics of energy will make the capture of gases financially attractive. Manure storage units will be covered; the biogas will be collected to be used for energy purpose, for the farm and the local communities. The solid and the liquid fractions of the manure will be processed and transformed to provide organic matter and the fertilizing minerals necessary for crop production. The location of the “manure units” will be influenced by the type of animal production, and therefore by the physical quality of the manure. There will be a logistic optimization of manure collection to the crop farms. It will be based on efficiency and optimization of resources. Therefore, the new farm structure will be efficient, as much financially as environmentally. Similarly, open-ocean fish farms that currently do not collect the feces will see the financial value in recuperating the fish waste and sell it. In cities, there will be an increasing interest to recycle the sewage. The purpose will be to recuperate the organic matter and the minerals it contains. A similar approach for human waste will apply as for animal production units as I described above. This will also be integrated in the future approach of urban farming, as it will provide the necessary nutrients for an efficient urban food production. It will be a source of revenue to the cities.

In rural areas and in urban areas, organic matter and fertilizing minerals will become strategic activities. They will serve the purpose of feeding sustainably the world population.

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

Ten human factors that may hinder feeding nine billion people

February 22, 2011

The road to ensure food security for all is still long. Although humans are very creative to solve and overcome their problems, when it comes to food production, they still lack control on many parameters. Since the beginning of agriculture, farmers have watched towards the sky to see what the weather would bring them. Rituals to call for friendly climatic conditions and soil fertility have been common in all cultures. Droughts, floods, never-ending rainfall, frost and other climatic events have happened on an ongoing basis and, climate change or not, they still will happen in the future. If natural events are out of our control, we can influence another parameter, although mankind’s history has shown that it is a difficult one to tackle: the human factor.

Here follows in condensed form my top ten human limitations to succeed in feeding nine billion people by 2050:

#10: Fear

Although fear is a defence mechanism, it will not protect humanity against food shortages. There are many fears that play a role in our understanding (or lack of it) of food production. The problem is not so much fear itself, but the inability to overcome it and to start bringing effective solutions to the problems. The other risk that fear brings is its ability to spread and to evolve into panic.

There are many challenges ahead, but we need to keep our heads cool, and address the issues practically and rationally, at least as much as we can. Inaction, which is a symptom of fear, will not be helpful. To feed nine billion we cannot be passive.

#9: Greed

Greed is fear’s twin sibling. It is a strong driver that makes people take risks for the sake of material reward. As such, a little bit of greed is good, as it stimulates action and entrepreneurship. It stimulates the need for action that I just mentioned. Speculation, the purest form of greed, will have to be brought under control. Its consequences in terms of social unrest and on the stability of societies are too serious. The risk with greed is that all the focus is on the short-term financial reward. It is also essential to ensure the continuity of food production for the long term, and we should not engage in solutions that can undermine future food security. A little bit of fear will help bring some balance.

#8: Not addressing the right issues

This, together with the slow disappearance of common sense, is a growing tendency. Too often, the focus is on eliminating the symptom rather than the cause of the problem. This usually results in creating a new set of unnecessary problems. By eliminating the cause of a problem, the solution does not create any new problem. We just have to deal with other problems and their causes. In the case of food security, an example of mistaking the cause and the symptom is hunger. The cause is poverty, not the lack of food. The food is there, but the poor cannot afford it. In our world of information overflow where the media are more interested in the sensational and the “sexy”, true and thorough analysis has gradually become less interesting to the public. Although analysis may be boring indeed, it is an absolute necessity if we really want to solve problems.

#7: Lack of education/training

Here is a topic that rarely makes the headlines in the media. Farmers, and candidates farmers, need to have access to proper education and training. In order to improve and produce both more and better, they need to have the knowledge and have the possibility to update this knowledge. This may seem obvious in rich countries where education and training are well organized, but in many developing nations, usually plagued with food insecurity, this is not the case. Too often, even the most basic knowledge is missing. For these populations to succeed and to contribute in increased food security, it is necessary to have education high on the list of priorities.

#6: Lack of farmers

This topic does not get much publicity, although it is of the highest importance. In many countries, the average age of farmers is above average and there seems to be little interest from the youth to take over. We need farmers if we want food. To have farmers, we need to make the profession attractive and economically viable. Two weeks ago, the US Secretary of Agriculture announced measures to make it easier to start up a farm. He mentioned that his country needs to find 100,000 new farmers. In Japan, they are developing robots to do the farmers’ work as there is too little interest from the youth for agriculture, and they face a serious risk of not having enough farmers. In the EU, there are more than 4.5 million farmers older than 65, while there are fewer than 1 million farmers younger than 30. This is how serious the situation is becoming.

#5: Lack of compassion/Indifference

In our increasingly individualistic and materialistic societies, the focus has shifted towards the short term, and even to instant gratification. Our attention span has shrunk dramatically, and unless other people’s problems affect us, we tend to forget about it. When it comes to food security for nine billion people, this will not work. There are many possibilities to produce enough food, as I have shown in previous articles, but to achieve this goal, we still have a lot of work to do. Mostly, we have to change a number of bad habits.

Throwing large amounts of food in the garbage is one of those bad habits. By changing this, we can save amazing quantities of food. First, we must lose the I-do-not-care attitude.

Large quantities of food are lost before reaching markets in developing countries. All it takes to solve the problem is to make the funds available. Compared with the stimulus packages and bank bailouts, the amount is ridiculously low. There too, the not-my-problem attitude is improper.

Another example is Africa. With the size of Australia of unexploited arable land, and low yields because of lack of proper seed and proper support, the potential for food production is huge. We need to help Africa succeed. The attitude of the West towards Africa, and Africans, needs to change.

Humans are social animals. This behaviour is an evolutionary advantage aimed at ensuring the survival of the species. Hard-nosed individualism and indifference go in the opposite direction. They work only in period of abundance. By showing some compassion and helping others succeed, the fortunate ones actually increase their own odds of survival. In our globally interconnected world, any negative food security event affects us all, eventually. We feel a pinch while we are “only” seven billion. This says how painful it would be by being nine billion.

#4: Interest groups

A better name should be self-interest groups. There is not a day that goes by without showing us the total lack of interest they have for those who are not affiliated to them. For as much as it is essential that all opinions and philosophies can express themselves, it is just as essential that they also have empathy and respect for those who think differently. Interest groups do not appear to do that. They express the behaviours that I indicate under #10, #9, #8 and #5. Their objective is to influence policies by bypassing the people who elected the representatives who depend on these groups for their political funding. Would that sound accidentally reminiscent of corruption and banana republic?

#3: Lack of long-term commitment to the vision/plan

There are many plans for food security out there. About every government has one. Industry groups come out with their vision as well. So do environmental groups. The problem in many cases is not the lack of objectives; it is the failure of execution.

To achieve food security, proper execution is paramount. It requires much more than a vision and a plan on paper. It requires a clear allocation of responsibilities and a schedule for the delivery of the objectives.

Often, what undermines the execution of a plan is the lack of a sense of ownership of the mission. All the actors of food security need to be involved as early s possible in the process. This makes them participate in the set up of the plan and this increases their level of commitment. There is nothing worse than a plan developed by a limited group that tries to push it on those who actually must make it happen. When people are not involved and committed, they feel no ownership of the plan. They simply will not participate.

#2: Ego

There is nothing like some good old-fashioned ego to thwart the general interest. Unfortunately, ego is a rather common component in higher circles of government, business and organizations. Some of the symptoms include the inability to say “I don’t Know”, the inability to admit being wrong, the tendency to wage turf wars, and the unawareness of the win-win concept. Acknowledging one’s ignorance is the first step to learning, therefore improving. Believing to be always right is simply delusional and shows a lack of sense of reality. Turf wars may end up with a winner, but usually it is a Pyrrhic victory.  Thinking that one can win only if the others lose is just an illustration of point #5. When it comes to food security for nine billion, a short-term victory at someone else’s expenses will soon be a defeat for all.

#1: Poor leadership

Leadership is paramount in any human endeavour and feeding nine billion is quite the objective. While I was writing Future Harvests, I constantly came across the importance of leadership. I have no worries in our technical abilities.

All the success stories that I could learn from had all in common having a strong leader with a clear vision of what needs to be done. The leader also had the ability to gather all the energies behind him and get a consensus on the objectives and the path to follow.

Similarly, all the failures stories also had leadership in common. Usually, it shows a despotic leader who acts more out of self-interest than for the general interest, who does not accept being wrong and change course before things go haywire.

In order to succeed and meet food demand by 2050, we will need leaders, at all levels of society, who have the following qualities. They will overcome fear, keep greed under control, address the right issues, will foster education, will encourage farmers’ vocations, will be compassionate, will work for the general interest, will involve and commit all to succeed, and will not put their egos first.

Copyright 2011 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

An Interview with The Food Futurist: 100 Answers about the Future of Agriculture

February 14, 2011

Following up on the recent publication of the report “100 Questions of Importance for the Future of Global Agriculture” by a group of experts from all over the world under the lead of Jules Pretty of the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, I wanted to react candidly and spontaneously on every of these 100 questions.

Since giving extensive answers would represent several months, if not years of work for a single individual, I chose for the interview format. I gave myself just a couple of minutes to say what came to my mind.

The result is this document: 100 Answers – An interview with the Food Futurist

I hope it will be as enjoyable for you to read as it was for me to write. I hope that it will trigger reactions, as this is more a first attempt to initiate a forum discussion.

The questions were quite interesting. However, I missed a few elements tat I believe to be quite important in the challenge of feeding a population of nine billion by 2050. The initial report did not raise enough questions about the issue of water. Water is essential to agriculture, and the challenge of accessing enough water is even more urgent and more critical than improving food availability. Similarly, the initial report did not reflect much on urban farming. Estimates of today’s urban food production are of 15-20% of the total world food production. Considering that about 50% of the population lives in cities, this means that 30-40% of all the food consumed in cities is produced in urban centers. This is far from negligible. As the urban population is expected to double by 2050, urban farming will be an essential part of our food supply. I had also expected more attention to aquaculture, which is the fastest growing food production.

The initial report focuses more on production aspects and systems than it does focus on the human factor. Population increase, distribution and especially the quality of leadership will be crucial for the way food security strategies can be set up. As I mention in one of my answers, our future will be as bright as our leaders.

Writing this document, and reacting to questions asked by highly qualified experts, was a good way of assessing the book “Future Harvests” that I published in August 2010. I was quite happy to see that the book addresses all the concerns of the thinkers and policymakers.

 I wish you happy reading.

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Posted by Christophe Pelletier

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