Over the years, there has been no shortage of publications and conferences about the theme of “changing the food system(s)”. Yes, like everything else, nothing is carved in stone and ongoing evolution is a part of life. Yet, it is obvious that change is slow and there are many reasons for it. Well, there is one main reason actually: the economics of food production. Money is always what makes or breaks change. In previous posts on this blog, I mentioned the importance of economics many times, and in particular the need to change the economics if we want to succeed with change. To change the economics, we must look at externalities. For those who follow my blog, you know that externalities is one of my recurring topics, simply because we cannot ignore them. We cannot ignore them because of their very nature, which is about identifying the long-term effects -positive and negative- of our activities. If in doubt, the reason for the demand to change food systems is obvious: it is about the negative long-term impact of food production on the very conditions that affect food production and our future ability to do so. Nobody argues that we must have sustainable production systems. The difficulty is to agree on what is sustainable and what is not. One of the main causes of the disagreement is that many people seem to confuse efficiency and intensification. I posted a video on my YouTube channel some time ago, in which I explain the between those two terms and why it is so important not to confuse them, because otherwise we end up with all sorts of misconceptions and keep disagreeing because we do not use the same definition. I encourage you to look at the video.

As I explain, it is all about finding the optimum point from an environmental point of view. Environment is not the only aspect to consider, though. The optimum also needs to match technical goals, especially meeting food production volumes. It must be optimal from an economic point of view, too. If the products become too expensive, consumers don’t buy, and if they are too costly to produce, farmers and food manufacturers will stop producing. Everything is possible but everything has a cost. Once, when I was working in the poultry industry, I had a customer who asked me for a product specification change. He wanted us to trim chicken fillets in rather drastic manner. As the conversation went on, I had told him just that: everything is possible. I added that we probably could even cut the breast fillets in star-shaped bits if he wanted to. I just added that it all came down to a matter of whether he would be willing to pay for the additional costs. Actually, it was a friendly conversation, as we had known each other long enough to trust each other. Yes, everything is possible. It just has a cost but is the customer willing to pay for it? That is an important part of the conversation about changing food systems. Is the consumer willing to pay the price for a more respectful product? Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. And some consumers are willing to pay and others are not.

Really, externalities are essential. The additional costs for a better system are about internalizing the externalities. It is about pricing products the right price, not just from a money point of view but actually from a triple bottom line point of view. Further, externalities are not just about the unit that produces the final product. It is about the entire system. Too often, a link of the entire chain makes sustainability claims simply because it shifts the environmental and/or social problem to other links of the chain, but as a whole, the system has not really improved. The externalities -and the responsibilities- have moved in the chain but the problem remains. When this happens, the link claiming to be “sustainable” is just forgetting to look at the entire system. Of course, people with a bit of critical thinking will notice that the problem has not been eliminated but just simply shifted. That is when the accusations of greenwashing arise, and rightly so. One link of the chain looks cleaner and probably think it is all shiny, but the entire chain is just as dirty as before.

But the greenwashing issue is not just a matter of producers and industries. Governments do that, too. Often, governments try to internalize externalities with subsidies and taxes but it is often simplistic and just focused only one element of the entire system. They make the same mistake. Let’s face it, it is often the result of political calculations and trying to offer good optics, but it is often short-sighted, nonetheless.

Another problem with externalities is that they are extremely difficult to calculate with accuracy. Just to illustrate what I mean just take a look of diagrams that the food system specialists like to produce. They are very complex, and rightly so because the system includes many dimensions and aspects. Here is one I have found on Dalhousie University website. This one is relatively easy on the eyes. Some others can be quite a bit less readable.

Those who produce such diagrams of food systems should calculate the externalities for all the lines and arrows they put in the charts otherwise the chart is just some intellectual exercise that will not produce much progress, and they tend to be rather useless as long as no economic aspect is included. Without the externalities of the existing system that we wish to replace and those of the new alternatives, we are stuck into rather unproductive dynamics.

For how much industry and governments approach systems and how to replace them in often incomplete manner, NGOs and activists make the same mistake. Wishing to see something disappear and be replaced but something more appealing is not enough. Actually, it is more in the realm of wishful thinking, which is why progress is so slow and encounters so much resistance. About activists, I often say that they are quite good at identifying problems, but quite a lot less so at finding workable and viable solutions. Opposite to that, industry is really good at finding solutions despite lacking the proactive attitude to recognize and acknowledge issues on time. They tend to make work of it only when severely challenged by the activists. It is pretty easy to see where the synergies are, don’t you think? A piece of advice that I have given n a number of occasions has been: “Talk with people you don’t like! That’s the only solution”.

Trying to change the food systems also faces a more general hurdle, which is the entire economic system. The entire economy is built around growth. As such, there is nothing wrong with growth, as long as it is “good” growth. In previous posts of this blog, I have mentioned the need to shift from quantitative growth to qualitative growth.

Just let me illustrate this with simple examples. A common joke about the GDP, which is our indicator of growth, is that if we decide to take rocks and smash all the windows, the window industry will get a huge boost as everybody would ask for new windows, but in the end from a quality of the society point of view, we would not create any improvement. We would be back to where we were, nothing more. On the other end, thanks to the window industry boom, the GDP would show a nice jump. It would be quantitative growth but there would not be qualitative growth.

Now, let’s imagine than instead of enticing people to always eat more of everything, and in particular of poor-quality foods, we would make sure that they eat really good food and have really good diets, the impact would be noticeable. There would be a lot less diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and other forms of morbidity caused by bad diets and bad foods. Quantitative growth would probably suffer, but qualitative growth would be impressive. The externalities would shift from negative to positive ones. For one, the costs for health care would decrease significantly and since there would be fewer sick people, all the other medical procedures could be carried out faster and thus also affect people’s health positively. I know some will tell me that this would affect the pharmaceutical industry negatively. True, although it also would mean that they could refocus they activities on other more difficult diseases to tackle and also grow as they would expand in other medical areas. Anyway, I hope that you get my drift about the difference between quantitative and qualitative growth. On a personal note, I really think it would be much better to help people eat just to meet their actual nutritional needs, therefore eat less but eat better. Their health would be better. There would be less food waste as there would less of it stored as unnecessary and useless excess body fat. Food producers would have to change the way to remunerate themselves differently, which is what I also mean with changing the economics. Quality focuses more on margin and less on volume.

In the end, we can create our own problems or we can create the solutions. Let’s think quick because time is running out.

Copyright 2024 – Christophe Pelletier – The Food Futurist – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

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