How to attract people to food production?

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Christophe Pelletier

With the population increase, food production becomes an increasingly strategic activity. Yet, the food sector does not seem to have the appeal it deserves, and attracting new people appears to be a challenging task.

In countries where the percentage of the active population in agriculture is low, many young people simply have never had any exposure to food production. Their food knowledge is limited to their visits to the local supermarket. Since one can love only what one knows, this seriously restricts the number of potential candidates. In a previous article, “Who will be the farmers of the future?“, I had already asked the question of who would be the farmers of the future. To get the attention of the youth, the food sector needs to become more visible and more approachable. There is a need for more interaction between education and visits to farms and food processors. As I mentioned in “Nutrition basics should be taught in school”, such activities should be part of the normal curriculum. Understanding food is understanding Nature, and understanding Nature is understanding who we are. Food, together with water and air, is the one thing that we cannot live without. This should make clear beyond any doubt how important food production and food supply are for the future of our species.

To attract new people to the food sector, it is also quite important to tell what kind of jobs this sector has to offer. These jobs need to be not only interesting, but they also must offer the candidates the prospect of competitive income, long-term opportunities, and a perceived positive social status. Many students have no idea about the amazing diversity of jobs that agriculture (including aquaculture) and food production have to offer. This is what both the sector and the schools must communicate. Just to name a few and in no particular order, here are some of the possibilities: farming, processing, logistics, planning, sales, marketing, trade, operations, procurement, quality, customer service, IT, banking and finance, nutrition (both animal and human), agronomy, animal husbandry, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, soil science, ecology, climatology, equipment, machinery, fertilizers, irrigation, consumer products, retail, research, education, plant protection, communication and PR, legal, management, knowledge transfer, innovation, politics, services, etc… Now, you may breathe again!

All these types of activities offer possibilities for work that can be both local and international. These jobs can be indoor or outdoor occupations. Employers are both small and large businesses. Jobs are available in industries, in government agencies, in not-for-profit organizations. Agriculture and food are about life science, and life science is about life. Not many economic sectors can offer such a broad choice of professions.

This said, getting more students in the field of food production will require relentless communication about the present situation as well as about future perspectives. It is necessary for colleges and universities to envision the future. Educating students today must help making them operational for the challenges of the future. Education is nothing less than developing the human resources that will increase the prosperity, the stability and the dynamics of the society of tomorrow. Attracting new students goes further than just agriculture and food production at large. Within food production, every sector also competes to attract new people. Some healthy competition should benefit the whole food chain.

Clearly, there is a need to identify future trends, future challenges and future needs to produce better food and more food. This will require a practical approach. Identify future needs is not an intellectual exercise. It is about providing people with food on a daily basis for the years to come. Identifying future challenges is a team effort between education, research, farmers, businesses and governments. All must work together to create a more secure future. If we want to avoid suboptimal solutions, there cannot be walls between the links of the food production chain.

In my opinion, the most effective way to work towards developing the proper curriculum and attracting students for the jobs of the future is to have a market-driven approach. The question is not only what type of jobs will be needed, but also where will they be needed? To be effective in this process, it is necessary to develop a vision of the things to come for the coming 10 to 20 years, which is the purpose of The Food Futurist (see mission statement). In our fast-changing world, today already belongs to the past. Developing a curriculum on current issues will not prepare students properly for their professional lives, and neither will it serve society properly. Only by identifying what skills will be needed is it possible to offer the best job perspectives for future food professionals, and being able to overcome future challenges. And feeding 9 billion people by 2050 is quite an objective! Identifying the challenges of the future indicates where the best job opportunities are. The action plans to develop tomorrow’s curricula will depend greatly on geographic location. Clearly, India will face with very different demographic, environmental and economic situations than North America, Europe or Brazil will. However, when it comes to food, we will become even more globally interdependent than we are today. This offers many opportunities to train people for work abroad, too.

As my head teacher in Animal Production, the late Julien Coléou, taught us in the first lesson of our final year at the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon: “To live is to learn, to create and to fight”. When it comes being prepared for the future, these three pillars of life all need to be on the curriculum.

Regaining the consumer’s trust

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Christophe Pelletier

I read many blogs, articles and opinions about food on a regular basis. Yesterday, I came across an interesting blog post on Meatingplace.com. Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton, an authority in the US poultry industry, wrote the article, titled “Consumer trust” after she found out about a survey carried out by the Center for Food Integrity. Basically, the survey concluded that as farms were growing in size, consumers started to wonder if they still had the same values, and although small farms still have the public opinion’s trust, large-scale farms are looked at with suspicion.

That article brought me to think about trust, how it works, and what to do to win it back once it has been lost.

Instead of trying to figure out which group of the population to influence, as the author suggests, I prefer to go back to the basics. If I stop trusting someone, what would he/she have to do to convince me that he/she is trustworthy again? The empathic exercise is a much better way to find out what might work or not. In my opinion, that is exactly what the food sector should do first, instead of pushing the same message without much success.

First, people stops trusting when they are disappointed, when they feel betrayed or when they feel unsafe. By finding out which one of the above caused the loss of trust, and what more specific reasons made the public change their minds, the food sector will already make huge progress.

The second thing to keep in mind is regaining trust is even much more difficult than winning it in the first place. The baggage will stay in the way for a long time. Therefore, a lot of patience is required. There will be no quick fix. A cute video clip, well-thought press releases will not be enough. Far from it. Trust is not something that can be forced, it must be earned. Trust is the result of consistent and positive behavior that benefits the other party.

Once people have lost trust, per definition, they do not believe anything they hear from the distrusted party. In fact, they will hardly listen. Therefore, words will have little impact, unless they go along with actions that confirm that the message is true. If the food industry does not want to change and hopes that communication will be enough to change the public’s mind, nothing will change. When you want someone to prove to you that he/she is reliable, you want to see tangible proof that something is changing in your favor. The most powerful communication tool that really works for regaining trust is the non-verbal communication. The distrusted one must sweat to win trust back. This does not take away that verbal communication must continue. It will keep the relationship alive, but it will not be the critical part for turning around the situation.

Here is just an example to illustrate this. The US meat and poultry sector has undergone many recall procedures about bacterial contamination over the years, and at this day, this problem seems to continue. The industry takes measures to solve the problem, because such recalls are very costly, but as long as there will not be an obvious change in food safety, and recalls keep on happening, consumers will keep doubting how their meat is produced.

Food suppliers have no other choice than to listen to the consumers. The customer is always king. The customer is always right, even when he/she is wrong. A lot of this is about perception. Here is an example of the above. Last June, Greenpeace came with a ranking of Canadian retailers about their seafood procurement, and in particular about their sustainability score on seafood. Costco scored poorly, and their first reaction was to dismiss Greenpeace’s assessment, by basically saying that they are professionals who know what they do, and that they do not really need advice from Greenpeace. Yet, a few weeks later, Costco reorganized its seafood assortment from 15 species back to seven sustainably produced seafood species. That is successful non-verbal communication.

Regaining the consumers’ trust will require transparency, integrity, honesty, a lot of patience and communication, and most of all action towards change that meet the market’s demand. This does not mean that all consumers wishes can be met. After all, life is a continuous negotiation. Food producers and the public need to meet somewhere halfway. Market-driven always trumps production-driven.

Involve in order to convince!

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Christophe Pelletier

A couple of days ago, I came across the following quote: “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me and I will understand”.

I cannot confirm who the author is, as it has been attributed to brilliant thinkers such as Confucius, Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin or an unknown Native American. It does not really matter.

This quote brought me to start thinking about what it could mean for the agricultural and food sectors, as they are under fire on a regular basis. Why cannot it convince the public of its message(s)?

Opponents of agribusiness tell a lot about their opinions, they also show a lot of pictures, documents or footage of what they criticize, and they certainly are very active involving as many people as they can. The agriculture and food sector, including aquaculture, also tells a lot, shows some, but not enough about their daily operations, and they seem to have a hard time involving enough outsiders of the industry.

I read many blogs and articles from both sides and I regularly come across the “agri-food” authors wondering why the public is so difficult to convince. After all, the industry claims to have the scientific facts that prove its points. The industry is wondering whether the difference in communication effectiveness is linked to budget amounts or whether it has to do with the quality of the PR officers from both sides. I do not think that it has much to do with either. I have concluded that it comes from the ability to make people understand the story. Therefore, it has to do the ability to involve the public with the industry.

To involve the public, it is necessary to create an emotional connection first. This is critical and, unfortunately for the agribusiness, this appears to be a difficult area. Indeed, how to connect with people who have little, if any, connection with the agricultural world and who rarely get to see the reality by themselves. Media and internet are the channels where they find information. Opponents of agriculture have an easier job in the sense that they want to change the system. The worst that can happen to them if they fail is the status quo. They win nothing, but they lose nothing, either. The industry is the one that has the most to lose. Generally, this translates into a defensive approach, and that does not communicate well. Per definition, being defensive means having lost the initiative. Only the ones who have the initiative can lead, and only the ones who lead have followers.

Connecting emotionally means exactly what it says. Rational arguments do not work. At least not until the connection is made. The typical response of the agri-food sector is about bringing scientific facts, but how to convince people who 1) do not trust you, 2) who are worried about their food and 3) who do not have the scientific knowledge to comprehend these scientific facts? Cold scientific explanations will not work. All this does is creating distance. Not ideal when you need to connect.

I always like to make a comparison with parents of children that just had a nightmare. The children’s fears are not rational, but they are quite real, as you certainly can remember. Normal parents try to comfort the children. And how do they do that? They ask what the problem is. They listen. They empathize. They tell the children that they will go with them to the bedroom and show them that there is no green monster hiding under the bed. They will lie down on the floor and look under the bed. Then, they will take the child to have a look, and that is involving the child! This is how they connect emotionally, which allows them to switch to rational arguments and get the child to go back to sleep. Of course, they will not close the door and leave a little light so that the child does not feel thrown back at the green monster again. They empathize again.

Do you think that telling the child that there is no scientific evidence of green monsters would work, or that research has showed that nightmares are not real? And do you think that dismissing the child’s fear as unfounded and therefore about stupid would work, although that is pretty much the truth? Of course, it would not work, and the child would remain fearful and possibly lose trust in the parents in such a case.

If the agribusiness wants to win the public’s trust, it will have go look under the bed and, together with the public, take a peek at it. The public could hardly care less for the industry’s scientific facts, but it cares about being listened to and being empathized with. Interesting challenge, is it not?