High-tech fish farm

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc Here is an article from fis.com about another type of high tech fish farm with some nice futuristic design.

Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc. has created the Oceansphere. “These elegant, self-sustaining and untethered semi-submerged floating pods are a revolution in open ocean aquaculture technology”, according to the fis.com article. The system is operated without the use of fossil fuels, which makes it environmentally quite acceptable.

As mentioned in the article, the company’s “plan is to demonstrate the feasibility of this technology and, as Jacques Cousteau said, farm the ocean as we farm the land.”

USDA experiments with grain harvesting device

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Here is a nice illustration of what I meant with my article “Innovation and tradition shape the future“.

This is an article from WorldGrain.com describing the result of a test on a new harvesting system for grain carried out by the USDA. They tested the stripper header on millet and wheat.
The idea of this system is to strip away the grain and leave as long as possible a stubble, so that it protects the soil from erosion and enhances precipitation storage. So far results tend to indicate that yields are not affected by this harvesting method.
Just an example of using new technology and innovation to help improve a rather traditional method of getting organic matter in the soil.

Wal-Mart’s 15 questions to suppliers on sustainability

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Recently, Wal-Mart has sent a questionnaire to all their suppliers, including for food items, asking them to give answers to 15 questions about they actually do about sustainability.

I like this questionnaire, because it is simple, practical and straight to the point. Suppliers who have difficulties to figure out the answers definitely have quite some catching up to do, because this is not going away.

This is the first step to impose a change towards sustainable products, and we can expect that this document, although only the beginning, will soon become the standard for retailers, and therefore to industry. I believe that their approach will be much more effective than all the partisan talk that seems to create more division than help create a comprehensive plan for the general interest.

I recommend reading this article from GreenBiz, which explains quite well what the Wal-Mart questionnaire will concretely mean for suppliers.

Ecosystem-based management approach gains importance

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Here is an article from fis.com illustrating what I had written in previous articles in this blog (enter “ecosystem” in the search window to have the list of these articles) and mentioned in my presentation Twelve trends for the future of food production.
It also illustrate my claim that for environmental organizations and industry need time has come to co-operate.
After all, food production is a biological process and so are our lives, so that is no wonder that we need to look at this issue in its broad and complete scope.

Retailers take the lead in sustainability

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Sustainability is a bit like quality: everyone talks about it but few give a clear definition when it comes to practical and concrete specifications. Just as importantly, leadership is badly needed to transform the talking into effective action.

The future is in our hands As long as the lawmakers remain slow to bring up the change and the clarity to give clear directions, we will need the leadership of some of the most influential players in consumer markets to get things moving.

Even environmental organizations and sustainability bodies have some difficulties to agree with each other. For example Greenpeace does not seem to think that the guidelines from the Marine Stewardship Council offer solid enough guarantees that products brought to market according to these guidelines truly are sustainable. Clearly, this is an area in continuous evolution and the ideal concept is still in the making.

The consumer themselves are both still under informed as well as overwhelmed by all sorts of contradictory messages to know clearly which choices to make, therefore some decide of what to buy either based on philosophical or on financial reasons.

Similarly, many businesses are trying to find their green way as they can, but there again the lack of a strong regulatory frame and the uncertainty of the return on the green investment do not help them. The result is that, although the awareness about sustainability among businesses has grown substantially over the last few years, many companies have taken rather timid steps so far, limiting their actions to the least costly possible and the most PR and marketing-driven. They claim to go green, they communicate a lot about it, but the progress is slow.

Yet, some companies take more initiative, show leadership and push to make the whole supply chain evolve to sustainable production systems. A very active sector in this area is the retail. Retailers in the UK such as Tesco or Waitrose, in Canada with Loblaw’s and Overwaitea Food Group, and of course especially Wal-Mart in the USA have definitely made their choice. They clearly understand that the future cannot be anything but sustainable and they are demanding that their suppliers now come with products that meet the requirements of tomorrow. Last month Wal-Mart demanded from all their suppliers to “develop comprehensive programs to promote sustainability and transparency – or else contemplate a future without Wal-Mart as a customer” (read article).

Tesco is now indicating the carbon footprint of milk products on the labels (see article “Environmental performance on food labels”); Waitrose, Loblaw’s and Overwaitea are going for sustainable fish products, adopting for example the SeaChoice specifications as their guideline. Wal-Mart stores have already implemented a number of measures to reduce their carbon footprint by reducing the energy consumption, and they have already have made some of their suppliers introduce different product presentation. For example, they were the first to demand laundry detergent to be more concentrated and packed in smaller containers. This saved water, it saved energy used to transport useless water, and it saved plastic used for the jugs and for the pallets on which the product was transported. Today, concentrated laundry detergent in smaller jugs is the standard. Without Wal-Mart pushing for the change, we probably still would use the old product in the old packaging.

Environmental performance on food labels

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Here is an article about British supermarket chain Tesco starting a project on labelling the carbon footprint of milk products.

carbon footprint of your food at a glance! This is quite an interesting development, as it would allow consumers to make their purchase decision based on the environmental impact of what they buy. It also would make retailers and producers more aware of their own business decision, be it for sourcing products or choosing their markets.

Of course, an other very important next step will have to be consumer education about carbon footprint numbers and how to read them, but this learning process was also necessary with nutritional information.

I see this as a very good initiative to identify and segregate sensible products from the not so sensible ones. Very likely, we will see more labelling about environmental information in the future, and not just for food products, but all consumer products.

Innovation and tradition shape the future

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Tradition in food can be quite resilient In order to understand what changes are ahead of us, we need to realize that opposite forces are engaged in shaping the world of the future. As we all know, accepting change is always a slow and sometimes a difficult process. There are those who see the possibilities and those who see the drawbacks. The first train was going, supposedly, to get cows stop giving milk, but we now know that cows love to watch trains passing by. Probably, the first caveman who drew a picture of an animal on the wall was considered by some as a great magician and probably by others as pure evil. As such, such a struggle is very useful, as on the one hand it shakes immobility and open new doors, and on the other hand it prevents us to rush into the unknown without thinking first.

Change is part of our lives and that will not change. The problem that we face about change is actually about the pace of change, more than over the change itself. Over the last century, this pace has just increased steadily, thanks to more and more efficient technology.

If we look back the lifespan of the oldest living person, which brings us back to the end of the nineteenth century, just take a minute to think of all the changes that have occurred since then. There was no car industry, no antibiotics, no commercial airlines, no TV, no internet or cell phones, no supermarkets, just to mention a few things that we take for granted nowadays.

Although such a change is dramatic and has affected the way we live today, it has been a process that has needed time. Usually, it is said that more than 60% of the products that exist today did not exist 10 years ago and if we extrapolate this to decade to come, we can expect some even more spectacular changes.

Innovation is in constant motion and technology helps us to conceive and to use much faster than by the past. Yet, it is interesting to see that even with such a pace of change, traditions still play a very important part in our lives. Even with lots of modern gadgets, most cultures keep their specific characteristics. Their respective values do not evolve as much as our “things“, these just become part of the culture. This is an important point when it comes to innovation: what you offer must meet a need, if it does not, it will either fail, or at best be a fad.

Having a look at the future, you must wonder what the underlying trends of innovation are since it started. I can see several major constant areas of innovation:

Reducing physical labor.
Helping us live better and longer.
Increasing efficiency.
Helping communication.
Increasing mobility.
Offering more leisure and entertainment.
Making some people a little wealthier.

What could this mean for food production in the years to come?

More technology to improve efficiency of water use, fertilizer use, animal feed use, land use, energy use (objective: zero waste).
More mechanization, automation and robotising, especially in software more than hardware, working on precision (intelligent technology).
Greater focus on health and natural solutions for food and for agriculture/aquaculture/fisheries (objective: zero residue and zero contaminants in water, air, soil, and food).
Projects to repair environmental damage and include agriculture/aquaculture/fisheries in environmental management (restore and maintain sustainable food production).
Policies, and politics, to increase food production (disease control, regulation, more government intervention at strategic level, incentives).
Redistribution of markets with geographical shift of production and consumption areas.
Shift from convenient to practical food solutions (bulk meal components).
More education on agriculture, food and nutrition (balanced diets, food safety, traceability).

While such changes will come over time, consumers will still be looking for some level of tradition in foods. This can be about authenticity, regional specialties and recipes, or choosing to buy directly from farmers. Obviously, this is not a rational process, but it is more about the perception of “true” and “natural” production systems. After all, nostalgia is a constant of human emotions, too.

Kraft Foods reduces global plant water use by over 20%

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

Here is an illustration of what I wrote in two previous articles (Managing water is paramount for the future of food production and Sustainability: As Natural As Balance). Read the article about Kraft Foods at http://www.meatinternational.com/news/kraft-foods-reduces-global-plant-water-use-by-over-20%25-id1718.html

Organic foods not nutritionally superior. So what?

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

A recent study from the UK concluded that organic foods are not nutritionally superior to “regular” foods. Of course, it did not take long for reactions to be published. The pro organics reject the protocol used and therefore the conclusions. The pro “industry” reacted satisfied. All of this is not surprising, and for a simple reason: people choose their foods greatly based on psychological reasons. Let’s face it the debate around organic food is largely about lifestyle and choices.

However, is the result of this survey a surprise? Not really, because in terms of nutritional value, the differences in production systems are not that different. When it comes to food safety, especially residues of chemicals, then it probably is a very different story.

What can affect the nutritional value of foods are the growth period and the timing of the harvest. Produce that grows fast and that is harvested before full ripeness contains relatively more water and therefore there can be a dilution of nutrients per kg of product. This is also true for meat products.

I do not believe that the real debate between” organic” and “industrial” should be so much about nutritional value as it should be about food safety. As consumers get more educated and have more choice, they will give the preference to something more natural and harmless, simply because it is common sense and the safe thing to do. On the other hand of course, agriculture must be in a position to offer affordable products. Organic foods are more expensive and this is what limits its market share to mostly well-off city residents.

If organic foods want to become the standard to feed people, it will have to work on its production costs and price. Retailers are playing a very important role in this, as they more and more dictate to suppliers how food should be produced. This is currently very obvious with seafood and the requirement set by supermarkets to buy only sustainable seafood.

My expectation for the future is that retailers will get more involved in agriculture and will impose on suppliers more restrictions on what kind of products they may use for crop treatment, more restrictions for better animal welfare. The market standards of the future will become “sustainable”, “natural” and “traceable”; not for emotional reasons, but for rational reasons. There will be pain to accept for producers to meet these requirements, and in the end the commercial negotiations will decide what the market price of “natural” foods will be.

Rebuilding fisheries is a must for the future

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Christophe Pelletier

As everyone knows, fish stocks have been depleted to levels that are not acceptable. This is the result of short-term thinking combined with highly efficient but stupid fishing methods. Not only fish is a high value food source, but oceans are complex ecosystems that we cannot afford to lose. Although aquaculture claims to be the way to compensate the supply of wild fish, this is only true within limits, as some aquaculture species are fed with fish meal and fish oil, and replacement of these products is also limited by the quantities that agricultural crops can supply, and consequently their price.

As one of the points that I mention in my presentation “Twelve trends for the future of food production” (under Presentations tab), we can expect that programs will be set up to rebuild wild fish stocks and bring the volumes back to levels with which sustainable fishing methods and quotas will help provide us with more secure supplies. This will be some sort of a stimulus plan for seafood with all stakeholders involved: government, fishermen, aquaculture industry, retailers, food service and consumers.

A recent report published by the Pew Charitable Trusts has reviewed the possibilities and the economic impact of rebuilding fisheries in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean, as well as the downside of doing nothing. A Canadian research has worked in a similar direction and tend to show that rebuilding fish populations is possible, citing a number of successful cases (see article).

All that comes out from these reports is that the situation, although quite serious, is far from lost, but it requires political will and organization to make it happen. This is exactly why all parties involved from whichever country concerned will have to act in a coordinated manner.