Tag Archives: Water

First speaking engagement with Turkey

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I recently had the honour to be the keynote speaker at the 5th Aegean Economic Forum. Below you will find the video of the session dedicated to agriculture (my presentation starts at 23:45 and lasts until 26:00). This was the first time I had an assignment with a Turkish organization and I encourage you to watch the video if you have 2 hours available. It was an outstanding session and I was quite pleased to be involved with a group that focused on essential topics before focusing on first world problems and first world solutions, unlike it often is the case in North America or Europe. I have added the text of my presentation below the embedded video, and I have highlighted in bold letters my main messages.

Text of my presentation:

Tonight, I will quickly tell you what changes I see coming and what is needed to adapt to a different future.

We have gone a long way since the beginning of agriculture. For centuries, agriculture worked in local and closed systems at the level of a region. With the development of industrialization, we started to open the loops, and not just in agriculture. We actually created two problems, not just one. On the one hand we have depleted natural resources and on the other hand, we have created piles of waste. We went from a circular to a linear system.

To make it worse, we never looked at the long-term effects and costs of this linear system. We never included these externalities in the production costs. So, waste became an accepted part of consumption society. And we waste lots. In the case of agriculture, the number that comes back regularly is that 30 to 40% of the food produced never gets eaten.

The issue of food waste is twofold. In developed countries, it is a behavioural and organizational problem at consumer, retailer and restaurant level. In developing countries, the main cause is post-harvest, either rotting on the field or because of poor storage and logistics. It is an infrastructure and money problem.

Regardless of the causes, food waste is not just about food, it is about all the water, the energy, the money and the land used to produce, transport, process and sell it. 

For consumers, it is about throwing away a third of their food budget. For a household spending 12% of its budget on food, it means that they voluntarily throw 4% of their budget in the garbage bin. That is rather silly, isn’t it? The total price tag of the wasted food alone amounts to about one trillion US Dollars worldwide. But beyond the money, let’s just think about what a third means.

A third of the world agricultural land is about 10 million km2 wasted (Added note: world arable land is about 14 million km2 and grasslands twice as much, so 10 million km2 is a conservative number, out of caution). This is 60% the area of Russia; it is the area of Canada or the Sahara; it is slightly bigger than the USA or China or Brazil; it is 2.5 times the size of the EU and 3 times the size of India. Because of waste, we need to put more land in production. So, indirectly, food waste is a significant source of deforestation.

Now, if we look at a third of the world population, we are talking about 2.6 billion people. It is almost the combined population of China and India, and more than twice the population of Africa.

Where else than by solving food waste, do we have 33% room for improvement in food and agriculture? It is only a behavioural, an organizational and an infrastructure investment issue. It is not rocket science. All it takes is money and discipline.

Right now, people are gathered at COP26. Unlike what they claim, what is at stake is not the planet, it is the biosphere, which is soil, water, organic matter, climate and of course life.

There is not only one food production system. There is a huge diversity of production systems and they do not pollute equally. There are huge differences between the different regions of the world. Even within one particular system, different farmers have different production and environment performances, and impacts. We need a targeted approach.

The proper way is to look at the different situations and through innovation and knowledge transfer level up the playing field and help producers improve. We must do more to help farmers succeed. They know the problems; they often know the solutions, but often lack the needed support. There is great potential in this field, especially with the introduction of new technologies.

Previous periods of modernization of agriculture were about adding muscle, first with animals, and then with machinery, it literally and figuratively was about adding horse power. The current transformation of food and agriculture is about adding a nervous system and synapses. Drones, satellite imaging, robotics, driverless vehicles, sensors, artificial intelligence and data collection are all extensions of the farmer’s senses and brain, but far beyond human capacities. The principle of precision agriculture is about taking the right action at the right time at the right place. This actually offers the best of all worlds. It helps producing the highest yields by using the very strict minimum of inputs. It helps reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides; it helps reduce the amount of energy, therefore reduce greenhouse gases and it helps reduce the use of water. These technologies go beyond production alone. They also can help monitor the environment and help detect possible impact on the environment immediately. The main issue with implementing new technologies is their cost.

New technologies and precision are the ideal tools to address waste, simply because waste and efficiency are two sides of the same coin. When we reduce waste, we are more efficient, as we need less input for the same output. It really comes down to producing more with less. 

In my opinion, there is no reason to sacrifice yields. Not everybody agrees. The USA think along the lines of increasing efficiency and producing more to meet future world demand. The EU, with its brand-new Farm to Fork policies seems to prefer to reduce production as the way to reduce greenhouse gases. Personally, I am surprised by the EU’s choice. The EU has a highly efficient agriculture, with some countries being the very top, and its carbon footprint is relatively low compared with many other regions of the world. Indeed, the EU, like all other regions, needs to reduce the use of inputs but in my opinion, the EU’s agriculture problem is not so much a carbon footprint one as it is a problem of distribution of productions, in particular a few areas having too high a density and concentration of intensive animal farms. They mostly need to rebalance animal farming and crops. The reason is, as I mentioned earlier, that loops that have been opened. 

The future will be about repairing the damage done. We will have to replace the consumption economy, which is about quantitative growth -about “always more”- by a maintenance economy, which focuses on qualitative growth, or on “always enough”.

Closing the loops is about the biosphere, with a financial element on the side. It is about preserving and regenerating soil, water, organic matter, while mitigating climate and by including the externalities. This means changing the economic equation. The economy is a combination of three components: resources, labour and capital. Next to this economic equation, markets determine prices through supply and demand. The math for both the economic equation and the markets are influenced by policies which set the rules of the game through rewards and penalties, and future choices of the reward/penalty system will strongly influence how agriculture will be organized and how it will perform, because producers will choose what returns them the highest income. A change I expect is the implementation of taxes on some product categories and production systems, mostly because governments need more money. To some extent, it will also influence consumers’ choices although consumers are subject to many more stimuli to make their choices. 

Setting new rules require thinking carefully about how they change externalities and therefore what the long-term consequences will be. It also means looking at the bigger picture. Climate change will affect the food world map. Some regions will not be able to keep producing what they produce today. They will have to choose for different crops and combinations thereof. Other regions will be more suitable to take over. Water availability will be a crucial factor in the future food map. How long can regions that produce and export large volumes of water-rich products to far away markets, from which the water will never return can continue to do so? 

New strategies are required. It can be the adoption of new and better varieties that can resist drought. It can be the use of different production systems, such as the use of cover crops, the use of mulch and organic matter. It can be the development of plants that use fertilizers more efficiently or that have higher photosynthesis efficiency. It can be different irrigation systems and move to a crop-by-drop approach. It also can be production systems that reduce evapotranspiration, for instance by combining a low-level crop under a cover of trees. It also can be desalination of sea water for irrigation purposes. 

The list of solutions is long but the redistribution of the world food map will have consequences far beyond the field. It will redefine geopolitics. All countries will have to rethink both old and new alliances. Feuds and partnerships combined with new natural conditions, and therefore trade, will affect food security.

It is also important to realize that food security, food sovereignty and self-sufficiency are different concepts. It is impossible for all countries to produce everything, simply because of different natural conditions. With more extreme climatic conditions, choices will have to be made. This is why I think that trade will be essential not only for food security, but also to mitigate the effect of climate change. 

Until now, the economic model has been “to produce where it is cheapest to produce”. As such not a bad idea, except that it opened the loops and did not include externalities. True sustainability means closing the loops and including these externalities. In the future, the concept must evolve to “producing where it is the cheapest to produce sustainably”. And this word, sustainably, is going to make all the difference. It will affect availability; it will affect costs and it will affect prices. And as always when prices increase, it offers opportunities for alternatives and also for resourcefulness.

An example is urban farming and there are all sorts of projects. It is estimated that 20% of all food produced in the world is produced in urban areas. Next to food production, it also has a social function and can help mitigate some of the effects of climate change. The question is often to figure out how to organize urban farming. There can be community gardens, people can also use their balconies to grow food, or old buildings can be transformed into farms. In cities, the roof surface is huge and roofs can be an ideal location to set a garden. Actually, some supermarkets are already growing perishables such as tomatoes, lettuce and strawberries on their roofs and sell them day-fresh to the consumers visiting their stores.

On the consumer end, there is plenty of activity, too. Suppliers offer products with green claims, true or not by the way. There are campaigns of information as well as disinformation about the impact of various food groups. Protein is one of these areas, and the fight to meet the need for protein is on between animal farming and alternatives.

But what do consumers want? They want food to be available, affordable and safe. There is also strong demand for natural, although natural is a rather unclear term, and most of the time, it means “not artificial”. They want healthy foods, and the rise of obesity and diabetes reinforces this demand. Because of climate change, consumers have become more discerning or at least try to be about which products they consider responsible or which ones they see as harmful for the environment. Production methods will matter more and more and a good example of this is the growing concern for animal welfare. Another strong trend is authenticity, which is also an unclear term rooted in some nostalgia and often means that it must not be “industrial”, or at least not be perceived as such.

Other areas that consumers look for are value and values. Value is not new but it becomes more complex. It is rooted in perception and psychology, not to say ego and status. Values have become increasingly relevant with the presence of social media. Consumers buy from suppliers that are aligned with their values. They are keen on knowing the food producers’ views on their role in society and environment. For a food producer, this can be tricky, as often it will take only one word or message that goes against the consumer’s values and they decide to stop buying. Social media have made people extra sensitive and touchy and bad publicity spreads like fire on social media platforms. This is a new dimension that food producers need to consider very carefully. Social media can make you and can break you in a heartbeat.

Transparency is important. Most suppliers see it has providing consumers with every bit of information but this is a herculean task and one can wonder if this is the right approach. Let’s face it, only very few consumers want to know everything from beginning to end about the history of the product they buy. Transparency is not so much about information as it is about trust. They want to know enough about the producer to feel confident buying the product. They want to have the assurance that the producer has nothing to hide and will answer honestly all questions. The food producer’s business needs to be on display as if it were behind a clear –transparent- window where consumers can look at anything they want in complete freedom.

Traceability is a cousin to transparency. It is essential to trace the source of a problem, should one arise, but it must be much more than that. It must be a proactive tool. Knowing why something went wrong is nice but it is after the facts. A good traceable quality assurance system is what producers need. This is where new technologies – “the nervous system”- can be useful by allowing a full online in real time quality control that has the ability to flag any deviation and stop the production line immediately. Having a proactive system that will prevent quality issues to be sent to the customer will spare many frustrations and save lots of money.

But next to better production methods and new technologies, one area that needs to improve in the future is to help people eat better. It should be the moral duty of food producers to take good care of their customers. In this area, we are still in an era of marketing-driven business, which is about having consumers buy more. It will have to change from quantity to quality, and the promise will have to be kept, indeed. An advantage of social media is that it will expose those who make false claims and false promises. Consumer information is going to be another front for suppliers. A system like NutriScore is drawing more and more criticism. It seems to have become a marketing tool and is no longer a true nutrition tool. If it does not get fixed, it will lose all credibility and in fact reinforce the feeling that the industry is always trying to deceive consumers.

So, what segments can be the winners of the future?

The points I have presented before, such as quality, clean, healthy, authentic will do very well. Foods and recipes that are rooted in nostalgia and tradition have great potential. This is especially true in mature markets that I see evolve into a mosaic of niche quality specialties. Of course, because not everybody is wealthy, there still will be a large market for low-cost staple foods sharply priced, but with increased standards about health, environment and ethics.

Over the last few years, perhaps the most disputed battlefield has been protein. Animal farming is being challenged. A lot of investor money flocks to tech protein alternatives. Plant-based imitation meat and seafood has received a lot of publicity. Many claims have been made about their potential. So far, they come short of those claims. The segment has room to grow but it will not replace animal farming. Performance on the stock markets is poor and the investors’ money is now moving somewhere else. I see better potential for smaller private producers with a low profile, catering to the need of consumers with wholesome products instead of high-tech meat imitations. If the stigma is currently on meat, the next category to be demonized will be ultra processed foods. Investors have also moved into what used to be called lab meat, a product that still struggles to find its name. Although they make regular claims about readiness to deliver large market quantities and being price competitive, it is still not really clear whether it will happen on a large scale. Other alternative protein sectors include the use of bacteria to produce specific protein. Perhaps, it will have some potential for animal feed, but more surely in the medical field. And of course, there are insects. There has been a lot of publicity but success is slow to materialize. One problem is the price. Just like all the other alternative proteins, they are not price-competitive with animal products. Producers of insects try to push it in Western countries’ markets but this is not the right place. There, people do not want to eat bugs. Westerners like soft and meaty. That is why lobster and shrimp are in demand. They are large aquatic insects really, but their look does not matter because they contain lots of flesh. Crickets don’t. It is that simple. I see insects having more potential for animal feed, if it can be price competitive.

The protein fight is useful. It has put animal farming on the spot and forced producers to find solutions to reduce their environmental impact, and it works. The sector has already come with innovations to reduce its methane emissions, and although there still is a lot of work ahead, the improvements are getting noticed. This is the beauty of the fight between industry and environmentalists. As long as the industry does not feel threatened, the initial reaction is always : “no, it costs too much”, but when the industry sees that it will lose business and it will cost them dearly, they are actually amazingly innovative, fast and cost efficient. 

Perhaps anecdotal is the fact that Bill Gates, who has been an investor in alternative protein and a man behind the claim that it would replace animal farming in a decade, which is not going to happen, has now invested in a cow milk producer (Note: the company’s name is “Neutral”) that gets the milk from farms where new technologies are being used to reduce methane emissions. He is pragmatic and he is moving on. Others will follow him. 

As animal products are concerned, all the forecasts for the long term show a further increase of consumption. In particular, poultry is by far the biggest winner. Aquaculture could do very well, too, if consumer prices become more affordable. You are in an area with great potential for the production of fish, shellfish, crustaceans and seaweed.

To conclude,

Feeding a population of 10 billion individuals is a huge challenge. It will require changes in the way we produce and in the way we consume. 

My main concern is that the conversation has become more and more polarized and intolerant. Instead of opposing systems and points of views, we need to listen and think carefully. Nothing is black and white and there is no one-fit-all solution. There is no silver bullet that will solve the problems so that we do not have to change. Instead, we will solve the problems through a combination of many solutions. Some will be of a technical nature but technology is only as good as how we use it. Technology is not only about high-tech, and innovation is not only about technology. The key is the way we think, and we need to be flexible with thoughts and ideas. 

Pragmatism will be essential. Whatever works is good, even if it is sometimes goes against our prejudices. Remember what Deng Xiao Ping said when he changed the course of China 40 years ago. “It does not matter if the cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice”. 

Our attitude will make all the difference. I expect that we are going to rediscover old wisdom and that many solutions will come from the past but in a modern jacket, as it is already happening. Money will make a difference, too. There is plenty of it around. All it will take is some effort. 

Succeeding will also require humility and cooperation. Nobody knows everything and nobody can solve all the problems on their own. Engaging in a positive and constructive dialogue is what will shift the conversation from a sterile win-lose debate into a win-win vision.

You can read more about my thoughts and views about the future of food and farming on my website blog and my books. 

I thank you for your attention and I wish you a fruitful session.

Copyright 2021 – Christophe Pelletier – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

What’s ahead for animal protein?

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As I explained in previous articles about protein, the future of animal farming looks rather good, actually. This does not mean that current productions systems are perfect. They are not, and many changes are necessary. Four drivers are going to make animal farming evolve towards systems that meet future requirements in term of environment, health, sustainability and consumer demands. They will not affect only farms, but the ways entire value chains are organized and even future flows of animal protein in international trade.

Two pillars of sustainability are externalities and the necessity to close the loops. Strangely enough, these two fundamental topics rarely ever get mentioned. Yet, they will define the future. I mentioned externalities quite a few times on this blog and if you are interested to read what I say about it, just do a search on the search window on the right side of this page. Basically, externalities are the long-term economic effects and in particular long-term costs of repairing the damage that any human activity causes. Closing the loops is simply following the basic principle that nothing ever disappears or get created, but that everything gets transformed. These two pillars of sustainability are going to force us to review how balanced -or not- productions systems are. Greenhouse gases and minerals balance from manure will force a change in location of animal productions, in regard to the location of production areas of ingredients for animal feed, feeding programs, logistics of both feed ingredients and animal products, in particular in terms of transport. Distance between markets will be only one part of the equation. Transportation systems will weigh even more. Will trade rely on road transport, rail or water ways? Different transportation systems have very different carbon footprints and this will affect the future of some industries depending on how they are organized and where they are located. It will also force countries to invest heavily in their infrastructure, which is another topic that is too often ignored and yet so critical for the future. Of course, infrastructure is not as sexy as tech start-ups and more importantly, it does not have the same appeal for investors. After all, infrastructure is an expense that benefits all, while the current thinking about money is more about individualising profits. Yet, infrastructure will have more impact than tech. Location will also be influenced by water availability, as water will become an increasingly influential aspect of sustainability. Just as an example, California has been struggling with water availability for decades. Yet, it keep sending water-rich produce to other regions, thus exporting its already scarce water. On top of that, California produces about a quarter of American agriculture. See the danger ahead? For the future, the economic paradigm will shift from “producing where it is the cheapest to do so” to “producing where it is the most sustainable to do so”.  The main reason for the shift will be externalities as we will have no choice but internalizing the externalities (sounds fancy doesn’t it?… try to place that one in a cocktail party when you have a chance).

Location is one of the changes, but of course when it comes to greenhouse gases, there will be other solutions to reduce the impact. Feed programs are one, and gas capture from manure will be another one. Tech and innovation will play their roles in those areas. Markets will do to, and I expect manure to become a highly valued co-product, and not a by-product anymore. Just as manure is a side effect of intensification and high densities, so are diseases. Last year saw the huge outbreak of African swine fever in China, which so far has lead to the destruction of 25% of the world’s pigs. That is the perfect example of what can happen again. It is not the first outbreak. There have been other ones before of the same disease and of avian influenza. The risk of diseases and their huge cost will also contribute to a readjustment of location of animal production, in terms of production centers, in terms of density of farms and also of densities on the farms themselves. So will the prospect of possible transmission of diseases from animals  to humans.

Next to such production issues, consumer demands will also change the way animal products are produced. The pressure for better animal welfare is increasing and will not weaken. It is just fair and it also makes a lot of economic sense. In my times in the pig industry, the poultry industry and in aquaculture, I did quite some research on the topic and the numbers spoke chapters. Treating animals with the proper respect pays off big time. Yet, I also faced a lot of resistance when I tried to show my conclusions by then. I guess that it did not fit in the thinking of the times. The future proved me right, though. The need for better animal welfare will also contribute to a change in production systems, housing and feeding in particular. Animal densities on farms will also be reduced. This trend is already taking place in Europe and there are more and more farming programs that go in this direction. And so do government policies. Along with animal welfare, environmental concerns from consumers will also push towards more “natural” methods of farming. Intensive animal husbandry is not going to disappear but its excesses will. The problem is that too many people tend to associate intensification with efficiency but it is only true to a point. When we reach that point, any incremental intensification does not lead to incremental efficiency anymore and the further we pass this point, efficiency actually decreases and externalities increase substantially. The future will be about finding the optimum between intensification, animal welfare, environmental impact and long-term effects. Next to that, as consumer markets mature, especially when people already eat more than they really need, demand shift from quantity to quality and we will see more and more quality programs appear. It will be good for consumers, for health, for the environment, for the animals during their life and for the profit margins of farmers.

As the graphs from my articles Cow farts, or quite a bit of hot air?  and What’s ahead for plant-based foods? show, demand for animal products is expected to increase and a number of products will do quite well. As I mentioned in the same article, ruminants actually play a important role in the management of grasslands and I mentioned their importance for a healthy environment, I believe that responsible animal production systems will help mitigate climate change. Of course, this means that the necessary changes be carried out as I mentioned earlier on in this article. I also believe that animal productions will play an important role in economic development, especially in developing countries and in regions where the population is expected to increase the most. It is nice to expect that the urban population will increase, but it is essential for a prosperous future that we also make sure that people in rural areas can be prosperous and that we do not end up with a demographic desertification of regions that can contribute to a prosperous future. Just as animal productions, although they were intensive and have had a negative impact on the long term, have helped many European young farmers stay in their regions and make a decent living for themselves, it can play the same role in rural areas in developing countries. It is true that mistakes have been made in the past and grave ones. We cannot change the past, but we can learn form past mistakes and make sure not to make them again. Productions that I expect to be successful and popular as economic development tool are poultry (meat and eggs) and aquaculture. Poultry and chickens in particular have the advantage to have a short production cycle and this helps farmer getting a quick cash-flow, which is essential to limit the need for capital. Aquaculture can have the same advantage with fast-growing species but less with species that have a longer production cycle as capital requirements can be heavy, although this can be attractive to investors. Two big pluses for aquaculture are the strong deficit between supply and demand and the health aspect of aquaculture products. The world is quite short of healthy seafood.

I see many areas of success for certain types of animal productions and I have summed them up in the following illustration. In particular, I would like to emphasize is my expectation for the future to see a surge of grass-fed beef with special breeds in semi-intensive systems in which there will be a minimum amount of high energy feed and no hormones at all. For all productions, I expect to see more and more of old-fashioned “authentic” products and recipes, and also a lot of “happy animal” products to be marketed more aggressively than has been the case so far.

Copyright 2020 – Christophe Pelletier – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

Changing economics to overcome future challenges

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First, a personal story

A year ago, I moved away from Vancouver to the Okanagan Valley Region some 300 miles east from Vancouver. There, I bought a property with a decent yard where I will have a garden and with a small vineyard. In some way, it is an illustration of what is necessary to foster sustainable practices. The parallel is obvious with some of the global challenges the world is facing and will continue to face in the future. For eight months of the year, the area looks and feels quite similar to the Mediterranean. Precipitations are not abundant with an annual quantity of only 337 mm. Clearly, water is scarce and needs to be preserved, even though an extensive system of lakes fed by mountain snow ensures an adequate supply of water. The region is quite agricultural with many orchards and vineyards, all thanks to irrigation. There are also many lawns in the area and the estimate is that about 25% of the water consumed in the region is just to keep the lawns green.

My plan is to install rain barrels to collect the water from rain and snow and use it for the yard. This is where the economics do not go in parallel with all the talk from politicians about sustainability. Around the house I would need five rain barrels. The lowest and best retail price I can find is of about $80 for a 200 liter barrel. To set up my water collection system, it will cost me $400 to provide me with a 1 cubic meter storage capacity. In comparison, the price for a cubic meter that the municipality charges for water is $0.30 per cubic meter. In the most ideal situation, that is if I were able to collect all the rain and snow through my five barrels, I would at most collect about 30 cubic meters per year. In money, it comes down to a saving of roughly $10 per year. To break even, I’d better hope that the barrels will last 40 years, which they might, but considering my current age, there is a fair chance I may have moved to a much smaller underground dwelling by then. Of course, my example is about quite a small investment and if the return is lousy, it will not change my life. At least, the barrels will help me save water.

The point of my story is that the comparison between cost and benefit would deter most people to consider buying rain barrels. It just does not make financial sense, if money is what matters. I always say that money talks and what it says here is to forget about being sustainable. One of my neighbours also considered installing solar panels on the roof of their house. After comparing the price of the panels plus installation and maintenance with the electricity savings, they discovered that it would last twice the life of the panels to break even. In terms of money, solar panels are a different kettle of fish than my five rain barrels. Recently I saw the price of a propane generator that produces 3650 watts for Canadian $350 while a solar panel that produces 100 watts is sold for Canadian $250. I can understand people decide to not pursue the solar option.

The economics of water and energy savings that I just described can be extrapolated to the much larger picture. All through the food and agriculture value chains, many changes for more sustainable systems face the same kind of dilemma. What makes sense from an environmental point of view often does not make sense financially in the current economic environment. Demanding more sustainable production system is quite legitimate and sensible, but the conditions must also be there to make it happen. The numbers have to add up for farmers and businesses to make the switch. As usual, money is of the essence and it can come from different sides.

First, the purchase price and the cost of operation of alternatives have to come down and be competitive. Either suppliers are able to drop their prices or offer more efficient systems. Governments also can help through subsidies to ease the pain. Subsidies, being public money for the general interest, it is only fair that we all must pay if what we want is a sustainable. Subsidies must of course be set up properly and be effective

Second, the customers, which in a fair value chain would be eventually the consumers, have to pay for extra cost of the better production systems, simply because our consumption societies with their sense of entitlement have to understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Such a realization also means that producers also understand that mass production that only deplete resources do not fit in the long-term picture and that value will have to replace volume.

Searching for a new economic model

With the many challenges arising from a growing world population, it becomes more and more obvious that the economic model of the past six decades needs some refreshing. As such providing consumer goods at an affordable price for the masses is not a bad idea. Helping people to have a more comfortable and pleasant life is certainly welcome by most of us. The problem is that the so-called consumption society is not so much aboutpillars-of-economy consumption as it is about people buying and giving their money to someone else. In the current system, consumption is optional. Research has shown that consumers use 75 to 80% of the goods they buy no more than once.  What really matters is the act of purchasing the goods. It is good for growth and the GDP, currently the leading metrics for the state of the economy. The problem is that mass production has gradually shifted from affordability to cheapness and from value to price. It has focused mostly on volume and has not taken into account that consumers would have to get rid of what they bought after usage. Negative externalities have been kept external indeed. Short-term financial results have had the preference and long-term impact has been ignored. The system is hitting a wall and issues of greenhouse gases emissions and waste of resources are now becoming urgent matters to address. All industries will be affected one way or the other. Food and agriculture will be no exception.

The big question is how to change the system without having it implode. That is not an easy one to answer but sooner or later it will have to change. Vision and leadership are crucial to manage the transition. I wish I had seen more of it. So far, I see and hear more about pro this and anti that. It is highly insufficient and produces more noise than results.

In my opinion, the problem is not so much about growth as it is about what growth means. Over the past decades, growth has been mostly about volume numbers. It has been a quantitative growth. I believe that the best transition towards the next model is to focus on what I call qualitative growth. It is not so much about volume as it is about adding value to the buyer. For consumers and countries, qualitative growth would be to quantitative growth what EVA (economic value added) is to turn-over for a business. It is about prosperity.

For food producers, such a shift will lead to a different approach. The most valuable areas of value added for consumers and society lies probably in providing good and enjoyable nutrition, yet affordable, through advice and education. The industry will have to help consumers eat better and help them have healthy diets. It will go beyond just supply food. Consumers will also have to rediscover what proper nutrition is. Initiatives such as the Global Access to Nutrition Index can play a pivotal role in helping food producers make the transition towards quantitative growth. The food sector has also an important role to play in keeping our environment livable. The trend towards transparency is an important part of the evolution on both health and environment fronts.

Of course, such a change of economic model means that the economics must change, too. It is also essential that those who do the right thing must be rewarded. A new reward system must be introduced in the set of rules and regulations so that producers get the proper incentive to make the shift because adding the type of value that I mention to consumers also requires a different price tag in the store, or at least a different breakdown of costs and benefits along the entire chain from producers to consumers. How to distribute fairly the cost tag of the change is still open for debate. The reward system has to apply for the business activity by allowing margins to be comparatively competitive in the new situation. Consumers doing the right thing must also be rewarded. The reward system should also apply at the remuneration level. In particular, the share of qualitative improvements in companies’ bonus systems will have to increase at the expense of qualitative growth targets.  The adjustments needed in the food and agriculture sectors will not end in this sector. They will have to include other area of government. In particular the health sector will have to be involved, as the consequences of the quality of nutrition on health are obvious for individuals and society both at the personal as at the financial level.

I also believe that such a shift in economic model will mean that business partners within the value chain will have to challenge each other to carry out the transition and it will become a critical point in choosing with whom to do business in the future.

Copyright 2016 – Christophe Pelletier – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

 

 

Nature will reshape food value chains

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The recent climatic events, in particular droughts, have attracted more attention on future challenges for food production, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the mainstream media cannot help presenting the as all gloom and doom. Certainly, there are very serious reasons for concerns, but solutions can be found. I wish the media would present more examples of positive actions to face and overcome the challenges.

It is not easy to deal with a changing environment, especially when it is impossible to predict accurately what the change will be. Predictions about temperature increases are useful but they are quite insufficient. An increase of 2 degrees on average will be different if the standard deviation is 1 degree or if it is 20 degrees. Other factors such as hours of sunlight and precipitations (including their nature, frequency and intensity) will impact agriculture at least as much as average temperatures. Changing climatic conditions will not only affect plant growth and development, but they will change the ecology of weeds and pests as well and that needs to be factored in future forecasts and models

Nature will reshape food value chainsA special attention on water is necessary. Without water, there is no life. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, wasting natural resources has been a bit of a way of life. The issue of food waste has finally received the attention it deserves, but the waste is not just about food. It is about all the inputs such as water, energy, money, time, and fertilizers. Water is still wasted in large quantities. Just compare how many liters a human being needs to drink compared by the amount of water that is flushed in bathrooms every day. Before the housing crash of 2008 a study in the US had estimated that lawn watering used three times as much water as the entire national corn production. But the issue of water is not just about waste. It is also about preserving water reserves. The late example of the drought in California illustrate what water scarcity may mean for food value chains. California is not only a major agriculture power house, but it exports a large part of the production outside of the state’s borders. The issue of water scarcity and the dwindling level of the Colorado River are not new for Californian agriculture. It has been known for a couple of decades that problems were coming. California produces a lot of water-rich fresh produce by means of irrigation. It actually has been exporting its water in the form of lettuce, spinach, melons, strawberries and citrus far away to places from where the water will never return to California. The water loop has been broken wide open and that is why, among other reasons, the system is not sustainable. If California can no longer supply its current markets, it will have to rethink its target markets. At the same time, other regions, that may not be competitive with California today, because externalities are never included in the cost of production, will eventually take over and replace the Golden State as suppliers for some productions. Unfortunately for the future, California is not the only region with a water problem. Saudi Arabia changed its food security policy a couple of years ago as the country leaders realized that trying to produce all its food would lead to a severe depletion of its available drinking water reserves. Instead of pursuing food self-sufficiency at all costs, the country chose to find other supply sources through international trade and through the purchase of farmland in foreign countries. The examples of California and Saudi Arabia demonstrate how natural –and demographic- conditions shape food value chains. The issue of water is not just about produce. Animal productions require usually more water than vegetal ones. In the future, water availability will surely affect where which kind of animal products are produced. New regions will arise and old traditional ones may review their strategies from volume-driven to higher margin specialty animal products market opportunities because of environmental constraints.

Climate change and water scarcity show how international trade can actually contribute to food security when done responsibly and with long-term vision. The prevailing model of producing where it is cheapest to produce without taking into account negative environmental externalities is facing its own contradiction and demise. The next model will be to produce not only where it is the cheapest to produce but where it is sustainable to do so. When water runs out, it is no longer possible to ignore the externalities of a production. When water becomes scarce, it gets more expensive. The law of supply and demand commands. When inputs get more expensive, several things happen. The economic model shifts. Priorities and externalities change, too. At first, producers try to find ways to increase efficiency and eliminate waste. The benefits outweigh the additional costs. Uncertainty stimulates innovation. New systems, or sometimes old ones that found a second youth, replace the current ones. If that does not work well enough, then producers start considering producing something else to ensure the continuity of their operation and find new business.

It is not the first time that our natural environment changes. Finding successful solutions to deal with it really are about our ability to adapt and to preserve our future, as it has been the case in the past. The challenges may be of a magnitude like never before, but so are our knowledge, our technical abilities and the tools present and future.

From an agricultural point of view, adapting to a new environment is about finding the type of production that thrives under new conditions. It may mean different areas of production for some species. In North America, there is already a shift for corn. Iowa has traditionally the main grower, but the corn production area is now expanding north. Minnesota is now producing more corn than in the past and so are the Canadian Prairies. Similarly, the production area for soybean is shifting north. Minnesota is growing an increasing volume of soybean and even in the province of Manitoba in Canada, soybean production attempts have been carried out since a few years.  It is the result of better production conditions and the development of new varieties that can adapt to new less favorable climatic conditions. Because of the local supply for soybean, the development of aquaculture with local soybean products for fish feed is now considered a long-term possibility in Minnesota among others. In Europe, corn production regions also saw a shift to the north for corn during the 1970-80s thanks to the development of new varieties, which largely contributed to the growth of dairy production in these new areas through the widespread use of corn silage. For the future, there is no doubt that genetics will contribute again to ensure food security. There is currently a lot of work done to develop varieties that can withstand droughts, floods or soil salinity. The ability to know the complete genome of species, to spot genes through gene markers, to be able to create new varieties that are less sensitive to diseases help speed up the development of crops that can thrive under future conditions. The recent developments in synthetic biology are quite interesting. Research conducted at the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) on the development of rice varieties that can have a higher photosynthesis efficiency and thus higher yields could open new perspective for a more productive and more sustainable production.

Next to the development of better and more adapted seeds and genetic material, the development of new technologies that I described in a previous article will bring a number of effective solutions as well. In particular the rise of precision agriculture is certainly quite promising. The ability to deliver to the crops exactly what they need when they need it at the right time and at the right place in the right quantity will help reduce the environmental impact of agriculture while offering the possibility of delivering higher yields. Similarly, in animal production, there still is room to improve feed efficiency. It can happen through further genetic improvement, the use of more efficient feed ingredients and feed composition and through better farm management. The latter is definitely an essential facet of a better future for food production. Better and updated skills for food producers will help being more efficient, more productive and more sustainable at the same time.

An area that is often forgotten when it comes to the future of food is the functioning of markets. If demand for certain products, and in particular animal products, increases faster than supply, price will go up and there will differential increases between the different types of products. As most consumers, unlike what marketers sometimes tend to make believe, still choose what they eat depending on the price of foods, there will be shifts. Some productions will thrive while others will struggle.

As prices still will be an essential driver of the location of the various vegetal and animal productions, markets and environmental constraints will increasingly have a joint effect. In the future, the dominant economic model of producing where it is the cheapest to produce will evolve. As the pressure on water supplies, soil conditions and pollution issues will keep increasing, the model will include an increasing share of negative externalities. They are the long-term costs that are never factored in the production costs but that will affect future production economics. Externalities are the hidden side of sustainability and they will determine the future map of agriculture, as it will no longer be possible to ignore them. Choices will have to be made between short-term financial performance and the long-term ability of various regions to be able to produce, and to keep producing, the volumes and the quality specifications that are needed by the different food markets of the future.

A friend of mine told me a couple of years ago after a trip to Asia how she could see from the plane the large plantations of palm oil trees, and how they had replaced the jungle. She described her impression as the view resembled the strategic game of Risk to her. Yes, climate change and water availability in particular, will reshape food value chains because agriculture, regardless of it scale, is a strategic activity. It is about life and death. It is about peace and war. Future strategies for both global commodities as well as for local food value chains will integrate Nature’s new deal of precious resources and conditions of productions. Together with the geography of future consumption markets, world agriculture will readjust, relocate and the Earth will look different once again.

Copyright 2015 – Christophe Pelletier – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

Precision is the future of agriculture and our future

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By the end of last July, the InfoAg conference took place in St Louis, Missouri. Matt Waits, CEO of SST Software, a conference sponsor, introduced me before my presentation titled “Beyond the Farm of the Future”. In his brief introduction he told the audience that he strongly believes that precision agriculture is the future of agriculture. His statement resonated quite positively with me. I see only advantages in making agriculture more precise. Just for starters, per definition the opposite of precision agriculture would be an imprecise agriculture. That is already reason enough to become a supporter of precision agriculture.

The first reason why a precise agriculture is the way to go is the necessity to manage finite resources more efficiently. Precision agriculture means sustainability. The philosophy behind precision agriculture is to use only what is needed where it is needed when it is needed in the mount that is needed by crops. In practical terms, this means that every molecule of input in agricultural production has to be transformed into food and not end up in the environment. Precision agriculture reduces waste. When I was writing my first book on the future of agriculture in 2009, the estimated worldwide amount of nitrogen loss due to leaching was of about 50%. The example of nitrogen shows what reducing waste can mean. In an ideal world where nitrogen would be used much more efficiently, it could be possible theoretically to use only half of the nitrogen we have been using, or in other terms, the current amount of nitrogen used should help produce twice as much food. Considering that the FAO claims that between 2010 and 2050, agricultural output should increase by 70%, it means that in an ideally precise agriculture, the world could meet the demand for agricultural products by using 15% less nitrogen than it did in 2010, theoretically. Also considering that the production of chemical nitrogen fertilizers represents about half the use of fossil fuels in agriculture, the positive impact on the carbon footprint of agriculture would be substantial. Similar calculations can be done on other inputs, such as water and crop protection products. By bringing just the right quantities at the right time at the right place, the consumption of water and chemicals will be reduced substantially, too. As recent droughts have reminded us how precious water is, precision watering is also becoming more important than ever. Water is precious, but in many cases, its price has not emphasized this enough. The main reason for wasting is always the result of economics. If inputs appear cheap, the low price is always implicitly perceived as a sign of abundance and of negligible value. Such a perception goes against the reflex of sustainability. Our elders did not waste anything (candle bits, soap bits, socks, you name it). They were frugal simply because the cost of replacement was too high, and at least was higher than the cost of repairing and saving. When a government subsidies inputs to make them cheaper, the users end up wasting much more. It is sad because such subsidies always have a well-meant starting point. The idea is to make it affordable to poor farmers so that they can increase their production. The result is when the less poor ones get the subsidies, they do not see the new price as affordable anymore but they see it as cheap instead. Managing for sustainability really is about managing the fine line between affordable and cheap. That is not easy, because the difference is not just about the price of inputs; it is also about the financial situation of the subsidy’s recipient. Subsidies should not be aimed at just price, but at more at efficient use of inputs and should be based on achievable yields. If governments wish to spend money, it should not result in farmers overusing and wasting water and production inputs. That is counterproductive. These governments, which often are in developing countries where resources are scarce and access to inputs difficult, had better spend money on helping farmers being more precise. The math is simple: efficiency is the ratio output/input, and the difference between what comes out and what got in the field in the first place is what is wasted – or lost. A precise agriculture reduces the waste, and therefore increases the ratio. This means that precision is the way toward increased efficiency.

As I mention developing countries, here is another important point to bring up: precision agriculture is not just for large farms but can be implemented everywhere. The development of precision agriculture goes parallel with the development of new technologies. At first, it would seem that such technologies are too expensive for small and/or poor farmers. If the point of view were to be that every farmer should own all the precision equipment, the answer is: yes, it is only for the large and wealthy, but looking at precision agriculture from that angle would be rather dull. Satellite imagery, drones, sensors, robots and other big data software can also be shared. In the era of the cloud and social media which are all about sharing, so can new technologies. Just like ownership of agricultural machine has also been shared through equipment coops for instance, so can these new devices. After all, it does not matter so much who owns them, as long as those who need it to do a good job can have access to them. Mobile communications have changed how farmers everywhere can get the latest information on markets. Smart phones have become affordable to the point that there are about as many mobile phones as people on the planet. Similarly to mobile communications, precision agriculture will also become more affordable in the future. If precision agriculture tools can monitor, map and help make fast decisions on farms of tens – and even hundreds – of thousand acres, they just as well can look after an area of the same size even if it is divided between many farms. It is just a matter of management and coordination between farmers. In poorer regions, it could very well be that the authorities be the owner of the equipment and proactively communicate with farmers through extension services to help the groups of farms manage the region efficiently for higher output. Such tools will help developing agriculture, in a sustainable manner. The benefits will be many. It will help increase farmers revenues, create economic activity, enhance social stability and help reduce the waste of water, energy and all other inputs. It will pay off in the long run and actually probably in the not-so-long run at all. Agricultural development requires financing and investments. Precision agriculture is in my opinion a very good place to put money at work.

In the future, the key for these technologies will be to also help see the bigger picture, not just the field and not just production data. The potential for applications and interfaces seems almost endless. By connecting all the devices and allowing sharing information of all events taking place on farms, these technologies are going to help reconcile the interests of all stakeholders much more effectively than it has been the case in the past. By monitoring production parameters as well as environmental parameters, proactive action will help anticipate instead of reacting. Actions will be targeted timely. One of the difficulties to manage sustainability is one of timelines. It is possible to monitor financial performance on a second to second basis, even faster actually, in the case of financial markets where algorithms can execute millions of transactions in less than a second. Environmental impact does not manifest immediately. It takes decades to notice the impact of a particular type of activity. With this time discrepancy between financial performance and environmental performance, it is only logical that money has trumped environment, even though there is a price to pay some day. That is the dilemma of externalities: how to factor such externalities when the exact cost is unknown. The future generations of technologies to monitor and map agriculture and environment will bring solutions. Once the focus widens from the field to the level of regions, countries and the entire planet, then it is possible to envision monitoring systems for all resources, environmental impact of agriculture and production output. It is only logical to expect dynamic information systems that could look like Google Earth, but with many editions, such as, the aquifer status edition, the nutrient edition, the crop yield edition, the soil erosion/restoration edition, the pest edition, the contaminants edition, and so on and so on. With such dynamic systems, it will be possible to not only monitor but to also produce simulations and test different scenarios. It would become possible to have an idea of how long resources can last, depending on different production techniques. It could be possible to make estimates and develop policies to adapt agriculture timely and ensure that future practices will maintain sustainable production systems. With such tools, precision agriculture, it will possible to develop worldwide policies and strategies to coordinate agricultural production. It also will help make markets much more transparent, as such dynamic systems would take into account consumption demand, worldwide stocks and production updates. Such transparency will reduce risks of speculation as the system would present a continuous update on the most likely scenario. Let’s face it! The computers will eventually replace the market places or agricultural commodities.

I agree with Matt Waits, precision agriculture will be the agriculture of the future. I also believe that the technologies that agriculture will use will play a role at a much larger scale and beyond just agriculture to shape the way we deal with our planet and our societies. Precision agriculture will play a crucial role in ensuring food security and prosperity.

Copyright 2014 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

Dealing with complexity

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Looking at the future of food and farming goes far beyond agriculture. It comes down to looking at the future of humankind. Balancing future supply and demand of food is an exercise that includes many disciplines and dimensions, probably more so than any other human economic activity. Anything that affects life and its level of prosperity must be taken into account. Feeding the world is not just a matter of production. Of course, the ability to produce and to keep producing enough food is paramount, but there is more to it than that. The consumption side is just as important. Demand will depend on the diet, which also depends on how much money people have available to pay for food.

Total future food demand is a combination of which foods and food groups people in the various regions of the world will buy and eat. This is a function of demographic, economic, cultural, religious and ethical factors. If future demand is about consuming according to the nutritional needs of a human being, clearly the situation will be different than if people demand twice as many calories and protein as the actual nutritional needs. The relative share of animal products in the total diet will also change the situation in terms of production and of production systems. Food production must adjust to the demand and do its best to meet it, but not at all costs. Therefore, it is essential to optimize food production at the global level so that the largest quantity of food can be produced at the lowest environmental cost. At the local level, production depends of course on natural conditions, but also on economic, political and cultural conditions as well. This may be the most profound change that we must deal with: feeding the world of the future is a global exercise. As more and more people worldwide have more and more money to spend on food, demand is now global, and therefore production plans must also be global. The times of producing food simply for the own people and exporting surpluses is over. Markets will now react to any event that will affect production or consumption somewhere else. Borders do not make this shift in thinking easy. It is always tempting to think that having one’s house in order is enough, but it is not. What happens in other countries on the other side of the world will affect us just as well. Why is that? Just one word to explain it: markets. There used to be a time, not so distant when if there was a drought in Russia, China or Brazil, markets would not react as strongly, and anyway not so much in the media, as we have seen over the past few years. This was the case because only a minority of the world was consuming large quantities and that minority did not have competition. Now the competition is wide open. Markets will keep reacting on this and the relative price levels of various foods will influence how much of what is consumed and where. We will see eating habits change because of this economical aspect of food supply.

At the same time, food production is also adapting to a changing environment, and to face its future challenges. The amount of new developments in technology, access to information and knowledge and in decision-making tools is amazing. Innovation is flourishing everywhere to solve environmental issues, to cope with new energy and water situations. The dominant themes are the reduction waste of all sorts, as well food as agricultural inputs and by-products, and the prevention of the release of harmful contaminants. Innovation is developing towards better and more efficient systems that must ensure the future continuity of food production and, at the same time, keeping food affordable for consumers. Interestingly enough, many innovations that will be useful for agriculture do not originate from the food sector. Food producers will need to be curious and look beyond the field to prepare for the farming of the future.

Clearly, the number of factors affecting both consumption and supply are many. To add to the complexity, many of these factors are not of an agricultural nature. Many of them originate from the population, its activities and its needs for all sorts of goods. I mentioned earlier that what happens in one region affects others, but the natural resources markets, such as energy, metals and minerals, that must meet demand for non-food consumer goods also affects agriculture and its production costs. Although many see rising costs first as a threat, I tend to welcome them, as they always stimulate innovative solutions to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Two examples show that it works. One is the car market in the USA that shifted from gas-guzzlers to high gas mileage vehicles since gas at the pump became much more expensive than it was only 5 years ago. The second one is food markets. Had you heard as much about food prices, food security or food waste before the food price hikes of 2008 and 2012?

In my work, I always try to make my clients and audiences aware of how everything that has to do with food is interconnected with many other sectors, and how economic, demographic and political events are linked to food security or how they might affect it in the future. That is an underlying them in my books.

Even, within the food and farming sectors, organizations do not realize enough how their future will be influenced by other food productions and vice-versa. I always get reactions of surprise at the magnitude of the interconnection and the interdependence with these factors, and how they affect their activities indirectly. It is a normal reaction, as most people tend to focus on what has a direct connection with their activities. After all, that is why I do what I do: to help them see and decipher this complexity, and understand what actions to take to adapt and prosper. I never shy away from show the complexity. My audience needs to get a flavor of the any dimensions and many layers involved. However, I always take a practical approach and show them that complexity is not the same as complicated. Deconstructing the complexity actually works well to show the many levels of actions there are. It helps my clients connect the dots between their activities and what will affect them and how. It gives them a level of confidence in how to deal with the future and take action. I also like to warn against oversimplifying, which is another tendency that I observe from time to time. The mainstream media is rather good at that. But I also get questions that sound like those who ask hope that I have a magic wand and will be able to give them a foolproof recipe for success. That simply does not exist.  If preparing the future were easy, nobody would even talk about it. It would be done. It it was easy, I guess many of the organizations that have been involved in agricultural development and food aid for decades would have already succeeded, and they would not exist anymore. Yet, they still have to keep up with their work.

Feeding the world is work in progress. Developing the right actions is complex, but not as complicated as it sounds. However, the true difficulty is in the execution, and in particular bringing other stakeholders with different agendas and different views on board to contribute to the success.

Copyright 2013 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

Thinking of a better agriculture in a better world

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Recently, I joined a group on LinkedIn called “Future of Agriculture”. One of the discussion topics, which caught my attention, was “What’s your dream for the world with agriculture as a theme?” Of course, this is quite a broad topic. I decided I would write here my thoughts about the discussion as concisely as possible. Therefore, here is what I believe is important for the agriculture of the future.

Agriculture must provide food today and tomorrow. Keeping the potential to feed the world for future generations is not an option; it is a necessity. Agriculture must produce in a sustainable manner. It must meet both the demand for food, but also be able to continue meeting future demand. It must take all necessary actions to ensure there will be enough water, enough soil, enough organic matter and enough nutrients to keep producing. It must also make sure that it does not contaminate the water and the soil. Agriculture must be sustainable from an environmental point of view, but it also must prove sustainable financially and socially. Without agriculture, there cannot be prosperous societies. To have agriculture, the world needs farmers. Farming must be an attractive occupation that allows those who practice it to make a decent living. This is more important today and in the future than it has ever been before.

Future food production must be innovative. Innovation is essential to solve current and future problems. It is the main trait of the human genius. Finding new ways of doing a better job and meeting all the future needs is a must if humanity wants to succeed in feeding its growing population. However, innovation is not the same as high-tech. Innovations do not need to be complicated and expensive. Innovation must integrate science, experience, common sense and practicality. Innovation does not oppose the past and the present or the future. It comes for the search of the best of all worlds. Innovation is useful only when it solves actual problems. It is not a doctrine of its own. The purpose of innovation is not about R&D for the sake of new products that help boost sales of those who market them. Its primary purpose is really about helping others succeed. Innovation must start from the market. What does the customer need to do a better job? The answer will be much more successful and better accepted if it starts from the market end, instead of being pushed onto the customers. This leads me to the next point: the necessity of being market-oriented.

Market orientation is the best approach for any type of business activity. It is true for R&D, but it is true for farming, too. Developing and producing by investing large amounts of money are much more effective and cost-efficient when the markets and the infrastructure are there. Offering what customers need has a much higher level of success than trying to convince buyers who are not very interested. The prices and the margins are always higher in a pull strategy. Market orientation also means that the infrastructure to bring the goods to the final users exists and that it actually works. One of the main scandals in today’s agriculture supply chain is the postharvest losses. It is outrageous that food that has been produced at the high cost of money, labor, water, energy, inputs and the farmers’ time rots in the fields or in deficient storage while it is good for consumption. It is the responsibility of all partners in production, supply chain and government to co-operate by organizing operations, so that food reaches those who need it.

The agriculture of the future needs to be developed in a pragmatic manner. There is no fix-it-all agricultural system. Food production depends on climate, landscape, soil types, water availability, need for sustainability, land rights, as well as the cultural, social, economic and political environment. The types of crops and animal production will depend on these factors. If systems cannot always be transferred from one place to another, knowledge and skills can be. Human intelligence and sharing is what spread progress. If farmers and all players in food production must be pragmatic and choose among the arsenal of tools and techniques what fits best in a particular situation, there are no boundaries in helping others to succeed. The energy must be spent to level up performance, not on defending a system for ideological or mercantile reasons. If the agriculture of the future succeeds, all of humanity will succeed. If it fails, humanity will have to deal with unrest, riots, hunger and possibly wars. Pragmatism is what will help the farmers of the future optimize food production around the world by making decisions that are in the best interest of all the partners from farm to table. Pragmatism is also what will deliver the highest financial return for them. However, for pragmatism to beat partisanship, bias and short-term interests, outstanding leadership will be paramount.

The leaders of the future will identify the right actions and execute them. They will cut the rhetoric and focus on delivering result on all fronts: financial, social and environmental. They will crystallize the energies around the objectives that serve all on the short term and on the long term. This will not be an easy task as the reasons to choose the path of least resistance are many. It will take courage, vision and the ability to convince the opposition. In history, great leaders have always sacrificed their personal interests, their personal safety and comfort for the good of the group. Such leaders are rare, but they exist, at all levels of society. They need to rise and improve the way we currently do things. They will succeed only if the average person is willing to make the right changes, too. This is not an easy task, either, but the alternative is even worse. The great leaders of the future will show the rest of us how things can be. They will give others the courage to implement the change and make them believe in the future. They will have to lead by example. They will have to reconcile instead of dividing and polarizing. When it comes to food production, they will not only help develop an efficient and sustainable agriculture, but they also will make sure that consumers change their eating habits where it is needed. They will help educate consumers about proper nutrition and moderation, while keeping food a positive experience, as well for the senses as for it social purpose. They will ensure that proper nutrition protects the health of their people. They also will give agriculture its rightful place in society and ensure that producing food is a respected and attractive occupation. They will take all actions to help food producers to succeed. They will reconcile urban and rural areas. They will make sure that people understand where food comes from and what it takes to feed for prosperity. They will work against waste.

Every waste is a loss of efficiency. With a population of 9 billion coming in the next few decades, waste will not be an option anymore. As the number of people increases and their needs have to be filled, the margin for error will shrink. The consequences of 9 billion behaving badly will be much worse that when there were only 3 billion people on Earth doing that. Every waste of resources will be quite costly, financially, socially and environmentally. The only way to reduce waste will be by being more efficient.  This will be true for food, as well as for water, for energy, for agricultural inputs, for soil, for organic matter and for biodiversity. Preserving and replenishing will protect humanity from a situation of depleting resources, which is where it is currently heading. The consumption and depletion society has no future. Future food production and consumption must be aimed at maintaining and preserving the potential of agriculture.

Those who are familiar with my work know that sustainability, innovation, market orientation, pragmatism, leadership and efficiency are the 6 principles that I had gathered under the acronym of SIMPLE in my first book, Future Harvests. In my second book, We Will Reap What We Sow, I developed and discussed the characteristics of proper leadership and the vision required to rethink food and farming to succeed in the future.

Even if future solutions need to be adapted to their specific local situations, these 6 principles apply everywhere and need to be implemented in a concerted manner by all regions.

Copyright 2012 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.

When externalities cannot be externalized anymore

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Externalities are costs, or benefits, that are not included in the price charged for a product. If a cost is not included in the price, it represents a negative externality. If a benefit is not included, the externality is positive. The concept of externality is particularly important to determine whether an activity is sustainable. For instance, if an industrial activity pollutes and causes harm, there will be consequences, and costs. As it takes many years for environmental problems to become obvious, the cost of repairing the damage caused by pollution is not included in the cost of the goods produced by the industrial activity in question. However, there will be a day when it there will be no alternative but to clean the damage. That cost is the externality.

Every activity that pollutes without cleaning the contaminants is a negative externality. Everything that damages physically the environment and undermines the sustainability of food production is a negative externality. Every activity that depletes essential resources for the production of food is a negative externality. In this highly industrialized world, the consequences of economic and human activities, slowly add up. Nature’s resilience makes it possible for damage to remain unnoticed for quite some time. However, the ability of Nature to repair the damage shrinks, as the damage is continuous and exceeds Nature’s ability to cope with the problem. As the population increases, the level of human and economic activities intensifies further. There will come a time when Nature simply cannot handle the damage and repair it in a timely manner anymore. The buffer will be full. When this happens, the effect of negative externalities will manifest immediately, and it will include the cumulated damage over decades as well. It will feel like not paying the bills for a long time and then having all belongings repossessed. Humanity will feel stripped and highly vulnerable. The advisory services company KPMG published a report in 2012 stating that if companies had to pay for the environmental cost of their production, it would cost them an average 41% of their corporate earnings. These costs are currently not included in the pricing. That is how high negative externalities can be. Looking at it from the other way, companies would still deliver 59% of their current earnings. Repairing the damage and still generate profits shows that sustainability is financially achievable. On average, the profits would only be lower, but the impact would vary substantially between companies. Businesses that create high negative externalities will show much bigger drops in profits, than business that do the right thing. The only ones who would have to get over some disappointment would be Wall Street investors and all those who chase capital gains on company shares. The world could live with that. Investors should put their money only in companies that actually have a future.

All the fossil fuels that humans burn are gone forever. It is not renewable. All the water that farmers use for food production and exported away from the production region is gone forever. Exporters in arid regions will have no choice than disappear, produce only for the local markets, or if that is economically sensible, import water from surplus regions. All the minerals that are used as fertilizers and that are exported from the fields in the form of leaching or in the form of agricultural commodities are gone forever. New supplies produced either with non-renewable energy sources or from mines that are slowly depleting must replace the loss. Organic matter that is lost from soils must be replaced, or it will be gone forever. Soil that is lost through erosion and climate is gone forever, unless new soil is brought back on the land or very long-lasting repair techniques are applied. Every gene that is lost is lost forever and might be missing dearly. Every species that goes extinct is gone forever, as well as its role in the ecosystem. Every molecule of greenhouse gas that goes into the atmosphere is gone out of human control forever. It might bring a heavy cost in the future.

Since everything that becomes rarer also becomes more expensive, the externalities are going to weigh on the economics of food and agriculture, as well as in any other activity. There will be an oil price for which the current machines will be too expensive to operate, and for perishables to be too costly to truck with fossil fuels over long distances. The economics of water will change the purpose of farming in arid regions. It will alter the agricultural policies and force farmers to innovate new irrigation techniques. The economics of minerals and organic matter will change the location of animal farms and manure containment systems. No minerals will be lost. Manure will become a competitive fertilizer, as chemical fertilizers will become much more expensive to produce. The logistics of manure will change and the location of animal farms will change to allow an optimal cost efficiency of raw material for feed and access to fertilizing elements and organic matter. Farms will not have to be mixed, but the agricultural landscape will restore an integration of crop farms with animal farms.  Agriculture will be sustainable only if completes all the cycles. In the past decades, the cycles of minerals, of organic matter and of water have been open. Food has been produced in one place, and then moved over long distances and the waste and surpluses have accumulated somewhere else, while the original production areas were slowly depleting. New systems and new organization will work on closing the cycles again to bring back what agriculture needs to function. The economics of energy will change the chemical industry and its products. Everything will aim at using as little primary resources as possible and maximize the efficiency of inputs by both bringing entirely new products and application techniques. It will be true for energy, water, fertilizers, chemicals, medicines. The new focus will be about using just what is needed when it is needed and only in the dose that is needed, and no more than that. It will be all about precision agriculture, precision animal husbandry, precision packing, precision manufacturing, precision processing and precision logistics.

When externalities manifest immediately, there will not be the time discrepancy between financial results and environmental results. There will be no excuse anymore to say that there is no evidence of consequences. There will be no possibility of creating the confusion, either. When pushed to the limits of its resilience, Nature will bring the financial and the environmental at the same timeline. It will be stressful. Doing the right thing environmentally, or in other words, producing sustainably, will be the best, and only, short-term strategy for financial sustainability.

Copyright 2012 – The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd

Just for fun, a bit of science fiction

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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.

No shortage of action points for the future

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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.