Feeding the world: the art of communication

Over the last decade, sustainability in the food and drink industry has become a major talking point. In an era of rapidly evolving global challenges, the call to adopt climate-resilient agricultural practices, reduce food waste and encourage dietary changes has never been louder. Achieving this takes leaders to show courage and engender a spirit of collaboration. No more is this in evidence than at Flora Food Group who held its Third Annual Next Generation of Food Conference in June in Wageningen, Netherlands in the Group’s food science center.

Skilfully hosted by Damian McKinney, the global CEO of Dioni Life, a non alcoholic drinks company, he addressed an audience comprising assembled guests from trailblazers to industry leaders to share their thoughts on the food industry’s future.

McKinney set out the day’s proceedings as well as the conference’s ambition, which, in simple terms, amounts to getting the food industry to offer consumers better choices. How we get there is the question. The answer: we must raise our game to help inspire, as well as meet consumers’ appetite for products that are good for people and good for the planet.

But transforming the food system means developing partnerships to inspire demand for more sustainable food. With families facing acute pressures on their finances, it’s on industry to help make sustainable options the easy, affordable, and attractive option, and to accelerate its shared efforts.

“We need everybody, as many people who are like minded, sharing our vision, sharing our future on board,” David Haines, Group CEO of Flora Food Group, stresses in his introduction before encouraging everybody to engage in debate.

But how to do that? One way was put forward by Jack Bobo, a prominent leader in the future of food, who is also an executive director of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies.

Jack’s extensive experience spans roles as director of global food water and policy at The Nature Conservancy, Conservancy, CEO of futurity, and senior advisor of global food policy at the US Department of State. Jack Bobo is also famous as the author of why smart people make bad food decisions, a book that unpacks how our food environment has fuelled the global obesity crisis and highlights the role of behavioural science in tackling food policy challenges, Jack Bobo’s presentation was titled, looking backwards to inform the future of food.

Whoever tells the best story
As climate, health and sustainability converge, the food industry stands at a turning point. According to Bobo, what’s clear against this background is that the industry needs to be more open-minded. Business as usual isn’t enough.

Enlightening guests with tales of corporate challenges and personal anecdotes on winning arguments, he put forward the idea of whoever tells the best story wins. Bobo highlighted the importance of storytelling. One of the wonderful things about stories is that they have meaning for everyone, both children and adults, who hears or reads them, no matter what his or her age. Stories are what motivate people, and the best stories bring people together to solve problems.

“One of the challenges we have today with food/the future of food, is that the stories we’re telling are dividing people,” Bobo tells a captivated crowd. “They are making everything we want to achieve more difficult.”

So how do we understand from the past to inform the present, to create the future?

We need innovation. And people love innovation almost as much as they despise change.

“And there is no place that people despise change more than in the food they eat,” Bobo asserts. “Because food is what brings us together with friends. It brings us together with family. And if you mess with my food, you are messing with my family, and people don’t like that. But if we don’t change how we produce food, everything will change.”

Given that background, how do we get people as excited about the new, latest food innovation as they are with the latest smartphone technology, is Bobo’s question.

Narratives are critical because they bring us together, and they can drive change. “For some people, the narrative is that science is, in fact, the problem to be solved,” Bobo explains. “It’s not the solution to our problems. And so I want to ask this question: has innovation failed us?
We can have a better future and a more sustainable future at the same time. Right now, we’re asking people to sacrifice for the future. But what if we ask them to embrace the future?

Bobo says that if the food system is broken, then everybody in the food system is the problem, and the people whose behaviours we need to change are the problem.

His main point centres on how we talk about this problem determines whether or not people resist it or work with each other to do better, faster.

One of the main points he left the audience pondering is the idea that in many ways, “things are not bad and getting worse, they’re good and getting better, but not fast enough”.

Bobo continues: “The question we should be asking is, how do we get to our 2070 goals by 2050? How do we get to our 2050 goals by 2030? How do I work with food companies and farmers to accelerate the pace of innovation? How do I help them do better faster, instead of beating them up for what they’re already doing? How we communicate matters. How we communicate determines if people work with us to solve problems or fight us and make solutions impossible.”

The future
Bobo is of the mind that we need to stop preparing for the future that we expect, and we need to create the future that we want.

“We need to have a vision of where we want to go, and it needs to be a vision that doesn’t just appeal to us and our group. It needs to appeal to those whose behaviours we need to change.

By way of example he presented three scenarios for the future of protein after speaking to beef and dairy farmers and asking them this question: what future is best for you?

• Scenario One – livestock wins. We meet all of our future protein by expanding animal agriculture.
• Scenario two – alternative proteins win, or beans and lentils, we all meet our future protein needs by expanding alternative proteins.
• Scenario three – livestock goes bust. We produce 20% less animal protein in 2050 than we do today.

After asking which future they want? Scenario one emerges as the outright choice, however with livestock winning, we cut down 10 or 20% of our forest to make way for animal production. People don’t like farmers now because  of the environmental impact, but most importantly, they don’t make more money in scenario one, because if demand increases and supply increase, income has to be flat . Scenario two, demand for real meat increases, but supply is flat. You have to make more money in scenario two, and we don’t need to cut down any more forest.
Scenario three, if we reduce production in the least productive countries on the planet, that is not the Netherlands, it’s not the UK, it’s not North America, well, now you’re making four or five times more money. You’re an ultra premium product that people aspire to.

95% of beef and dairy farmers agree that scenarios two or three are the ones where they do best.

If we can articulate a future in which people are thriving, they will support it. If we can bring them together for a shared vision of what the future of protein should look like. Why would they oppose government regulation that allow these alternatives to move forward? Because we all want the same thing. We want a sustainable, nutritious and equitable food future, but we also want a future in which our family is doing okay. If we can’t articulate a future that people want to live in. Why should we be surprised if they reject it every time Bill Bill Gates says we’ll all be eating synthetic meat in 2030 he makes that future less likely.

Language barrier

The language we use can either open doors or close them so they draw to a conclusion. Bobo wants us to think a little bit more about why this particular moment is so important and what happens to populations after 2050?

Well, population growth slows dramatically and it’s declining. By the end of the century, the population of China will be about half what it is today. By 2100 India’s population will be about a third lower than its peak. Five of the 10 most populous countries on the planet will be in Africa, the world will be a very different place. But importantly, we don’t need to produce more and more food forever. In many ways, we just need to get to 2050 without screwing things up, because every day between now and 2050 it gets harder to feed the world, but every day after 2050 it will get easier to feed the world.

Bobo believes that if we haven’t screwed things up, if we haven’t cut down our forests and drained our rivers, our lakes and our aquifers, we have a huge opportunity to reduce the footprint of agriculture.

“After 2050 all of productivity gains go to reducing that footprint,” he explains. “But we live in a very unique moment. For 10,000 years, farmers were asked to do one thing, produce more food. Now they’re being asked to produce better food, food that’s better for people and better for the planet.

“We’re at an inflection point in all of human history. So the thought I want to leave you with is the next 25 years. They’re not just the most important 25 years there have ever been in the 10,000 year history of agriculture, and they are. They’re also the most important 25 years than we’ll ever be in the history of agriculture, and that’s why we have to get it right, and that’s why the work you’re doing here is so important.”

But that’s why we need to communicate in ways that bring people together to solve problems, because if we do, agriculture can, in fact, save the planet.