This is how wizards and prophets are working together to solve the food crisis
How can we feed 8 billion people – healthily and within planetary boundaries? The current food system is failing. While 600 million people are undernourished, 3 billion are overweight. At the same time, we are exceeding 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries – four of which are largely due to how we produce food.
There is a solution. Or rather, two solutions. One from the “prophets” and one from the “wizards”. Let me explain.
What I saw in Rome
In the spring, I attended the Global Summit of the True Cost Accounting Accelerator at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome. The message was clear: the food system of the future must take much greater account of the external (“true”) costs of food. Environmental and social damage must be factored into decisions made by companies, governments and investors, among others. This is the core of what we at Impact Institute and True Price have been fighting for for more than 10 years.
But something stood out in Rome. Almost all examples of successful True Cost Accounting concerned applications of organic farming. In itself, that is not surprising. If you use less or no artificial fertiliser, it cannot leak into the groundwater, resulting in less pollution and therefore lower external costs. The elephant in the room is that this makes it very difficult to feed 8 billion mouths. It is possible, but we would have to change our eating habits. Much less animal products and much more plant-based proteins. And if you start telling people what they can eat, you will face political opposition, to say the least.
About the author
Reinier de Adelhart Toorop is Head of Research at Impact Institute in Amsterdam, a social enterprise that helps companies, governments and investors become more sustainable by measuring and assessing their impact on the environment and society. He also teaches Sustainable Corporate Finance at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Reinier holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Leiden University and previously worked at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.
And what I hear from our customers
When I speak to many of our customers, I hear a very different message. Technology is the solution. Not less fertiliser, but more. Or at least smarter. And preferably micro-dosed precisely at the roots of the plants with the help of AI. Now less leaks away. And if this also increases the yield, the negative external costs per kilogram of food will be reduced even further.
During a workshop at a large slaughterhouse, I heard about their sustainability strategy. In a world where people eat pork, they have technology to slaughter pigs in the most painless way possible. With smart logistics solutions and sometimes unexpected sales channels, they ensure that literally not a single gram of the pig is wasted. After the workshop, there was a delicious vegetarian lunch, with the menu including the meat substitute they are investing in as part of their risk diversification strategy.
Wizards and prophets
Technology enthusiasts who see innovation as the solution to all the world’s problems are referred to as “wizards” in Charles C. Mann’s The Wizard and the Prophet. The ultimate wizard was Norman Borlaug, who developed grain that yields extremely high harvests and is resistant to most diseases. According to some, this has saved up to a billion people from starvation. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. At the same time, however, “his” high-tech food requires large amounts of fertiliser and pesticides, which laid the foundation for exceeding the planetary boundaries I mentioned earlier.
For true magicians, that is not a problem. Just as technology solved the first problem (food scarcity), it will also solve the second problem (pollution). For example, through microdosing. And in a relative sense, anyway, through ever-higher yields.
Mann would call the participants in Rome prophets of doom, with William Vogt, one of the founders of the modern environmental movement, as primus inter pares. Prophets advocate a world that is more locally oriented and in which we sometimes have to settle for less. They shake their heads at the optimism (or is it stupidity?) of the wizards. Meanwhile, the wizards cannot imagine the prophets’ world with less growth and less choice. Who would want that?
From two world views to one
My point is not that one group is right and the other wrong. They are both right. But they are also both right in identifying the weaknesses in the other’s argument.
In my work, I sometimes speak with “prophets” and at other times with “wizards”. In both, I see the desire to work towards a better, more sustainable world with a food system that is completely different from the one we have today. But few of them show any understanding for the other’s vision.
My ideal for the food sector is one in which the best ideas of both prophets and wizards are taken on board without taboos. In which technology is embraced – provided it serves humanity. In which growth is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. In which we all think about what is really healthy, tasty and sustainable – and only eat that. In doing so, consumers may well need a little nudge in the right direction from time to time. The future of our food system requires courage, nuance and cooperation. Not either/or, but both/and.
