Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I would be a sorry, a very very rich person if that game would
work like that. Hi.
Welcome to our second episode onthe book stuffed and starved,
the battle for our world's food system.
We continue looking at the food system through an egalitarian
lent. First of all, we start out
looking at the development of the price of coffee along the
(00:23):
supply chain. And what we can learn about it,
then Frank and I get into a whole discussion about Consumer
and corporate responsibility. And lastly, we critically.
Look at whether food Tech, and our current attempts.
In the food industry are actually solving the root
problem of malnourishment and starvation in the end.
(00:46):
You'll also hear from us, whether we would recommend
reading this book or not. I'm joined by my wonderful
co-host. Frank, Alexander cunha, he is
the chief of Advisory board at the herb and spice company wrap.
Apps. And he's also sharing some
insights from his own industry experience.
And additionally, he is the managing director of the adult
(01:08):
bird wraps Foundation, which offers grants for impact focused
food science, more on that laterfor now.
Let's Jump Right In. Red to Green is the most
in-depth podcast on food sustainability.
And in this season 7 we discuss key takeaways from books on the
(01:30):
food system, I'm your host Marina Schmidt and I'm joined by
my co-host, Frank Keenan? A little side note, we are in
the middle of the conversation and Frank is about to describe
how the price develops along thesupply chain.
It can be pretty overwhelming ifyou try to remember all the
numbers just focus on the actualtakeaways.
(01:54):
So on the grand scheme of how the price develops.
Raj Patel brings up at one point, the example of unfair
market prices and he basically explains the way coffee goes
through the hole. Supply chain until it ends up in
the shelves. He basically says a family
coffee Farm wherever in the world sells coffee for 14 cents,
(02:15):
a kilo and it bought by middlemen that then brings the
coffee to a Mill and that middleman adds five cents to the
killer price. So he ends up with selling it to
the mill with 19 cents from Mill.
It ends up in a city, another two senses being added on and
it's 10 being sold from from that City.
(02:38):
It to nesler are based on Londonwords been sold for 1.64.
US dollar per kilogram basicallythe first whole value chain in
the country until it's at the Port ads from 14 to 26 sent.
The price is per has been increased and that it jumps from
(02:58):
the port somewhere, most likely Africa.
I guess it jumps up to one pointsix four Cent.
And I think that's basically, that's the job of the Traders
because they have good knowledgeand access to the local markets,
some in Africa, they buy it, they ship it to nessler and say,
there's your product, it's a time more expensive and then he
points out. That Nescafe is then being sold
(03:20):
and I'm not quite sure if it's the price that is being on the
shelf or that surprise. The retailer pace is $26.
So it's about 200 times more expensive as it has been when it
entered the nessler word in London.
So, look this up. Nescafe, the instant coffee
(03:40):
costs, roughly 51 dollars per kilo at Walmart.
So the processing adds to the costs but likely also to the
bottom line and that is actuallywhat Raj Patel is arguing for.
I quote, there's every incentivefor food producing corporations
to sell food that has undergone processing, which renders it
(04:02):
more profitable if less nutritious so just to summarize
because we had a lot of numbers.Hours, it starts out at like 14
15 cents, according to the example from the book stuffed
and starved. And then a big jump happens at
the Port, right? With the Traders, with the price
jumps into a whole dollar range between one to two dollars.
(04:25):
Then once processed by nested the price, jumps into the low
double digits, if it's just beans or into the medium double
digits, if it's processed further into instant powder.
Where did all the money? Go have it this year the way he
explains the story. He's not talking about the value
of being added and the cost being related to that.
(04:47):
And he leaves the reader. The impression there's a profit
somewhere along the way that is between 14 cents and 26 US
Dollars and somebody's taking that into his pocket and he's
forgetting Transportation. Milling cleaning food, safety
issues quality issues, He's grinding packaging, a storage,
(05:11):
the salesperson, being responsible, to put the product
into the Shelf at the retailer. The person who's creating the
packaging, like he's not addressing the costs.
And actually think what you should have done is at least to
make it more complex and more real.
He should have addressed. What are the costs added with
each step on that Coffee Bean onthe kg of coffee?
(05:32):
There's the coffee is not the same when it started from the
farm in Africa and it ends up inthe Shelf.
The supermarket's, I would be a very sorry, a very, very rich
person if that game would work like that.
I can tell you, I'm really deep into pepper and you can compare
papal to Coffee. We're not making a torn at times
(05:53):
profit on Pepper. When we buy it from our Traders
or from our farmers in Vietnam. Definitely not.
I would say it's again. Like I don't think he is saying
this is the profit margin, right?
He's just Jibing how the price suddenly jumps and this is
interesting and I wanted to comeback to this because the Traders
(06:17):
have a bigger part to play in this whole thing.
Absolutely. We've been talking about so far
and because that's the interfacethat Nestle has it just talks to
the Traders and then how you supposed to like it's pretty
intensive to try to figure out where the trader got his beans
(06:37):
from And what this traitor actually gave to the farmers
unless you have some kind of completely different like,
transparent solution, and I knowpeople throw Block Chain around
to. I have not enough expertise in
blockchain to say, whether that be using Bitcoin for paying
(06:59):
Farmers is, is the way to go or something.
It points at the issue that we'll just in general lacking
transparency. In the food system, for sure.
And that's an issue that also multinationals have.
And if they try to trace back where they have their products
from, and yes, the multinationals have a huge, 22
(07:24):
like a markup on their products and it's I think it's not such a
such a problem. If the other part of the supply
chain also gets their due. They're do profit, so pretty
intensive to try to figure out where the trader got his beans
(07:44):
from and what this traitor, actually gave to the farmers
unless you have some kind of completely different transparent
solution. But it points at the issue that
we're just in general lacking transparency in the food system
for sure. And the interesting thing about
this is how that actually leads to a coffee Surplus and
(08:08):
Therefore to food waste. I quoted the law of supply and
demand would suggest that coffeeGrowers would move out of the
market and do something else. This would presuppose that there
is something else that they can do.
It has resulted in a global coffee surplus of 90 million
kilos. So the criticism that Raj Patel
(08:29):
has for Nestle, for example, is the following with high levels
of brand loyalty and with such market dominance Nesta is In the
position to raise the price thatit's Growers.
Receive yet, nessler, Starbucks in every other food system,
Corporation have a rock-solid alibi Us in the name of
(08:50):
consumers and consumer, Freedom wages are kept, low and
opportunities, for Farmers to increase their income are
stymied. I export my quotes in my
highlights from my Kindle and unfortunately, I cannot give you
the page numbers that I do promise that these are all
actual quote. From the book.
Well, there are enough topics tosolve in our food system and
(09:14):
here just a quick shout out to the adelbert raps Foundation
which over the past 40 Millions has invested millions and
millions into food science research and that's also a great
opportunity for startups and forresearchers for people who are
working on their Master thesis or their PHD thesis or the next
(09:35):
big idea that can turn The food system upside down in the
positive sense, that'll bear traps Foundation is offering
grants to Scientific institutions sometimes also
working with startups. I've asked Frank, what kind of
topics they're actually offeringgrants for.
(09:56):
I think you can rule out anything, which is nutrition.
So, any kind of consumer studies, we don't go out and
you're so, we don't believe thatwe have the knowledge to tell
you what an intrapreneur scientists should do.
It should be. The other way around he should
come to us because of his idea or her idea his knowledge and
then basically say look that's something I want to achieve.
So biggest headline is impact for us and not this or that
(10:20):
topic we want to address changing the food system to
about food system. Check out the other bird wraps
Foundation by typing it into Google or by following the links
in the show notes. You can also connect with Frank
Alexander cunha on LinkedIn and Just paying him directly so
(10:41):
Frank. Yes, mr.
Coonan. Yesterday, you talked about
something that you heard in a meeting.
I think which was price over moral, and the moment, you said
that actually thought it was like a related to the corporates
in on us. Like, yeah, yeah, excited.
We'll see ya. It's so comfortable into the
(11:04):
mindset of Marina. That bad companies are only on
profit and there's no moral in it and I actually meant it
totally different, but it's okay.
It's actually a common phrase. Now, in some of the discussion
when I'm doing business and we're discussing what the
consumer wants, and it's kind ofa catch phrase, its moral.
(11:27):
Overpriced, it's the other way around price over moral.
So the idea is basically the consumer will tend to choose the
cheaper price and there have been studies on that even here
Germany where they were trying to figure out the Animal Welfare
label. What is the consumer willing to
pay for a better life circumstances for Animals?
(11:48):
I don't have to study now on hand but to give you basically
an idea come on, but it's also stingy to this.
We're not talking like that's, especially bad.
We're we're just not willing to okay.
Yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah, trude.
The, the study have perhaps in at least a juror, the German
study had Had proven that the Readiness of Germans to pay a
(12:12):
decent amount more for an animalwelfare.
Positive product is, basically not existing with all these
books. The consumer is either the child
that is being Guided by the bad industry towards a bad decision
for himself or it, is this person who's willing to buy
locally and seasonally and eat healthy either.
(12:32):
He's super Auto Pian person. Or he's a he's a child and I
think we are in the Middle with Humor worldwide.
Today, I'll be influenced by theindustry and by the retailers
and they have an unconscious about it and I think as a
consumer you have to take the responsibility for your
decisions. You make, some of my favorite
(12:54):
highlights from the book of Rush.
Patel's views regarding consumers are in u.s. stores.
Today, one can find child-sized cards with long poles attached,
while intended to help parents better find them.
Are children in the aisles. The mini card, serve an
educational purpose, the flag proclaims, it quite clearly
(13:16):
customer and training free, customer in training and he and
regarding the historic development of grocery stores.
He says, the only possible pointof contact between the person
eating the food, and the person who grew it became the label on
the tin from this point onwards.The people selling the goods
(13:39):
were expected to know, preciselynothing about its Origins and if
they knew anything were prohibited from saying it and I
must say it is a bit weird if you think about how often do you
actually know where these kidneybeans were from?
If you buy it in, maybe I just don't look enough but maybe
(14:01):
that's also not the way to change things.
I quote again the Honey Trap of ethical consumerism is to I
think that the only means of communication we have with
producers is through the market and that the only way we can
take Collective action is to persuade everyone else to shop
like us. And that comes back to what we
(14:22):
had. When we talked about the book,
carbon footprint of everything, we are in a freaking bubble, we
are in a bubble of people who think about food, not just three
times a day because somehow addicted to it and we were
thinking about it the entire dayand it's easy from this
standpoint. People should make conscious
decisions and I love to talk to people outside of my bubble,
(14:45):
just even recently at a friend'splace and he had these sausages,
like, the salami sausages from German brand called guten tag on
stage, which is good and cheap. And I was like, oh my God, this
is just like the cheapest crappiest salami ever.
I just don't you think about thequality of your food and there's
thought, no, he does not becausehe has 10,000 other Things to do
(15:08):
and it's not his profession to think about it.
Yeah I think we are also overloading consumers.
We have to do this and you have to do that and just like how
about just make the system in a way that it actually
incentivizes the cheapest. And best option to be the
sustainable. One, the bubble we are living in
the bubble, we are talking. We both are well.
Fat educated. Who will not take the time to
(15:37):
produce a podcast? And talk about the meaning of
our food system. We're not worried about when
we're going to go home tonight. What's going to be on the table?
Like there's going to be a conscious decision about what
we're going to put on the table.It's not going to be flown in
strawberries, but there are billions of people out in the
world that really are more worried about to get at all,
(15:59):
something to eat and to Fort something to eat, one of the
things I realized is what is thepurpose of the food system?
The purpose of the food system is start to feed us but we do it
for a profit and I think you have to admit that and starting
from that point onwards what's the flaw in the system and what
(16:21):
we need to change. Honestly speaking I still waiver
for a system that is orientated on profit but that's a different
story and if you'd alone can't be enough, the issue is that
profit is a met. Yeah, there's a good there's it
cannot be the only metric. That's measured, it's not the
only metric, but I think the system is set up in a way that
(16:42):
is oriented a profit and then the society steps in and gives
us legislation and rules how we have to behave within that
system. And it's such an easy call to
ask the legislation that the politicians to set up the right
rule book for these kind of systems.
Perhaps it's too easy to be saidand I'm pretty sure some people
(17:02):
are going to grow me on the industry side for saying that
but I think that's a necessary Tthat food system.
Need to be checked and balanced by the society.
With legislation, putting rules into place.
That is something I would have expected that the book asked for
saying, we need to have different routes.
He does that at certain points, but coming back to the idea of
profit, The Profit comes with scalability or scaling up.
(17:27):
The simple thing is, you reduce costs in producing Foods by
being bigger. The system is being billed in a
way that scale is King. And that's going to have an
impact on the price and price isthat again.
What the consumer is searching for his not searching for the
moral correct product, he searching for the cheapest
product. And so that's my personal view
on the whole food system, but hedoesn't bring that up.
(17:49):
He blames the industry and the Traders and petitions for
setting up a rigged game. Because actually, his thesis is
that all of this like the marketliberalization, and the building
of this multinationals, was argued based on, we need this to
make it. Cheaper for the consumers.
(18:09):
He argues that isn't actually always the case.
So, Raj, Patel are you throughout the book that the
liberalization of the market andGlobal free?
Trade has made the food system, less stable, and has driven
prices instead of making it cheaper for consumers,
especially in countries that arenot wealthy.
And that's something that we will talk more in depth about in
(18:33):
The Next Episode. The point about historic
responsibility that I'm about toShin is not from the book but it
is a thought that came to me while reading the book to me.
One thing that came up when we were pre discussing the book
yesterday, is this concept of what I would call Historic
responsibility? So let's go through like the
(18:55):
idea that somebody joins Nest. Let it's a corporation and this
person wasn't the person that isresponsible for loads of cacao
Farmers struggling to get by in the past, or in the present.
Isn't but becoming part of an organization is a bit like being
part of a country, but with a bit more Choice, actually, like
(19:15):
I was born into Germany, we wereborn into Germany and we haven't
been responsible for what has happened in the past.
We weren't the ones doing it, but still, but being part of
this country and being part of the culture, it is our
responsibility to acknowledge what has happened and to act and
go out of our way to make sure that we don't do the same
(19:37):
mistakes. And that we actively do
something to mitigate the impacts that hat.
So I see that is the case also for corporations.
And again I prefer to talk aboutit as the individuals and
corporations, I personally believe the change is in the
corporation's. The opportunity is in the
corporations and therefore the power is also probably more with
(19:59):
individuals indecision positionsat a corporate, then it is with
startup Founders because all thefounders at some point, they
start out with this mission. Mission and vision and we want
to make everything better. And at some point they're bought
by a midsize company. That's bald by a corporate and
then they get pressed into a square shaped space in this
(20:20):
massive conglomerate and all thefuzzies are cut off to be square
and efficient and a food system that's based on certain metrics.
So believe that individuals in corporates can have some of the
biggest impact by acknowledging this kind of systemic And
saying, okay, it's not like there's blame, I'm not trying to
(20:41):
be like all pointing fingers, but having the possibility to
effect change, actually comes with the responsibility, to
affect it. Yeah.
That was my preach on a Wednesday.
Thanks for coming to my ceremony.
You can join the red to Green Colts in the show.
(21:04):
Knows, I think the yes, you're right.
He Dad, I already joined. I going to give you an exam.
Last week, we had a very intensediscussion with my management
board about sustainability as being a part in our strategic
framework and I'm actually proudto say that we said, besides
(21:25):
risk profit grows. We now agreed up on
sustainability, as one of our pillars, where we measure our
decision against then was a veryintense discussion because it's,
um, Means less profit but more sustainability.
So that's something where I totally agree with you.
That being an employee and an organization brings them the
(21:47):
responsibility and the possibility to change and steer
things in a different thing. But I'm the majority owner of a
company. So I have the power to actually
push that through and it didn't come from a management.
It came from me, and I think a person being employed by Nesta
is a two small figure that he isactually able to shift.
(22:08):
If an organization in a way thatit's going to have an impact,
but I like the way you have setting it up or you explaining
it, because I still believe, even if you are too small to
have an impact, you are part of the system, which makes you
responsible of the actions of the system.
And I think that's something youcan't deny.
(22:28):
So, every person in a company needs to be aware what the
company is doing, and the impact, it's going to have and
buy that decide if you want to be part of it or not.
And I think that There's a truthin it.
I'm not so optimistic about the way, they have a possibility to
actually change something because that that needs quite a
lot of power. Again, if we've been talking a
lot of power about power over last last hour.
(22:50):
Yeah, I think I'm more optimistic on that.
Mainly because, of course, there's this whole notion.
I once talked with somebody about voting, right?
And he said with my vote, is just one vote of million, so I
don't need to vote and it's the same thing with oh, but my
changes and the Changes that I can affect on my company are not
going to save the world so it doesn't matter.
(23:12):
No absolutely matters and if it doesn't matter on a base of of
it actually affecting change, itmatters on an ideological level.
Unlike sometimes you do things out of principle and I think in
corporations and inspiring story.
I recently got exposed to us at in Tel Aviv.
I was at the, our Grievous conference and I talked with
(23:32):
somebody there who is a directorin a cooperative Nice of they
have about 300,000 farmers and he started to think about, okay,
the future is uncertain, the soil health is eroding, climate
is changing, everything is becoming more volatile.
(23:53):
So how do we actually think better about how we use water?
How we reduce the food, waste, how we increase soil health and
within the company, he wasn't the kind of activist looking
kind of person. He wasn't wearing Birkenstocks
Stock and he wasn't telling everybody eat plant-based
Burgers. He's the classic corporate guy
(24:15):
who decided, okay, I'm going to speak business, I'm going to say
we should reduce food waste for our bottom line.
We should increase soil health, for our bottom line should do
all of these things because thatwill be better.
And that is where I see possibility, of course, like in
your case, it was like a value change.
He said, our company is going tosee sustainability as an Pendant
(24:38):
value that we should follow. But then there's so much
possibility in just saying. This is better for us for the
existing system and pushing thatjust having the eyes open, where
does profitability and sustainability overlap?
And where can I make it happen? Like, I think we've talked about
the farmers. We've talked about the kind of
the traders, who have talked about the Retailer's without
(25:00):
talk about the processing industry - as an example, and I
think we should end up with the consumers as well. 800 million
people Starving 1 billion, people being stuff.
I like that kind of clear message he's putting in here
because there is something wrongundoubtedly and I checked the
numbers and verified the numbershe showed and these right?
(25:22):
Yeah. And I think it's a good
indication in the book that there is something going wrong
and our food system, if we are creating that kind of figures
and something popped into my head because especially in the
old protein space. Everybody talks about our, we
have a rise. Global protein demand and that's
true. But there's also this whole
topic about feeding 10 billion people.
(25:44):
And I like that he describes forexample.
And I quote, the book here in Africa, recent starvation, Mass
scale, hunger, and hunger related deaths.
Have not been triggered by the absence of appropriate crops.
The truth is more complicated. He then criticizes that people
talk about or policies, talk about all we need to grow more
food. We need to grow more food, but
(26:05):
then he has this example of thisRegion called Lesotho and he
writes, I quote, the reason theyare hungry is that many in
Lesotho simply cannot afford to buy the food that is available
because they have a spar Supermarket there.
And it's just selling imported goods at prices which are too
expensive, while not allowing the local farmers to sell their
(26:27):
goods. If you care about addressing
starvation, then the policy and poverty is actually the way to
go, maybe more. Potent than just looking at the
agriculture side of it. Yes.
Rush Patel also Dives a bit intohow this Paradox of stuffed and
star comes about. One example, is the 1990, the
(26:52):
1943 Bengal famine famine. One example is the 1943 Bengal
famine in which over 3 million people died.
One example is, I quote the 1943Bengal famine in which over
three million people died. The Paradox, is that at the same
(27:13):
time as people died of hunger, there was enough food and Bengal
to be able to feed them in his path-breaking research Economist
amartya sen observe that modern famines weren't related so much
to the absence of food, as to the inability to buy it.
It's just that those who owned it.
(27:33):
It had hoarded, it knowing that less Food meant higher food
prices. This is a hugely important
finding because it breaks the link between the simple
availability of food in the market and the question of
whether the poor get to eat it times.
When the food is perceived to bescarce, The Hourglass shape of
the food system is almost certain to deliver not food, but
(27:57):
hunger the only way that famine can be overcome is to guarantee
rights to people that Trump those of grain hoarders, at the
waist of the food system hourglass This is very harsh
critique and the part that I find the most interesting in the
most relevant to the actual foodTech field is the following
(28:20):
sufficient food to feed, the population has been present,
what have failed have been. The channels of distribution
does Monsanto proposed to address these.
They do not because there is notwhat they sell.
And indeed that's very much linked to also a lot of food
Tech pitch decks and if one is actually trying to meet a lack
(28:44):
of protein in developing countries.
Well, most likely it's not even about the supply but it is about
how do you get it there and how how do you change the system
that the people actually have the money to afford these
Solutions? So Raj Patel says we're asking
the wrong questions quote. How do I change the flour to
(29:06):
read? Not.
What would happen if I did the questions that get asked, are
determined by the profit motive,the force that rarely meets the
needs of the hungry, the questions are.
How do we get the vitamin A in the rice?
Or a, how do we get the poor to stop reading?
But never why, half the poor remained hungry and there is a
(29:28):
mounting pile of questions that remain on asked. for example, he
also criticized as golden rice which is genetically engineered
rice, which is supposed to have more vitamin A coming from beta
carotene which also makes it more orange supposed to have
more vitamin A but he points outthat depending on whether you
(29:50):
hear the ranges from the BiotechIndustry, it would require two
bowls of rice to meet the daily requirement of beta-carotene or
if you listen to Independent assessments, It would be nearly
50 bolts of rice per day and he criticizes.
I quote half a carrot contains the recommended dose of vitamin
(30:11):
A. The plain fact is that the
majority of children in the global South suffer and die.
Not because there is insufficient food, or because
better carotene rice is nationally lacking, they are
malnourished and undernourished because all their parents can
afford to feed them is rice. And now Molina, the question is
(30:32):
If I'm asked and you can ask thequestion to later, would you
recommend somebody to read the book?
Yes. Okay.
And why? It's a dense book.
It's quite a chewy book and I think he does a very good job of
describing things. Very detailed.
(30:53):
He has a lot of references for me.
Not all the chapters were equally interesting.
My favorite parts of the book were on the impact of the
liberalization of the market to specifically, India, and Africa
the way that he described. It were really interesting to
me. So I would recommend people who
want to understand the setup. Up of the food system to read
(31:15):
it. I don't think it's the strongest
in terms of proposing Solutions.And that's also fine.
It's already a big chunk of workto be able to do the first part.
I absolutely agree with last part.
It's not a it's not a solution book.
Yeah. But what do you think about the
book? I think it's an uncomfortable
book and I like the way you saidit's chewy so it's very dense.
(31:36):
And you said that too in a way that he has collected a lot of
information insight about our food systems and he It puts it a
long, this to the value chain ofour food system from the
farmers, to the consumers or theretailers.
And being part of that value chain on other system, it felt
more than once uncomfortable playing along this game.
(31:58):
Like I had to admit I think there's a truth in it, what he
says and there's a truce in the way he describes it and so I
think for someone being part of the food system, yes, that's a
good book to read. And to confront yourself with
the truth of the author and yourown truth.
(32:18):
Like the way I've been confronted with my own trees
here and there were more than once I had to put down the book
and think about why do I feel uncomfortable in the way?
He's putting the story at some points.
I think he's over simplifying oris drawing the wrong conclusion.
But still there's an underlying truth in it.
(32:39):
If you know, anyone who would appreciate talking about the
Topics in the food industry to ask the big and tough meta
questions. It would help a lot if you just
take 20 seconds to simply forward them.
A link to this episode, this helps us to keep producing
content like this for you. A big thank you to the entire
(32:59):
team especially Celeste Gupta and radhika ramachandran for
audio editing. Until next time, let's move the
food industry from harmful to healthy from polluting to
sustainable from red to Green. Topics in the food industry to
ask the big and tough meta questions.
It would help a lot if you just take 20 seconds to simply
forward them. A link to this episode, this
helps us to keep producing content like this for you.
A big thank you to the entire team especially Celeste Gupta
and radhika ramachandran for audio editing.
Until next time, let's move the food industry from harmful to
healthy from polluting to sustainable from red to Green.