Three Challenges Facing the Food and Agriculture System and Opportunities for Social Entrepreneurs
Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President for Food at The Rockefeller Foundation, shares advice with aspiring entrepreneurs in the food and agriculture sector.
Roy Steiner is the Managing Director for the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. He is leading a team that is dedicated to creating access to nourishing food for millions of people in the United States and around the world.
In this interview, he spoke about three challenges facing the food system and invited social entrepreneurs to imagine a future that is sustainable, rather than dystopian.
Could you start by introducing yourself and your past experiences in the food and agriculture sector?
I’m the Senior Vice President of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Initiative. Before that, I spent several years at the Omidyar Network, which is a social impact investment fund, and nine years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s agricultural development program.
What brought me to the food and agriculture sector is a fundamental belief that it’s the foundation of human civilization. Food systems enhance and enable a flourishing and peaceful society. When you don’t get it right, it contributes to a real breakdown.
For example, you can see that all over the world, the food system is a major contributor to global warming and greenhouse gases. Where the food system doesn’t function well, conflict flourishes. We also see a lot of health problems, both from the wrong kinds of foods and undernutrition. So, food and agriculture is fundamental to a peaceful and flourishing society.
What are some of the challenges in the food and agriculture sector that need to be most urgently addressed right now?
I think there are three fundamental things.
First, we have to improve the efficiency of our production. We need to get more from our inputs, but there is currently quite a bit of inefficiency in the way we produce. For example, 70% of the fertilizer we use is wasted.
Second, we have to reduce food loss and food waste. We know that 30 to 40% of all food that is produced is actually thrown away or discarded somewhere along the supply chain. That is a lot of waste and we can get a lot better at that.
Third, and one of the most important challenges, is that we need to shift diets toward more healthy food. Producing enough and efficiently is not going to solve the problem that our dietary patterns are resulting in some of the greatest epidemics of poor health that humanity has seen. Currently, in many countries, you’re seeing obesity rates of 30 to 40%. That’s not just in more developed countries but across the globe. These diet-related problems are resulting in diabetes and contributing to about 60 to 70% of non-communicable diseases.
So the question is, how do we shift people to what we call “protective foods” or healthy foods? Basically, that means a diet that is high in fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, and much lower on the ultra processed foods that are providing us with too much sugar, starch, and salt. Unless we make that shift, we’re going to see massive healthcare problems.
Those are the three fundamental challenges that the food system is currently facing. Underlying all of this, we have to solve these problems in a way that is sustainable and does not contribute to environmental degradation or greenhouse gases.
What are some opportunities for innovation where aspiring social entrepreneurs can contribute new solutions to these food and agriculture challenges?
All along the supply chain, there is opportunity. One theme we are seeing consistently is that food and agriculture is one of the least digitized sectors of the economy. There is not enough application of good data and analytics to improve decisions — for example, to identify where to plant more effectively and what kinds of inputs to use.
Another opportunity is to track the supply chain more effectively to increase traceability and safety by using blockchain. Then there is the ability to deliver in new ways — for example, delivering really healthy food to areas that do not have it. So, there is an incredible opportunity to use data analytics to make better decisions, and to build effective and efficient distribution and delivery tech systems.
There is also an opportunity to create new products that are healthier for people and better for the planet. For example, Beyond Meat just IPOed. Five years ago, people thought it was a crazy idea to create a plant-based burger that could compete in Burger King. Well, that’s actually starting to happen with Impossible Foods.
Those are examples of the real desire to eat healthier, but new products alone are not going to do it. We also have to figure out ways to create food environments that are conducive to healthy eating. I think there are lots of interesting ways to change institutions, schools, and hospitals to help them enable their students or patients to eat healthy. This is where behavioral economics could come in to nudge people toward a better outcome. For example, there is evidence that by changing the way food is described on a menu, we can make people more likely to choose healthy food.
In your previous roles, you contributed to the creation of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Based on your experience, what food and agriculture challenges are particularly urgent in developing and emerging markets?
Just getting good information to farmers is a challenge. There is increasing use of cell phone technologies to enable farmers to make better decisions. But we need to get better at that — we still don’t have really killer applications. There are huge inefficiencies in supply chains.
There is an opportunity to introduce alternative energy, as well. Now that solar energy is so much less expensive, it’s starting to enable innovations we had never imagined — everything from solar irrigation pumps to solar drying and solar energy processing is just starting to become economically viable. So how could we adopt solar energy throughout the supply chain? That would mean redesigning from a process and an engineering perspective.
Then, once we develop these new protective and healthier foods, we have to develop demand. Consumers everywhere in the world, including in Africa, want things that are convenient, tasty, and low cost. Too often, we have the ultra processed foods that are cheap and unhealthy filling that void. So we need healthy products that are convenient and tasty.
What are some examples of successful social enterprises and innovations in this sector that aspiring entrepreneurs should know about?
One Acre Fund is a nonprofit social enterprise that provides loans for purchasing inputs, training on agricultural techniques, and crop storage solutions. Wefarm is a platform for farmers to help each other make better decisions. Twiga Foods is a distributed distribution company that accepts food from farmers and delivers it to thousands of vendors around Nairobi. They are able to reduce prices dramatically because they are much more efficient and don’t waste as much food.
At a high-tech level, there’s Atlas AI, which is using satellite imagery to help measure yields on the ground in Africa in real time. It can create more accurate estimates than the governments themselves, providing information for policymakers as well as the private sector.
What projects are you excited about at The Rockefeller Foundation right now?
There is a number of really good storage and waste reducing technologies. For example, InspiraFarms has developed a cold storage solution that is solar powered and really quite innovative.
There are also simple solutions, like hermetically sealed bags that prevent the destruction of maize and many other crops. That alone could reduce food loss by 50%, if we can figure out how to get them to farmers. We have also had a lot of success with fruit fly traps that are cheap and reduce the spoilage of mangoes.
Another area that is pretty exciting is using insects as feed for chickens. For example, you create a farm that raises insects on food waste. Then you feed those insects to poultry. It’s a huge environmental benefit and the poultry are even healthier. It’s a wonderful way to deal with the waste issue and create a sustainable food source.
We want social entrepreneurs to understand they are part of an ecosystem; they should not be solving these problems in isolation. Where should aspiring social entrepreneurs build relationships to start creating meaningful change in agriculture and food systems?
It all starts with the people who are engaged in the supply chain: the farmers, the traders, and the retailers. It is critical to engage with them.
In terms of organizations, there are funding organizations like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and innovation funds like Acumen. There are also bilateral and multilateral institutions that are active in this space. Every African government has its Ministry of Agriculture.
Finally, colleges and research universities in Africa often have a deeper understanding of the realities on the ground. I recommend partnering with other students in agricultural colleges who can give a reality check. Even just a Skype collaboration is helpful — there are students and universities who would love to help.
Have you seen any common mistakes from social enterprises in the food and agriculture sector that you would like social entrepreneurs to be aware of?
Yes — assuming that no one has ever done what you’re thinking of. Another big mistake is that people don’t understand the realities on the ground and the basic economics that have to make sense for an innovation to become sustainable. Additionally, understanding what is culturally appropriate and building upon existing infrastructure is critical.
You also have to understand that farmers and the food community are generally fairly conservative and risk averse because the consequences of making a wrong decision are dramatic. So it will be challenging to drive adoption of even the best technologies.
Is there any advice that you would share with someone who might want to build a career in this sector?
It starts by getting your hands dirty and understanding what is happening on the ground. Theory is important, but grounding in reality is just as important.
My other advice is that we’re generally pretty bad at listening and developing feedback systems. Any time you are beginning a new initiative, make sure you have feedback systems in place to help you learn quickly.
It is part of the lean startup mentality, but it doesn’t always translate to the agriculture sector. People say, “Oh, that’s fine for Silicon Valley. But we know what the answer is here.” But that’s not true.
So, how do we leverage our knowledge to create more dialogue and more connection points?
Finally, I understand that you have been involved in projects related to “future sensing” and “foresight.” Could you tell me more about that and how it relates to food systems?
When I was at Omidyar Network, we were developing what we called “future sensing capabilities,” which is listening to signals and creating future scenarios and foresight. In one of our analyses, we looked at how our popular culture envisions the future.
We found that 99% of the books and movies in our list were dystopian and dark — like Hunger Games, Mad Max, The Handmaid’s Tale. We are extraordinarily good at describing a world that we don’t want and are afraid of. We are quite bad at describing the world we actually want.
The challenge is that if you can’t imagine a future, you can’t create it. And we don’t have a lot of imagination of what a really good future would look like.
We have global warming, automation, artificial intelligence, population growth — all of those things are real. But let’s say we made the right decisions: What would the food system actually look like? What would it take to support that vision?
We’ve optimized our food system for two things: profit and production of calories. We have not optimized it for nutrition, environmental sustainability, culture, and community. Our food system needs to optimize along all six of those factors. So what would that actually look like in your region? What would it mean for land use? What would it mean for the kinds of crops that are being grown? What would it mean for the distribution system and employment, given that artificial intelligence and automation are going to change everything?
At the end of the day, the whole reason to create visions of the future is to direct the kind of innovation processes we want.
Recommended resources:
- Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, Walter Willett et al.
- Good Food is Good Business: Opportunities driving the future of affordable nutrition, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Feed Compass: Acting on animal feed, Feed for the Future
- Shaping the Future of Food, World Economic Forum
- Productive Diversification in African Agriculture and its Effects on Resilience and Nutrition, World Bank
