Greg Muir: Farming and the future of food

Greg Muir.

Greg Muir, managing director of Tru-Test Group and chair of the Te Hono Movement, looks to the future of farming in NZ.

As a technology company whose fortunes are inextricably linked to those of the primary sector, the Tru-Test Group feels the pain when global commodity prices decline.

However, worrying about short term price changes in milk, meat or wool is a waste of energy unless you think that prices will stay low forever, which they won't.

Farming is largely a long term intergenerational business. Thus it is important to reflect on - and plan for - a vastly different farming future. But what could that future look like?

Disruptions in other industries are a solid lead to how much change may be ahead in our own sector. Technology and business model disruptors like Uber and Airbnb are turning traditional ways of doing things into something fundamentally different and global food systems are also open to potential threats posed by similar emergent and destabilising technologies.

One of these threats may well be alternative protein sources. Some might glibly dismiss them as 'Frankenfoods', but a US start up called Muufri plans to go to market in 2017 with a synthetic milk produced from bioengineered yeast that supposedly tastes like the real thing. Only last month, Maastricht University also hosted the first International Symposium on Cultured Meat where speakers extolled the virtues of reducing the environmental impact of agriculture. Although far from affordable right now, the technology required to grow meat in a laboratory is on the horizon and the first products could be commercially available within 10 years.

The food systems that we supply from New Zealand are not immune to the potential threat posed by these and other technologies. Equally so, our primary sector has the opportunity to move quickly and to take advantage of the potential to capture and create value arising from those very same technologies - either directly or through a position developed in the polarised market forced to make calls between synthetic and natural products.

Whether it's processing power, online storage, amount of data transactions or connections per person the world will change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 20 years.

This is why we need to be constantly thinking about where the disruption is coming from, how the business rules are going to change, what's going to be different in five years time - and how to make sure that we're on the right side of any disruption.

We have done it before. Kiwis disrupted value chains through transporting refrigerated meat in the 1880s, we successfully transitioned from the Chinese gooseberry to the Kiwifruit in the 1950s and in the same decade brought through a step change in production by the introduction of aerial top dressing. Fifty years ago, Tru-Test Group, one of New Zealand's leading agritech businesses was founded on disruptive technology with the introduction of the world's first proportionate flow milk meter, a product which has significantly impacted the quality of the global dairy herd.

What needs to be understood now is that disruption processes are speeding up at an exponential rate. Whether it's processing power, online storage, amount of data transactions or connections per person the world will change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 20 years. Consumers are exerting choices and preferences that have a profound impact on production and supply. At the same time, industry leaders have technological, social and political influence that can shape these consumer preferences.

So how can New Zealand's primary sector drive further growth in the food systems they supply and promote?

One opportunity lies in unlocking deeper levels of insight on the variability in production systems for faster gains in productivity and greater alignment with consumer preferences.

By combining data from multiple sources, companies like John Deere and their peers are generating unbelievable productivity changes in arable farming systems. With New Zealand's leadership in pasture based livestock systems, we can drive similar gains in productivity and value in high value proteins.

Capturing weight and other attributes of livestock on a daily or regular basis can provide critical information about growth profiles and feeding regimes that enable farmers and processing companies to supply offshore markets with the right product at the right time. Like many great disruptions, the seeds are planted many years in advance before the benefits are reaped and I'm certain that in ten years time farming in this way will be our advantage.

Like many great disruptions, the seeds are planted many years in advance before the benefits are reaped and I'm certain that in ten years time farming in this way will be our advantage.

Industry and Government alike recognise the need for generating thought and debate on potential disruptions and opportunities. Tru-Test Group have recently partnered with Callaghan Innovation and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to encourage such debate by inviting some of the world's leading futurists to address industry leaders in Auckland on November 10th.

Entitled 'Beyond the Line of Sight', the event acknowledges that the horizon of change is really close but the real challenges and opportunities lie beyond that horizon. The speakers will be provocative. They will challenge existing thinking. And they will encourage us to look at the world through different eyes.

So rather than dwelling on global commodity fluctuations, let's look at the technologies that will create major shifts in our interlinked fortunes. Let's prepare and be bold.

Greg Muir is managing director of Tru-Test Group and chair of the Te Hono Movement.