Friday, March 29, 2024

The price of entry in a fragmented world

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The pace of change we’re experiencing right now is relentless and it’s often difficult to stay positive as each new thing comes along.
The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting takes place in Davos from 16-20 January.
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Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor is doing the rounds in Europe, firstly in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, before heading to a major agriculture summit and bilateral trade talks.

The annual WEF event brings together heads of state, 200 cabinet ministers and 1500 business leaders to form a global response to the big issues.

O’Connor is highlighting trade stability, agricultural emissions mitigation and innovation in farming as his priorities this year.

The forum meets at a time of turmoil, and the event’s tagline – Co-operation in a fragmented world – speaks to the devolution of geopolitical relationships recently.

Nonetheless, if we’re to solve the big issues of climate change, food security and the cost of living – all while the fourth industrial revolution continues at pace – we’ll need all hands on deck.

The pace of change we’re experiencing right now is relentless and it’s often difficult to stay positive as each new thing comes along.

Maybe that’s the problem. What if we normalised change instead, ensuring our people, communities and economy were equipped with the knowledge and resilience to not only ride the waves of change, but use that momentum to our advantage?

Luckily for us there are smart people looking to do just that.

If you want reassurance that New Zealand agriculture is in good hands, the scholar reports at Rural Leaders are an excellent way to find it.

Each scholar looks at one of the big, or not so big, challenges in food production and, having picked the brains of global leaders, comes up with a home-grown solution.

The Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit is being held in March and promises to be equally inspiring.

This year’s keynote speaker is United States-based global food executive Devry Boughner Vorwerk, who is the founder and CEO of DevryBV Sustainable Strategies.

She’s had leadership roles at US red meat giant Cargill and at Grubhub, an American online and mobile prepared-food ordering and delivery platform.

In New Zealand the concept of environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG principles, is still in its infancy.

But Boughner Vorwerk has firm views on what the future holds in this space.

“ESG is a condition of competition,” she says. “Some businesses … are ‘ostriches’ with their heads buried in the sand and will only advance on ESG through crisis. [But] ESG policies have an impact on the ability to access capital, insurance, top talent and customers.”

Factoring ESG into a business model may sound simply like more cost and bureaucracy at first blush.

But what it actually does is give assurance to the business, the regulator and the consumer that a product is fit for the modern world.

By recognising and accounting for the human and environmental impacts from the outset, a business becomes more agile and can roll with the waves of change more easily.

As Boughner Vorwerk warns, it’s a condition of competition.

This is a warning everyone in our farming sector needs to hear.

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