Last week I participated in Responsible Business Forum onFood and Agriculture conference in Manila. Oriented around the theme, “Driving
growth, improving lives,” the speakers, panels and discussions focused on the
environmental aspects of being responsible. Global Initiatives put it together,
in partnership with WWF and corporate, NGO and media partners.
Lately I’ve been focusing on the ways that agriculture impact
and can contribute to public health and nutrition, and working primarily with public
and NGO sector, so the environment and business emphasis made a nice change of
perspective for me.
One highlight was meeting Jason Clay from WWF. In his opening
plenary talk, Jason very masterfully walked us through the enormous impact that
agriculture has on the environment, and why it’s so important for companies involved
in agriculture and food production to work together ‘pre-competitively’ to pull
the rest of the market toward better practices and products. All consumer
choices should be more sustainable, Jason says, and I agree! I highly recommend
his TED talk from a few years ago which includes these themes and more. Jason is a terrific speaker who takes his
mission to raise awareness about these issues very seriously. We need more
ambassadors like him who are dedicated to cutting through the complexity to
carefully explain the trends and the urgent issues in ways that policy makers,
corporate executives and the news media can understand. He’s a master.
Another highlight for me was realizing that there is a lot I
don’t know about agriculture and food production! The conference included an afternoon
spent in self-selected working groups on specific commodity groups. I joined the
discussion on aquaculture and fisheries, in part because I knew less about that
topic than the others. But I didn’t know just how much I didn’t know, like how
many fish it takes to make a fish! This sector is incredibly complex and
important for nutrition, economics and the environment.
From a communication perspective, the conference speakers
and panelists that did the best were those who weren’t afraid to get into some
of the specifics of their topics. I was happy to learn that one speaker’s
daughter thought farmers should be respected just like parents “because they
feed us every day”. Another speaker, now a senior executive at a big multinational
company, spoke movingly about helping his father on the family farm in South
America. From passionate Philippine industry and government speakers, we
learned fascinating things about the benefits of bio-char and why senile coconut
trees are an emerging issue in the Philippines!
Kudos to the organizers at Global Initiatives for gathering
a great diversity of participants from around the world, across Asia, and especially
from the Philippines. I shared a table with an executive from a local restaurant
and catering group, and an official from the department of agriculture. And it
was great fun bumping into friends and colleagues from past projects.
Looking ahead, I would love to see this kind of business
conference framework oriented around a nutrition topic. The business sector has
an incredibly important responsibility in addressing hunger and malnutrition as
well as dealing with the growing issues of obesity here in Asia, as was pointed
out in this blog just a few days ago on the importance of using private sector supply chains to meet nutrition challenges (lots more good stuff on the #feedingdev site!).
PS: Thanks to my friend Tod Gimbel and Landmark Asia for sharing the
invitation so I could join!
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