Mustard shortage, products more and more difficult to find on the shelves or in our agri-food companies... Some foods that we used to buy without question are becoming more and more difficult or impossible to find. For several months now, we have been observing these food shortages in France - the symptom of a systemic disruption linked to several global crises. In thisthird episode of Eating is Changing the World, Henri Bouillot, director of Soliance Alimentaire, gives us several insights on this subject.
Today, society is facing several international pressure factors: the demographic escalation, the climate emergency, economic rivalries, or the aging of the population. These underlying trends are in fact the framework for several future food shortages. Yet the IPCC had warned all international leaders back in 2015:
Persevering on current trajectories will have negative repercussions: food will become increasingly expensive and a large-scale problem. food insecurity become a large-scale problem.
Despite this warning, we saw this as something distant and abstract. Today, we have to admit that this situation has already passed our doorstep...
Between the COVID-19 crisis, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that has caused energy costs to rise and China's increasingly autarkic behavior in terms of raw materials, the IPCC's forecasts have only accelerated. Spectacular situations of global food shortages are occurring much faster than expected.
For Soliance Alimentaire, the issue of food shortages has become a pressing topic for companies and territories. Today, they must protect themselves from such threats by securing their sourcing and supply chains to the maximum.
For several years now, a number of countries have concentrated and specialized in the production of certain raw materials. If we take the Ukraine and Russia, this is the case for cereals and sunflowers. Out of 50,000,000 tons of sunflowers produced in the world, more than half come from these two countries! Being aware of this specialization allows us to better understand why the Russian-Ukrainian crisis has had such an impact on the sector. This concentration of production creates a relationship of dependence between producer and non-producer countries. We can therefore better understand how a geopolitical crisis can be the cause of a food shortage.
Let's look at another product. Mustard seed is mainly produced in Canada. This year, this country experienced a catastrophic weather situation for this type of crop. This situation has led to poor harvests, followed by shortages of mustard in France. However, Burgundy has long been specialized in this type of crop. The ease of import from Canada has gradually pushed France to disengage from this production. We have thus become dependent on Canada and its climatic hazards for the production of French mustard, despite our ancestral know-how.
Faced with this globalized competition, climatic hazards and political tensions, several good practices can be put in place. For Henri Bouillot, the regulation of food supply chains is not enough. There are several other issues to work on: economics, marketing and all business disciplines. To explain his point of view, he takes the example of the French pickle:
"An Indian gherkin costs 5 times less than its French cousin to produce. For a company, it is therefore almost unthinkable to put a product five times more expensive in its box of gherkins... To go further, we must be able to analyze the value chain of this raw material. In this case, it is the harvesting of the pickle that is expensive. In this case, the bigger the gherkin, the cheaper it will be to harvest, as labor costs are reduced. To make lower the price of a French gherkin, we can thus opt for the increase of its size. Then, some other mechanization issues will allow to lower the costs. Innovation is also central to develop a French gherkin industry. In mass distribution, consumers are generally able to accept a reasonable price difference when the product benefits from a French origin like this one".
Through this case, Henri Bouillot shows us how the combination of technology, acceptance and transformation of the way of buying, is the key to more reasoned chains. To achieve this, companies should not only look for buyers, but also for agronomists and talents able to combine these different approaches.
Changing our food systems requires consumer acceptance, but also a change in the way companies operate. For Henri Bouillot, this effort requires, first of all, the commitment of top management and shareholders. These changes imply a transformation of the company's logic. The models in this area are the structures whose managers have a strong awareness and a deep-rooted desire to commit to the transformation of their operating methods:
" The first thing is the presence of managers who carry this new spirit, who question the usual routines of purchasing and the notion of profitability at all costs. Leaders who know how to move from the logic of material price to a value price, which integrates the notion of risks in foreign production. "
For Henri Bouillot, the positive evolution of companies depends on a change of mindset and the integration of the value of "solidarity" within and for the sectors.
Soliance Alimentaire has many in-house specialists in the following sectors: fruit and vegetables, dairy products, cereals, etc. These talents provide the structure with an extensive knowledge of the cost chains and the major players in each of these sectors. This allows the consultants to develop alternative scenarios to the preliminary situations studied during the first diagnosis of the company's supply chains.
Soliance Alimentaire is often confronted with teams from industrial companies, represented by people who are often not very well informed about the jobs upstream of the chain. The objective is then to train these employees and to carry out a certain number of recruitments to complete the company's skills. In this way, the consultants accompany this entire process upstream of the launch of the transformation project. This first step can take from 6 months to one year. Then, downstream, Soliance Alimentaire conducts all the feasibility studies and manages the framework with the partners in order to build these new channels. For Henri Bouillot, "these are projects that take several years and that require a real strategic will on the part of the managers ".
Did you enjoy this content? See you next month for a new episode of Eating is Changing the World. Don't hesitate to share it with others!
In the meantime, listen to another episode of Eating is Changing the World: Sustainable Livestock Production, when transformation becomes necessary.
