Massive change in how the world buys food – KPMG report

 The author of the futuristic document, Ian Proudfoot, head of KPMG’s global agribusiness operation, explores and highlights many changes New Zealand primary producers must grapple with to retain their ‘relevance’ in global markets.

Proudfoot told Rural News that accessibility and connectivity are driving business ideas and change so rapidly that companies have to be up with trends – demographic, political or related to natural resources. KPMG set out to explore the macro trends expected to shape political, social, environmental and economic effects on the global community during the next 20-30 years.  

“The aim is to challenge the agri-food sector to think beyond the bounds of their immediate circumstances and scan the global horizon for new opportunities and threats. What we are trying to put out is that people need to have a perspective that is much, much wider than they have ever had before,” Proudfoot explains. 

“Nowadays, things can change very quickly and evolve in ways that have quite material impacts on the overall global economy. We are telling people they have to be very close to everything that is happening and sort out the noise from the key signals that will impact how they do business on day to day basis.” 

Companies must not only know what’s happening in the market place, but also what’s happening in the ‘virtual’ world, Proudfoot says. Companies must get people on their boards and management teams to deal with such trends, and “have the right people to filter all the information. There is so much data created and a growing plethora of mobile devices. It’s predicted there will be 50 billion connected devices in the world by 2020. There is so much information coming out of each of these devices that how we filter it to get at what we need is very important. The risk is being snowed under with data.”

Proudfoot sees the digital world as critical to companies, and he sees a ‘coming together’ of the digital and real worlds that will cause people to change how they do business to fit around a digitally enabled world.

The report also notes huge changes in consumer trends, some happening right now such as more online buying of food. People want to buy food same-day and have it delivered in their preferred portions, Proudfoot says. 

“The retail model is rapidly changing and everyone in the supply chain, including farmers, will have to tailor their operations to the demands of consumers.” This applies especially to New Zealand, a small food producer that must be ‘relevant’ to consumers.

Foods fit for shrinking

FUTURE FOODS may be vastly different from those of today, Ian Proudfoot says. They could include laboratory-grown beef and milk, both heralded in the past year.

“These are trends we need to be open to. [We may be] the world’s greatest natural food producer, but we also need to play an important part in emerging synthetic food markets.”

New Zealand producers should explore ways to tailor their food products to the ageing population and/or meet the growing demand for religious-based diets, Proudfoot says. He predicts that by 2050, 40% of the world’s population (3.6b people) are expected to be eating in accordance with religious beliefs.

Also, limits on water could affect the reconstituting of milk. Looking at the supply chain for milk products into China, for example, the biggest risk of disruption is reconstitution. 

“In China the average consumer is allocated fresh water – about 2 million L/year to produce their food and clothing and cater for day-to-day needs. Take the 15,000 L of water consumed to produce one kilo of beef and extrapolate that out; it means they don’t have much water for day-to-day uses. 

“So is… building milk powder plants the right thing to do, or should we be looking at producing new consumer products designed for markets where people don’t have the water to reconstitute powder?”

Then there’s ‘food police’ to enforce high standards of food quality and combat food ‘fraud’.

NZ has primary sector leaders thinking about the big picture and future trends, Proudfoot says. NZ has been somewhat ‘sheltered’ from such trends, but this is changing.