We are like, ladies and gentlemen, you want again
welcome to the Kingdom's podcast.
And today I've got with me a very, very important guest
fighting out of Brisbane, Australia.
Mick. Welcome, Tony.
The future is Haunter. How are you today, Tony?
Good, Adamola, how are you? Very well, thank you.
And of course, you know, I very
much appreciate having you on the podcast today.
There's something I always say that when a person shares their
time with you, they're sharing their life with you because the
SI unit for measuring life is time.
So thank you once again for sharing your life and your time
with us today. And of course, you need to sit
back while we read your flowers to you.
So, Champions, today's conversation is not about food,
it's about the future of survival.
Meets Tony Hunter, Global food futurist, strategic foresight
advisor. A man who has spent over 3
decades at the intersection of food, technology and innovation,
Tony does not just study trends, he translates exponential change
into strategic decisions that determine whether businesses
survive or disappear. From advising global giants like
PepsiCo and KFC to shaping boardroom conversations on the
future of food systems, Tony's work to lend his leaders to stop
reaching, reacting and start designing the future as
philosophy is simple but powerful.
If you do not know where you're leading, any future will take
you there. This episode is a master class
in mindset, strategy, and technology reshaping that the
world eats. Tony, you once again.
Welcome to the Kingdom's podcast.
Wow, wow. It's a great well, it's a
pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.
We're gradually Teddy to a futurist podcast.
We had the number one futurist on the podcast a few days ago.
And of course, we have a number 2 and award on the podcast.
And of course, shout out to your colleague Ronnie William #20 on
the podcast as well. So we are gradually becoming our
futurist. And of course, we also had Steve
Brown, I think about two weeks ago.
The Brown is the ex chief futurist for Google DeepMind and
Intel. So I guess we need to start a
rebranded It's a it's a futurist podcast.
Well, but you know, Tony, your journey actually spans science,
operations and global strategy. What moment forced you to stop
thinking like an operator and start thinking like a futurist?
Look, I think that moment for me, Ademola, was back in 2017.
I mean, I started my consulting work 10 years before that.
And prior to that, as you say, I was in operations general
manager of two food companies. And right about 2017, I started
to see things in my newsletters that I hadn't seen before.
And we all get into industry newsletters.
So I'm reading my industry newsletters.
So I'm going like, wow, I didn't know you could do that.
I didn't know that technology even existed.
And look at that consumer trend. Look how fast that's going.
And, you know, I sat back and I went, I have never seen in all
my 30 odd years in the food industry a rate of change like I
was seeing in 2017. So, you know, I'm kind of like,
wow, all this stuff's going on. So I go and talk to my executive
friends, my clients and colleagues saying how do you
keep up with all of this information that's coming up?
And the usual reply was I can't, I've got problems to solve.
People recruit meetings to go to, strategies to prepare.
Tony, you want me to think 5/10/20 years into the future,
not going to happen. So then I thought to myself,
well, someone needs to do this. And to use my wife's most hated
phrase, how hard can it be? So I, I decided that I would be
the one who would look at all these technologies, look at what
was going on and communicate them as part of my consulting
business. And then of course, when I'm
consulting, I'm only dealing with maybe what, half a dozen
people or in an organization. So the spread that I was getting
the, the amount of people I could reach was fairly small.
That's when I became a professional.
Speaker. World speaking professional,
Yep, speaking on on the the future of food.
But that was when things changed for me was about mid 2017.
And that realizing how difficult it is for executives to do their
day job to include looking at cutting edge technologies across
a wide spectrum and project that 5/10/20 years into the future,
very, very difficult. Extremely difficult.
And you know, speaking from the lens, from the viewpoint of the
millennial, right? So as a millennial, I always
feel that I am in a sweet spot. I'm not too old and I'm not too
young, right? And I've been privileged to see
the evolution of technology over time, right?
I was alive when we were using the, the cassettes, right, the
CDs, the BCDS, the tapes, you know, we saw the, the
BlackBerry, we saw, you know, Chelsea shut it into the Android
phones and you know, the, the iPhones, you know, from iPhone 1
down to iPhone 17. It's, it's, it's really amazing
what, what, what is happening, you know, seeing blockchain
technology, looking at cloud computing, quantum computing.
Now we're in the age of the LLMS, who knows what is coming
next? We just don't know.
And you just have to keep keeping up, right?
But you know, you often say that leadership is about foresight,
right? But what did you have to unlearn
to develop that level of clarity, even in the fast-paced
world of technology? Look, I think at all when we're
in a business, we look out into the world and we think that we
see like, oh, a good 180° I can, I have this wide view of the
world. And if you leave that company or
particularly if you leave that industry, you find that no,
that's how wide your view was. So what I had to sort of unlearn
or develop was that ability to have a very, very wide view of
food, a very, very wide view of the future, not just any
particular segment or industry, but to look at technologies that
lie on the fringe, technologies that aren't necessarily in the
food industry at all. I mean, you look at some of the
technologies like cultivated meat that came from the medical
industry. You look at something like
precision fermentation comes from pharmaceuticals.
So those industries didn't directly interface with food,
but they do now. And we're seeing other
technologies as well coming up at the cutting edge of various
industries that are having or will have a major impact on
food. Wow.
I, I think having a bit of a background in science, I'm quite
curious about the fermentation side of things.
Would you give us a brief story about how it came about?
Because, you know, it's interesting how some of the
world's greatest inventions actually come from unintended
consequences. So, for example, the person who
invented silk did not go about thinking they wanted to invent
silk, it just happened. So I'd like for you to give us a
brief story about how about the fermentation process.
Yeah. Well, I think if you look at
what we're calling precision fermentation now, precision
fermentation is where you take the gene for something you want
to make. You put it into an Organism.
It could be a yeast, a bacteria, a mold, something like that.
And then you get that Organism to produce the compound that you
want. And that's been very common in
the Pharmaceutical industry for decades.
One of those factories costs about 2 billion U.S. dollars to
to build and Commission. So they're not cheap.
And we use that for say, particularly for for medicines.
And that industry is fine-tuned for absolutely pure high grade
materials because you're injecting it into your body.
Now for food, you don't need that degree of purity because as
long as the impurities are inert, they don't do anything,
then you can then make that product far more cost
effectively. And we've seen particularly 2
products on the the forefront of this precision fermentation. 1
is whey protein because as we know whey protein for is a
byproduct of cheese making and it's in so many products.
It's everything from protein shakes to protein bars to all
sorts of things of fortified use in whey protein and the whey
protein demand is doing that. So a company called Perfect Day,
they put the gene for casein into a yeast and they use that
to make whey protein. Another company called the, they
were called the every company at the time and they put the gene
for egg protein, egg white albumin into an Organism and
they grow egg white products. So that's using a technology
richly in for pharmaceuticals to make food products.
Wow, amazing, amazing. So for all of the gene bodies,
listen to these. Now you know how your whey
protein is that's been created. I used to be on whip it is it.
I hope it is fine because I used to be on whip protein for some
time. So let's contemplate whether
we're going back to whip protein or not, or whether we're just
sticking to eggs. So you know, you, you actually
work with a lot of leaders, right?
And a lot of them to see the least are overwhelmed by the
rapid change that is happening. Oh yes, in this Asian time.
So what separates those who adapt from those who disappear?
I think those that get help because it's one thing knowing I
can't keep up and then you have a decision.
I'm just going to ignore this stuff and hope it doesn't affect
me and hope it goes away or acknowledge that you have a gap
and you find you get help to fill that gap like you would do
with I suppose anything in in business where you have gaps
need to fill that gap. The thing with looking at long
term strategies, what we call foresight is it is long term,
you know, Wall Street quarterly results, you can do something.
You'll see the results at the end of the quarter went up, went
down. You know the result.
With foresight, you're making decisions that will have impacts
in five and 10 years time. And the 10 year of most CEOs is
what, 5, maybe 10 years at the most, some longer term.
But most people, so most CEOs are not likely to see the
results of their work in foresight during the tenure of
their organization. That's where it's the
responsibility of boards who are responsible for the long term
health and welfare of the company to step in and say we
want you as CEO to have a 510 or 20 year view of the future, even
though you might not be here to see it.
Wow. Amazing.
So that speaks to corporate governance, right?
And I appreciate you talking about the importance of
corporate governance, but I'd like for you to shed more light
on this because a lot of the experts do not, would I say,
give it the attention that it deserves.
But it is something that is very, very important.
So I'd like for you to speak to the importance of corporate
governance, right, for organizations and of course for
the, the, the progress that is needed in, you know, this
current times, we have, you know, a, the proliferation of
AI, for example, proliferation of new technologies, right?
But corporate governance, how important is it for
organizations to stay adaptable and to stay future proof?
I mean, I think if you don't have resilience as an
organization in this day and age, you're doomed to failure
because we know how fast things can change.
We know how disruptive technologies can be if they're
not addressed and they're not taken into account.
So that ability to be resilient and at board level, setting the
tone for the senior management in terms of resilience and in
terms of that resilience being the ability to react to
unforeseen circumstances in the future or even better, to be
prepared for a set of unseen circumstances, or not unseen,
but ones that you're not sure of.
We call them alternative futures.
So some people think that, oh, you know, if you're a good
futurist, you predict the future.
Now, futurists don't predict the future.
They ensure that you're prepared for the future, whatever it
turns out to be. So you look at the future and
go, given all these technologies, here's maybe 3
different ways those technologies could go.
And as an organization, you then say, OK, what do I have to do
differently for each of those 3 scenarios?
Now you don't put together a 200 page plan for it, but you
acknowledge that if this future happens, my core is still OK,
but I'm going to need these three technologies for that
future. This one happens, cores are OK,
but I need 3 different technologies for this future and
so on. So that you're prepared to be
resilient and you can react in good time when the future
actually eventuates. So I think that governance point
of view, taking that long term view of the future, because what
we're finding at the moment, and I talked to a lot of
organizations and they're like, Oh no, we, we haven't got time
to think about the future. We've got the affordability
crisis, we've got Hormuz, we've got this with that.
That's fine. But you need to be able to make
decisions today with the long term future in mind.
As I say, the reason we explore the future is to make the best
possible decisions today. Because if we know what the
future could be, we can look back to today and say, well, OK,
if the future is going to be one of these, what today is going to
be leading us in the right direction?
Because you can make short term decisions that take you in that
direction. If future turns out to be in
that direction, you just wasted a lot of time, effort and
resources. So even though the temptation
might be no, no, no, I just need to worry about this quarter and
next quarter, then I'll think about the future.
But if the short term decisions are taking you in the wrong
direction, you're wasting a lot of time and effort.
And sometimes you have found grown on the wrong Rd.
But, you know, Speaking of the future, let's talk about the
future of food. You describe food as technology.
Are you able to break that down? What does that really mean for
business leaders today? Well.
I mean, if you think about food from farm to fork, it's full of
technology. You look at farming, we have
drones on farms. We have robot tractors, we have
precision wedding. We have weeders, robot weeders
that use lasers to destroy weeds.
So technologies everywhere on farms.
If we look to the manufacturing side itself, we have what we've
talked about, precision fermentation, cultivated meat.
We have AI coming into product development.
And then you go to the consumers.
Consumers, there's technology in their food.
They have their smart rings, smart watches, turn them about
their health and nutrition and guiding them and guiding them in
what they should do and how they should eat.
So food and technology, they're just intertwined.
You cannot separate food from technology.
So I'd say food really is technology.
They're one and the same. I mean, we used to be food used
to be a sleepy technological backwater compared to the
electronics industry, but that's not the case anymore.
There's as much technology goes into food manufacture as that
goes into any of the electronics technology around today.
Yeah, with a lot of organic chemistry at the at the highest
level happening right now. I love, I love the concept of
the fermentation. Wow.
So what are the top three technologies that will redefine
the global food system over the next decade?
I think the, if we look at it, looking at cellular agriculture,
which is not just cultivated meat, but what we're seeing
today in the chocolate's a great example.
If you've seen the price of chocolate, chocolate keeps going
up because we've got diseases, low yields, labor problems, all
sorts of things happening to the cacao industry.
So we chocolate ingredients are more and more expensive,
actually take the cells from the cacao plant, put them into giant
stainless steel reactors and make chocolate ingredients.
So cellular agriculture can be used for plant products as well
as animal products. I think cellular agriculture has
got an amazing future. Then as we talked about what's
called in general synthetic biology, which includes
precision fermentation, that is going to have a major effect.
And the last one, of course is AAI, which is an accelerator to
the other two. So it means that you can
accelerate the pace with which you can develop your cellular
agriculture products and your precision for fermentation
products. And those three technologies I
really believe are going to drive massively the future of
food. Now, I'm not saying in any way
that conventional crop agriculture and animal
agriculture will disappear. Not saying that at all, they're
going to be around for a long, long time, if not forever, but
just that these technologies are going to be the most influential
on where we see the future of food go in the coming decades.
Amazing. So alternative proteins, AI and
sustainability are major trends. Which one is the most
misunderstood and why? I think, you know,
sustainability possibly is misunderstood because when we
think about sustainability, we think, oh, it's sustainable,
that's great, but sustainability is keeping the status quo.
What we should be looking more at is regenerative agriculture,
so that we're getting the outcomes we want in terms of
biodiversity, soil health, less inputs like fertilizers.
I mean, we're seeing, again, with the current crisis in the
Middle East, the supply of urea is starting to dry up.
So we've got less and less fertilizers that we can use to
grow our crops. So I think that if we get that
regenerative side of things, then that is going to help
insulate part of the food supply from shocks like we're seeing
now. And there's even technology in
that. There's a company called Pivot
Bio. They have a soil microbiome that
they've developed. They can either spray it on the
ground or on the seeds before they're planted and it reduces
nitrogen usage by about 40 kilos per hectare, which is a lot when
you're doing millions of hectares.
That's a lot of fertilizer you don't need.
So you don't get the runoff, you don't get the problems, you
don't have to buy as much fertilizer.
Very, very cost effective. So those sorts of technologies
are also in the mix. Again, another example of
technology and farming. Wow.
So, so you talked about how the crisis in the Middle East is
affecting the global supply chain for food briefly, right?
I'll love for you to expand on that, right.
But also you talked about a component, a chemical compound
that is your beer, which is very would I say, a stable component
of fertilizers, right? Also, it's one of the most.
Commonly used fertilizers. Yes, that that I know.
At least, you know, I do have a science background and thinking
about it, like correct me if I'm wrong is, is it not possible to
produce urea from what I say synthetic chemical reactions?
Is is it possible to to to do that?
Yeah, a lot of. Nitrogen is produced by what's
called the Harvard Bosch process and they use a lot of LNG, which
is one of the problems that a lot of liquid nitrogen produced
in the in the Middle East is not getting through.
So we can't make our our, our fertilizers.
And this is one of the things that we're seeing.
If we go back to COVID, we've had the shock of COVID
disrupting supply chains. Russia, Ukraine war disrupting
supply chains, now Strait of Hormuz disrupting supply chains.
As I've been saying for years, this idea of growing stuff or
making raw materials on one side of the world and shipping it to
the other side of the world is not necessarily the good idea we
once thought it was. And Hormuz is not the only choke
point. The Panama Canal, the Suez
Canal, the Straits of Malacca, those are all global
checkpoints. If one of those goes down, then
we have similar problems to what we're seeing now or, or possibly
even worse. So countries now need to look at
the difference between food security and food sovereignty.
Now, Singapore, for example, exports about 90, not 95% of all
its food. But they're quite food secure,
right? They can buy whatever food they
like. They're a rich country until
either A, you just can't get it or B, people won't sell it to
you. Malaysia stopped selling chicken
to Singapore like that at one stage because of their domestic
chicken market problems. So they couldn't get it because
they weren't food sovereign. So they didn't make enough food
in their own country. Even though their food's secure,
they weren't food sovereign. And I think we're going to see a
lot more returning to the days of, well, OK, even though it's
cheaper to make it 10,000 kilometres away and ship it in,
maybe we're best to make it in our country so that we are food
sovereign. So if anything happens and the
supplies cut off, we can still at least grow a base amount of
food for our country rather than being at the mercy of someone
else. And I mean, as as we know,
food's been a weapon of war for 10s of thousands of years.
That's what sieges were all about, right?
Starve people out. And you get your desired
alcohol. Yep, Yep.
And I mean the rules based order is now dead as everyone says.
So you really have to start looking at where do you need
sovereignty and some of these new technologies can you can
make food without arable land or virtually any freshwater.
There's a company called Solar Foods based out of Finland.
They make food from air. They suck air in through their
machine. They separate out the water,
carbon dioxide and nitrogen. They split the water into
hydrogen and oxygen, hence using solar energy, hence solar foods.
They mix some microbes, a few minerals, they process the
nitrogen and they grow food from air comes from NASA technology
of the 60s. How do we feed astronauts?
And they're now commercializing their second factory and that
product will go mainstream in the next decade.
And so therefore, in countries in Africa, in particular
sub-Saharan Africa and other places where you don't have
arable land or fresh water, a lot of it, you can still make
food. And the beauty is it needs solar
energy. Guess where the most solar
energy is on the planet? Sub-Saharan Africa.
Africa. Africa.
That's the equator. That's the technologies.
Yep, exactly. So those technologies, that's
why some of these technologies are so good for food
sovereignty, because you don't have to try and create or you
don't have to have large amounts of arable land and freshwater.
Well, I, I, I love the fact that you, you, you touched on
sub-Saharan Africa. I'm originally from Nigeria.
And of course that is, that is the hotbed of sub-saharan of
Africa. And you know, for me, it's crazy
to think about the fact that we are blessed with the, would I
say, solar energy, like it is literally free in that part of
the world, right? But one thing we've always
struggled with is when I say government policies and of
course execution by the government.
So if you were advising a government today, what would be
the first move for them to seek your food for the next 50 years?
Look, I think The thing is, Adam Alla is which government are we
talking the government of Nigeria or the government of the
US to conquire different ends of the spectrum?
What I'd like to concentrate on is the countries at the Nigeria
end of the spectrum up and coming emerging companies with
huge opportunities and population and everything else
and say to them, look, you know, if we look, I look at Kenya back
in 2002, right, they needed to dramatically improve their
telecommunications. So what did they do?
Did they go? I know we'll let's have a, we
have a cabinet meeting. I know, let's buy 100,000
trenching machines, 2,000,000 kilometres of copper wire, set
up a local handset manufacturing industry, and in 100 years we'll
catch up with the rest of the world.
No, they got cell technology in, they gave people cheap handsets
and they leapfrogged. Literally 100 years of
telecommunications technology in a decade.
So why can't countries like that look at food in the same way?
Why do I have to import millions of tons of fertilizer, grow all
these cows, do all this stuff to have a food industry?
Why don't I look at the latest technologies and say, how do I
use those to leapfrog where I am now to where I want to be?
And again, taking into account that sovereignty is so important
and the importing fertilizers and other resources is probably
not a good idea. And if we look at Nigeria by
just after the early 20 fifties, it will have more people, a
higher population than the US. So it will not have the same GDP
maybe, but will have more population, a much younger
population and probably on a much faster trajectory than than
than the US. So why don't they take advantage
of the latest cutting edge technologies rather than going,
what did they do in the US? What did they do in the UK?
What did they do in Australia? Let's just follow them.
If Kenya had done that, they'd still be talking on handsets and
trying to, you know, connect through the operator.
I mean, that doesn't make any sense.
So why can't they leapfrog some of these into some of these new
technologies? That's what I'd be saying to
those, to those governments, to the other governments, the more
advanced governments, I I'd be saying, you know, look at where
you are and what you can make sustainably.
Because there's a gap between what we can make sustainably and
what we're going to need to feed a global population in 2050.
And what we don't want is to disrupt the current global food
system. We've seen what disruption does
to the food system. The last thing we need is
disruption like short sharp shocks.
We don't need those. So what we need to do is look at
how we optimize and make sustainable our current food
system and on top of that, other technologies so that we can fill
that gap between what we can make sustainably and what we're
going to need by 2050 and beyond.
Amazing, amazing. And of course, you have your
proprietary framework. It very much aligns with the
philosophy of this forecast because the main philosophy of
this forecast is mindset, skill set, tool set.
And of course, you have provided the tool set, right?
So you have the framework called the Future Cubed, which is
trademarked, right? So are you able to what I say,
give us a brief expose on what the future cubed framework is
about? Yeah.
Well, look, I mean, just to go back once to Adamola, the the
reason I developed that was some people look at trying to do
foresight, trying to look at the future and it's just all too
hard and all too complicated. So I thought, what's something
that is nice and easy and simple to follow.
So obviously the future cubes about the future and the cubed.
CUBED is the process that you follow.
So first of all, you challenge your thinking.
We've talked before about taking a much wider view of what's
going on, challenging things. The old, we've always done it
this way or this is the way things happen, or that's the
only way it can happen. So look at these new
technologies, some of which we've talked about, and
challenge your thinking with it. What could that mean?
And then we call these cutting edge things that we see signals
of change. They're a signal that things are
changing. They're not going to be the same
as they were. And we need to then understand
that's the Ewing cube, understand these signals and
what they could mean. And then we need to from that we
then go to be prepared. So what we do is we say given
all these things that we've seen, let's prepare what we
talked about before and Amola, which is those alternative
futures. So we can see the future could
happen in maybe 2-3 or four ways.
Let's develop an understanding at least on a surface level of
each of those futures. So then we can have a be able to
be resilient no matter what future comes to pass.
We might not pick it exactly even with the three, but if we
do have work properly, it'll be very close to let's say one of
those three that we had. Then we need to do a bit of an
evaluation. We need to dive a little bit
deeper and go, well, OK, what do each of those futures mean for
our organization? Does it mean that we need far
more CapEx? Does it mean that we need much
better human resources in R&D? Does it mean we did much better
marketing department? What do each of these futures
mean to us? And then the final one, the D in
future cubed is decisive action because I'm not one of these
futurists that goes, here's a blue sky view, flying cars,
robot dogs, this, that, and the other, it's like, no, no, no,
I've been in business. It needs to be something that's
useful. And then at some point you need
to take action. You can't just do all this work
and then say, oh, that was interesting.
You've got to go. We need to take action.
And if you've done the work properly, you will take action
maybe 12 months before your competitors even realize what's
going on. You've maybe already started
building that factory 12 months ago, so they're 12 months
behind. Maybe you've recruited the best
people in the world in that area of research or product
development or whatever, and you've deprived the other
companies of that expertise. So that's the advantage of that,
being prepared for what's going to happen.
And that's what the future Q process does.
It's a very simple process that people can follow to be prepared
for the future. Well, amazing framework and of
course I love the level of detail and insight that you
provided into the framework, but where the companies actually
feel right in applying this foresight strategy.
I think they again they concentrate too much on the
short term and they don't pay enough attention to the long
term that it something that goes on the shelf that's interesting
that's for five or ten years time rather than saying no.
This is an integral part of our strategy that must be considered
at every board meeting, at every quarterly or six months,
whatever strategy meeting, this needs to be embedded in what we
do. This the process of looking to
the future to as a check against what we're doing today.
Does it match if we think the future is in that direction and
this short term decision is going to take us in that
direction, is that still the right thing to do?
So not using that and continuing to use that knowledge.
On a. Continuous basis.
So how about you know SMEs, that is small, medium, you know
skilled enterprises, founders without a project.
So how can you know small businesses use the framework
without affording a big consulting project?
Well, I mean, I, I suppose the easiest way is go to my website,
there's a few, there's an outline of the future Q process.
And I think there is no downside no matter how you approach that
foresight strategy. Even just having a view, looking
at my process and following it yourself is way, way better than
doing nothing. If you can look at that and say
to yourself, I'm going to do this every week.
I'm going to look at what's going on.
I'm going to spend 2 hours investigating the future,
challenging my thinking, and then thinking about what that
means for my organization. Just that change in mindset
without spending a lot of money on going through the whole
process in great depth and detail.
Doing that changes your mindset because a future cube is a
process, but it's also a mindset.
It's a way of looking at the future.
That means that you're far less likely to be ambushed as
circumstances change. Oh.
That is brilliant. So please what is the website so
we can have it in the description below?
It is futurist4food.com and the four is FAOR so futurist FAOR
food.com and you'll find that there one of the drop downs will
take you to my process. OK.
And if you want to follow me. On link link LinkedIn as well
also. I also feature that on my
LinkedIn as well and on the my website there's also blogs
frequently on the future Q process and things like that.
OK, yes, we will have your LinkedIn as well, you know, in
in the description for for the forecast.
So wherever you get your forecast guys look at the
description and of course you can connect with Tony Hunter on
LinkedIn. You can link up with him on
LinkedIn. So for for for the founders
listening to us today, right? What's that?
One simple foresight habits that every founder, every CEO should
start doing this week. I think, look, just develop a
deep sense of curiosity about the outside world and what's
going on outside your own field. I mean, that exposure to new
ideas and new ways of doing things, I think there's no
substitute for doing that because we're all tempted as
senior executives to focus so much on our own business, so
much of what's going on. And particularly if you've been
in the industry a long, long time, which can be quite an
advantage sometimes. But at the downside is that
you're only looking at it through that same lens that
you've looked at it for the last 5-10, maybe even 20 years.
Oh wow. Amazing.
And you know, something just came up on my mind.
I have been privileged to speak with some of the world's top
futurists, right? And one word that all of you
keep saying is curiosity, right? I have never spoken to a single
futurist who hasn't used that word.
Curiosity. What's up with being curious,
right? Yeah.
And, and I mean, it's one of those things I I read a
newsletter and it's amazing. You read a newsletter and you
see something. Then you follow that one and you
follow that one and you follow that and you go down the rabbit
hole and you discover things, but you.
Never even. Imagined, I mean the one of my
favourite technologies at the moment again, which is at the
outside edge of food, but I can see how it could be applied to
food, even though no one's mention it to my knowledge is a
company called Koniku. What they've done is they've put
mouse neurons onto a computer chip and it can smell better
than a dog's nose and it can be used for detecting landmines,
detecting explosives at airports.
But imagine if you use that sense of smell to smell food
products and then correlated that to what the consumer wants
in a smell of a product. You and then use AI to then
generate A formulation that will give you that flavour, that
smell profile that you want. So that could be really, really
useful to digitize food smells. Amazing stuff.
You just never know what you're able to create in the age of AI.
But you know, like talking. Absolutely.
The the the global impact and the system of thinking.
Now we are heading towards a global population of 10 billion
people. That is insane.
That is scary, right? So with the world heading
towards feeding 10 billion people, we need as much
innovation as we can get. But what are we getting wrong
today? Look, let me just go back a
second. I say that we're going to have
11 billion or more mouths to feed, not ten.
Because besides. 9 points. Besides 9.7 billion humans,
there will be about 1.3 billion or more pet cats and dogs also
needing to be fed. They can eat as much protein as
a human. So we have over 11 billion
mouths to feed, not just the human population by 2050.
So that's the challenge. And if we look at the coming
generations, pets are becoming more and more important, more
and more part of the family, and they want to be fed well, I've
been looked after. And so the challenge is going to
be feeding these increasing number of pets as well as
humans. Wow, interesting.
I know, I know we've touched on this before, but I would like
for you to expand on this right now.
Like how does geopolitics and the global supply chains, right?
How does it shape the future of food security?
You know, given what we've seen recently with the Suez Canal,
with the Strait of Hormuz, like how does geopolitics and you
know, would I say clumsy chances in the global supply chain
system, right? How does it shape the future of
Food Security I? Think what it means is that as a
country, you have to realize I cannot rely 100% on any country.
And for a variety of reasons, I just can't do that.
So how do I look at the supply chain and that same word we used
before, Ademola resilience. OK, if I can't get it from here,
can I get it from there? If I can't get it from there,
can I make it locally? What should I be making locally?
What should I be doing to make sure that I have that
sovereignty over my food supply? Because if I can't feed my
population, that's the end of the story, isn't it?
In the end, that's it. So you have to be able to feed
your population. And one of that's one of the
government's prime responsibilities is to ensure
that their population are fed, yes, National Defence and all
these sorts of things, but there's no good defending a
population that's starving to death.
So you have to be able to feed your population.
So whatever you can do to ensure that is something valuable, it
becomes a matter of national security.
Is resilience and certainty sovereignty over your food
supply? Wow.
So what role will emerging markets like the countries in
Africa play in the future of the food economy, the global food
economy? Yeah.
I think again, it harks back to what we were talking about
before is that if they can adopt these new technologies and adopt
them fast enough, then they become hotbeds of innovation and
hotbeds of new technologies, new products, And that could give
them a competitive advantage. Because as we know, generally
you look at new technologies, they start off expensive and
then they drop right in price. So if these countries can get in
and scale some of these technologies, then they actually
find that they have a competitive advantage against
some conventionally manufactured products, and that then goes
back to their own food supply and makes more affordable for
them to supply their own population.
So I think there's a huge opportunity for these countries,
particularly in Africa, but in parts of Southeast Asia and
India as well, to really adopt these new technologies to secure
the future of the food supply for their populations.
So if the current global system collapses, what does the next
version look like? Well, as I say, I hope it never
collapses as such. Well, I, I hope that changes
are, are manageable. The rate of change is manageable
because if it were to collapse, mass starvation would be it.
I mean, if suddenly, not just the Strait of Hormuz, but Suez
was closed, Michael was closed, and we had two or three of these
choke points around the world closed, that would be
disastrous. We would see starvation on a
level, an unimaginable level we haven't seen for centuries.
So I think that would be absolutely terrible.
What I think is that we need to look at a rebalancing of our
technologies and our food supply system to ensure it's at least
sustainable, if not regenerative, and that we look
at these technologies as a ways of filling that gap that we know
we're going to have between what we grow sustainably within
planetary boundaries and what we're going to need.
So that's going to be, I think, the big, big effect.
Oh. Interesting take.
You know, let's talk about AI and leadership because AI is at
the heart of what we do with this podcast.
So you often times talk about exponential change.
And of course anybody who understands AI understands that
AI and exponential change are their siblings.
But why do leaders consistently underestimate the the power of
AI and the the exponential change it can create?
Because I think that seems to create that exponential gap.
Yep, I think there's, I forget who it was, but someone said the
greatest failing of the human race is the inability to
understand the exponential function.
And because what it is is we humans, we're linear creatures,
right? An hour is an hour, a day is a
day, a week is a week. A week doesn't pass quicker next
year than it did this year. It's still a week when you're on
holidays. It might seem to pass quicker,
but it doesn't really still the same.
Week as it was when you're at work.
It just seems sure, right? So that's the thing.
Humans are linear technology, particularly things like AI, and
most often are exponential. They're not linear and we have
trouble wrapping a human linear minds around an exponential
function. I think that is why leaders have
trouble grasping it. And the other side of things is
what they so often see is the exponential curve, as we know is
very, very shallow at it start. It looks like a straight line,
right? So if you're, if you're a leader
and you look at those points and you put your ruler across them,
you can look, that looks like a pretty nice straight line to me.
It's not. It's a very shallow curve.
And if you don't act, the gap between the straight line and
the exponential curve starts widening in enormously.
So people often they overestimate how quickly things
will happen. So it'll all change in a year?
No, it took 510 or 20 years. But when it did change, they
underestimate the impact it will have.
So you know, that is one of the problems that our our people
board members seem second son have is they thinking linearly.
It's very hard not to think linearly to immerse yourself in
exponential change. And then when you look at it, it
seems to be linear anyway at 1st until it takes off.
And then you find out how far behind you really are.
Because if you're running your business on a linear mode and
the real change is that you end up with a huge gap and either
you never catch up and you disappear, or you have to pump
enormous resources into catching up, that's your only two
choices. Interesting.
Let's say, OK, assuming time is not linear, they say time flies
fast when you're having fun. Yeah, time all these slides fast
where you have a fun. But what might have shift?
Most leaders might try to to stay relevant in an AI driven
world. What's the mindset shift that is
required? I think the mindset shift is
that AI is for use everywhere in the organization, including at
their own level. AI is not something you delegate
to the guys in IT and then say good, we've got this AI thing
done, the guys in IT are looking after it.
In Australian parlance, she'll be right mate, Don't worry, it
has got it. We'll just keep doing the way
we've always done things in the boardroom at the CEO level.
No. If you're not embedding AI at
your own level in the things that you do, then how do you
expect the rest of the organization to respond?
How do you expect them to embed AI in what they do and take the
advantages of it if you're not doing it yourself?
It really is a case of leading by example and looking at how
you can optimize use of AI in your own department and in your
own job. So if you're not doing that,
then basically no, you're never going to convince the rest of
the organization that it truly is important.
Just and take. So Speaking of AI in your own
department. Let's talk.
About AI in the end to end, when I say food process from farm to
funk. So how will AI reshape the food
industry from farm to funk? Well.
I, I think the, the biggest impact is probably going to be
in the manufacturing side of things, which will feedback into
what they want from farms, feed into the supermarkets and, and
consumers. And that is its impact on
product development and R&D. So if we look at if you're a
food technologist and someone says I want you to make a new
food product, you can, you might have twenty ingredients and
you've got to get the best combination of five of those to
make your food product the tastiest it can be.
What's your chance of choosing the right five products that are
going to be absolutely the best? You got to go down the 20 and
get get rid of that one. Get rid of that one.
That one's good, that one's good and you'll come up.
If you're a good food technologist, you undoubtedly
come up with a good product. Now, if you're using AI, you can
say it says 20 products. How about you give me 20,000 and
I'll give you the best combinations.
And it can come up with an enormous number combinations and
ways of doing things that we as humans have never even thought
of. And I'm not saying it can
replace the human. Yep.
So that you can. So then it can produce some
combinations. You're like, I never thought of
that one. I'll try it.
And then you look at it. Maybe it's not quite right.
But again, that feedback loop, you feedback to the AI that
wasn't quite right for this reason.
So next time it's even better and you can build up that
knowledge base so that you can develop products that maybe you
never even thought of. And it's compressing the time
frame from having an idea to having the product on the shelf.
You go back 1020 years, 18 months.
Here's the idea from marketing. Here's all the stuff we've done,
It's on the shelf in 18 months, in 18 months.
Now consumers forgotten about that trend.
That's long gone. 18 weeks is too long now developing a new
product, you need to try and get that down.
If you get into 18 days, you probably can't, but you need to
get it down to a a few months in order to take advantage of a
consumer trend. Consumer trends are changing so
quickly that you need to be able to do that.
And AI enables you to come up with those combinations of
ingredients and ways of making things and ways of evaluating
products that we never had before.
No substitute for humans in the mix because as I say, humans eat
food, AI doesn't. So the final arbiter has to be a
human. But I think that's where the big
difference is coming. And we're seeing companies like
AI Pallet based out of Singapore, taste wise based out
of Israel in America, the Institute of Food Technologies
have their Co developer AI that we're seeing AI come into food
products in a big way now and making a big difference.
All the major companies where you're talking Unilever, Danone,
Nestle, they are all using AI to develop their products.
And that is a is having a huge effect on how quickly companies
can react to changing food trends.
A while. So how do they balance the short
term and the long term strategy? Well, if you look in in terms of
product development or. Yes, yes, exactly.
In terms of product development, because you know you're talking
about that rapid change right, in consumer behaviour.
So how do you get to balance that short term strategy versus
the long term strategy? It's it's very, very good for
short term because of course then you compress the time it
takes from idea to product on the shelf.
Looking at long term, it's goes back to fundamental research, so
finding molecules that do things that you didn't know they could
do or developing new products. So looking at genomics, so you
can look at, OK, how do I engineer this microbe to make
that particular product which takes a longer period of time?
How do I look at this particular molecule that we need to make to
make it sweeter, to make it taste this way, it tastes that
way. So using AI to develop those
products in more an R&D phase than an application phase,
that's going to affect what we what we develop in the the long
term. Interesting.
And you know you've actually speaking from the business side
now, right? You've actually worked with
global brands and as well as start-ups.
I think you would agree with me that the start-ups have more
flexibility when it comes to executing strategy on like the
big global brands. But the big brands tend to have
the advantage in terms of the resources that they have control
over. So what would you say are the
biggest strategic mistakes that both groups are make?
I think The thing is that what we're seeing with AIAI is
democratizing product development.
So whereas before the large companies had the big advantage,
they had lots of legacy data, they had lots of knowledge, lots
of things that their people knew that other people didn't know,
that's disappearing now. We're finding that small
companies can have access through AI and through some of
the ingredients companies to the same level of technology as the
Nest, Lays and Danones and so on of this world.
So that's what we're seeing. And I can visit your day where
you can a small company or a startup, you can make a phone
call or a video call or on your watch or whatever we're using in
1020 years time. So I want a formulation for a
product that does this, this, this and this, and I need to
make it on these machines and so on.
And the AI other end goes or words that effect and then says
here you are. I've got three different
formulations I think will do what you want.
You say thank you. How much is that?
And they say $250. So instead of $25,000, it's now
$250. They say you said your own AI.
Just please pay that AI the 250 please, and put the formulations
in my inbox or in my file folder.
Thank you very much. And you get the three, you try
them, they're 95% right. You tweak them and you've got
your product. You might be a very small
organization, but you're going to have access to the same
amount of horsepower in developing a product as the
large companies. Because as times are changing
and consumers are changing so quickly, the advantage of
knowing what consumers wanted 20 years ago disappears.
Who cares what consumers wanted 20 years ago?
What they wanted 20 months ago might still be relevant, but 20
years ago? Forget it.
And as we get further and further along that legacy data
is likely become less and less valuable compared to knowing
what's happening now or what might happen in three months
time or happened three months ago.
So I think that that's the that's the big thing is that's
what's going to happen in the future is there's going to be
this democratization of the ability to develop and
manufacture products. The big disadvantage for
startups is scaling. We have the scale up Valley of
Death. So you can get your product, you
can prove it at pilot scale and then you might need a couple of
$100 million to commercialize it and scale it.
That's where the difficulty comes in, because particularly
at the moment, AI is sucking the lifeblood out of venture
capital. Everyone their dog in venture
capital wants to investing somehow in AI.
Otherwise I need to. FOMO.
Fear of missing out on AI? Yep, and food organizations
generally have much lower multiples than technology.
Thing is, we're always going to need to eat.
If you're looking for a long term solid investment, food is
generally far better than any technology.
It might not make you rich tomorrow, but it's going to keep
you in money for a long period of time.
And that's though where you have VC who who can get their fund do
the funding in the short term. Looking to get a good multiple
on exit. You have banks who say show me
your turnover for the last 12 months or two years, so I know
that you can make money to repay the loan.
That's no good because you're a start up and in the middle.
There are very few funders in the middle who will say, well
OK, I'm prepared to take less than the VC, but I'm got a
bigger risk appetite than a bank.
So I will fund you in that scale up phase so you can go back to
the bank in three or five years time.
Say here's my history, here's my profitability.
That's why I think I can borrow 2 or 300 million from you to
build my next factory. And that's that's where the the
problems are for those small companies.
And I think they underestimate how hard scale up is going to
be. I think that's the big issue for
the difficulty. In scaling start up companies.
Yep, it is. Very very and you need a
different. Set of skills compared to
founding exactly. Exactly.
But but where should capital be
deployed today for the highest long term return in food
innovation? Well, as I was saying, I can't
predict the future. So because I can't predict the
future, I can't really predict for you 1 technology.
What I would say is take AVC type approach, spread your
portfolio across different technologies and different
companies, different organizations act like a venture
capital, do a deep dive so you really understand not just a
superficial level, but at a deep level the technology you're
investing in. And then invest in a portfolio
of companies because you can look at it and go, well, say
there's our alternative futures, which if, if these futures, one
of them comes off and I've got five companies that future comes
off. All three of them all, all be
successful. That one and three will be
successful. That one, three will be
successful. There might be 3 different ones
in each case. But depending on what future
comes to pass, you will have a portfolio that's going to give
you a good return. So spreading your your risk base
really is what it's about with these new technologies.
Hey, amazing, amazing take. So what are the signals that
tell you if a company is future ready versus if they are already
obsolete? Well, I think looking if, if
they are future ready, then they are adopting these new
technologies. They're looking at them, they're
saying, OK, how do I add them as an opportunity into my business?
So they're looking at and saying, well, OK, this could be
a competitor, but maybe it's not a competitor, Maybe it's
something I can add on to the organization.
There's a company in Australia, a dairy company called Norco,
and they invested in a company called Eden Brew who were using
precision fermentation to make dairy ingredients.
So rather than circling the wagons and trying to kill this
company, they invested in them. So that seems to me they're
thinking they're looking to the future, they're looking at the
opportunities. The companies that are already
obsolete are the ones that are going.
I need to get my marketing department to tell people how
horrible this new technology is, how bad it is, why they
shouldn't do it. I need to do everything I can to
block it. I need to speak to my
representative in in government and get them to stop funding for
it. I need and I need to do, we need
to do more of my stuff that I've got because I don't want to
change. I just want to keep doing what
I've always done because that will always make us successful.
So I look for those signals that these companies, those are the 2
ends of the spectrum. There are ones in the middle,
but the people who are really looking at the future, embracing
the future, embracing new technologies as an opportunity,
as an add on to their business. And those are determined to
crush everything new that might change what they do.
I think that is an interesting take across the Life is harder,
or would I say life is the hardest right now for lobbyists
that it has ever been at any point in time in history,
because I think the democratization of of
information has just made it very, very difficult.
So we have what is closest in history to having a perfect
market situation like we're taught in economics class.
You know, there's, there's, I think we, we keep getting closer
to the concept of a perfect market of perfect competition
right in, in this age and time. Many thanks to, you know, the
proliferation of our information by the LLMS, by the AI systems.
But we do have what I say, a large population of founders,
entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast.
So if a founder is listening right now, what is one decision
they cannot afford to delay today?
Oh, can't afford to delay. I mean it, it is going, I hate
to say it again, going back to what we say, how am I going to
scale this? How am I going to be able to
manufacture this at a commercial scale?
Not just thinking about I need to get this to pilot scale and
then I'll prove I can make it and then everybody will come
running to me with money. No, you need to think way beyond
that into the commercialization side of things and say to
yourself, I've got it up and running, I've got it at pilot
stage. Now how am I going to cross that
scale up Valley of Death to actually get my product to
market to where I can prove sales and I can then prove to
investors, including banks that I am worthy of their money?
I think that would be the single thing I would say to them, just
don't stop at there we are. I've made the product, now
everybody's going to give me money.
Might have worked 5 or 10 years ago, maybe it's not going to
work now. They're, you know, the companies
are far. Even VCs are far more choosy
about what they invest in. You have to have a convincing
point of difference. I was speaking to someone the
other day and they said yeah I've had people come to me with
ideas and they put into ChatGPT and chat GP told told them it
was a wonderful idea and I said to them, well I can, I can at
least 5 competitors right now. You didn't do your due
diligence. Make sure you have a true point
of difference. If you're just one of a range of
companies did exactly the same thing people have already
invested in. No, you need to have a
compelling point of difference from the other people in that
start up and founder space. And if you've got that
compelling point of difference and you can show how that can go
through to scale up and commercialization, then I think
you've got a compelling proposition for funding.
Exactly, you, you have to prove the innovation and of course
you, you need to prove the differentiation as well in this
age of tax, you know. But let's talk about your
personal philosophy and legacy, right?
What does legacy mean to you in the context of global food
systems? I mean, if you're looking at
from from my personal point of view, from my, my legacy, you
mean at a mother or? Yes, definitely.
When it's all said and done, like what would you like your
legacy to be in the context of the global food systems?
I'd like my. Legacy to be that I I'd like it
to be that I inspired people to optimism.
I am at basis a techno optimist, not in a political or social
point of view, but I believe there's not a problem in the
world that cannot be solved through the correct application
of technology. I look at it as a technology has
solved humanity's problems since the dawn of time.
From the invention of the plow to grow more food to
antibiotics, to mRNA vaccines. Technology has always solved
humanity's problems. It always has and it always
will. So I am an optimist.
People say, oh, we've got to feed all these people and this
problem that probably all we have a history literally of
solving problems through technology for 10s of thousands
of years. Why we think all of a sudden
we're going to come across a problem that's so insolvable
that humanity is going to collapse.
I don't believe that. And if we'd looked at what we
talked about with Africa, of the next 2.5 billion people coming
onto the planet in in to 2051 billion of those are going to
come from Africa. And the young minds that are
going to come into society with their dreams and their ideas and
their optimism on life, I think is a wonderful thing that we're
going to see and that we should be looking to the future with
optimism. I mean, one of the things that
saddened me the most, one of my wife's friends said that she'd
had someone come to her and say, when are you going to give that
your kids? You know, I think you're
probably sub 10 years old. When are you going to give them
the talk that basically they're pretty well doomed and the
world's going to burn? When are you going to tell them
that? I, I was appalled and saddened
that anyone would think that that's what you need to tell
your children. No, that's not right.
I mean, we see too much negativity on the TV, too much
sci-fi. We don't.
See all yeah, it's all my too much dystopian sci-fi.
We need more Star Trek. We need more Star Trek with that
utopian view of what could happen rather than the dystopian
view of things like Blade Runner, however entertaining
they may be. That's not what we want.
We want the utopian version or as close to that as we can get,
and we can do it. And yes, technologies can be
used for good or evil. You can take your plow and beat
it into a sword and kill people, or you can keep growing food
with it, right? No.
Technology can be is solely for good or solely for evil.
We have a choice as human beings as to how we use these
technologies, how we're going to control them, how we're going to
use them to benefit all of humanity.
And we can do that. I think there's no reason that
we can't healthily, sustainably and fairly feed our 11 billion
entities, including our pets in 2050 and the 1314 billion maybe
on the planet by 2100. I don't think there's any reason
that we can't do that. But that future is in our own
hands, whether we do it, whether we achieve that or not, I take
the optimistic view that that's possible.
That's what we should be going for, and if I had a legacy, it
would be the person that when they listened to, came away from
our podcast, Adamola optimistic and inspired as to what could
happen in the future. Amazing, amazing stuff.
So, Speaking of being optimistic, when the world looks
back at this generation of leaders, what do you hope they
have to say? I think they will.
What would I hope they will look back and say yes, possibly more
than possibly. This generation created a range
of problems, some unintended consequences, some through lack
of care, but they finally came to the realization that the
future of the planet and future generations was still within
their hands and still within their grasp.
That it was not at the point where nothing could be done and
it was basically we're all doomed no matter what we do now.
That the leaders took that situation and made something of
it to improve the future of the coming generations.
That's a fantastic take. So when it comes to you
personally, what what drives you to stay at the forefront of this
space even after decades of experience?
Look, I think it's two things, Adam Alla, I am basically an
optimist. I'd like to believe the
optimistic view of the future. And even though I've been around
for a few years, that endless curiosity when I look at
something and find something in my newsletter, in my research
and I go like, wow, look at that.
How ingenious are we as humans that we've managed to do this?
And the endless curiosity and amazement at what we can do.
I continue to be amazed. I continue to enjoy what I do
and I find it endlessly fascinating.
And that ability in consulting, but in particularly in the
speaking, to go out and tell people about what's going on and
to spread the word on what's going on in new technologies and
say that that endless innovation and of, of, of humanity, that's
what keeps me going. I I've really thoroughly enjoyed
that. I I love that.
And of course, you know, there's something about people who love
knowledge, who love to learn. You always find yourself, when I
say, running down different rabbit holes.
And of course, you know, you just invited me yourself that
like, there was a time I was reading a newsletter just in the
evening only to discover that AE put me on research board into
the midnight. And I asked myself, like, who
sent you to do this? Yeah, suddenly an hour or two
hours gone by, like good grade. Where did that go?
And then you just keep going down the rabbit hole that it's,
it's that curiosity. And I think it's, it's a common
denominator when you look at people who end up becoming elite
level experts. I tell people the best in the
world are the best in the world for a reason, right?
You can't take away the place of, you know, that hunger.
You can't teach a person to be curious.
I, I, I don't know how to teach a person to be curious.
You need to you need to want to know it by yourself and that's
how you know you end up getting when I say people who become
elite level experts at what is that they do.
I don't know if you ever intended to become a futurist or
to be known as a futurist, but that curiosity LED you into the
research that made you become, what I say, globally relevant.
And of course, I think it's something we need to tell people
listening to us today. Like you always have to develop
that curiosity, right? Be curious about something,
about something relevant and something meaningful.
And yeah, things will definitely shake off.
Wow. And I think the other.
Thing is, I think as a futurist, you have to be part dreamer.
You have to dream of the future. You have to dream of a future
that you want to see become reality and strive to help
people to embrace that future and for that dream to become a
reality. I mean, my, I hopefully I can
make it to 2050. I hope to look back in 2050 and
go, yes, that dream of healthy, sustainable, fairly feeding the
global population has come to pass that dream.
So I think you have to be not just curious that curiosity.
I think that's intertwined with being a dreamer as well.
You're so curious that you dream of how these things can
influence the future and how they could become reality.
Speaking of dreaming, I'll give you this line.
I think you'd like it. You cannot feature in the future
that you cannot picture. How about that?
You cannot. You cannot feature in the future
that you cannot feature, so I'll give you that lie.
I like it. I like it.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Going to. Make a note of that one.
You cannot feature in the future that you cannot feature guys.
You heard it on the King Goose podcast first before before Tony
Hunter. Well, he's going to want
royalties, folks. He's going to want royalties
before Tony. Hunter takes it and puts it on
one of the keynote speeches. And then at the moment we'll see
it and go where's my royalties? Where's my royalties?
No, no, no. I started a way for you.
That's my gift to you today before before we heat the quick
fire round. So it's five questions, you
know, quick answers, right? So let me know Are you ready to
rumble? Hey, I'm ready.
I'm ready question. Nice, you were born ready.
Number one question is 1, Food innovation that will shock the
world in the next 10 years. What is 1 field innovation that
will shock the world in the next 10 years?
Yeah. I think the innovation that will
shock the world is someone coming up with a product that
will improve our health span towards our lifespan so that we
don't spend 10 to 15 years of cognitive decline and physical
decline. Someone who invents that, that
will shock people. I think I'm shocked already
thinking about it. I am shocked already.
Well #2 #2 is what is 1 belief about food that people need to
unlearn immediately today. They need to unlearn that anyone
diet suits absolutely everyone. We are all highly individual and
we need individual personalized diets.
Wow, please, can you repeat that again?
Can you let the people out the back hear that?
Because I think a lot of people need to realize this, you know,
that there's no one-size-fits-all, you know,
plan. And yeah, don't, don't let me
come for some people on the Internet.
Don't let me call for some people because they're people
who I think you've seen them. You've seen them already.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to call them out.
I'll leave that to you to call them out.
Wow. #3 is if you had $1,000,000 to invest today in food tech,
where would it go to? I would put.
It into something based on what's my one of my favorite
technologies, right. There's lots of technologies,
but plant molecular farming where you put the gene for a
compound you want, like casein into a soybean.
You grow the soybeans, take out the casein to make cheese and
process the rest of the soybean. I'd invest in that technology.
Interesting stuff. What is 1 habit that keeps you
ahead of exponential? Change it.
Goes back again, Adamundo, as you said, for all futures.
Endless, boundless curiosity. As I say, If I only knew now
what I knew six months ago, I would be completely useless.
Things change so quickly When I speak, I check my slides the
night before to make sure nothing's changed with the
companies I'm going to use as examples because things change
so quickly. I have changed slides the night
before a presentation because they weren't right anymore.
They changed since I wrote them when I got on the plane a couple
of days beforehand. Wow.
It's, it's, it's, it's quite interesting the, the rapid, you
know, change in technology. We have it.
I, I once spoke with a guy, he, he, he, he was named on the
Forbes 30 under 30 Alexandra Hampson you have from Canada.
And then he was talking about how himself and his team were
developing a tech solution, I think for the aerospace
industry. And guess what, Just midway in
the development of that product, the technology in this space
changed. And what it is that they were
developing became obsolete. And it's crazy.
It's crazy how technology can be you just midway development of
product. And of course, the product is
already out of fashion. So what would be your final
message to leaders viewed in the future of Humanity True Feud?
Well, I think there are only two things that you need to do in
order to stay alive, right? Drink and eat.
So you're in the business of the survival of humanity.
That is the business that you're in now.
Food. We have to eat food to be
healthy, but we have to acknowledge as a food industry
that we have caused a lot of the problems that we've seen,
lifestyle related diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity and
things like that. And as the food industry, it's
our obligation to say, knowing what we now know in terms of the
effects on the consumer, the population, knowing what we now
know in technology, nutrition and everything else, how do we
ensure that our food products are healthy for human beings and
they do not contribute to disease?
That, I think, is something as food executives, we really need
to think deeply about. Maybe we didn't quite know it 10
or 20 years ago, but we do know it now and we can't stick a head
in the sand. We have to say, how do we
change? Wow, interesting.
I think I'll disagree with you on something.
I'll say there are 4 things you need to do to stay alive #1
breathe in oxygen #2 eat food #3 drink water, and #4 listen or
watch The Kingdom's podcast. I missed that last one.
I should have got that last one. Wow, thank you very much.
You know, for, for, for your time today, you know, today it
has actually been powerful. And of course, you have given us
modern insights, you've given us golden Nuggets.
And of course, you've given us a legs to see the future.
And of course, for everyone listening, this is your moment.
The future is not something you wait for.
It is something you decide. And of course, as always, we
build legacy by opening doors. So from me to the audience, it
is, you know, always go for something in your lives,
conceive belief, strive to thrive and go achieve.
And of course, for me, it's actually goodbye.
But from Tony Hunter, do you have any last words?
Do you have anybody to give a shout out to?
And I'll leave you to say your goodbye.
I mean, my thanks, Adam, all that.
Thanks very much for the opportunity to be on the
podcast. It's been an honour to be on the
podcast with you. Thank you very much.
And just basically to my fellow futurists out there, all the
other people on the Global Gurus Top 30 and others who are out
there, keep doing the work, keep looking to the future because we
need to create the future that we want to see.
Because what I always say to companies, look, if you don't
look at what you can do to create the future you want,
someone else will create one for you.
And you may not like the one they create for you.
Wow. That is deep.
So shout out to all of your, you
know, futurist colleagues that that I have interviewed so far,
you know, Diana Wu, David Brett King, Bronwyn Williams.
Yeah. My friend Rohit Tawar in London.
Rohit, Rohit Tower. Yeah, Rohit Tower.
He's my friend as well. We're connected.
We we should, we should, we should bring him on the podcast
as well. Rohit Tower, if you see this,
you can see it's it's time for you to be on board.
Who else? Who else?
What names are we forgetting? And.
Another futurist from Australia called Michael McQueen, he's a
very good trends person, speaks a lot, very well known globally
so shout out to Michael as well. Local Australian guy Michael.
I know Michael. I know Michael McQueen.
I think I, I dropped a comment on his LinkedIn post yesterday.
Yeah, Michael, he he always has like fantastic takes.
I think I love futures. I do love futures.
Like you cannot help but love the futures.
Wow. So once again for me again, it's
thank you. It's it's a love and respect to
you. And of course, guys, you know
what to do, like subscribe, comment and of course, share,
share this share with your friends and your foes, right.
Everybody needs to be future proof.
So goodbye guys. Uh.