Blah blah blah. Blah blah.

Globalisation of the food system has put local producers under immense strain.  How food is produced and marketed has changed more in our lifetime than the previous 10 000 years.

This has caused what I can best describe as an identity crisis for our agribusiness and food sector.

To put it plainly, things are tough and everyone’s feeling a bit unloved at the moment.

Consequently, there has been intense analysis and exploration of how we view ourselves.

 

Interestingly, what’s evolved is the perception that the cause of all our ills is a new disconnect between consumers and the origin of food.  In some instances, this has bordered on complete anger that consumers haven’t devoted themselves to making us happy and profitable.

There is now a huge movement to tell the story about the origin of food and the people producing it.

What’s my beef with all this?  We now have an industry full of talkers and very few doers.

You can’t talk your way into someone’s fridge.

Where are the innovators and early adopters?  Where are the new business models and integrated exporters?  Were are the new products centred on food experience?  Where is the collaboration?

Talking is easy.  It means you can keep doing the same thing whilst hoping for a different outcome.

As Steve Jobs of Apple fame reminded us, there’s no point asking consumers. They don’t know what they want until you put it in front of them.

If you want to be loved by consumers, put something in front of them they'll love.  Then do it again.  And again.  And again.  And again.

I’d like to see less money wasted on talk-fests.  Quite frankly they have become very uninspiring and a blight on our industry.

More support needs to be directed at the doers in our agribusiness and food sector who want a seat at the global dining table, and can envision the great innovative products to get them there.

Know a business that is a doer?  Give their great product or service a plug here and expose them to thousands of readers by clicking on the comments link below.