As the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, Sarah Evanega pushes for evidence-based decision making in agriculture. She is also the winner of the Planet of Plenty awards in the Educator category. We spoke to her about the role that plant science plays in producing enough nutritious and safe food for a growing population.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Sarah Evanega hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Tom:                          This is Tom Martin. And our guest is Sarah Evanega, winner in the educator category of Alltech’s Planet of Plenty Awards.

                                    Sarah, also recently received the coveted Borlaug CAST Communication Award. She is director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, a global communications effort that promotes evidence-based decision making in agriculture.

                                    She is a research professor in the Department of Global Development and holds an adjunct appointment in the Section of Plant Breeding and Genetics in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell, teaching courses on Agricultural Biotechnology on the undergraduate and graduate levels.

                                    Dr. Evanega, congratulations and thanks for joining us.

Sarah:                        Thanks, Tom. It’s so nice to be here.

Tom:                          So, tell us about the Alliance for Science, what are its aims, what does it do?

Sarah:                        Yeah. The Alliance for Science is a global platform. Anyone can be part of the Alliance for Science. Any individual, any organization can join the Alliance for Science.

                                    We’re a global effort to ensure access to agricultural technologies, the information that can help us improve food security, improve environmental sustainability, and really explains the quality of life globally.

                                    We’re a communications initiative standing firmly in support of the science, trying to improve the enabling environment for plant and agricultural plants.

                                    So, we work to increase public engagement and communications around plants sciences. We work to ensure good science and farm policy making that can have a positive impact on our mission.

Tom:                          Why does science even need to be defended?

Sarah:                        Yeah. Well, that’s a good question. But, the world is certainly facing some big challenges ahead, not the least of which is feeding the many, while at the same time fighting climate change.

                                    We absolutely need science and innovation to do this to meet these big challenges. And, I think, you know, this year, this past year has been a very clear demonstration of the need for science and innovation to solve complex global problems.

                                    So, for the past year and a half, we all know we’ve been reliant on good science to get us through this pandemic that we’re in. And we’ve seen firsthand the impacts of disinformation and lack of access to science and innovation. I mean, sadly, it has literally been the difference between life and death in this case and so, we absolutely need to defend science and ensure that science and forms the policies that – that really have real world implications.

Tom:                          Is it becoming increasingly difficult to cut through all that clutter of mis- and disinformation to keep people accurately and contextually informed?

Sarah:                        Yeah. I mean, we definitely live in a time when, you know, we have information overload. We’ve got so many different social media platforms that we can communicate on, some of which are opened, some of which are closed loop.

                                    It’s – it’s an information age and I think, you know, that can – can serve a really positive purpose and it can also, you know, be a disservice. And so, I think the important thing is is that we make sure that science is well represented in those information platforms and we get, you know, bonafide experts out there communicating and sharing the good science informed material information that can help people make good decisions about their life.

                                    And so, part of what we’re doing at the Alliance for Science is really trying to help equip people, young people, old people on sciences, journalists, you name it, farmers, people from all kinds of different walks of life to have the kind of communication skills that they need to get out there and share good science-based information, so that we – we have it informed public and that we have policy makers who – who can – who can stand firmly in support of the science.

Tom:                          The young people who participate in the Alliance for Science program, where do they come from?

Sarah:                        Gosh, they come from all over the world. So, in our training program broadly we’ve had about 800 trainees from roughly 50 countries from around the world.

                                    So, if you look at the map of – of where the Alliance for Science had representation in our training program, it really spans the entire globe with Antarctica as an exception. [laughs]

                                    And so, it really truly – we truly are a global alliance and that’s something we’re very proud of. We have a lot of representation in our global fellows program from across the developing world. We’ve had a lot of fantastic champions from across Latin America, from across South Africa, fantastic representation from South Asia and really vibrant group from the Philippines as well.

                                    So, I mean it really is a global – a global alliance and the champions who come to our programs are leading efforts across the globe.

Tom:                          And what sorts of issues are these students working to solve?

Sarah:                        Well, they are all coming on into our programs with a passion for these issues. So, they come to the Alliance for Science already with, you know, sharing our mission to advocate for access to agriculture innovations.

                                    So, these are people who might be concerned for example about youth employment or youth engagement in agriculture in their home countries of Zimbabwe for example. And so, they really want to develop a strategic plan to help ignite excitement for agriculture among youth in Zimbabwe for example.

                                    They might be from a farming community, who really wants to advocate for access to improve seed and other agricultural innovations that can actually help them grow resilient – resilient crops that are relevant in their country context. Maybe they’re advocating for a good biotech policies that will help ensure access to those seeds.

                                    We’ve also had a champion from Bangladesh for example who has essentially after participating in our program grown up his own Alliance for Science like organization called Farming Future Bangladesh, that is a communication initiative that is working together with the Alliance to do many of the same kinds of activities, but specifically in Bangladesh.

                                    So, I mean, really the opportunities are endless and the ideas and the projects that flow from these fellows really are driven by the issues that are the most relevant in their country context that they care deeply about. Very home grown.

Tom:                          Well, where are you seeing importance successes in those initiatives?

Sarah:                        Well, we’ve seen partners in Nigeria for example works together to advocate for access to Bt cowpea, Bt maize, and other improved seeds that could help Nigerian farmers move away from a lot of the, you know, import – imports that they are relying on as well as accessing improved seed for crops that are so important in their country context.

                                    So, since – since our Nigerian fellows for example begun working together, they and other partners around the globe like the Africa Agriculture Technology Foundation, the Open Forum Biotechnology in Africa, many commodity groups and farmer organizations across Nigeria have worked together over the last couple of years and are now seeing tremendous success and having access to new biotech crops that are going to help Nigerian farmers.

                                    You know, in the US, cowpea is kind of, you know, strange thing that we don’t eat very much. I mean, I grew up eating it on New Year’s day for good luck,  [laughs]  but it’s not really staple in our – in our diet.

                                    In Nigeria, it’s such an important source of protein and so, having access to those legumes and source of protein is so important in that cultural context.

Tom:                          I think it’s safe to say by now that climate change is being recognized by most people as one of our most serious challenges. But, I’m wondering, what are some other serious challenges that could also benefit from scientific solutions?

Sarah:                        Well, I think you’ve – you’ve said it right there. Climate change sort of looms over everything, right?

Tom:                          Uh-hmm.

Sarah:                        And, in agriculture and plant science, we are up against this enormous challenge of feeding the, you know, 9 or 10 billion people who are going to inhabit the earth in a few short years, while at the same time, addressing climate change.

                                    And that’s a big wicked problem because agriculture is the contributor to the climate change and all kinds of different ways. But, you know, when I look at the kind of innovation happening in plant science, whether it’s, you know, the classical genetic engineering or, you know, newer emerging technologies like CRISPR.

                                    I see so much research innovation happening right now that’s going to help us feed the many, while at the same time, reducing agriculture’s negative environmental footprint.

                                    We see crops being developed that are not going to need the same amount of extra fertilizer and other innovations that are going to reduce nitrogen fertilizer, which is fantastic.

                                    We see, you know, innovations that are reducing emissions in agriculture and improving soil conditions the conservation agriculture. We see applications that are reducing pesticide use, like this exciting Bt eggplant that’s being grown in Bangladesh.

                                    So many exciting applications that are happening right now through genetic engineering, through CRISPR, and a range of other technologies that are helping us do agriculture in a much cleaner and greener way.

                                    And so, while it’s an enormous challenge, I am optimistic that we – that we can achieve our – our challenge of feeding the many at the same time we’re using agriculture’s negative environmental footprint.

Tom:                          You cited many innovations that are really interesting really exciting, but the one that really, I think, qualifies for mind-blowing is CRISPR.

                                    And, I’m just wondering if you could expand on that. Anything that you can think of that’s going on in the CRISPR area that agriculture in particular might benefit from?

Sarah:                        Absolutely. We’re -- I share your enthusiasm for CRISPR, I think it’s a really exciting tool that is going to be a game-changer in food and agriculture. So, I’m excited about applications of CRISPR that are going to help improve the environment.

                                    I was just reading recently about some genes in cattle that are associated with methane emissions that, you know, can be – can be addressed to reduce methane emissions from cattle that’s an exciting CRISPR application.

                                    There are applications across the – across crop improvement that are also going to help us grow more using less resources and having less negative impact on the environment.

                                    I’m also really excited about the implications for nutrition, so using CRISPR to crops that are going to be more nutritious, that will allow us to grow more diverse crops that can stand up to climate change and other stresses.

                                    So, for example if we look at, you know, the first generation of genetically engineered crops for example, you know 99% of all the crops that are genetically engineered that are growing out there in the world are essentially just four crops, right? You have the – 50% of it is soy, 30% maize, 15% is cotton, and 4% is canola.

And so, most crops haven’t actually benefitted from those tools and CRISPR is very much democratizing tool that many researchers can use from public institutions, small and medium businesses, startups. It’s not limited to a few big companies. It’s a very democratizing tool.

And what that means is that we can use this tool to improve specialty crops to improve crops that are important maybe in a developing country, but not traded, yeah, globally. And so, there’s so much opportunity to – to improve a range of different crops that can help combat malnutrition, undernutrition, etc.

And also, I think, you know, in the context of the US, there’s a number of products that are being developed that – that are going to be a great interest to consumers that are going to help us consume healthier, more healthy convenient food.

So, there’s startups that are working to really improve our produce aisle. And I’m excited about that because I think that’s going to be a real game-changer for the acceptance of – of the role that plant breeding innovation can play improving our life.

Tom:                          There’s another matter that you brought up earlier that I’d like to touch on here and it has to do with population.

                                    The world seems to be going in two different directions between developing nations and developed nations. Developed seem to be depopulating. We’re getting into negative population growth, while at the same time, the developing world is going in the opposite direction.

Does that figure into your calculations as a scientist and as somebody who’s thinking about a planet of plenty and how to feed the world?

Sarah:                        I think one of the important points that – that I think a lot about is the need to engage more young people in plant and agricultural science and in the – in the careers associated with agriculture and producing the food that we need.

                                    So, in a lot of developing country context as well as the US for that matter, you know we’re not seeing young people getting into the – the field of agriculture. And I think there’s a lot of reasons for that.

                                    But, what we do see is that when young – when young people see agriculture as a good business as an exciting business where they can innovate and use state of the art technology, then they’re more likely to engage in agriculture-related fields.

                                    And so, I think, though, it goes back to the – our core mission of ensuring access to these innovations, these innovations that excite people that engage young people in agriculture that inspire entrepreneurship, so that, you know, it can become a good business and attract the young brightest minds.

                                    And I think in the context of the US, we have a great opportunity to engage more – more diverse people in plant and agricultural science as well as in agriculture. And I think that that needs to be one of our priorities in the US is to really make sure that the face of agriculture, the face of agricultural science and the face of plant sciences is as inclusive and diverse.

Tom:                          I’d like to circle back to the Alliance for Science and talk about its funding. I think it’s worth noting, you do not accept funding from corporate agriculture. Why is that and how is the effort supported?

Sarah:                        Yeah. So, we work on some controversial issue areas and we – we’re a neutral organization at a US university. And to maintain that trust that I think we’ve inspired across bringing the stakeholders, we do not accept funding from industry.

                                    And I think that’s important for us to maintain our – our neutral and very science conformed position, we are driven by science, not by corporate agendas for example.

                                    We are largely funded through philanthropic organizations. A great deal of our funding does come from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We also have received funding from US government agencies like the USDA, USAID. So, we have some small family foundations that have given to us.

And we – we really very much in spirit of transparency and so we do list all of our funding sources on our website.

Tom:                          Sarah, I know that you’ve been instrumental in launching the AWARE initiative. AWARE is standing for Advancing Women in Agriculture through Research and Education. If you could tell us about this program?

Sarah:                        Yeah. I work on closely with a colleague on this initiative that we launched a few years ago. And our goal really was to create a cross cutting initiative, so that we would consider the needs of women in agriculture in everything that we do here in our unit.

                                    So, that ranges from really encouraging and supporting student research that will benefit women to ensuring that all of the global projects that we’re running consider for example the needs of women farmers in various country context.

                                    So, it really is about, you know, thinking about the role of women across all areas of agriculture in all that we do. And part of that also is in through our, you know, capacity building program, ensuring that we have good representation of women.

                                    In many countries where we work, women are the ones who are – are –are holding down the fort at the farm for example as – as men seek of farm labor opportunities and so forth.

                                    And so, it’s really important that, you know, in plant science, we’re thinking about the needs of women as they process these crops, not just grow them, but process them.

And so, the AWARE initiative is really all encompassing and cross cutting thinking about, okay, what are the needs of women and how can we adjust those needs through everything that we do from our research to our education opportunities.

Tom:                          We have talked about issues and challenges and obstacles as well as some amazing innovations and forward-looking programs that are going on right now.

                                    What makes you optimistic about a Planet of Plenty?

Sarah:                        I am an optimist and I, you know, I’m a plant scientist and I really do feel like the role that plants breeding and plant science can play in helping us achieve a Planet of Plenty in this – in this changing climate is so crucial.

                                    So, we, in plant science, we have the opportunities to create this Planet of Plenty to produce the food, nutritious – safe nutritious food that’s going to feed our growing population, while at the same time, playing a critical role in adapting to climate change as well as mitigating climate change.

                                    So, plant science I think is so full of opportunities and it’s my hope that, you know, as we inspire a new generation to get into plant science in a much more diverse generation to get into plant science, we’ll have new decision makers at the table, we’ll have new innovators at the table, and we really will be able to achieve this Planet of Plenty in – in a world full of enormous challenges.

Tom:                          Yes. That’s Sara Evanega, research professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York overlooking beautiful Cayuga Lake.

                                    And, she’s also the winner in the educator category of Alltech’s Planet of Plenty Awards.

                                    Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah:                        Thank you, Tom. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today.

Tom:                          I’m Tom Martin and thanks for listening.

Alltech Coppens recently published its sustainability report, which focuses the responsible use of the earth's resources within aquaculture as the sector works to support the global food supply. Guido Crolla, procurement manager with Alltech Coppens, discusses the ambitious goals outlined in the report and highlights the industry achievements that counter the negative portrayals of aquaculture.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Guido Crolla hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Tom:                          I’m Tom Martin and joining me is Guido Crolla, manager of procurement with Alltech Coppens. A global specialist in developing, producing, and marketing fish feed and nutrition solutions, Mr. Crolla took the lead in producing a report detailing the company's commitment to sustainability. And he joins us now to talk about it. Greetings, Guido.

Guido:                        Hello, Tom.

Tom:                          So, Alltech has committed to 9 of the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals. Let's begin by having you tell us how, as a subsidiary of Alltech, Coppens is working to support that commitment.

Guido:                        Well, Alltech did a great job by committing themselves to the United Nations Global Compact on July 2019 and went to creation of a Planet of Plenty vision. And then as a subsidiary, this gives us a lot of possibilities and opportunities as well. So, one of the SDGs Alltech committed themselves to was SDG #14, life below water. And this SDG fits perfectly with us with Alltech Coppens. So, daily job is based on the life below water. We believe that we all have a contribution to achieve a better world and to create more awareness on the SDGs. So, within Alltech Coppens, we created our own sustainability team. We called it a Planet of Plenty team. And this theme consists out of 7 members from different departments. And this gave us the opportunity and the possibility to raise more awareness within the complete company in a short period of time as most disciplines are involved in the team. And in addition, we are now in contact with the people of the Planet of Plenty team in the States and with colleagues from all over the world who are focusing on sustainability as well. We, within Alltech Coppens, we believe that communication and knowledge sharing is the key to achieve the vision of a Planet and Plenty. And you will hear several times during this podcast I think that we can only achieve a Planet of Plenty when we work closely together, Tom.

Tom:                          How is Alltech Coppens researching, developing, and putting into practice better alternatives to the way the fish industry has been going about its business?

Guido:                        So, the Alltech Coppens R&D and procurement departments evaluate all the raw materials which we’re using on aquaculture products. And so, we ensure that they are sustainable source and responsible and ultimately benefit farm performance in the future of our industry and planet. So, different feeds are characterized according to its impact on different sectors such as climate change, acidification, etc. So, by assessing how much feeds we produce, how much of each raw material or ingredient we use in each feeds and the geographical location of our suppliers, we can evaluate the raw materials. We are determined to contribute to the United Nation SDGs and evaluate the origin of the raw materials. So, last year, 80% of the raw materials that we sourced were produced within Europe. 20% came from Germany where our factory is standing. 60% came from the Netherlands where we have our head office. And we expect that those numbers will slowly increase this year and the year after. So, nowadays, fish feed quality is not only determined by parameters directly related to the fish like the performance, but there is also a focus on the effect of the feed on the planet. So, we conduct a lot of trials on alternative raw materials like insect meal, a single-cell protein. So, we are constantly sourcing new alternative raw materials with a sole focus on lowering the impact the feed has on the environment.

Tom:                          So, I take it from what you just said that you are working with other companies in other parts of the world to improve sustainability in aquaculture?

Guido:                        Indeed, Tom. If you want to achieve a sustainable world and a Planet of Plenty, we have to work together. So, we work closely together with local partner factories to produce efficiently and at the same time to minimize adverse effect on the environment. With sharing our knowledge and experience, we want to provide the local communities with better feeds and to lower the feed conversion ratio. By doing so, we’re not only providing the local communities with more food and better food, but we are decreasing the usage of raw materials too, so a win on both sides.

Tom:                          How is sustainability embedded in the Coppens business strategy and what are the ambitions and goals of that strategy?

Guido:                        So, within Alltech Coppens, we are inspired by the great challenge the world has presented us to produce enough safe, nutritious food for all while caring for our animals and sustaining our land, air, and water for future generations. A Planet of Plenty vision is a vision of promise, possibility, and positivity for the future.

                                    It’s a belief that the world of abundance is achievable and it will take all of us to work together. Within Alltech Coppens, we focus our attention on 3 main areas. The first one is sustainable operations. The second one is science and innovation. And the third is people and communities. If you visit our website, alltechcoppens.com, you will find our examples on our sustainability is embedded within our business going from sustainable feed index, reusing water, creating an Alltech Coppens Academy circle of waste management and a lot more. And on the longer term, we have set ourselves the goal to be carbon neutral at the Alltech Coppens Aqua Centre by 2025. So, within 3-1/2 years, to expand renewable energy, and to use only renewable energy by 2030, and to realize zero waste emissions by recycling and reusing materials throughout the complete life cycle of our fish feeds by 2030.

Tom:                          It might seem obvious, but maybe not. Why should sustainability— Why should the long term be viewed as a business issue?

Guido:                        To simply put it, sustainability is a business approach that’s creates a long-term failure by taking into consideration our business approach in ecological, social as well as the economic environment. So, as the expectations of corporate responsibility increase and as transparency becomes more prevalent, companies are recognizing the need to echo sustainability. So, professional communication and good intentions are no longer enough. To sum it up, sustainability is a major challenge. One that met us beyond individual companies as we all want a long lasting, viable business. And we can only achieve this by embedding sustainability within the core of our business.

Tom:                          There's a section in the sustainability report that you oversaw on materiality and supplier assessments. And we hear a lot these days about very serious supply chain issues. Are there these sorts of problems within the aquaculture industry?

Guido:                        Yeah. Unfortunately, there are. So, we face the same struggles and challenges as most other major industries. We have governments interfering with export and import taxes. There are trade wars, strikes, extreme weather situations. Then we had COVID-19. Complex global logistic situation and so on. And the hardest part here is that our customers and their animals are relying on us as a feed specialist. We can't afford any delays of a week or longer. Even a day might be critical. And therefore, at Alltech Coppens, we are constantly monitoring everything and everyone around us to anticipate in the best possible way.

Tom:                          There’s a documentary out there. It debuted in March on Netflix. Seaspiracy is the title. And it stirred up a lot of controversy. A lot of celebrities praising it as “a brilliant expose of fishing is the greatest threat to marine life”, but NGOs, sustainability labels, and some of the experts quoted in the documentary have accused the filmmakers of making misleading claims using out of context interviews and erroneous statistics. Where do you come down on this matter?

Guido:                        Yeah. Tom, I think we all agree that it’s a message of the ecological harm of industry of fishers. It’s a major irritant issue. But to be fair, we need to present facts, not fiction, and unite. Build consensus and use rational arguments to convince people to change. The convenient oversight of not including the many, many success stories of good management, that's why science communities provides an extremist view of this issue.

Tom:                          Guido, what in your mind are some of the more serious misperceptions that are advanced by this film?

Guido:                        The biggest error is to say that sustainability fisheries don’t exist. As we all know, food production systems have an impact on the natural world. Obviously, some more than others are aware that sustainable fisheries do exist. In the most recent assessment by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, it was calculated that almost 2/3 of the fish stocks were being harvested in a sustainable manner. Around 66%. And that 78% of all landings of marine fisheries came from biological sustainable stocks. That’s completely different fact than Seaspiracy is showing us.

Tom:                          Well, the head of the International Marine Mammal Projects says Seaspiracy did a disservice to organizations that are doing critical work to protect oceans and marine life. Is that true?

Guido:                        Indeed, the movie needed to be much more scientifically accurate. So, many of the statements made were based on outdated studies and links were often made where they don’t exist. These errors make it very easy for decision makers like a government to ignore the message in the film. Seaspiracy had the lack of diversity of views too. Almost all the interviewees were white and from the western world. We need to do it from a range of ethnicities and cultures. We need to do it from the seafood industry, from managers, from NGOs, from the local society in Africa or Asia. There’s almost no fishery scientists were interviewed for the film as well, which is in my opinion a major omission in the film about overfishing.

Tom:                          The documentary’s director, Ali Tabrizi, asserts that fisheries are in severe decline. Is that true?

Guido:                        Overfishing is a problem, but we know sustainable fisheries are possible. If we turned entirely to the that it would complicate from the sea, environmental impact on land will be catastrophic and much more visible to humans. In terms of carbon footprints, well-managed fisheries and aquaculture systems actually have a much lower impact than many other food production systems. So, aquaculture currently provides about half of all the fish or seafood in the world. And we need to figure out how to expand aquaculture to feed the growing global population. Even with improved fishery management, we are unlikely to be able to sustain a much more sea-free fishery, so aquaculture is the future here.

Tom:                          Well, this documentary makes one very stark— I would even say breathtaking prediction. Quoting from a 2006 study that the ocean will be empty by 2048, empty 27 years from now, is fishery’s depletion actually on such a path? Are we headed toward that?

Guido:                        Yeah. This is some wrong information that they’ve used as well. This claim was originally made in a scientific paper in 2006 by Boris Worm. And the funny thing is in the follow-up paper in 2009, 3 years later, he co-wrote that it was found that in certain areas which limit the fishing, the stock heads were caught already. When you actually look at the data this research was based on, it was based on massive extrapolation into the future. It was a study that was questionable to begin win. A more recent study in 2016 reported by the National Academy of Science of the United States predicted that over 50% of the fish stocks would be sustainable by 2050. And overfishing is certainly a problem in some regions in the world. Even regions where fishing management regulations are based on scientific evidence and properly enforced, most fish stocks are doing well.

Tom:                          What can you say given all of that information that is being put out there through the documentary for example? What can you say to us to reassure people that the industry is committed to sustainability?

Guido:                        Well, when we take a look at let's say farmed shellfish like oysters, mussels, and scallops for example, they are some of our more sustainable food options. And you think why because they don't require any additional feedings and they tend to grow their nutrition directly from the ocean current in which they are grown. And in this way, they create an incredibly direct link from sunshine to highly nutritious animal proteins via plants in the form of plankton. And in some cases, farming shellfish actually reduced pollution and improves water quality. For example, a fertilizer runoff from land-based farming is a common water pollutant, but shellfish has the ability to filter this from the water. They convert it into food. And this also has the added benefit of reducing the likelihood of toxic algal blooms in the area where shellfish farming occurs. And if we go a bit deeper, we see that the global fish in/fish out factor also called the FIFO in our industry is 0.27, which means that we need 270 g of wild-caught fish to produce 1 kg of farmed fish. And this FIFO factor is calculated by defining the fish caught that is used for aquaculture feed production by the farmed fish heads with those feeds. So, if we do the same for Alltech Coppens, we have a FIFO factor of 0.10, which means that we need 100 g of wild fish to produce 1 kg of farmed fish.

                                    Sounds quite sustainable for me. We need 1 kg of fish to gain 10 kg of new fish. And in addition, the greenhouse gas emission of farmed fish are significantly lower than some of our daily used product. Did you know, Tom, that coffee and chocolate have greenhouse gas emission that are 3 or 4 times higher than farmed fish and even the healthy oil, healthy olive oil, has a bigger impact on the environment than farmed fish? And last, but not the least, the feed conversion ratio for some of the fish species that we produce feeds for is even below 1, which means that we need less than 1 kg of feeds to produce 1 kg of fish. Just let this cross your mind and think about this. It’s quite sustainable, isn’t it?

Tom:                          Those are some really interesting comparisons. They put things in perspective. Guido Crolla, manager of procurement with Alltech Coppens. Thank you so much, Guido.

Guido:                        Thank you, Tom.

Have a question or comment?

Growing up near the rice fields and beaches of Bali, Melati Wijsen saw the impact of plastic waste firsthand as it littered the landscape and endangered local wildlife. She was spurred into action, and at just 12 years old, Melati and her younger sister, Isabel, founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags, with a mission to rid the world of plastic bags and empower young people to take action. Hear from Melati on the youth-led movement to build a brighter future and what this could mean for business leaders.

In this episode of Ag Future, we revisit a conversation that Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech, had with Melati Wijsen, Founder of Bye Bye Plastic Bags & YOUTHTOPIA, as a part of the Alltech ONE Ideas Conference in 2020. For more information and to register for ONE 2021, visit one.alltech.com.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Melati Wijsen. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Dr. Lyons:    Welcome to the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience. I'm Dr. Mark Lyons, President and CEO of Alltech. Founding Alltech in 1980 was just the beginning of a vision for my parents, Dr. Pearse and Mrs. Deirdre Lyons. They desired to build a business, but they also wanted to ensure that that business would have an impact on our planet far into the future. Today, our customers, partners, and more than 5000 team members around the world are working together for a planet of plenty, propelling our founding vision into a new world of possibilities. We are inspired by the challenge to produce enough safe, nutritious food for all while caring for animals and sustaining our land, air, and water for future generations. Our natural resources may be finite, but human ingenuity is infinite.

                        Planet of plenty is a vision of promise and positivity for the future. It's our belief that the world of abundance is achievable, but it will take all of us working together. It's a vision that must be led by science and technology, and a shared will to make a difference, to plant trees we will never see grow. In 2020, these ideas seem to be growing in importance and urgency. Our special guest today on the ONE Virtual Experience was motivated very early in life to make a difference.

                        Growing up near the rice fields and beaches in beautiful Bali, Indonesia, Melati Wijsen was impacted when she saw plastic firsthand as it littered the landscape and endangered local wildlife. She was spurred into action at just 12 years old. She and her younger sister, Isabel, founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags with a mission to rid the world of plastic bags starting at home in Bali and empower young people to take action. She has spoken on world stages such as TED and the United Nations. She has been honored by Time as one of the most influential teams in the world, and has also been named to CNN Heroes Young Wonders and Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

                        Melati graduated from high school one year early and recently founded Youthtopia, a global community that empowers youth through meaningful, short peer-to-peer programs and provides them with tools that they need to become young changemakers themselves. Melati, welcome to the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience.

Melati:            Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be joining you today.

Dr. Lyons:    Well, you have an incredible story and I think one that will not only inspire the ONE Virtual Experience normal adult audience, but also their children, the kids and teenagers that we've invited to join us today. Could you maybe just start with telling us a little bit about what inspired you to take on this role of being a changemaker?

Melati:            Yes. Well, for starters, I grew up on the island of Bali here in Indonesia. Growing up here, we had a childhood which meant playing in the environment 24/7. We were always in the rivers, running through the rice fields. That at an early age grew such a strong connection between myself, my family, and the environment around us. When we started Bye Bye Plastic Bags when I was 12 and my younger sister was 10, we had no idea what being a changemaker even was, what an activist even meant. We just saw plastic pollution being a problem, plastic pollution ending up in places that it absolutely should not, and it wasn't rocket science. We just asked a simple question. How can we get started? How can we get involved?

                        The rest was pretty much history. My sister and I rolled up our sleeves without a business plan, without a strategy, but the pure passion to just protect the environment in our home.

Dr. Lyons:    When you specifically got things started with your sister and you decided you were going to do something, what really started that journey? What was the seed of inertia that got things moving for you?

Melati:            This is a question that we get a lot of the time. One thing that I have heavily reflected on especially during this time right now is after seven years on the frontlines, what was it? What was that moment for us? It's very difficult to pinpoint one moment. To be honest, I think it was a whole collection of moments growing up on the island of Bali. Again, we were always in nature whether that was doing our first surfing lesson and really being out there in the ocean with plastic coming out after every single paddle, or learning how to plant rice for the first time and actually planting it on top of plastic. All of those sorts of moments where you may be hearing it for the first time through my story, but for me, it was my reality.

                        I don't know if I can give you an exact moment for me, but I definitely know that me and my sister saw this problem, and at the same time, we were very much inspired by the story that we learned at school. Think back to the time when you first learned about Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Lady Diana, all of these incredible leaders who throughout history made a difference in their community. My sister and I, after learning about them for the very first time, we thought we don't want to wait until we're older to start making a difference. We went home that day, connected the problem of plastic pollution, this motivation that this class, this lesson had for us, and combined the two and said we're going to make our island home of Bali plastic bag-free.

Dr. Lyons:    That's incredible. I think one of the things that all of us think about is how would I have started that at that age? Or if I know young people at that age, what would I be thinking of what they were doing? What did your parents and maybe your community think about this when you got things going in those first stages?

Melati:            My parents, first and foremost, they come from completely two different worlds. My mom is Dutch, my dad is Indonesian, totally different cultures and backgrounds, but they both found themselves on the island of Bali. When they were raising me and my sister -- also, me and my sister, a little bit of background, we were that kind of sisters that never fought. We are best friends. Even up to this day, we tell each other everything and we do everything together. We were always doing projects, not as big as Bye Bye Plastic Bags, but we were organizing the village bazaars. We were organizing how to make tree houses with our friends. We're always up to something.

                        So when my sister and I went up to our parents and said we're going to do this, we're going to make Bali plastic bag-free, they thought and we thought it was just going to be another summer project. But here we are seven years later and our parents have been an incredible source of support, which we're very, very lucky to have and to call our parents as one of our biggest supporters. They've also taught us a lot about balance. I'm sure we'll get closer to that throughout the entire discussion of how young changemakers and the support system around them require that sense of balance.

Dr. Lyons:    Maybe we could talk a little bit about those early stages. You must have faced a lot of challenges. Maybe you could explain a little bit of what took place. How did you get things moving? How did you get some of the first signatures on your petition?

Melati:            To be honest, when I think about our very first days with Bye Bye Plastic Bags, it blows my mind. It still does. I have a lot of projects that we started after Bye Bye Plastic Bags where I just want to capture that same sense of spontaneousness. I don't know if that's a word, but that level of passion that just went into creating something overnight and turning into this large movement that became much bigger than just me and my sister overnight. At first, we posted our first Facebook post and the first likes were my mom and my dad, the auntie and the uncle. Then we thought, well, what can we do from there?

                        Obviously, the first step was building our team, and that was often more other young people, other peers, our best friends. From then on, we started a petition. So what you were referring to, how did we get the first signatures on board, we put it up online. And within the first 24 hours, we had 6000 signatures already agreeing that Bali should be plastic bag-free. I guess this was really the first "aha" moment for us. This was where we realized that more people agreed with us. We were onto something big and the time for change was now. Since then, we've really used that momentum that we built as one of the largest youth-led movements in the country to see how we could build those conversations and turn that into action and positive impact.

Dr. Lyons:    That must have been so exciting to get that level of response.

Melati:            I just want to share one story, just the level of excitement to give you an idea of what that was for me and my sister at 10 and 12 years old. Every morning just before school, we'd rush to our parents' computers and log on to our online petition and reload the page. Every morning, we had thousands and thousands of more and new names that signed the petition. That was something that we did every morning for the next several weeks forward.

Dr. Lyons:    That's incredible. It must have been such a rush every morning to get up and just be thinking about what the response was. Certainly, I think that message then moved even beyond Bali to international. It's extraordinary. Ultimately, you've faced some challenges. Obviously, it wasn't all smooth sailing the whole time. What did Bye Bye Plastic Bags actually achieve and what were some of the roadblocks you had to overcome to get there?

Melati:            Over the last seven years of campaigning on the frontlines, we have come across many obstacles, everything from how do we keep that long-term motivation going. Being 12 years old, starting the movement all the way up to today where I'm 19, that long-term motivation, keeping people hopeful in the movement, keeping people excited about the change that is coming while it still didn't come fast enough, that was probably one of the biggest challenges. The way we overcame that honestly was just to keep the movement fun, keep the movement as creative as possible. Being a youth-led movement, that wasn't too difficult.

                        I think one of our biggest achievements that we have accomplished after seven years, six years on the frontlines together with the like-minded, our biggest and proudest achievement is the ban on single use plastic bags, straws, and styrofoam on the island of Bali.

Dr. Lyons:    It's an incredible achievement and it's something that I think a lot of people with a lot more experience, with a lot more resources couldn't have achieved. I think everybody watching this will be watching with admiration in terms of what you and your sister and the whole movement have done.

                        You really touched on an interesting point there that I think every organization struggles with. You have a founding principle and everybody feels very passionate about it in the beginning, but how do you keep that energy going? You mentioned something that we find very important within our culture, fun. You've got to keep things fun. Right now, we're in a world where we're a bit separated. Obviously, social media has been a huge part of your movement. What have you learned over the last seven years in terms of social media, how to use that and how to influence others and keep that mission alive and strong?

Melati:            Well, I could write a book about all the different lessons because if one thing is for sure, Bye Bye Plastic Bags was my life school. There's no other textbook that could teach me what I learned through the hands-on experience. Some of the biggest tools and learnings that I've had is really how can we collaborate more? How can we create those connections and those partnerships to create meaningful impact in our communities? I think that was one of the biggest takeaways over the last seven years and something that I really hope we can be a living example to show that collaboration. But also, youth empowerment is key if we want to see change happening.

Dr. Lyons:    Absolutely. That's a lot of what you're working on now. You've moved on. You're talking about a lot of other ways to engage with young people, and you've created something very exciting and new and something I was very inspired by first learning about it when we chatted earlier, Youthtopia. What is Youthtopia about and what is it that you want to achieve with this new ambitious effort?

Melati:            Yes, and thank you for letting me share a little bit more about Youthtopia. I don't know if you can tell, but my cheeks always get very hot and excited when I talk about the new project that me and my sister are working on. Think about the seven-year journey that me and my sister had. It brought us to so many extremely beautiful stages all around the world from the TED stages to the UN headquarters. My sister and I were going all over the world, but our biggest audience, no matter where we were, was always young people, other students, other like-minded, young people that were always curious about our story.

                        Whenever we stepped into the classroom, they sat a little bit taller, leaned on their chairs and said, "If they can do it, I can do it, too." But the question we always got after presenting and sharing our story with Bye Bye Plastic Bags was young people coming up to us and asking, "How can I do what you do?" This is where the larger passion of me and my sister really came into, which is education, specifically peer-to-peer education, and youth empowerment. How can we mobilize an entire generation of young changemakers?

                        That's what Youthtopia is all about. We're a community-centric platform with learning at its core and we work with real life, frontline, young changemakers. We use their experience. We pull together their knowledge and put it into a program for the rising young changemaker. We provide the education systems and the educational programs that the current traditional system doesn't have in place right now.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. I think for a lot of us, we're going to think, okay, that sounds fantastic. How do we define youth empowerment? What can we do to make sure that youth do feel empowered? I think a lot of times, young people today feel a little bit disconnected, disheartened particularly in this moment where COVID has been such a challenge. What can we do to define that youth empowerment and make sure to support it?

Melati:            This is again where my passion for education comes in, so cut me off at any moment when I talk too much about it. This is really where a huge passion of mine and a belief of mine is, that the education system needs to change. A big reason why young people all around the world feel a disconnect is because a big chunk of our day, five days a week, we spend it at school and we learn about things that are not relevant nor happening in the moment. Where when we come back home, when we turn on our phones and go through Instagram, we're seeing all of these bigger problems. This heavyweight suddenly sits on our shoulders and we want to play a more active role in the community we're living in, and we're not being provided with that.

                        When we talk about youth empowerment, we have to expect more from the young generation. We have to expect more and to guide more with the relevant tools, the relevant skills, and educational material our generation is asking for. I really think that youth empowerment, especially in the space that I'm in with the young people I've gotten to meet, we're empowering each other with our stories, with the other things that we're learning and sharing with each other. I think that that's really where the power of youth empowerment is.

Dr. Lyons:    I think a lot of people are going to be wanting to get onto Youthtopia hearing about it when they go through this. How can other youths get involved? Is this something that is limited to Asia? Is it something that's global?

Melati:            This is definitely going to be a global project and we welcome anyone that would like to join and learn how to become a young changemaker. As most startups nowadays, especially led by the Gen Z, the best source of information at the moment as we build is our Instagram page, youthtopia.world or our website, which is the same handle.

Dr. Lyons:    Awesome. Let's switch gears a little bit. We're in a moment right now that is truly unprecedented. One thing that we're seeing in the lens that we have is that a lot of these mega-trends are speeding up. And things that we were speaking about before, sustainability, climate change, and it being accepted and being something that we're really going to focus on are two that we do see speeding up.

                        We took a great quote from Martin Luther King a few months back and said there's a fierce urgency of now and that this is a moment that we've got to grasp. How do we grasp the opportunity that is being presented to us right now in a moment of such change and really continue to move these types of things forward?

Melati:            I asked myself this question a lot and I definitely don't have the answer. I think it's a learning curve that we are all experiencing. I guess the way that I would approach an answer would be to zoom out and zoom in at the same time and really personally reflect on what this time means to you. This is on a global scale. I think we're being given an opportunity, an unprecedented opportunity, not a challenge, not a risk, but this is an opportunity for us. I think young people as well, again, we often look at challenges or burdens without the heaviness, but we again look at it more as an opportunity.

                        I think we have to look at it as when I say zoom out, think about the timeline that we have set in place. Five years ago, the United Nations invented the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This has become a framework that is implemented or spoken about all around the world, in classrooms, in board meetings, in government halls. The 17 SDGs is a framework or acts as a framework and a guideline of 17 different goals from humanitarian issues to environmental issues that we have to reach. 2020 and this year, we have hit the ten-year mark to reach those goals or not. I think with everything going on, we're being given an opportunity to reflect and refocus, restructure, reinvent the time that we're living in because we know already way longer before the 17 SDGs were invented, we know that the current system no longer works to our favor or to our benefit. And if we do not change business as usual, we're headed to an unlivable future.

                        The opportunity that is right in front of us, where and how we grasp it is by first and foremost becoming face to face. Once we do the whole zoom out, come up close. Embrace the confrontation that is happening right now on a global scale and on a personal scale, and understand what side you want to be on: the part that makes the future worth living or the history that doesn't move us forward. I think this is where we as individuals have a huge role to play in creating the movement forward.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah, I think it's really that moment. It is a gut check moment in a way to really say where are we going and how are we going to change the trajectory if we don't like that place that we're going to end up. For a lot of the audience, and I'm thinking particularly even within our core business, the word 'activist' often strikes a tone of fear. People are thinking, "What is this person doing?" Of course, we know one of the big challenges that we have as humans is sometimes not embracing change, which is certainly something we need to be doing right now. How do we help people to overcome that fear and actually see that opportunity that you're highlighting for change?

Melati:            I love this. I love that the word 'activist' already makes people a little bit uncomfortable. That's good because that's when we know we're doing our job right. The role of an activist, especially young activists, is that we don't have that level of diplomacy. We know we do not have the time for chitchat and how's the weather. We get down to business. We know what we want. We're determined. Activists, especially in the recent couple of months, couple of years back, especially with the youth movement on the rise, we make people uncomfortable. The goal is to make us as uncomfortable as possible so we know we have to change. It's about applying the right kind of pressure.

                        Notice the reason why I don't mention the word 'fear' is because I think that that's not necessarily where the movement even comes from. The movement comes from a place of passion, of authenticity, and of love. I think that's why older generations or people that are afraid of change, they come up from a place of fear. They come up from a place of not willing to change because they're stuck in their comfort zone. Again, that's where we come in to make you as uncomfortable as possible so that we can change and move things along.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. We like to say that the magic in life starts at the edge of your comfort zone, so I think that's absolutely what we need to be doing and provoking in certain regards. Fear is one of the most useless emotions I think we have. I'm thinking about people watching this and saying, like you've said, "I'm a young person. I want to get involved." But a lot of people do feel intimidated or uncertain about themselves. How did you have the confidence in yourself to say, "Yes, we can go and get this done" and what would you suggest for young people if they were wanting to embark on such a mission themselves?

Melati:            I think that there are a lot of reasons why you are feeling this way and rightly so. Don't feel like it's not normal. There are definitely moments even where I find myself feeling super overwhelmed because when we look at the problem that the world is currently facing, we can feel very small and very -- well, just simply asking the question, where can we start? Where do I start? And how do I start? I think one piece of advice or one learning that I've had through my own experience is if you find just your piece of the puzzle, where can you add your strength, your power, your authenticity? Fuel it with your own passion. For you, it might not be plastic bags. For me, that was something that opened a whole opportunity and started me on this journey. It might be feeding the homeless, fighting for the forest and the rights of the trees.

                        Find your own passion and what is happening in your local area. I think once you find something that you deeply connect with, intimidation and the butterflies in your stomach is a healthy and good way to keep you on this path, to keep you moving forward because you also have to understand that it's bigger than you. It's bigger than one person. For me, this was the biggest lesson that I still cherish and carry with me to this day. We're a part of something bigger. There's a bigger message here, and young people are here to play a role in a bigger picture.

Dr. Lyons:    Fantastic and very inspiring. There are going to be other people watching this and they're going to be thinking, gosh, this young lady, very inspiring, very impressive, has spent a third of her life now focused in this area, but I'm a little later in life. How do I become a changemaker as well or how do I help to mentor changemakers? What would be your message perhaps to the audience a little bit older?

Melati:            Well, first of all, you're probably in a position of power, so I hope that you are using it to the potential of creating a world and a future that we are proud of, that is legal, that is just, and that is fair. I think that as a company owner, an industry leader, a government representative, being an adult, there's so much that you could do for good. When we talk about empowering young people and bringing us and inviting us into the space, that is one thing that we need more of. We need to be invited more often to conferences, to sit on panel discussions, and when we're not on stage, to be in the room.

                        Too many times, I'm finding myself in these beautiful, incredible, wealthy, knowledgeable conference rooms, and I ask the question, how many of you here are below the age of 30? Not because I want to see how many old people there are, but just because I want to make a point of how many or too little young people are in the audience. This for me, you have so much power as adults to invite us into those spaces. That's one of the ways that I think that you can empower and foster us into the realm of changemaking as well.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah, I really like that idea. I recently was introduced to a book called "The Good Ancestor" and it was basically talking about future generations, generations that aren't even with us. Somehow, we need to also be thinking about them and bringing their voice into the room. I think that type of concept of getting more listening sessions and engagement with youth and what's really important on their agenda is a great suggestion and something we should be thinking about.

                        I might just think a little bit back on plastics. Plastics had been a big, big focus. That was the initial core issue that you guys identified and moved ahead with. Plastic is really part of a larger problem, which is a huge reliance on fossil fuels, which has been the dominant driver of climate change.

                        Do you have any thoughts about how we can use that focus and that success you've had with plastic to maybe put a light on the bigger issue of overuse of fossil fuels?

Melati:            Well, if we think about it -- and it touches on a way bigger point and I like that we're headed into there. When we think about problems or issues or challenges, we often box them or label them as if they're separate. Plastic pollution is connected and intertwined to climate change. Climate change is intertwined to gender inequality, to poverty. We have to start understanding that there is a global interconnectedness to all of these issues.

                        Think about the Black Lives Matter movement. There is no racial justice without climate justice. There is no climate justice without racial justice. Just before diving into that, of the plastic pollution, I just wanted to paint the picture of just how the narrative needs to change that everything is interconnected. Plastic bags, for example, the very thing that it's made of is from the fossil fuels that we need to keep in the ground. The reason, without even knowing it when we started, plastic pollution or going up against plastic pollution, it's a low hanging fruit. It is something where people are ready for as individuals, consumers, businesses even, government even. We're all towards a willingness and an intention to see how we can find alternatives.

                        When we started, for example, Bali banned plastic bags. That opened an entire discussion of okay, now what? What is the long-term solution? How can we look more into other types of alternatives not only for plastic bags, but for other plastic products for the entire waste management system? I think using the fact of the discussions on plastic pollution as a leverage to climate change and the climate crisis is a good way to go and a good start to open the larger discussion.

Dr. Lyons:    I think it really touches on the actual opportunity. Maybe you have a plastic ban in one location, but it creates commercial opportunities. You are getting an opportunity now to engage with business, to engage with policymakers. Have you been able to see or identify anything within companies that's maybe restricting them to see the opportunity that some of these changes and perhaps aligning with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals could actually create for them?

Melati:            Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question 100%, so please correct me or guide me in the right direction. But from what I get and where I think I would like to answer is that right now, what I'm coming on to when I'm in board meetings or when I'm with a government meeting, I constantly hear the excuse that people are not ready or even business leaders themselves are not ready for the change. But when I dig a little bit deeper, I'm like, why are we not changing fast enough? Is it a budget issue? Not really. Is it a consumer issue? I may live in a bubble, but I don't think so. I think the demand is there.

                        What it comes down to is definitely what you're touching on, is that systemic support is not there. I feel like the government regulations are not changing or adapting nor supporting the level and the speed of change. So business leaders can hide behind that and have no consequences or need to change their behavior. I think it's a little bit frustrating because when we talk about the elephant in the room, that's the elephant in the room. We're having too much gray area. People are hiding behind the willingness only and the inspiration only without actually implementing or changing the regulations, the policy frameworks to be able to actually implement that change.

Dr. Lyons:    We've been touching on a lot of different topics and I like the way that you phrased that the Sustainable Development Goals give us a framework. For us and for me personally, I feel like one of the most important of the Sustainable Development Goals is the last one focused on partnerships, and you've already mentioned collaboration. How do you think that policymakers, youth activists, and even companies can come together in partnerships to bring about the change that we need?

Melati:            I couldn't agree more. There is a very strong need and urgency for more partnerships, more authentic partnerships to take place.

                        To touch on it a little bit as well, I think when we look at partnerships, especially between young people and businesses, government sectors or departments, it's often viewed upon as an annual CSR program or a charity event where it's a one-off partnership. I think moving into 2020, learning everything that's happening around the world right now, we have to understand that when we talk about partnerships, it has to be more long-term. It has to be sustainable.

                        The way that authentic partnerships can take place is if there's a true transparency and communication. What I mean by that is take for example when a big corporation sets a goal or even a government sets a goal and a massive commitment. We love viral articles and viral videos and headlines, but we need more than that. In order to have a real working partnership, transparency and communication in the progress of achieving that commitment is necessary for us to be able to commit fully and to be able to contribute back into the partnership in a meaningful way. I think that that's what young people are really looking for, just to have a seat on the table and be taken seriously at the same time.

Dr. Lyons:    This is a time of challenge. It's a time of separation. You guys have had to deal with that and modify what you're doing. Maybe a two-part question, the first, how have you adapted your program through COVID and kept that engagement? Then maybe I'd ask, you're an optimistic person and I think that's one of the things that makes what you're doing very attractive and something that people want to be part of. What makes you optimistic for the future?

Melati:            Okay. The first question, with Bye Bye Plastic Bags, we were definitely more hands-on. You could find us at a bazaar, at an event, at a conference. We're doing three to five events a week. As a youth led movement, that was a lot for us to be doing. When COVID-19 happened, we had to switch everything online. We kept it as interactive as possible with our followers and continued our educational outreach there.

                        But with Youthtopia, we use this momentum and this growth in online learning to our advantage because Youthtopia's signature programs live online. That, for us, has been a real boost and actually worked to our advantage where we now host a lot of webinars, and again, interactive peer-to-peer panel discussions. We've had a lot of traction continue forward there also simply because we see that kids, young people all around the world, especially now, what is being amplified is the question of how can I create positive change? Our goal with Youthtopia is really to become that go-to headquarters for young changemakers all around the world.

                        What keeps me hopeful is exactly that, I would say, seeing young people from all around the world, all corners, no matter what background, no matter what culture, them coming up with the craziest and coolest and just so simple solutions. Being so determined no matter how often they're met with barriers and challenges. Their persistence, that's what inspires me. I feel like this sense of global community that we have as young changemakers has really been, again, amplified throughout this COVID-19. I think it's really brought us closer together as a global community, so I'm grateful for that, but it's also what fuels me every single day.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. It is one of the paradoxes of this time. Somehow we are physically separated, but somehow socially we're actually coming together, so it's great to see that you're experiencing that as well. Well, Melati, this has been fantastic. It's been really exciting to talk to you. I think it's been inspiring for me personally. I think for the audience, they will feel exactly the same, so thank you for being with us and sharing your story.

Melati:            Thank you very much.

In this episode of Ag Future we revisit a conversation that Susanna Elliott, chief of staff at Alltech, had with Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at the London Business School and founder of the advisory practice HSM, as a part of the Alltech ONE Ideas Conference. While human progress and smarter technologies have risen to great heights, these advancements have prompted some anxiety about where we’re headed. Lynda discusses a framework based on three fundamental principles to give you the tools to navigate the challenges ahead. For more information and to register for ONE 2021, visit one.alltech.com.

The Following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Lynda Gratton. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Susanna:      Is our technology becoming a Frankenstein to be feared? And what happens when the world turns gray with an aging population? For the first time in our history, more people are over the age of 65 than under the age of five. Ahead of us is the promise of a longer and healthier life, but the life that we know just might be over.

                        Welcome to the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience. I'm Susanna Elliott, and joining me today to explain both the possibilities and the seismic change ahead is the author of The New Long Life, Lynda Gratton. Lynda is widely regarded as an expert on the future of work. She is a professor of Management Practice at the London Business School, and sits on the World Economic Forum's council. She is ranked one of the top 15 business thinkers in the world, and today, she's here to help us understand what it means to be human in a world of technological innovation.

                        Lynda, it is a privilege to welcome you to the ONE. We are living in the vortex of an enormous transformation. I know you've referred to the next ten years as perhaps the largest and fastest transition ever, and much of this shift is as a result of technology. Can you talk a little bit about the changes that are on the horizon for us?

Lynda:            Well, technology is one of the shifts that's fundamentally changing our lives. And of course, during COVID, I think we all realize that technology was baked into our offices, but also our homes. Really fascinatingly, on the 14th of March, so this was just as COVID struck, I ran a webinar at London Business School about virtual working. One of the questions I asked was what is your experience now? There were about 2000 people on the webinar and I gave them five different descriptions. The one that most people said was, "I'm feeling a bit lonely at home" and the one that only 2% or 3% said was, "My technology is letting me down." I think we forget just how brilliantly technology has held up. That means that in the months to come, this question of hybrid work, where are we going to work, is going to be possible because of technology.

                        Now, if you think about the technologies that we have in our home and at work, one of the questions that I think is reasonable to ask is does it mean that we're going to all lose our jobs? There's some debate about that. My own view is that technology will fundamentally change almost every one of our jobs. I'm a professor. I can imagine that some of my job will be done through AI, some of it will be done through a chat box, and there's only part of what I'll carry on doing. So it will change all of our jobs and it will add new jobs, which by the way is very difficult to predict.

                        I live here in Primrose Hill. If I'd shown you in 1830 -- I wasn't alive in 1830, by the way. But if I had been and looked out onto the street here in Primrose Hill in the center of London, you'd have seen many different horses going by. In fact, there were more than a million horses in London. If I said, by the way, there's now something called a motor vehicle, you'd have said, "Well, obviously, that's going to destroy all those people's jobs. Who's going to look after the horses? Who's going to shod them? Who's going to feed them?" But what you couldn't have imagined was the jobs that this new technology, this motorcar would create. The fact that it would build oil companies, that it would have rubber companies, that it would build a supply chain, that it would make sure that people then travel so they had more leisure and so on.

                        The simple point I would like to make about technology -- two points really -- number one, all of our jobs are going to change. That means that upskilling and reskilling becomes a lifetime event for everyone. Number two, we can't really predict where the new jobs are going to come from, so we have to remain flexible and also be really capable of navigating the future.

Susanna:      I love that message, Lynda. I think it's one part exciting about the possibilities, but then there's also a little bit of anxiety I think we still feel when so much of that change remains unknown. What are some things we can do now to prepare? I know in your book, you talk quite a bit about moving away maybe from the routine tasks. Maybe you can elaborate on that a bit more, about the things and the choices we can start making right now when we look at our work.

Lynda:            Well, there are so many things that we can do really to prepare for the future because of course, technology is not the only force that's changing our life. My one book, The 100-Year Life, was about the demographics, the fact that many of us are going to be living into our 90s and 80s. That means that we'll be working into our 70s. So the very structure of our life, the idea of full-time education, full-time work, full-time retirement, that becomes an impossibility. So if you bring both of those things together, the huge changes in technology plus the fact that we're going to be living so much longer, what that means is we have to prepare for what I in the book called, what Andrew Scott and I called the multistage life. The idea that you will need to be thinking about your education right the way through your life, upskilling and reskilling. It means that you have an opportunity to take time out. Why leave all of your leisure time until your retirement? Why don't you bring some of that back so that at 30 or 40 or 50, you could have a gap year?

                        It's a completely different way of thinking about our lives. Actually, in terms of preparing for it, one of the points I make in The New Long Life is it's a great opportunity for us to think about what could our possible selves be. What could we be that's different from what we are now? Because in a long life with lots of technological change, the opportunities to change the way that you live, to change your skill set even begin to change your identity. These are all now possible.

Susanna:      It's amazing. I spent a lot of time reflecting on this part of your book because it's something that I guess we've just always grown to accept, that there's this three-stage life and perhaps even not given it much thought. You have education, you have work, and then you have retirement, and how all of those lines are now being blurred. I really love the idea, especially as a mom of three young kids right now. I've often said to my husband, gosh, I wish that I could live my retirement right now when my kids are young. But I guess the question though, how realistic do you see us breaking that three-stage model? Will it happen in my lifetime or is this something that may take a few generations before we change the whole societal framework?

Lynda:            No, I think it's happening right now actually. Although COVID, the pandemic, has created enormous loss and deep anxiety and pain for many people, it's actually accelerated many of the trends that I've talked about when I've been talking over the years about the future of work the digital trends. Actually, many companies are now asking their employees, would you like to work flexibly? Would you like to continue to work from home? Would you like to flex the hours you work? Not surprising, most people are saying, "Yes, I absolutely would."

                        By the way, I don't think that's particularly because of the pandemic. I think any company that had asked that question a year ago would have had the same response. It's just that they didn't ask the question because they couldn't imagine that people could work from home and still be really productive. So I do think that what we've experienced in the last year as it is -- it is a year now, isn't it, almost -- has actually fundamentally changed the way we think about work. And whereas with the pandemic, we thought about how do we restructure a week, I think actually, a legitimate question would be, well, how do we restructure a year?

                        If I could work anywhere, well, why couldn't I travel the world at work? Or if I don't have to work all the time then why couldn't I take six weeks off? Why couldn't I work for four days a week? I think these are all legitimate questions. By the way, social change happens not usually because a corporation wants it to happen. It happens because individuals say, "I want this and it's important to me." If those individuals are important to the company, let's say they have particular talents that are valuable or they're high performers, companies listen really hard. So all across the world, I'm hearing companies saying, leaders saying, "We need to change the way that people work." The more that you and your colleagues say, "This is what we want," the more likely you are to get it.

Susanna:      Yeah, I think you're actually leading into a point that I really loved in your book, talking about the importance of becoming social pioneers and how often when we have huge leaps forward in technology that the gains aren't felt immediately, that we have to have social ingenuity that responds to that human ingenuity at first.

                        Right now, you describe that there's this widening gap between the technologies and between the social structures, although perhaps as you've mentioned there, as a result of COVID, we've been able to speed up again in terms of maybe our acceptance of flexibility. But right now, as we continue to live in this gap between what was and what could be and what will be, what are some ways that we can cultivate that social ingenuity?

Lynda:            Well, thank you for that question. Really, if you look at the history of change, the history of social change, why does anything change? Why do we now have pensions when we didn't use to? Why do we now have something called a teenager when we really had nothing? No age group was called a teenager, but now there are. It's because individuals say, "This is what I would like to happen" and they're social pioneers. The group I'm interested in is people in their 70s who are saying, "I now want to work. Stop discriminating against me. Stop telling me I'm old. I want to start my own business. I want to be a digital expert. Why is it that only young people can be digital experts? Why couldn't the old?"

                        I think there's a whole bunch of people at different ages doing different jobs who say, "I'd like to live my life differently." The more people do that, the more that we look around and see them and say, "Wow, that's exciting. Maybe I could be like that." That's why, by the way, in the book, we talk quite a lot about networks. Because we say if you spend all your time with people who are just like you, the chances are that you never see what other lives could be. That's a real argument for building diverse networks, which are diverse in terms of gender obviously, but also in terms of age groups and the sort of jobs that people do.

                        I'm not myself an entrepreneur, but I have friends who are. That's why when I thought about setting up my own business, I looked at them and thought, wow, I could do that. If they can do that, I can. So building diverse networks turns out to be really important if you want to be a social pioneer.

Susanna:      I think that's fantastic because one of the key points I drew from your book, too, was an expanded view of inclusivity. We don't normally think of age as being a part of that. I know within the book and even within some other interviews, I've heard you really challenge the stereotypes and generalizations that go with various generations. I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit further particularly you, the aging population, and the over 65 group.

Lynda:            Yeah. Well, thank you for that question. I feel a little bit of a party pooper because I know we love generational labels. We talk about Gen Y and Gen X and Baby Boomers, but honestly, there's no empirical evidence for any of it, none at all. It's made up. In fact, if I showed you, if I gave you a whole bunch of data about people, and from that data predict what generation they're in -- I don't mean you gave them the age data, but just how they felt about themselves and so on -- it will be very difficult for you to predict what generational group they are. That's the first problem with generational labels.

                        The second is that it assumes that everybody within that label is the same. I'm a Baby Boomer, but that doesn't mean to say that I'm the same as every Baby Boomer. One of the really interesting things about living longer is as you live longer, the diversity within an age group increases whereas if you look at your one-year-olds, they all pretty much look the same. I know for me, I have lots of children, so the only thing I ever remember about kids is they walk at one and they talk at two. That's about as far as it goes with me. But actually, by the time they're 16, they're already different. And by the time they're 60, people are completely different from each other. You can have an incredibly healthy 60-year-old, a 60-year-old who's gone and exploring the world, and another 60-year-old who's staying at home and frightened of everything and doesn't want to get out of their home.

                        We've really got to just look at people for what they are and particularly in consumer terms. If you as a technology company think that the only people who are technically literate are young people, you're missing out on actually the largest cohort that there is, which are the people who are over 40.

                        I think it's really important that we drop our stereotypes of generational labels and just look at people for what they are. Some are young, some are old. They're different within their own age groups.

Susanna:      Yeah. The implications of generalizing could be tremendous. As you mentioned from the business point of view, the opportunity that exists when we're looking at a demographic that is perhaps the most affluent of that demographic that has ever existed, they could be spending $15 to $20 trillion a year, and yet you'd see very few advertisements targeted to that over 65-year age group. Perhaps you can talk a little bit about how you would be advising companies and CEOs who are considering that growing over 65 group without overgeneralizing.

Lynda:            Yeah. Well, the very fact we just used the term over 65, that immediately tells you something, doesn't it? You imagine that even though most of us are going to live now into our 80s, possibly our 90s, we're still saying somehow when you're over 65, you're all the same as each other, and there's no evidence of that. What we're seeing is that as people are living longer, healthy living becomes really important. People said to me after I'd written The 100-Year Life with Andrew Scott, "What did it mean for you? What difference did you make?" The simple truth was I became healthy. I lost weight. I started Pilates. I started walking and running for an hour every day, and I'm a hell of a lot healthier now than I was four years ago. People are really focusing on healthy living. That's a very, very important part of what it is to be older in our society.

                        The second thing is they want to carry on learning. If you live to 90 or 80, you really have to work into your 70s. I was just on a call with one of the US' largest insurers just an hour ago, talking to their managers and saying people need to walk into their 70s now. We have to accept that and help them to do it and support them to do it. You're in a country, of course, where you've got all sorts of people over the age of 70 in very senior position. So we have to be much more accepting that people are perfectly capable of being highly productive into their 70s and 80s, and possibly into their 90s. That means it's a very exciting time.

                        I'm 65. I'm very pleased that I'm 65 now as opposed to being 65 when my grandmother was 65 because although she went on to live into her 90s, she was really treated as if she was old at the age of 65. Certainly, I don't feel old at 65. I think that's helped me become the person that I am and the person that I will be as I age.

Susanna:      I want to pick up on that point on education just a little bit. In our organization, we've always had a focus on lifelong learning. In your book, you illuminate the idea that learning becomes a choice. It's something we do throughout our lives because again, it's no longer sectioned off into this three-stage traditional narrative. My question for you -- and you're in the London Business School -- is the university model now broken? What do we need to do at a university level to make education accessible throughout all of life?

Lynda:            Yeah, it's completely broken. No question about that. It's shocking how slow universities have been to change. Having said that, two things have happened, which have really accelerated, in fact, during the pandemic. The first is that there are amazing online programs. Some of the universities are very active. Harvard, for example, has as many people online now as it does in its campus. Companies like Coursera are doing an incredible job of giving people the opportunity to learn online. During COVID, one of the things that's happened is we've all become very relaxed about virtual working. I teach all of my classes now virtually. Now, I'm not going to be doing that forever, but certainly this year, I have. The feedback honestly has been pretty good. There's a lot to be said for virtual teaching.

                        I think we've really learned how to teach virtually, which of course has got a completely different cost point than if you have to come along to a university campus. I think the second thing is that universities are also realizing that they have to think about older people.

                        Now, Stanford, for example, as always -- well, certainly for some years has had a wonderful program for over 60-year-olds, but it's very, very expensive and really not accessible to anybody except for the wealthiest. But nevertheless, you can begin to see that there are opportunities for us to reach out to people in every age group. Certainly, one of the things that we're doing at London Business School is to think about our alumni, the people who came mostly to do an MBA in their mid-20s. We want to be much more actively involved with their learning right the way through their life and not just when they're on our campus.

Susanna:      Yeah. It's interesting because people now pursue learning in very nontraditional ways. It might be through YouTube. It might be through podcasts. They may not be interested or able to commit to doing a degree at a particular time. Do you see a role for technology to play and beginning to track how people learn the pathways in which they learn? Maybe they get a credential in one place. It could even be through some virtual learning or a podcast or YouTube again. Is there a way that we would begin to track that? I don't know if there's blockchain of education that we begin to build as a society.

Lynda:            Yeah, that's absolutely crucial. There are two ways that technology firms could really, really, really help right now, or three ways, but let me just talk about two. The first is the whole business about -- well, let me give you the three ways companies can help. The first is in the recruitment process, to help companies recruit rather than simply saying does this person have a degree or not. Because one of the shocking aspects of the labor market, particularly in the US, is that if you don't have a degree, you don't even get looked at even though you might have some great skills. So the first thing that technology can do is it can help people get into the recruitment process even if they don't have a college degree.

                        The second thing they can do is really build amazing online education. I follow all of this, by the way. I'll speak about that in a moment, but I'm very, very interested in technology of companies who are doing this because they will make the world a better place. There are some amazingly experimental, innovative online programs now being built.

                        The third, which is the point that you speak about and I think is absolutely crucial is credentialing. It's very difficult for an adult to be really persuaded to learn a lot unless there's a credential at the end of it. Now, there are amazing credentials for digital skills. IBM, Microsoft and so on have actually built a whole suite of training programs that end up with a certificate, but that's not yet really happened in other softer skills like customer service skills, decision making, empathy and so on. We do need to help people credentialize their skills so that when they go for a job, they can say, look, I can prove that I know how to do this.

                        If I were to add a fourth thing that I think technology could really help, it's again your point, and this is about navigation. There's a fantastic report that came out in the US this week actually that showed that many people doing relatively low paid jobs, as part of that job, have some of the skills that will help them do a higher paid job, but they don't know that. They don't know how to navigate into those higher paid jobs. They also don't know what skills should I be adding so that I can do this higher paid job. That's absolutely crucial. Navigating across the labor market is so important for individuals, and technology can really help.

                        Now, my plea to you is please start businesses that do that. I co-chair the World Economic Forum Council on jobs, so that's where all the tech companies come to Davos every year. One of the things that I've said as part of my role there is that I would like to build an ecosystem. I like even just to write the ecosystem of all the companies that are working in helping people get jobs. I'm on the lookout all the time. Certainly, at London Business School, we have a whole bunch of MBA students who are building businesses that support employees to find work and then to credentialize the work and so on, so it's an incredibly important ecosystem of technology.

Susanna:      Yeah. I'd actually like to stay on this topic of company's roles in helping to navigate this new landscape because so much of our audience here on the ONE Virtual Experience, they are business owners themselves. How should they be rethinking the typical career path for their organization? How do we break free of that, "You're 65. It's time to retire" and break that link between age and stage when we might have somebody -- it might not be 30 years in the company as a significant thing. It could be 50, 60 years with an organization moving forward.

Lynda:            Yeah. Well, I think it's quite -- first of all, it's about forgetting the stereotypes. I've mentioned that already, which is to say don't stereotype people on the basis of their age. Age is very malleable. We basically age pretty much as we want to age. Each of us can change the way we age by the choices we make on a daily basis about how we live. Do remember that age is malleable.

                        The second thing to say is that I don't think there are any big policy decisions here. I think it's actually having conversations with people. I was talking to a company yesterday. It was one of the big German manufacturing companies and they said, "We're really worried because we've got all these 50-year-olds who are incredibly expert in our methodologies. We're worried that they're all going to retire. What can we do about that?" Well, the obvious answer is you talk to them and ask them what they want. Once you do that, you'll find that they will tell you what it is they want because very few people actually want to leave work at 50. The idea that you leave work at 50, and then spend from the age of 50 to age of 90 playing golf, nobody wants to do that. I don't know anyone who wants to do that. They want to stay productive, but they probably just don't want to work in the way that you're describing work, so listening to individuals.

                        Again, technology plays a really great role there. My advisory company, HSM, does two big things. One thing is that it joins our companies to talk about the future of work. We've been doing that for more than a decade now. But the other thing it does is we have a platform where we can get up to 200,000 people in a company talking about something that's important to them, and we find a way of moderating and facilitating that conversation. We've done quite a lot actually, which says to people, "What is it that you would like?" and they will tell you what they want.

                        For example, some 60-year-olds are saying, "I would love to mentor other people. I would absolutely love to mentor the young." The young are saying, "Wow, I'd love to mentor an older person, so why don't we get that happening?" They say, "I'd really like to be part of this, but I don't want to work every week. I want to take six weeks off." I think being more responsive to what it is people want at every age, not just the over 60s, is a very smart way forward. I think one of the things that we've learned from COVID is we actually can arrange work in many different ways and still be highly productive. Who would have thought that I would be sitting here in my personal home studio, talking to you? I wouldn't have probably done that a year ago, and yet this is probably the third webinar I've done today. It's amazing. We've all learned incredible skills.

Susanna:      We have. I want to pick up on your point there with regard to intergenerational relationships because another piece of your book that stood out to me is the importance of relationships. Here we're talking quite a bit about the changes that technology is bringing forward, but how we will be successful ultimately comes down to how we remain human and how we connect to others and the importance of connecting beyond our generation. Perhaps you can talk a little bit more about what we can do to cultivate relationships throughout this longer life.

Lynda:            Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that question. I've been talking about the role of families, communities, and neighborhoods in almost every one of my books. I've written ten books now and it's been a theme that's gone right the way through. In fact, the first book, I wrote about the future of work, which is called The Shift, which I wrote ten years ago. I really talked quite a lot about neighborhoods and families. I think of all the things I spoke about in that book, that was the one that didn't really make a difference.

                        I didn't really see people investing in their families in the way that I thought they might want to. Men weren't taking any more paternity leave. Women were struggling with maternity leave. People were struggling with looking after their kids. I think that's a shame. I think, again, COVID has shown us that it's possible to work from home. It's possible to be more related to our families at home and to our neighborhoods. I think quite a number of people are going to say, "If I can work from anywhere, why do I need to live in a big city? Why wouldn't I want to live in a smaller suburb or a smaller town where I can walk around, where I can take the kids to school? I don't have to get in the car all the time." These are, in my view, very positive and healthy choices. I think we will see people really actively making choices that provide healthy families. That's the word that I would use. What can you do to support healthy families? The more that companies can do that, the more vibrant our society becomes.

                        There's a virtual company based out of California that I've written about quite a lot actually. One of the things that they say is we never meet each other. We're all completely virtual, but that doesn't mean to say that we don't socialize. We socialize within our neighborhoods, not to our colleagues. I think that's a really interesting point, isn't it? Why wouldn't you want to spend time with your neighbors and with your family, not necessarily with your colleagues? There's another thought about families and communities.

Susanna:      Yeah. When we think about that, what are some ways that companies can very practically help contribute to society in this new 100-year life, particularly when you think about enhancing families, maybe allowing people to have more opportunity for that lifelong learning, or these, "I'm going to take a year off and I'm going to go travel the world?" What should we be thinking about if we are company owners, managers, and trying to incentivize that for our team members?

Lynda:            Well, I think it's again listening to the individuals. For me, autonomy and travel are my biggest loves. I headed up one of the big consulting practices at the age of 32. I was the youngest director ever at the age of 32, and I left to come into business school. The reason I did that is I wanted autonomy. I was working in one of those consulting practices where I was on a plane all the time. I was working all hours and I didn't want that. I came into academia in part because I wanted the autonomy. But of course, other people want different things. So I would listen to your high potential people and find out what it is they want. I think you'll be surprised that many are taking very thoughtful views about their future.

                        One of the interesting things about families is that in most countries of the world, men and women work. Mothers and fathers work. So when we built organizational structures, we often built it with the idea that there would be a man who would work and there would be a woman or a partner, mostly a woman, who would stay at home and look after the kids. That's a tiny minority of our families. Most families have both working parents. That gives them actually a lot more choice because they're no longer dependent on one income. They've got two incomes, so they can act as a unit in terms of the choices that they make.

                        I think that listening to what it is people want at different stages of their life is a very smart thing to do. I myself, I run my own business, as well as writing about businesses. In fact, I sit on the board of a multinational, so I do see huge companies, but I also see small companies. My company's only 20 people, so I feel all the issues that everybody else is feeling in terms of managing a relatively small, in my case, technology-focused business. Listening to your employees, I think, is at the heart of getting that right.

Susanna:      You've also done some extensive consultation work for governments, particularly in Japan. I know you were brought in at the request of Prime Minister Abe to take a look at the 100-year society. What are some learnings that we can take from Japan?

Lynda:            Well, Japanese people up until recently live longer than any other people in the world. In fact, Hong Kong is currently on the top of the list of populations who live into their hundreds.

                        The way that Japan does it if you go into the communities is that they eat very healthily. If you've ever been to a Japanese restaurant, you know they're eating a lot of fish, and that's amazingly healthy. Not so much in Tokyo, but certainly out of Tokyo, they have very strong communities. Somebody will bump into a neighbor on a daily basis and they walk. In fact, actually, if you look at the places in the world where people live into their 90s, in the hundreds, they almost always walk. I know that many of you are going to be living in cities where you get into your car every day and drive to work. That's terrible. If you look at places where people live to a hundred, they do three things, as I mentioned. Firstly, it's about what they eat. Secondly, it's about being part of a community, as simple as talking to a neighbor every day. That seems to make a massive difference to your mental health. Thirdly, walking every day, not necessarily big exercise, but actually standing up and walking. Those seem to be the three things that certainly Japan is very keen on.

                        Part of what Prime Minister Abe wanted to do was to move people out of Tokyo and encourage people to live in the countryside. In fact, the COVID has absolutely accelerated that trend. So people are much more interested now in living in the countryside because they don't have to commute into Tokyo every day.

Susanna:      It's fascinating, some of those three points that you've mentioned, how critical they are to mental health, which is something that is quite critical at the moment. We're talking about it a lot within our organization. It's also very significant in the sector that we work in, agriculture, which will be most of the audience that's listening to you through the ONE Virtual Experience. Those are important points.

                        Just taking that a step further, as an individual, I'm listening to you here on the ONE Virtual Experience from my home on my laptop. We're still in the midst of COVID coming up on the holidays. Lynda, what should I be doing right now when I think about this possibility of living many more years? What are some of the choices I need to be making right now?

Lynda:            Well, I would say this is the time, especially at your age, to really put down a foundation for a long life, a long, healthy life. We all know what those things are. Just as I said, from Japan, if you go actually to the website for The 100-Year Life, which is www.100yearlife.com, you can fill in a diagnostic that tells you how much you're preparing for a long, healthy life. It basically asks questions around three areas or four areas because there's also stuff about money. One is whether you're living healthily. Honestly, we all know what that is. It's about food and exercise, simple as that.

                        Secondly, it's about whether you're developing your skills, how much time you're setting aside to learn new things. Thirdly, it's about whether you're building strong, meaningful relationships with other people. Fourthly, of course, it's about whether you're saving enough money. If you're doing all those four things, you are in brilliant shape.

Susanna:      That's great. I imagine that's part of the advice you're giving your children. I know you mentioned several kids. Is there anything you would change when you look to the next generation?

Lynda:            I actually have eight children and we've got 11 grandchildren, so yeah, there's a lot. When you say what would I change, what do you mean by that?

Susanna:      Would your advice be any different when you look to the next generation or would it be pretty much the same as what you've just shared?

Lynda:            I think when I look at my own kids, who range from -- the youngest is late 20s, and they go right up into their late 30s. One of the things we talk about in The New Long Life is this notion of possible selves. At any stage in your life, you can reinvent yourself. You can be something different. I think that's really good advice because I think when you start off, especially when you're young, you think, "Well, maybe I've got to do this for the rest of my life" and the simple truth is you don't. You can be lots of things.

                        I've always encouraged my kids to be explorers. In fact, my father encouraged me to do the same and it was a great piece of advice. I remember -- this was unusual actually. At the age of 21, I hitchhiked -- this was madness -- from the north of England right away through Europe, right away through Syria, right away through Jordan into Israel. I had a scholarship to look at child rearing practices in a kibbutz. I wouldn't suggest my children hitchhike right away through Syria and Jordan these days. But when Chris was young, was 18, I said go live abroad for a year, and he lived in Shanghai, Mumbai, and Singapore as a journalist. He wanted to be a journalist. He didn't actually turn out to be a journalist, but that's what he wanted to do when he was 18.

                        I would say to young children, just explore the world. I know COVID is terrible, but once it's over, we can start moving around again. I think the best thing that a child can do is to explore the world. I love seeing the rest of the world. It's a wonderful way of learning. I've learned so much, as you say. I spent quite a bit of time in Japan. I come over to the States obviously quite a lot as well, but Japan in particular is just the most fascinating country. If you haven't been, as soon as you can, buy yourself a ticket and go and have a look at it. It's astounding. It's an astoundingly different country, the same in Africa. I mentioned to you I'm hoping on the 28th of this year, this December, to be over in Tanzania to have a look at the Serengeti. Africa is an extraordinary place, so that would be my number one advice to my own kids, is explore the world.

Susanna:      Yeah. We would be very much in sync with you from an Alltech perspective. We always consider travel to be the great educator.

Lynda:            Oh, great!

Susanna:      Yeah, we do. We love to travel here at Alltech. We've talked about so much change from the three-stage life now becoming an entirely new narrative, and all of the societal changes that need to go along with that. What do you feel is maybe the greatest challenge to change as you consider education and government, and even how we view age? What would you narrow down to be the greatest challenge?

Lynda:            One of the things that I do in my teaching -- and I do it actually when I advise companies as well. It's something that you may want to think about in your own company -- is I build personas. I build just one page descriptions of individuals who are typical of the people in your company. Then when I teach, I ask my students -- I do that, by the way, in my new book. You'll see that there are characters that I ask the reader to think about. I ask them to think about their lives.

                        One thing to remember is it's much easier for us to understand the trends that are shaping our world through the eyes of an individual. It's much more difficult to understand them just in a broadest way. For people who are educated and who have agency, I think, honestly, they can grab the future. If I look at my own kids, highly educated, you can see they're going to have a great life. But in a way, that's not the challenge. The challenge that we all face are the kids who don't have that.

                        One of the sad aspects of the trends that are shaping our world is that all of them lead to great inequality. In terms of tech, we know that people who have higher education are much less likely to have their jobs automated. In terms of demography, we know people who are educated and wealthy live 12 years longer than people who aren't. In terms of family structures, we know that people who don't have resources, it's incredibly difficult for them to have stable families. I think as we think about the future, we actually also have to think about how do we within our companies and within our societies and with our government support those people who don't have the chances and choices that we've got.

Susanna:      I can't agree with you more. I think that really came through strongly in your book. In order for technology to bring progress, we all have to be able to flourish from it and to create a construct in which we enable that to happen. Hopefully, that's the case. We do things like make education more accessible and so on. I want to end on a note that we have asked all of our participants here in the ONE Virtual Experience. We were focused on optimism for the future, and your book in and of itself, the prospect of a longer, healthier life, is full of

                        Can you maybe tell me a little bit more about as you look to the future, what is it that makes you optimistic?

Lynda:            I think technology makes me incredibly optimistic. I can't wait to have a car that I don't have to drive myself. I've got already a very advanced car and I can see it's dying for me to stop driving it because it's constantly trying to drive my car. I think it will be amazing when we have technology that allows us to see each other even more clearly than we do now. I can see that virtual reality is going to play an incredibly important part. Wouldn't it be marvelous if I can teach you in a more interactive way?

                        I think that technology is absolutely going to make our lives more exciting. But as machines become better, we humans also have to become better. We have to become more human. As machines become more technology, we have to become more human. And being more human is about empathy, creativity, innovation, so I also see the future as a real opportunity for human innovation, human creativity to build a better world.

Susanna:      I can't ask for a more perfect note to end on, staying human in a world full of technology. Thank you so much, Lynda. It has been a pleasure speaking with you.

Lynda:            My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

As a research scientist at Alltech, Dr. Anne Koontz lives out her passion for science communication, outreach and international collaboration by helping farmers become more sustainable and efficient. She joined the Ag Future podcast to discuss how to support farmers by effectively communicating to those outside of the agri-food industry the realities of the environmental impact of animal production and how farmers have worked for more sustainable operations through science and research.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Anne Koontz hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Tom:                          I'm Tom Martin. Dr. Anne Koontz is a research scientist for Alltech with a strong interest in science communication, outreach, and international collaboration. We thank you for joining us, Dr. Koontz.

Dr. Koontz:                Thank you for having me, Tom.

Tom:                          So, do people today understand the realities of scientific inquiry? Can science kind of be boiled down to recognizing that the more we know, the more we know we don't know?

Dr. Koontz:                That is a fairly accurate statement. The important thing to remember about science and one of the things that's really hard for people who don't work in a scientific field is that science is constantly changing and updating itself whether we're finding new ways to ask a question, new ways to measure response. We're adding to that knowledge base constantly and reevaluating what we know. I have a very good friend who’s a brilliant scientist in her own right, Elizabeth Culprice, who wrote on Facebook not long ago. I have to quote this because it was just so perfect for this conversation. She said, “Perhaps the greatest utterance of the scientist is I don't know. Scientists never know. But upon seeing what we don't know, our next thought is how can I figure it out? How can I get closer to knowing? Formatting the known, creating a testable guess to what we think it could be and testing it, and moving closer to one step of knowing is what we do.” And I couldn't say it any better than she did of what scientists do and how important is to understand that science is all about not knowing and wanting to know what we don't know.

Tom:                          So, I guess we should filter through that: when we hear that there has been a scientific discovery or finding that, ‘yeah, that's true, but it could change in the future as more scientific inquiry is conducted.’

Dr. Koontz:                That's absolutely correct, Tom. And I think the other aspect of that that’s important when we have these kind of conversations and we talk about science communication and science outreach is the idea that we often have to simplify things. The way that I would explain gravity to, you know, my 8-year-old niece is very different than the way that I would discuss gravity with another scientist. So, it is a new onset of understanding that come as we increase things. I'm a big fan of— You’ll see probably through the rest of this conversation as well. But one of my favorite things comes out of The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett. And he said that these sorts of simplification are simply lies we tell children and they’re okay types of lies because it's the only way that people at that age can understand that concept, but we need to be— When we’re teaching those simplifications that are constantly reminding people that as you get older, as you have more knowledge and more understanding, those concepts become more and more complex.

Tom:                          Well, Anne, I know that you think a lot about science communication and I’d like to turn to that with regard to the farm and I’m wondering how have digital media, and broader connection, and social media changed the way farmers communicate what they're doing.

Dr. Koontz:                I think it has fundamentally changed the way farmers communicate with the greater audience around them. The ability to go direct to the world and say “look, this is my farm; this is what I'm doing today; here, let me walk you through my barn or take a ride on my tractor together” and show both the good and the bad of farming is really important. These farmers that are willing to do this, this type of communication, are really letting everyone into their everyday lives and showing the good, showing the bad, showing the frustrations and the excitement that come with farming, and making an industry that a very small percentage of our population work in— making that industry much more relatable to those who don't have access to a farm.

Tom:                          How can scientists like you in the agrifood industry support those narratives that farmers are sharing with consumers through TikTok or Instagram?

Dr. Koontz:                That’s a really great question, Tom. And I love this. The most important thing is to like what they're doing, share them with your platform, share them with your followers so you keep getting their message out there. And if you're willing to dive into the conversations— Now, sometimes they can get a bit heated and touchy when you get into the comments on a lot of those farmer’s pages. And I applaud every single one of the farmers who are willing to take that on and be on social media in that way, but the things that we can do as scientists especially is to backup what the farmers are saying. So, show that the farmers aren’t unique cases and link to other farmers who are saying and doing the same thing. And when people start asking, you know, why do they do it this way, why are you making this particular decision, to then link and discuss the science and the research that goes into those decisions that farmers are making and so that it's not just an arbitrary, we've always done it this way or I think this is right for me, but there is actually a huge knowledge base of science and research that is guiding all of these to allow farmers to be both sustainable and productive.

Tom:                          Climate change and the greenhouse gases contributing to it have never been under as much scrutiny as they are today. And agriculture is often singled out as a culprit, ruminants and cattle in particular. As one whose work focuses on understanding impacts of animal production on the environment, how do you respond to that?

Dr. Koontz:                My first answer is always going to be carefully. The most important thing to me is don’t deny and don’t get angry. Absolutely agriculture and cattle in particular contribute to greenhouse gases and global climate change. I like to start with whatever resource or citation the person that I'm talking to is pulling from. So, say someone has said, you know, cows are responsible for 14% of greenhouse gas emission. Let's work with that number. That number comes from the FAO. It's not wrong, but it’s actually the easy global figure for all of animal agriculture. So, if we put that in the context for most of the conversations lately have been in the U.S., so in the United States, the EPA gives the number of greenhouse gas emissions of 10% for all of agriculture with about 35% of that being animal agriculture and ruminant in particular. Now, that 34% sounds like a lot, but 34% of 10%, which means it’s 3.9% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emission. Now, if we compare that back to other sectors, which I think is absolutely critical, the same EPA says that 29% of greenhouse gases come from transportation sector and 25% are related to energy production. When you put that 3.9% or 3.4% of emissions from ruminants in that context, the 29% for transportation and 25% for electricity, it doesn't seem quite important. But if all you see is that, you know, 34% of agriculture is ruminants or 14.5% of global greenhouse gases are agriculture, those numbers seem scary and big. So, it's really important to have the context and the comparisons for these conversations. And like I said, don’t deny. Do we contribute? Absolutely. Are we constantly working to contribute less? Yes.

Tom:                          Is it accurate to equate the climate impact of methane emissions with the impact of carbon dioxide? In other words, are there important differences in the nature of these emissions?

Dr. Koontz:                So, this is one of those questions where I have to refer back to the beginning of our conversation and say I'm not an expert in this particular thing. And this is a topic that is rapidly evolving in the science community. So, to hit on some of the high points, there's a difference between the carbon dioxide and methane in how they react within the atmosphere. So, carbon dioxide is considered a stock gas, which means it hangs around in the atmosphere once it's produced for a very long time. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 years. Methane on the other hand is considered a slow gas, which means that it only hangs out in the atmosphere for about 10 years and then it's broken down through a process called hydroxyl oxidation. So, putting that in the context of a big picture and why this has become a hot topic within agriculture in particular is that plants take up carbon dioxide and carbon sources from the environment. That's something we all learned in school generally. And those plants store that carbon and complex types of molecules. Carbohydrates, etc. So, when these plants then are consumed by animals in agriculture, those carbon-based molecules are broken down. And in a cow, some of that is converted to methane and release them again into the atmosphere. But if that methane is then broken down in 10 years into carbon dioxide, some portion of our carbon dioxide is taken up by plant. And this cycle just continues again and again. So, if we’re not significantly increasing the amount of methane we’re putting back into the atmosphere in comparison to the amount we're taking out, then perhaps we're a little more carbon neutral than we thought we were at least in that particular aspect of our carbon footprint. Now, there's a lot more to that discussion than in my very simplified overview right there. It is very much a current topic of debate and discussion within agriculture, within climate science. And it is one that I'll be keeping an eye on for sure for the next few years.

Tom:                          Well, you're right. I'm wondering if there's a danger that this increasing clamor for a reduction in livestock emissions might upstage the effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Dr. Koontz:                I think that's a very good conversation to have and it's a touchy topic, Tom. I mean in true scientific fashion, again, I'm going to say it depends. So, as I said before, does agriculture contribute?

                                    Absolutely. Do we need to reduce that contribution? If we can, yes. Do fossil fuels contribute? Again, absolutely. Do they need to reduce their contribution? Certainly. But when we start equating those things by simply saying they're both contributors, that’s where it gets difficult because, as I said before, the contribution coming from livestock and agriculture is significantly less than the contribution that’s coming from transportation and energy sectors that are largely fossil fuel based. But when you put that to someone as far as what they can do in their everyday life to reduce their personal impact, it's much easier to say “well, I'm just not going to eat meat one day a week” than it is to say “well, I’m gonna stop using my car one day a week.” Those are two very different lifestyle changes and one is going to be far more approachable to most people.

Tom:                          Pollution from the really large farm operations runs off into streams that feed into major waterways like the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico. And that contributes to algal blooms, dead zones that impact drinking water supplies, aquatic ecosystems, recreation, people's livelihoods. What's your perspective on these large scale operations?

Dr. Koontz:                I think this is another one of those areas, Tom, that is a touchy subject, but an incredibly important subject. There is no doubt that agricultural runoffs contribute to all of these dead zones and issues with our water quality throughout the world But it is one of those places where it is very important, again, to look at contribution. And unfortunately, I don’t have those numbers right in front of me because I’ve not seen them. This is not an area that I’ve spent a lot of time looking into as a scientist, but I do know that, well, agricultural runoff is significant. There is the more recent research coming out of especially Duke University in North Carolina that's looking at dead zones in urban streams and what they're finding is that those exist there as well. And so, we have to really start examining not only agriculture's contribution to these issues, but also our urban footprint, you know. One thing I paid attention to for years and tried to look at on my own property is the use of salt and ice melt ‘cause I could use salt as a weed killer. But when I use salt as an ice melt in the winter, that salt is staying in the environment, contributing to my grass not growing or contamination of my soil around my own property. And when we think about that scaled up to a global issue of how much salt and other ice melt type products we put on to roadways and where does that ultimately end up and what is it affecting as far as the environmental around us, again, I don’t wanna downplay agricultural contribution because we absolutely do have an agricultural contribution. But there are other factors that come into this issue of dead zones, water quality, and soil loss. And I know that within agriculture, farmers are constantly looking at adding buffer zones, changing the way they plant, changing the way they kill, using precision farming to really only get the nutrients where they need to be when they need to be there so that we are minimizing that loss or leaching. And I think they’re doing everything they can as the information and technology becomes available. And that’s really all we can ask.

Tom:                          Well, how do you think agriculture can improve not just the perception, but the reality of its environmental sustainability?

Dr. Koontz:                Those are two very different questions. I think the reality about environmental sustainability is very much already there. I've never met a farmer who didn't absolutely love the land they worked with and care about it and want it be there for multiple generations down the road. And because of that, they're generally very aware of what they're doing and how it affects the world around them. Now, whether or not that's been accurately communicated, that's an issue, but I think as we mentioned before, getting access directly to consumers and the rest of the world, your social media and other interaction capabilities is really changing. The ability to know that a farmer is person and not just someone who is, you know, essentially looking at the land like it’s a factory floor and trying to get more and more out of it as best they can, but genuinely cares and wants to do the best they can to produce safe healthy food while also taking care of the land they work with is really critical. And so, I think it's a balance. I think the reality is already there and we are continuing to push that reality forward with the science that’s done by researchers like myself and then the implementation of that science by the farmers and ranchers around the world. It's really a focus on that perception through communications that is critical.

Tom:                          Okay. Big change of subject here, but this is a question I’ve been looking forward to asking. Are doors opening to women in the agrisciences?

Dr. Koontz:                You know, Tom, that's not a terrible question. But at the same time, I want to rephrase it and look at it— You know, I'm a woman who's been in agriscience in some way, shape, or form my entire life. I grew up with access to farm through my grandparents, knew I wanted to be in agriculture fairly early on in my life, knew I wanted to be a scientist fairly early on in life. And I honestly personally never had a lot of pushback to being a woman in science. You always run into the odd person that proves you wrong. But you know, they're manageable. And so, I think not only are doors opening, but they are open. And I see that because more and more of the scientists I collaborate with around the world are women. And more and more of the farmers I talk to are women. And women are no doubt a driving force in agriscience. And we're going to hear more and more of us out there talking, and communicating, and showing you what our lives are like, and why you should also be in agriscience.

Tom:                          Okay. Let's talk about Alltech’s Planet of Plenty mission, and tell me how science informs or plays a role in that mission.

Dr. Koontz:                Absolutely. So, the three leaves that are in the Planet of Plenty logo are really critical. And we’ve given meaning to each of those 3 leaves. Science, sustainability, and storytelling. So, from that, you obviously can see that science is very much at the core of Planet of Plenty. Science is guiding the development of sustainability solutions. The science is guiding the changes we’re making and supporting farmers in farming options and ranching management. And science underpins all of the stories that are being showcased in the Planet of Plenty ongoing activities. And so, it’s really all about making that science applicable and communicating it very well to the world.

Tom:                          Why would you say it's important not just to the ag industry, but to consumers as well, that events such as the ONE Ideas Conference are held annually?

Dr. Koontz:                And here, we're right back to the beginning, aren’t we, Tom? Knowledge is constantly growing and everything else is changing. And honestly, I don't think the speed of change is going to slow down. If anything, it's just going to continue to increase. Because that change has been so rapidly, there's so much technology, and knowledge, and ideas that are generated every year, and so having these kinds of ability to get together, and talk, and discuss, and see what's new around the world on an annual basis really just gives you that one-stop shop for new ideas and new concepts. The other aspect that is absolutely one of my favorite things about Alltech’s One Conference is the international diversity. Well, in non-COVID times, I get to travel a fair bit for my job and see how things are done in a lot of different places and that gives me so many connections because, you know, someone encounters a problem— the same problem in different places. But because of their available resources, and cultural differences, and climate, and everything else, they solve that problem in a different way. And so, when you can start bringing those different solutions to the same problem and in discussing those things on an international level, you really start to find some of the key things that tie together and you can make those solutions stronger in each different location.

Tom:                          You know, it's been several years now, but I remember when we discussed CRISPR technology at the ONE Ideas Conference. And at that time, it seemed novel. It seemed exotic, but here we are today with evidently a breakthrough in CRISPR technology that might lead to restoring the vision of the blind.

Dr. Koontz:                It is absolutely amazing. I have so many stunning scientist friends who work in cutting-edge technology. And if I could just communicate what they're doing to the public on a daily basis, I would be overwhelmed. Science is moving so fast. We're seeing new things every day. And there's no doubt that Alltech has made it and absolutely key point to be on the forefront of that change in technology and knowledge and make sure that we're presenting the best of those changes and knowledge update to the people that come to our conferences and that’s just fun.

Tom:                          I tend to agree with you. That’s Alltech research scientist, Anne Koontz. Thanks for talking with us, Dr. Koontz.

Dr. Koontz:                Thank you for having me.

Tom:                          And I'm Tom Martin. Thanks for listening.

David Butler, head of sustainability at Alltech, believes that being a sustainable business means taking care of people, the planet and your profit. He joined Ag Future to discuss Alltech’s vision of Working Together for a Planet of Plenty™, how companies can begin to take action toward sustainability and why he believes in a future where farmers are more profitable and productive because of sustainable agricultural practices.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with David Butler hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Tom:                        I’m Tom Martin, and with me is David Butler, head of sustainability at Alltech. The brainstorming behind the company’s sustainability commitments and goals takes shape and form in David's office, and it's his job to ensure that Alltech is continually finding innovative ways to be more sustainable in the more than 120 countries where the company operates. Welcome, David.

David:                      Thank you, Tom. It’s great to be here.

Tom:                       That term, “sustainability,” it's a big one. It gets a lot of use these days. So, in your context, how do you define it?

David:                      Yeah. Well, I look at it as a balance of social, environmental and economic factors. So, anything you're doing — whether you're running a business or running a country — you can't neglect any one of those things. You have to look at the whole picture. So, sometimes, it's described as people, planet and profit. And you have to make sure you're not neglecting any of those areas. So, if your company is making a lot of money but you're exploiting people and damaging the environment, then you won't be able to do that forever. And so, you have to think about the long term and not just the next quarter's revenue.

Tom:                        So, how does that definition of sustainability figure into Alltech’s Planet of Plenty mission?

David:                      Well, our sustainability work is an essential foundation for (our) modern business strategy. And it's about doing the right thing, reducing risk, maximizing opportunities and looking at the long term of the company. So, it's just good business sense, really. A Planet of Plenty is something bigger than that. That's our vision statement. It’s Dr. Mark Lyons’ vision for the future of the company and the future of the agriculture industry and, in fact, the world. And it's about building partnerships and trying to do our part to work toward that long-term vision.

Tom:                        Agriculture is often cited as a source of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. How is the industry working to reverse its contribution to increasingly frequent extreme weather events and the overall warming of the planet?

David:                      Yeah. Well, certainly, agriculture is a giant industry. You know, there are over 7 billion people on the planet that we have to feed, and agriculture also produces fiber and all sorts of other products. So, it's not very surprising that we have a big footprint, you know, with greenhouse gases. And the benefit of agriculture — or kind of the good side of things — is that we’re one of the very few industries that also has (the) opportunity to capture carbon and pull it out of the atmosphere and put it into soil. And so, there are a lot of people that are working on different ways to do that through regenerative agriculture methods. There are also a lot of people that are working on ways to reduce the emissions that we produce with machinery or the production of fertilizer and, in fact, emissions from livestock.

Tom:                        In 2019, Alltech committed to the United Nations Global Compact and to work toward nine Sustainable Development Goals. Tell us about those goals.

David:                      Yeah. Well, the goals themselves are pretty amazing, I think — just the fact that they exist, because, in 2015, the United Nations came together, and they launched something called the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. So, it's a blueprint for creating a better world by the year 2030. So, 192 countries joined together on this agreement, on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And they also agreed on how to measure progress toward them. I think that's amazing, that 192 countries could come together and do that. And the goals are really designed for countries to enact, but companies can help to advance those goals, and companies should focus on the goals that are most closely aligned with their core business. So, we looked at zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, climate change, life below water, life on land, and partnerships for the goals. And those are the nine that we chose to focus on.

Tom:                        Those are some big ones. Each one of those is pretty enormous.

David:                       Yes.

Tom:                        So, making such a commitment is quite a bold step that I would have to believe must be pretty difficult for a global company that's operating in an ever-changing world of different cultures and different economies and so forth. Why was it decided to make such a commitment?

David:                      Well, actually, Mark Lyons’ vision of a Planet of Plenty came first. We had already kind of mapped that out and decided, you know, “This is a new vision for the company going forward.” So, we started looking at actions that we could take to move that vision along and movements that we should join with other businesses. And the Sustainable Development Goals is one of the best ones around, because it provides a direction for companies and countries to work with each other, and, you know, it provides metrics for measuring progress. And the United Nations Global Compact is the organization that kind of helps companies come together and work toward the SDGs. So, we joined that.

Tom:                        If you think about this as a nine-burner stove, are you cooking on all nine burners? Are there some things that are kind of up on the front and others on the back burner?

David:                      Well, I don't know if anything's on the back burner, but yeah, they're not all on a full boil yet. We've got some work to do, of course. The ones where I see the most progress right now are the environmentally focused ones — and, of course, that's kind of closest to my heart. Climate change is such a big issue, and it's going to impact every single other Sustainable Development Goal, you know. If we can't address climate change, we're not going to succeed in any of these other areas. So, we committed to something called the Science-Based Targets Initiative, which means that a company will figure out what their greenhouse gas emissions are, and then they determine, scientifically, what they have to reduce them to by 2030 to properly address climate change. So, that means that it’s not just a PR exercise, where you wave a magic wand and say, “We're going to reduce our emissions by 10%” or whatever you think it should be. It’s based on calculations by the intergovernmental panel on climate change that say, “Your emissions are going to have to come down by X percent by 2030.”

Tom:                        What advice, David, do you have for companies that are interested in making this move to more sustainable practices and operations but may be feeling tentative about it?

David:                      Well, I think, whether you’re tentative or not, I think the best place to start — the most sensible, business-focused place to start — is by saving money. And if you can reduce your energy use, then you're also reducing your greenhouse gas footprint. And if you can reduce your water use, you're helping the environment. If you can reduce the amount of waste that you output, you're helping the environment. All of those things are very important, and they have to be done across the globe and by all companies. So, why not start there, and then, take a little time and track the amount of money that you save, and then, take that money and reinvest it in some other, more ambitious things? And you know, don't just randomly pick something that you think sounds nice. Look at what your company does — like, what are the areas where you can come up with a benefit that's really closely aligned to your core business, you know? And maybe you can get your customers or your suppliers involved, and you can build partnerships around that and find ways that you can make your business stronger and more resilient and even more profitable while you're making an improvement in the world.

Tom:                        For generations, it seemed as though sustainability on the one hand and profitability on the other hand were working at cross purposes, but do they have to be mutually exclusive?

David:                      Well, I think that perception is based on the fact that a lot of people don't know that sustainability has that economic aspect. So, if you’re running a company and you’re putting so many resources into environmentally beneficial programs or social programs that your company is not profitable, then, by definition, you're not sustainable. And if your business goes belly-up, then you're not going to be making much of an impact in the world, and all the people that depend on your company are going to get left behind. So, you really have to balance all three. So, by definition, they are not mutually exclusive. They depend on each other.

Tom:                        There’s a lot of concern about population growth in coming decades, and I’m wondering: Is it possible to feed a growing number of people without contributing further to climate change and other environmental issues? Can this be done sustainably?

David:                      Well, it can't be done doing the exact same thing that we've been doing over the past many decades, because while agriculture has gotten more and more efficient in many parts of the world, there are other parts of the world where we're still clearing forests for new agricultural land. And you know, if you look at the Amazon rainforest or other rainforests, those are actually really poor soils, once you cut the trees down. So, a farmer might go in and clear land in the Amazon rainforest only to have to clear more land again in two years, because the soils are depleted once they cut the trees.

                                So, we've got to look for ways to produce more food without, you know, damaging the environment further. And there are lots of innovative ways we can do that. I think one of the most important things is to look at all the waste we have in the system. We waste an amazing amount of food; it’s somewhere between 30–40%, depending on whether you're looking at the developed world or the developing world, and that's insane. I mean, all of the resources that went into all that food are wasted. And in addition to that, a lot of that food ends up in a landfill, where it turns into methane. And so, it's like you've shot yourself in both feet there. And we've really got to get a handle on the food waste. And we just waste a lot of organic matter in general, you know, into landfills — material that should be composted and put back into the soil, and instead, it's burned or it's put in a landfill or, maybe, it's dumped at sea.

Tom:                        You know, I had not heard that about the Amazon, about the condition of the soil on the forest floor. And meantime, we have experienced deforestation in this country, in places like Appalachia, due to surface mining and so forth that was on lands that were rich in soil, and we lost that as a result of the clear-cutting. A lot of irony at work here. But looking into the future, how do you see agriculture adapting to more sustainable practices?

David:                      Enthusiastically. And I might not have said that a year ago, but I really think the conversation has changed. You know, there are so many online conferences now where people are talking about real solutions to climate change — how can we start to put carbon into the soil, how can we change some of the practices that we have that are so dependent on too many chemicals, too much chemical fertilizer? You know, how can we protect our water? And I think we’re starting to approach a tipping point where people are realizing, “Hey, we can start to do things differently here. It doesn't have to be the way we've always done it for the last many decades.” And in fact, when you look at a lot of regenerative agriculture practices, they are actually very similar to practices that were done 100 years ago. But when you combine that with science and innovation and a really precise use of technology and modern automation and mechanization, then you can see do those things at scale.

Tom:                        Yeah. I guess the journey to this realization about climate change and about sustainability and so forth has been very halting over the years, but it seems as though — are you sensing that we're “getting it” now?

David:                      Yeah. I really do think we are. I mean, I’ve been on a lot of video conferences and calls with organizations like the USDA and Farm Bureau and pretty conservative legislators, and nobody is saying, “This is not happening.” They're saying, “What's the best way forward? How can we make the changes that we need to make, and how can we do it in a way that doesn't put it on the backs of the farmers?” The farmers can't afford to change everything they're doing out of their own pocket, you know. And the whole world is going to benefit when we start to put carbon back into the soil. So, the farmer should benefit from that as well.

Tom:                        What are some of the more important changes that you’ve been observing in recent times that have to do with that?

David:                      Well, I think there is a lot more talk now about complex multiple crop rotations, about cover crops keeping the soil covered year-round. Soil health is a big, big topic — much bigger than it used to be. And rotational grazing is also very, very important. So, that means that you're taking grazing animals — whether they’re cattle or sheep or even possibly bison — and you're moving them through small paddocks and moving them, maybe, as much as every day. And so, you mimic, kind of, the behavior of a natural herd that is chased by predators and is constantly moving through the environment. And that means that instead of turning them loose on 100 acres and just letting them mow that all year long, you're moving them around these small paddocks and (into) every paddock. It's a very long rest time, and the animals are bunched together, and they trample the grass into the ground, and they fertilize it. And that's how the soils in our grasslands were created, you know: in that symbiotic kind of relationship with herd animals. And those grasslands are some of the most rich — they were some of the most rich carbon sinks on the planet.

Tom:                        Wow. That's really fascinating, and the whole thing is. So, I have to believe that when you get up in the morning, you get ready to go to work, you're pretty excited about it. What excites you most about your work in agricultural sustainability?

David:                      Well, I think the thing that is most exciting to me is that agriculture does have this amazing opportunity to kind of help us rebalance the carbon cycle, pull all the excess carbon back out of the atmosphere. And in the process, we can make farmers more productive, more profitable; make the soil healthier; make our food healthier and our water healthier. And if I can have some little, small part of that, some area where I can help with that, then that's exciting to me.

Tom:                        That’s David Butler. He leads the sustainability team at Alltech. Thank you, David.

David:                      Thank you, Tom.

Donnie Smith may be retired from his former position as CEO of Tyson Foods, but he remains just as busy addressing food insecurity and empowering farmers and communities to create a more sustainable future. Listen as he shares the passion behind his work to foster entrepreneurship and education through the African Sustainable Agriculture Project, and the lessons he imparts on other business leaders who want to make a positive difference.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Donnie Smith hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Tom:                        I'm Tom Martin. And we're joined by Donnie Smith, former Tyson foods CEO. Under Smith's leadership, Tyson achieved four consecutive years of record profits, multiplying stock value 6 times in 7 years. In 2014, Smith and his wife, Terry, pledged $3.2 million to the University of Tennessee to establish the Donald and Terry Smith Endowed Chair for International Sustainable Agriculture. And then in 2018, the Smiths funded the Smith Center for International Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. So, we're going to focus on what's keeping Donnie Smith busy these days. And you'll soon hear why it’s a fitting conclusion to our purpose-driven business series. Greetings, Donnie Smith.

Donnie:                      Hey, thanks, Tom. It’s good to be with you today.

Tom:                        And talk about purpose driven! That would seem to describe your current work around sustainable agriculture in countries on the African continent. I've heard you speak about this, and it’s very clear that you have a genuine, deeply felt passion for this work. What drives that passion and what has drawn you to Africa?

Donnie:                    Honestly, Tom, I can't ever remember not being fascinated with the African continent. And then later, you know, in my career at Tyson, let’s focus in around about 2010 or so. I think God just laid a burden on my heart and said, you know, “I've trained you in culture, production, logistics, you name it. And you know, it’s time for you to take what you've learned through this— at that point 20 something year career at Tyson— and go employ that somewhere on the African continent.” And so, there's just been a passion in my heart for the African farmer and helping them to try to compete on the world stage and get past subsistence farming and actually make farming a commercial endeavor like it is here in the U.S. and in other developed worlds.

Tom:                        Africa accounts for a significant proportion of the world population growth that’s expected in the next 30 years or so. How significant and what are the implications for Africa and for the world for that matter?

Donnie:                    You know, I call what you're talking about the grand challenge between now and 2050. So, if you’re a young person just entering the workplace listening to this podcast, in your working career, we will add about 2 billion people in the population and about a billion of those will inhabit the continent of Africa. So, you know, the continent of Africa is somewhere around, you know, 4 billion today. So, the population there is gonna double. Now, the interesting part of the challenge is because incomes will improve and organization will happen and several other socioeconomic events, we’re gonna need to produce about twice as much food as we’re producing today while restoring the resource used to make that food. I've heard several scientists estimate that we're using about 1.2 to 1.3 planet’s worth of resources to produce a planet’s worth of food. And hey, by the way, we’re still leaving about 700 or 800 million people behind because they're food insecure. So, somehow over the next 30 years, we gotta double food production and we've got to restore the planet to where we're only using 1 planet’s worth of resources to make that planet’s worth of food. And for me, the most concerning part is half of the population growth is going to happen only at African continent where we find a large portion of stunted children, you know, food insecure people, very, very low per capita incomes as compared to other countries in the world. So, that's a huge challenge for us and one that I'm dedicating the rest of my life to try to have some impact in.

Tom:                        What are some things that the developed world takes for granted that are just not present or available in many African countries?

Donnie:                    You know, and maybe my answer is gonna be more to scale, but there’s four things that immediately jump into my mind. Number one, a transportation infrastructure. You know, we take it for granted that you got trucks traveling on the interstate highways at 70 miles an hour carrying an 80,000 pounds plus. You know, railroad infrastructure, highways, bridges, all that stuff.

                                 And then when you get to Africa and you try to get around, it’s just incredibly slow and incredibly frustrating. The electrical grid and the energy infrastructure, you know, it’s not that it’s nonexistent. But you know, we’re in a developed world. We never worry about it. When we flip on the switch, there’s like 99.9% chance the lights are gonna come on. Yeah. It’s a 50/50 proposition in a lot of African countries. Pretty much everybody in America is powered. You know, in a lot of African countries, maybe half of their population is actually powered these days and the energy grid is just so unreliable. We never make it in Rwanda for a week, generally speaking for a day without power grid failing on us.

Tom:                       Oh, wow.

Donnie:                     And you know, access to capital, access to finance, you know, to finance the reoccurring costs, you know, those we take for granted here every day. And it is a very difficult proposition to find reasonably priced capital and certainly reasonably priced financing on the continent.

Tom:                        I think you've just touched on this a little bit, but I want to ask you. I know you began working in Rwanda in 2012. Is that right?

Donnie:                    Correct. Yeah.

Tom:                        Okay. Tell us about the conditions that you encountered when you began working there and what kind of work you've been doing in Rwanda?

Donnie:                    So, our work in Rwanda is inside of our foundation. So, African Sustainable Agriculture Project is a foundation that our family established about 2012. And so, the work we do is primarily focused on the poultry value chain, but not exclusively. You know, what we try to do ASAP— we believe the only sustainable form of agriculture is commerce. Right? If you can't make a business out of it and make a living doing it, then it's constantly going to require a gift from somebody. And you know, I don’t know how many billions or maybe even trillions of dollars have been given to the African continent over the last 30 or 40 years, but I can tell you that many of the important metrics haven't moved much. So, my belief is that donations aren't the answer. What Africa needs is direct foreign investment. It needs economic development. It needs capacity building, skills training, that sort of thing. And that’s what ASAP is all about. You know, our goal is to build capacity among African farmers, teaching them the skills they need, the leadership they need, financial skills they need, enabling them where we can in a very low cost way to be able to begin an enterprise, largely in our case a poultry enterprise. So, in Rwanda today, we have a feed mill. We actually opened the first commercial feed mill in the nation of Rwanda in 2014. Now, think about that. Before 2014, there was not a commercial feed mill operating in the country. Today, there’s 4-5. I mean that’s 7 years ago. Right? It's not that long ago.

Tom:                        Right.

Donnie:                    We also have a table egg farm producing table eggs. And then we are in the beginning processes of— We did a project with University of Tennessee and USAID to pilot whether or not we could establish a broiler business. And the pilot has ended and we’re now in the beginning processes of standing up a broiler business to produce broiler meat. So, that’s our work in Rwanda. Again, that’s all inside a nonprofit. Now, let me say this. Each of those three businesses that I mentioned is a registered for profit Rwandan business, keeping to our principles at ASAP that you have to have a sustainable profitable business to really say that you're doing sustainable agriculture. One of the problems we have in poultry is the high price of corn and soybeans, which make up about 70% of the cost of the feed or maybe more, which is about 70% of the cost to produce a chicken. And so, understanding that, I'm involved in a farm services business that is working on a seed reproduction.

                                You know, finding more efficient ways to do sustainable conservation agriculture at scale, which we think is a key to being able to get the input prices low enough to be able to grow animal sourced foods, chickens, you know, you name it, at a price that’s affordable for a large portion of the population like we enjoy here in America today. So, besides the philanthropic work though, I'm also commercially involved. Tyson Foods own the chicken breed called Vantress. And Cobb’s largest distributor on the African continent and their oldest distributor was the Irvine family out of Zimbabwe. And I have partnered with the Irvine family to help grow that business outside of Zimbabwe in sub-Saharan Africa. We’re basically a day old chicken feed supplier, which is critical to having a poultry infrastructure that’s viable on the African continent. So, you know, I’m not only philanthropically involved. I’m also commercially involved. Again, it goes back to my commitment. I will spend the rest of my life trying to produce affordable food on that continent.

Tom:                         I have to say that African Sustainable Agriculture Project works out to be a great acronym, doesn't it? ASAP.

Donnie:                    It does. ASAP. We gotta get this done as soon as possible.

Tom:                        Appropriate and clever there. So, what sorts of skills were needed when you arrived there that weren’t there and how have you helped people acquire them?

Donnie:                    So, poultry before we arrived, there was a general idea or mindset that you could not raise modern genetics successfully on the African continent. You know, too much disease. You needed to have the ancient breeds and what I would call yard birds or yard chickens. You know, you had to use those. And you know, learning what I learned about genetic potential and all of that during my Tyson days, I just felt in my heart that wasn’t true. I mean there are certain principles that need to be employed. You need to meet the chicken’s needs. Feed, water, safety, health, biosecurity, those sorts of things. And so, I just felt like if we could meet those needs for the bird, we’d be successful. And sure enough, over the 3-year pilot project with USAID and University of Tennessee, we have some of our African growers who are growing 100 chickens at a time at 7,000 feet of altitude in communities you’ve never heard of with no electricity, etc., that have performance that rivals a chicken grower in the U.S. So, it can certainly be done. So, helping African farmers understand that the poultry rearing skills has been part of it— but it's also important for the people that work in our companies— I found a deficit in problem solving and critical thinking skills. There's just this underlying tone that “Okay. Well, that broke. That won't work.” Well, no. “Okay. It broke. Let’s fix it.” “I do not have any tools to fix.” “Sure you do. There’s something around here we can use to fix that.” And so, we have spent a good bit of time helping the folks that work for us understand that things are gonna happen. But when they happen, that's when it takes our ingenuity to figure out an answer to whatever problem we're facing and to do fairly quickly. So, working with our team on— and By the way, our grower’s, our farmer’s, you know, critical thinking and problem solving skills has been very important. Of course, you know, if you’ve got an American owner, we've helped them with English. And that's an important skill because English is kind of a universal language around the world and they are taught English in the school system, but they don't get to use it a lot. And you know, some of the finer points of using the English language— So, we do English training as well. That's just a small sample. But you know, one of the main things that I think is beyond technical skills is we're trying to help develop leadership skills. You know, how do you get the most out of people? How do you problem solve and create opportunities for people?

                                 How do you get a group of people to stay engaged and to do the right thing at the right time? Timeliness is a huge issue on the continent. And so, we learned some lessons from our friends at Foundation for Farming and they have a system that they use and you do things on time at standard and with joy without waste. And so, if you take those 4 principles and you get things done on time, you get things done efficiently, you do ‘em at a high quality, at standard and then with joy, that is an amazing tool set to use to help a group of people understand how to influence people beyond their direct span of control.

Tom:                        That is a really tough and ingrained trait to transform, isn't it, to go from—

Donnie:                    It is.

Tom:                        …”can’t do” to “can do.” How do you persuade or influence people who've been under that kind of mindset for generations to change?

Donnie:                    Yeah. Well, I learned from some early mistakes. I was way too quick to bail my team out and just send more money. And over the last year and a half, I figured out that my heart to help was becoming an enabler of bad behavior. You know, this will sound a little rough, but the end result is really important. And it’s practically a parenting skill. You know, when our children are doing something that we don't want them to do, we correct them, and we instruct them in the right way to do it. And you know, there are certain consequences if they persist in bad behavior. Right? And so, over the last year and a half, the change that we've made is— I've said “Look, guys, I have provided you with ample capital to be successful. You guys have made some bad decisions or, you know, let things drop and then the country manager has to figure out how to fix these things. We’re gonna change that. And you're gonna run— You are a registered Rwandan business and you're gonna run like a registered Rwandan business. And if you run out of money, then you're going to fold up shop and be bankrupt.” You know, that sounds harsh and rough, but let me tell you what they did. In our feed operation, they cut their cost by 50%.

Tom:                       Wow.

Donnie:                    Their operating cost. Because they knew if they didn't, they weren’t gonna have jobs. And now, our feed mill is profitable, our egg farm is profitable. We have a light at the end of the tunnel so that our little broiler business is gonna be profitable. And it all came when I quit enabling bad behavior. And so, you know, creating an atmosphere of reality where we really are a business— And you know, as a feed manufacturer for example, you know lots of people that go out of business because they don’t run good operations. Well, you could join them if you don’t change. Now, you know, for you, we have access to expertise at Tyson. You have access to expertise to a Fortune 100 CEO. You have every resource that anybody in an agricultural business in Rwanda would want that you can tap into. But you know what? It’s your business and you have to run it. And I tell you, you know, I love ‘em, but I was hurting them by not providing that commercial entrepreneurial environment where you have to make it or go do something else. And it has been a significant change in the culture. You know, communication was terrible. There was a passive communication style where this is broke, but I’m not gonna say anything about it. But if they asked me about it, I’ll tell ‘em it’s broke. Well, that’s not the way to run a business. You know, if something breaks, you tell everybody. I mean “How can we fix this? I need your help.

                                This has to be fixed, etc. etc.” And our team has made the junk from the jump from this passive and communicative “I’m just here to earn a buck” to “No, I own this business. And in order for us to be successful, I have to communicate with my team members and I have to be part of the solution, not just a noticer of problems.” And I tell you, it is so fulfilling to see them be successful. And you know what? They know they’ve changed and they know that the cultural change has been a part and a big part of their switch to profitability, which gives them some financial security for the future. It’s been awesome.

Tom:                        It sounds to me, Donnie, as though what you have brought to the people of Rwanda, those that you’ve worked with, is a larger sense of purpose than just earning a buck.

Donnie:                    Oh, definitely. Yeah. You know, we talk all the time about— Let’s take our little broiler business. So, what I do, ASAP provides basically a zero interest loan for about 3 years to build the coop and give them equipment. And then every batch of chicken, they pay back roughly 1/15th of the cost of that coop. But after they buy it, it's theirs. And you know, they have a capital investment on their farm that frankly could be leveraged. Right? And they could get a loan based on that, etc. And so, it provides them kind of a network opportunity that they didn't have before. But then what has happened is— The growers we work with are desperately poor. Our average household is about five. Our average household income is about $0.85 a day. Now, let that sink in. $0.85 a day household income for a family of five. These are desperately poor people. Now, when we bring chickens to ‘em, then they are able to double and sometimes triple, in a few occasions quadruple, their income. And you go “Okay. Well, great. They went from 85 to above 90.” Woah, woah, woah, woah. Yeah, that’s true financially and factually, but what if somebody doubled your income? Right? That's a big deal. And you know, what they do is— and we help ‘em a little bit, but they get this instinctively. The first thing they do is pay school fees and get their kids in school. The second thing they do is they buy their insurance. And the third thing they do is they always start another source of income. Now, it may be going in with somebody or a couple of other people and buying a dairy cow and just praying every day that every calf she has is female, right, or buying a few goats and starting goat farming or getting a sewing machine and just sitting on their front stoop and sewing clothes for people in the neighborhood. But they use the capital that they earned through poultry production to earn more money and earn more income, which is just phenomenal. And so, you know, I’m kind of going back to your question. I say that. I say this. You know, what we’re doing is in essence providing economic development through agriculture and that can change the country, and we hope it does. Right? And that’s our whole approach. You know, there's an old saying, “You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” You know, what we’re trying to do is teach them how to make money using agriculture as an income source.

Tom:                        Talk to us about how this work and these projects have empowered women in Rwanda.

Donnie:                    You know, it’s great. So, my managing director, I call her the CEO of everything we do in Rwanda, she just turned 30. She's a graduate from the University of Arkansas here locally. Phenomenal. Katie's wonderful. So, let’s call her the CEO. The COO is Rita Nchuti. I think she’s 30. Maybe 31. You know, Katie had experience in environmental and poultry science at the University of Arkansas. Rita was fortunate enough to get an education in the U.S. and then she had a couple of internships at Tyson to get exposed to the poultry business.

                                 And honestly, Tom, you know, over the last 7 years or so, we tripped over every stump in the field, you know. We’ve learned all our lessons the hard way. But these two ladies, you know, they’ve turned around a business that was in a very difficult spot and then probably half of our chicken growers are females, most of which are single parent females. You know, raising chickens and doubling their income is giving them an opportunity that would be hard to come by any other way. And you know, a lot of the agricultural workforce in Rwanda are ladies. And we feel awesome about giving an opportunity to create a source of income that really doesn’t take time away from other things that they could do. You know, the poultry coop takes a few hours, but it’s kinda spread through the day. And so, if they have other things to do whether it's, you know, make clothes or work in the fields or whatever it may be, they can do that and it's not cannibalized by poultry production. It's all incremental income. We have seen so many testimonies of how sometimes young African women and certainly families that have been impacted in a significant way— And there’s kind of two components there. The other is the economic development part. Their income doubled or tripled and now they've created, you know, other income strange that have them in a better spot and will continue on, but there's also— I don't know what it is. It’s fulfillment. It’s pride in knowing that I have learned to do something. Yeah, I got some help, but I’ve learned to do something that I can support my family with for the rest of my life and maybe the rest of their life. And I have a skill that not many people in my country have. And I have opportunities that not many people in my country have. So, there’s a fulfillment— I don't know— pride, whatever that is that I can see the look in people’s eyes that “Man, this is making a difference.” And by the way, you know, COVID has been very difficult on us over the last year. You know, a lot of the poultry sector was supported by restaurants and hotels. Of course, travel has been severely constrained and restaurant and hotel businesses have just been decimated. And so, you know, our biggest need today is pretty much demand. Right? And it’s gonna be a while. You know, some of these countries it’s gonna take a while to recover from such a severe economic impact. But you know, we’re committed. You know, I think that we have found ways where we can produce economic development in a way that also helps nutrition, you know, animal source, food, eggs, chickens, whatever. So important to pregnant and lactating women and to preschool children, that sort of thing. So, when you combine all that, it’s hard for me. It’s hard for me to think of a better way to be spending my time.

Tom:                        Let’s turn to your experience in business leadership and I’d like to pick your brains if I may and ask you to share some insights about this. What makes your shortlist of dos and don’ts for a business leader?

Donnie:                    That’s a great question. So, here’s what I’m gonna do. If you would go out and Google Donnie Smith servant leadership, there will be a few 30-35 minute podcast, or YouTube videos, or whatever where I talk about the way I think about leadership and particularly servant leadership. And I would just encourage your listeners to go do that and we talk about what's in the head, the heart, and the hands or what are the habits of servant leaders that are really impactful leaders. But you know, a couple things that I would maybe highlight here today, is it’s really about them. It's not about you.

                                You know, God gives us the opportunity to impact other people and to be involved in their lives. Folks spend about, what, a third of their life in the workplace. And you know, as leaders, we're providing the environment in which most people spend most of their working life. That’s a big deal. That’s a huge responsibility. And so, it's incumbent on us to make that environment engaging, encouraging, to develop the people and give them— I would call that empowering. You know, giving them the skills that they need to be able to do everything that they have the potential to do. And there's a lot that goes into doing that and that’s a little about what I try to crack open in that video. So, you know, gosh, I could go on for hours about, you know, what I think about leadership, and things you ought to do, and things you ought not to do, but that’s probably the most efficient use of our time today.

Tom:                        Donnie, you could be comfortably retired, digging your toes into some nice, warm, sandy beach someplace. What drives you to instead put your all into this work?

Donnie:                    Yeah. That's a good question. You know, I was actually talking to a fellow over the weekend that is basically doing what you said. I mean he’s fishing, and hunting, and hanging out. You know, Tom, I don't really look at what I'm doing as retired. I'm looking at it as reloading. You know, I don’t see any biblical evidence that God is through with us when we quit earning a paycheck from a particular company. I think God has a purpose for my life and I think a significant part of that purpose has revolved around, you know, what I can do to take the skills and the lessons I've learned through working a lifetime anyway in the poultry industry and then go deposit that in a place that desperately needs that to be able to be able to better. And so, yeah, you know, I don’t even refer to myself as retired. I'm just doing another work and I am passionate about making a difference in the lives of people who I get the opportunity to influence whether that's in leadership development or whether that's in economic development, agricultural work. So, I don't know. Maybe that's a different way to look at it, but I tell you what. It is super fulfilling when you're talking to— So, here’s a quick conversation. So, I talked to one of our young growers. And I asked her. I said, “So, you know, you made 40,000 francs a month. What did you do with the money?” She said, “Well, the 7 or 8 years that we have been married, we have saved up about that much money. And so, we put that money—” So, think about it. In 6 weeks, they had earned as much money as they had saved in 6 or 8 years. Okay? So, let that sink in for a second. And then what they did is they went and bought a cow. Pregnant cow. And they took care of the cow, got her to calf. Thank God it was a female calf. And so, what they did is they took that to her sister. And her sister takes care of the calf. They bring the cow back to their house. Now, they’ve got milk. The country will go out and artificially inseminate it themselves. So, you know, now they got another pregnant cow and praying every day that it’s a female so they can continue to build their little herd. And they've improved their nutritional outcomes. You know, they've improved their economic outcomes. And it’s just so rewarding to know that Frozene— And you know, we don’t even talk the same language. But Frozene and her family will never be the same because God told me to take my chicken skills to Africa. Tom, that’s pretty cool. That's a great way to spend your life.

Tom:                        I would say so. Well, you know, now that you have experienced it for a while, what’s your counsel to others who are getting close to retirement? I mean we have this kind of mindset, don't we, where we hit a certain age and boom! You retire.. But it sounds like we're knocking down those walls quite a bit these days. Wouldn’t you agree?

Donnie:                    Boy , I sure hope so. You know, God and your company or companies over time Tom, have invested, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars in teaching you skills, you know, whether leadership skills or particular skills.

                                 And I just think— For everybody listening, look, think about two things. Think about, number one, what are you good at and what do you like to do? What are you skilled at? What do you enjoy doing? And then also then think about who in the world can benefit from that. And you know, there’s a verse and scripture that says, “To whom much is given, much is required.” And we certainly won the genetic lottery being born in America or wherever your listeners are. Right? I mean we are blessed. So, we have been given much. And I think, you know, from us, it requires something. And so, you know, we often get bogged down when we ask ourselves the question. Well, yeah, but what difference can one person make? Well, let’s reframe that question and let's say, “Okay, in what one person’s life can I make a difference?” And if you can, then you should. And I just hope that we don't waste the twilight, whatever you wanna call it, years of our lives fishing and hanging out on the beach. Hey, look, there is nothing wrong with going fishing. I love to fish. I live on a lake. I love lake life. You know, I love going to beach. I don't want you to feel guilty when you go and enjoy the life that you earned from those years of toil and like not at all. That’s a blessing and you should enjoy it. But, man, don’t make it all about that. Think about what you can do. You know, maybe you can’t change the world, but I’d guarantee you. You can change somebody's life. And by the way, you don't have to go to Africa to do it like I do. You go across town, or down the street, or somewhere, but there's somebody on this planet that can benefit from you, your heart, and your resources, and what you've been trying to do. And I just don't want you to waste that because, you know, man, the world needs folks that will jump in with both feet and say, “I don't know how much difference I could make, but I'm gonna make a difference to somebody. So, you all move over and let me in.”

Tom:                        That’s Donnie Smith, former Tyson Foods CEO and supposedly retired. But actually, he is busy as ever making good things happen for people and economies in Africa. Thanks so much, Donnie. We appreciate it.

Donnie:                    Thanks a lot. I’ve enjoyed it.

Tom:                        And that concludes our series on purpose-driven business. I'm Tom Martin.

In this episode of Ag Future we revisit a conversation that Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech, had with Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, as a part of the Alltech ONE Ideas Conference. Rebecca explores how to reimagine capitalism so that it is not only an engine of prosperity but also a system that is in harmony with environmental realities, the fight for social justice and the demands of truly democratic institutions. For more information and to register for ONE 2021, visit one.alltech.com.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Rebecca Henderson. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Dr. Lyons:    Hello. My name is Dr. Mark Lyons and I'm the president and CEO of Alltech. Welcome to the ONE Virtual Experience. You're joining more than 24,000 changemakers from 118 countries for an exploration of ideas that could transform our businesses, our lives, and the future of our planet. The name ONE comes from our belief that just one idea, one person, can change everything. In this edition, we'll be exploring the ideas, the ideas of four business thinkers and best-selling authors, beginning with Rebecca Henderson. I believe you'll find this conversation both challenging and fascinating.

                        She says the world is on fire and climate change is to blame. Is it possible that capitalism is the solution to our sustainability crisis? An economist, scholar, and professor at Harvard University, Rebecca believes that we need to bring business back into balance with the planet. Her latest book, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, sees business as central to providing solutions and hope to a planet in peril. A leading authority in organizational and strategic change for more than 30 years, today, her work focuses on purpose-driven capitalism and the role that business leaders can play in reimagining our current system. Rebecca Henderson, thank you so much for being with us.

Rebecca:       Mark, it's my pleasure. Please do call me Rebecca. Thank you for having me here.

Dr. Lyons:    Okay. We'll remember that from here on out. Well, within Alltech, we believe that climate change is not only a responsibility for companies to tackle, but it's also a tremendous opportunity. For me, this really started as a young child and carried through into university and then into my career. For you, it also seems that it was something that began and has an origin, as you've described in the book, in your early life but accelerated through conversations you had with your brother. Perhaps you could share with us a personal perspective of how this new mission began for you.

Rebecca:       Sure. As you suggest, I've always been engaged with what we might call nature. I am an out-and-out tree lover. I spent a large fraction of my adolescence lying on the great lower limb of a massive copper beech, looking up at the sky through its branches, and just reveling in feeling safe, connected, and wonderfully happy. Trees for me have always been about the future and about the past, these hundred-year-old beings that have just endured for so many millions of years. For most of my professional career though, I didn't really put the trees in my office as it were. I became a professor at MIT and a specialist in technology, strategy, and organizational change. I was the Eastman Kodak Professor of Management and that's what I did. Coincidentally, I've worked with very large firms like Kodak or Nokia who were facing major shifts in their industry, trying to help them become more innovative and more responsive and more productive.

                        My love of trees, which became a passion for hiking, camping, and kayaking, was really something apart, not something I really connected to my work at all. That changed about 15 years ago when I happen to see Vice President Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. My brother had been sending me scientific papers about climate change -- he's a freelance environmental journalist -- so I sort of knew the basic facts, but when I saw Gore's movie, I was like, oh my God. For some reason, that movie really grabbed me, made me really realize the urgency. My first thought was I should just quit. I thought, well, here I am oiling the wheels of corporate capitalism. What has that got to do with heading off this existential threat? Of course, one of the things I thought about was the threat to the trees because climate change is killing the forests of the world.

                        I thought, well, what can I do? I went to my friends who work in activist organizations and for NGOs and I said I want to do something. What should I do? How can I make a difference? They said, "You should stay at MIT and teach business. That business has an enormously important role to play in heading off the threat of climate change and you're in the right place at the right time," so I essentially completely reoriented my career. I started teaching a course in sustainability in business. It was the first course at MIT on that topic. And then ten years ago, I moved to Harvard to help found the Business & Environment Initiative at HBS.

                        I started teaching a course called Reimagining Capitalism: Business and the Big Problems, which was essentially how can business help, what can business do. If solving climate change requires transforming, let's see. Power generation, power distribution, transportation, all of agriculture, infrastructure, what can businesses do? Then even beyond that, given that we need a systemic change, I think, to address this kind of major problem, what role can businesses play in that? That's been what I've been eating and drinking for the last 15 years. It's been fabulous. I've learned a lot, met so many amazing people. I feel incredibly grateful.

Dr. Lyons:    That's fantastic. It does seem like a wonderful way to take that expertise, that knowledge around innovation, around business and development of business, and move into a very much directional place that's much more purposeful. You feel that businesses can play this important, significant role in society, solving major issues such as climate change. I think it's also something that we believe in. We've launched a program last year called Working Together for Planet of Plenty and it's really much more around collaboration, not just our own company, but really working across the globe as an agri-food industry.

                        Companies, I think we all struggle with how do we move forward with these types of initiatives. Maybe you could give us a sense of some of the elements that hold us back from change or maybe examples of companies who have been able to make these changes and how they went about that.

Rebecca:       Let me start with an example of someone who was really able to drive change and then we can back into why that's so hard in general or why it's often so hard. My favorite example at the moment -- because there are so many -- is of my friend, Erik Osmundsen, who left a cushy job in private equity to become the CEO of a garbage company. This was a slightly unusual career move, but Erik had decided he really wanted to make a difference. He thought that the waste business really gave him an opportunity to begin to shift things on a global scale.

                        Historically, waste, as I'm sure you know, has been a lot about just sticking garbage in holes in the ground and covering over those holes. But what Erik saw, and this is ten years ago now, was that waste could be a major source of raw materials. That if we could really move to a circular economy in which nearly everything was reused, that would not only reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases by millions of tons, which it would, but also help address the problem of mining and digging out primary materials because if you can pull the copper and the steel from a car rather than having to dig it out of the ground, that's a much lower environmental footprint.

                        So he went into the business with this kind of rosy-eyed, "I'm going to save the world. Hey, this is cool" kind of manifestation and I think that's characteristic of many of the people I know in this area. They really have a passion to make a difference. Then he started riding along with the garbage trucks and he found that the industry was massively corrupt. A lot of garbage was being disposed of illegally. People are even throwing toxic chemicals into the fields of Oslo. The regulations were poorly enforced and the fines for violation were tiny. He thought of quitting because how do you turn around a business that's so thoroughly corrupt?

                        He decided to go public. As soon as he did that, a number of interesting things happened. The first was that most of his senior team thought he was crazy. Here was Erik going on television and saying the waste industry in Norway is corrupt. "I'm going to turn it around. I'm going to charge the prices that are necessary to run a clean business." The people in his firm were like, "Erik, calm down. Get another cup of coffee." Half of his senior team quit, so did many of his customers.

                        This is the amazing thing that I've seen happen in firm after firm. The people that were left said, "We really like this. We want to be part of something that's larger than ourselves" and they started innovating like crazy. It turned out there were all kinds of legal ways to cut costs and that recycling was not a fantastic business. Erik will never be a hugely rich man, but a good business. In fact, when you put it out there, customers are willing to pay a little bit more.

                        He also was able to persuade several of his competitors to join him. We'll come back to this question of partnerships, but of course, if more firms in the industry agree to do the right thing, everything gets easier because you don't have bottom feeders pushing prices and practices to the bottom. His firm is now one of the largest and most successful recycling companies in Scandinavia.

                        What I like about this story is for me, it has many of the elements. It's got the heroic leader, but Erik would be the first to tell you it wasn't about him. It was about the team. It was about the fact that everyone in the organization got so excited about the mission he was laying out. He found that as a garbage company, he could hire almost anyone he wanted. He became one of the most desirable firms to work for in Scandinavia and they got fantastic people. It's about innovation and using innovation to build a business model that transforms the industry and puts the company in a very strong position.

                        Once you started to really invest in recycling, it turned out that there was a very significant economy of scale both in recycling the waste itself and in attracting customers in becoming a supplier of raw material, in learning how to operate that business. That gave his company, Norsk Gjenvinning, a significant competitive advantage, so translating that passionate engagement into a competitive advantage. And last but not least, that wasn't enough. He had to bring his competitors with him. He had to bring the regulators with him. So it's about transforming the whole ecosystem if we're really going to build a circular economy. I love that story because Erik is amazing. And as I say, he will be the first person to say, "Rebecca, I'm not the hero. It was the people on the ground. Everybody should be doing this." I think the exciting thing is so many people are.

Dr. Lyons:    You do need, it seems like, that person at the top completely convicted and committed, but also somebody with confidence, I think, to say this is the mission we're on. It's amazing to hear there are other benefits to the talent that you're able to attract. The thing that really strikes me is that collaborative aspect and bringing your competitors in. I wonder if you could help -- because that's something that I think we all maybe feel within our own organization we could speak with our colleagues, particularly this year, build up that momentum to move forward with a purposeful mission, but how do we share that with others outside of our organization?

Rebecca:       Two things seem to be important. The first is having that burning desire to really make change. That, I think, is the fire that gives both individuals and firms the vision to see that things could change and the courage to push in that direction. The other -- and this is just the same as inside every individual organization -- is you have to have a business case. There has to be a business case. Merely jumping up and down and giving speeches is not going to get us anywhere. I ran the Strategy Group at MIT. I've 25 years corporate boards experience. There's got to be a business case.

                        The good news, I think, is that as we get more and more firms committed to cleaning up their own operations to thinking more deeply about their own employees and their own workforce, it's becoming clear to many firms that many of these problems, you can't solve on your own. The experience Erik had, which is, wait, if half my competitors are still acting illegally and throwing the stuff away and charging artificially low prices, that's super hard to compete with, so it has to be a cooperative action. So what is the business case? It differs industry by industry.

                        If we take for example, the case of Unilever that was a pioneer in sustainable palm oil, that was adding 18% to 20% to the cost of one of their largest commodity purchases and they couldn't afford to do it alone. They just could not. So what was the business case? The business case is if we continue to use conventionally grown palm oil, our brands will continue to be vulnerable. So Unilever was being targeted by Greenpeace, people dressed in gorilla suits on the headquarters. Nestle was being targeted. There was a shocking ad that was put out by one of the NGOs showing a man biting into a KitKat and instead of having the candy in his mouth, he had two bloody orangutan fingers. No one likes that kind of publicity. It's just not good, so there was protecting the brand. But there was also, I think, protecting the long-term viability of the supply chain.

                        These are both collective problems. Now, in that case, Unilever was able to work with other consumer goods companies and persuade 67% of the world's traded palm oil to commit to sustainability, which was an incredible step forward. You saw similar dynamics, as I know you know, in beef and soy in Brazil, but it's having a clear business case as well as that passion. Let me tell you just one story about a meeting I facilitated amongst chief sustainability officers across a wide range of firms. We were talking about collaboration and it was very nitty-gritty. What is the business model? How do we audit this? How do we move it forward? Then there was a moment in the meeting where one of the participants said, "But let's remember why we're doing this. We have to stop global warming. We have to save the world." It was that wonderful moving back and forth from really being emotionally and individually committed to making this work with doing the hard work of putting the agreement in place and making sure the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed, it's that combination which it seems to me as essential. Of course, it's why I love being an academic. It's easy for me to say. Doing it is really hard, but I think we're seeing more and more examples of people doing this on the ground and doing it very successfully.

Dr. Lyons:    Well, I think one of the interesting things of your role is that you're able to interact with these big corporations, but also small startups. I was wondering, as we reimagine capitalism, entrepreneurialism whether it's within large organizations or it is small startups is going to play a key role, for those two groups, is there any message you might have for those incumbents, but also maybe for those plucky startups that are looking to disrupt?

Rebecca:       Oh, I'm a huge fan of the startups. Twenty years studying innovation in large firms taught me that startups cause change. Nothing moves a large organization like a small firm introducing something new and showing there's a different way. So if I think about what's really going to move us forward, I'd put my money on the entrepreneurs in so many ways. What would I say? I'm not sure what I would say that doesn't sound like a cliché. Good luck. This is the way forward. You have no idea how important you are. There will be setbacks, but you will overcome them. We're in a moment, I think, of immense dislocation and transformation. People are starting to become so much more aware of the risks we're running in in taking the planet for granted, and the stability of the atmosphere and the stability of the climate for granted.

                        I think there are all kinds of openings. So I think the other thing I would say is you are at the leading edge of change. You are surfing a massive structural transformation, which I think is going to take us to an entirely clean economy in the next 20 to 30 years, so be of good cheer.

Dr. Lyons:    That's a great message to have. Through this year, I think so many of us, we normally would be traveling around the world and perhaps connecting with friends, with customers in so many different ways. This year for me has been a good bit different, but it has given us the opportunity to probably talk to more people than ever. We're speaking to our colleagues, our customers all around the world, and I would say three major themes have come out. I just wanted to ask you if these are themes that you also have seen or if you're seeing something different. These are three that we felt already existed, but have been accelerating.

                        The first one was trust. We've seen a real need particularly in such a fragmented chain such as agri-food for trust. The second has been health. Of course, we're all concerned about our personal health, our family's health through this year, and we're probably more aware of good and bad health. The last, of course, is climate change. This was something that our industry was cognizant of, but we've really seen accelerated an incredible level. We've seen, of course, legislation coming through in Europe with the Green Deal. I just was wondering if you had any thoughts on those three themes or maybe you're seeing something else that has been accelerating through 2020.

Rebecca:       Mark, I wish we were somewhere where we could slip out for a drink afterwards and you could tell me more of what you're hearing. Trust, health, and climate, do I hear those? Yes, I do.

                        The one that I also hear that you haven't mentioned is inclusion. I think there's a really heightened awareness of how many people feel excluded from the economic mainstream and how it is overwhelmingly communities of color that are suffering from COVID, that have the jobs that aren't paying or that are being laid off. That's the fourth theme, I would add.

                        I think health is not surprising. Climate is, I hope, not surprising and I'm so excited to hear that you're hearing that widely. Trust is super, super interesting. My scholarly research is all about trust. Economists call it building relational contracts, which means that you have relationships both within the firm and between firms that are contracts in the sense that I'm saying I'll do this if you do that, but they're relational. They can't be enforced in court. It's basically about trust. My research and that of a bunch of people working in this space suggests that high levels of trust are really closely correlated with abilities to innovate because it's much easier to take risks and try new things if you trust your counterparty. It's associated with agility so you can react to shocks. You don't have to go back to the letter of the contract, but instead can say, well, let's both do the right thing.

                        It's correlated with distributed power. There's been this research in the business schools forever and ever that suggests if you can give more power to people on the ground and they have a strong sense of strategic direction that the firm will be more resilient and more responsive and more innovative. I think COVID has really -- I know several managers who said, "Oh my God, everyone was suddenly at home and I had to trust them. I couldn't control them in the same way." But what trust does is really empower people through the organization and in the supply chain. That gives you the ability to do so many more things than if you're always watching the quarterly number, looking over your shoulder, doing what's been done before. I'm so excited that that should be the first thing you said. That's what people raised. They raised trust.

                        Just to get a little bit meta for 30 seconds, we've sort of been running our whole society -- major generalization here -- as if all that mattered was us and right now and getting more stuff. I think one of the things this year that's really raised for a lot of people is it's about the longer term. It's about the community. It's about connection. The folks at McKinsey are running around, talking about how CEOs are switching from just doing to also doing and being. Are you being, Mark? Does that ring any bells with you? Are you seeing that switch, that there's more interest in slowing down, empathic connection, and thinking about the broader picture?

Dr. Lyons:    Absolutely. I think that's a huge theme and something that I think through this year, those individuals, those companies who have been able to show that empathy and really understand the situation that their colleagues were dealing with, perhaps that their customers or their suppliers were dealing with, I think that's going to be something. We have been forced sometimes to show more of who we are as individuals and I think that's actually been a great maybe silver lining. There've been a few potentially silver linings of this year, and maybe that is one.

                        I think to build on that, we've talked about trust as a new currency. We've thought about that in the sense that this is something that really is going to be a major element. But when we look at government, we can see that there's been a loss of trust pretty much globally. At least it seems in the West, as we call it, a loss of trust in government. You talk about this relationship between government, the public and private sector being so important, but how can companies balance in that situation? If you have poor governance, how can you move ahead with some of these types of initiatives as a private sector company?

Rebecca:       I'm seeing a lot of firms work that issue locally in particular regions.

                        For example, I'm familiar with a group of business people in Orange County, California where they've come to the realization that their local educational system is really failing them. Their talent pipeline has been crippled because the local community colleges and universities just aren't providing the kinds of skills and pathways that local people need in order to join these kinds of firms. And so they're starting at the bottom, working with individuals at the community colleges, at the universities. What do you need? What can you do? How can we help?

                        I'm seeing some business people who are very concerned about heightened levels of inequality in the regions where they live, where there might be populations that are almost excluded from the economic mainstream without transportation systems, with inadequate health care or with inadequate educational systems, working as a group -- again, this is all collaborative, working as a group with the mayor or the governor, trying to work on improving the health of the entire region. Again, the business case there is the businesses want great people and they want to be able to hire diversely and broadly and be located in strong places, and they're really working one-on-one with mayors. What is missing? How can we help? In Columbus, the business community helps spearhead public referendum, for example, to increase funding to schools, so directly trying to improve local capacity on the ground by being an ally to the government in that kind of effort.

                        I'm seeing these kinds of local efforts. Some of the big IT companies, for example, where they have facilities located in developing nations or some of the big apparel companies where they have factories in places where the local labor laws are not well enforced are working with local governments to fund labor inspection and to train labor inspectors. This is very nitty-gritty. This is like, how can we do better right here, right now? The advantage of that, of course, is that it's very concrete. You're not trying to boil the ocean. It's of course tricky and difficult. Governments are often very suspicious of companies. So back to your point on trust, you really have to show that you're a good partner to work with.

                        On the more macro level, I think there's an increasing recognition that a healthy democracy is fundamental to a healthy society. I was surprised and heartened by how many firms step forward here in the US to speak out in favor of election integrity and voter participation and having everyone vote or as many people who wanted to vote could. I think that's an example of how business can play a small role in the larger political context in a very positive way. We can also chat about efforts to try and rein in corruption. Any single firm often feels that perhaps they have to participate in cultures of corruption, but if an industry as a whole says, "Look, we're not doing this," again, that's a way to try and improve trust in government and government capacity.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. I like what you say that corruption thrives in darkness and that when we can work in a collaborative way, that really helps to root out those types of things. I might go back though to your theme of inclusion. I think that that is a lovely fourth. In Alltech, we tend to stick to threes, but I think this one definitely should be included. To think a little bit about some of the challenges that we've had through this year, it's obviously been the challenge of COVID, but the social justice movements, I think you've caught a lot of companies a little bit off guard. Sometimes organizations maybe don't have the demographics, don't have the ear to the ground to be able to speak to those points, and particularly, sometimes executives feel a bit out of depth speaking about these topics.

                        I wonder, from the experiences you've had this year talking to different companies, if you might have any advice in how companies should think about these things and bring about that aspect of change within their organizations as well.

Rebecca:       I'm happy to respond, but I need a health warning on this part of the talk. Diversity and inclusion is not my special area and there are some amazing people working in this space who have thought deeply about this. Mark, I'll give you my impressions because as you say, a lot of executives are thinking about these issues and I have some sense of what seems to be working, but I'm no expert. What seems to be working? Genuinely acknowledging that there's an issue. Sometimes that starts with looking at the data and being very clear about the data.

                        I know a couple of CEOs who've actually apologized. When they sat down and they looked at gender diversity in the firm or their employment of people of color that they were shocked. This is bound up, of course, with the issue of inequality. Many CEOs didn't really know and some still don't how many people in their firms are working at minimum wage or below a living wage. That's a really important piece of information if you're going to be serious about improving the well-being of your workforce that you really want to have a handle on. So acknowledging there really is a problem, putting some numbers on it, being very concrete about what you're going to do. This doesn't mean forcing everyone through diversity training. All the research suggests that's a bad idea. Making diversity training available so that people who want to can learn more about what's this about, how can I make sure I'm an ally of people of color, how do I think about changing what I do.

                        I think those of us who are white and privileged -- and that would certainly be me -- I know I've had to do a lot of learning about how am I subtly racist and how do I take my privilege for granted. When I walk into a room with my plummy accent and my reasonable clothes, I just take for granted that people respond well and say nice things to me. I've just taken that for granted all these years. So just beginning to try and come to grips with this. I would put myself at two on a ten-point scale, how comfortable I feel around these issues, but I think acknowledging that we don't know and really talking to our employees about what's happening. I've heard some wonderful stories. I'm sure you have, too. One was about a chief technology officer of a major technology company based in the UK and he was talking to his CEO. He said to the CEO, "You know, I go and visit my mother every Sunday. I drive across town in my Mercedes and I have to wear a suit." The CEO said, "Why do you have to wear a suit to drive across town to see your mother on a Sunday?" The CTO said, "Because I'm black. The police would stop me otherwise." The CEO is just totally floored. He is the chief technology officer of this incredibly successful company, very accomplished individual.

                        So listening, listening, listening, listening, and then making concrete commitments, working with local colleges, strengthening the pipeline, committing to having more people on a wider -- when you search, making sure that the pool you look at is gender-diverse, is racially and ethnically diverse. It's not just one woman and one person of color, but you're really searching. You're going the extra mile, and then supporting people once they're in position. We know a lot more now about informal mentoring networks, about how we tend to work with people who look like us. It's so much easier to give a little bit of inside tip to how to get around here to people that look like you. It's just sheer coincidence that when I ran the Strategy Group at MIT, I hired a British woman. We like people who look like us. She's totally fabulous, by the way. But it's becoming aware of that bias and taking active steps to overcome it and measuring your progress. Sorry, that was a long answer, but it's such a complicated question and I know there's much more to be said.

Dr. Lyons:    But it's a very powerful, very, very timely topic, and something that I think we all need to be thinking about. I reflect on maybe the rise of empathy as something that we should be thinking about for 2020 and being much better listeners and thinking about some of these things. I think that was incredibly useful and I think it'll be very, very beneficial to our team.

                        I might just with this next question actually congratulate you. You've taken a course. You've taken an idea. You took a bold step. You had 28 students, I believe, the first year in your course. Now, you have over 300 in that course. Obviously, it might be partially the professor, but also the topic that has really grabbed a lot of these students. I wonder if you could share with us what have you seen through the transition way that those students are thinking today because of course, these are going to be the leaders of so many businesses of tomorrow. But also, some of them have already, of course, joined the workforce. Have you seen any of those leaders step out and have an impact in their organizations or maybe it's too early to tell?

Rebecca:       First, the students have changed enormously. Thirty years ago when I taught, it's all about making money and being innovative. That's what we focused on and that's what the students wanted to focus on. When I first started teaching Reimagining Capitalism, there were 28 students. Now, there are over 300 and the dean has asked me to take many of the ideas from that course into the required first year course on leadership and governance.

                        Students are passionate about these issues. I have had the great pleasure of working with so many students who said to me, "Look, I want my life to count for something. I want to make a difference in the world. Where should I work? How should I think about this?" I always tell them, "You already know that. What is your heart telling you? You're super smart. You've done the research. You should go where you feel you ought to go." But there's an openness and a deep awareness to the role of business in the larger world that is quite different than it was not just 30 years ago, but ten years ago or five years ago.

                        Have I had students who have already done amazing things? Yes. Yes, I have. Two students of color, well, two black students who started a venture capital firm investing in black-owned businesses. Everyone said they were crazy. They were told, "Oh, it's a great idea, but you're crazy." They went ahead and did it anyway. As I'm sure you know, historically, it's been super hard to raise money if you're not white and not male. That's been hugely successful. A couple of other students who have helped start a business that invest just in women-owned businesses, a reasoning that all the data suggests that women entrepreneurs are disproportionately more successful, so let's give them some more money. They've done really well.

                        I have a lot of students in renewable energy who are instrumental in pushing forward the wind and solar revolutions. It's really exciting to hear from people on the ground as to the difference they're making in real time. And even more so to hear from other students who say, "Okay, I've paid my dues. Now, I want to make a difference. Now, I'm moving into this field" and I'm seeing that a lot, too.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah, that's great to hear, very heartening. When we were doing some research, reading the book, looking at the website, on the website, you highlight three reasons for writing the book. You talk about the urgency of climate change. You talk about inequality, but you also touched on one called -- you're thinking about vilified institutions. I think as being a science-driven company, a company that really puts a lot of focus and importance on experts, I think the way that institutions and the way that a lot of science is being looked at is something that we are concerned about.

                        Agriculture and agri-food is a sector, of course, that's providing food for our global planet, global population. In many regards, we believe if done properly, it can overcome a lot of the health challenges of the world. But it's also a sector that's under threat. This year has really broadened our sense of sustainability, not just sustainability in terms of the environment, but also a lot of the livelihoods of those who are producing our food.

                        I think one of the things that we've been struggling with is we know as a sector, we can continue to improve. If you look back 30 to 40 years ago, the improvements that have been made in terms of efficiency of food production are pretty staggering. But at the same time, by and large, for a lot of people, when they think about where their food comes from, they're somewhat unaware and they probably have a slightly more negative view. Certainly as a sector, many of the agriculturalists feel somewhat vilified. So that word, when I saw it, it kind of jumped out at me.

                        I wonder. How does the sector approach this and how can we participate in the conversations that are taking place whether it's regulations being made or conversations with consumers, and be part of those as equals, and also with credibility?

Rebecca:       Wow. One concrete example that comes to mind is that of genetically modified food. My understanding of the science is that there is no evidence that genetically modified food poses any threat to human health, and yet there are many millions of people who won't touch genetically modified food at a moment when, as I understand it again, we're going to need to genetically modify our food if we're going to feed eight to nine billion people, so that would be a very concrete example.

                        This is a super tough question. Working with students, I'm very aware of how easily a company can get vilified. I think there's no shortcut to rebuilding that conversation and rebuilding the relationship, being as absolutely as transparent as you can, being consistent. I think what really bothers the younger generation is the perception of cynicism, the perception that they're being spun. Here's the lovely, fancy CSR report with puppies and kittens and fields of waving grain. And over here is the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and the overuse of fertilizer and the running down of topsoil, the extraction of fossil water, and then fill in whatever vilification you want to include here, so being really clear and really transparent about what you're doing.

                        The other is being clear about the plans for change. What better antidote can there be than showing we're using so much less fertilizer, so much less water? We are really trying to increase the nutritional content that's in the food supply and make nutritional foods available at a reasonable price. It's convincing stories in depth. In my book, I talk about Lipton's move to sustainable tea, and Michiel Leijnse, who was hired as the brand manager for sustainable tea. This was a product that was about the least sexy product you can imagine. This is teabag tea, essentially a commodity, huge pressure on price. Michiel came up with the idea that we should make tea sustainable. Everyone was like, "Are you crazy? No one's willing to pay more for teabag tea. And we'd have to train 50,000 to 100,000 small holders and somehow communicate what we've done in a way that didn't suggest that we'd made the tea taste worse. What are you thinking?"

                        It took him nearly six months to persuade his superiors that this was worth trying and a lot of work on the ground to make it happen and a lot of follow-through, but they did. They made Lipton tea -- I believe it's now almost entirely sustainable. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but that came with real improvements in livelihoods of the tea workers who were among some of the most disadvantaged workers in the world, with much less use of pesticides and fertilizer, with reduced emissions, and with increase in market share. Indeed, in some ways, you can say that Michiel took the whole industry. I think that was just consistency, consistency. They said they would do it and they did it. They hired the outside auditor and they measured what they were doing. They were able to communicate that in a way that stuck, but that takes long-term focus. It's not something you can do in a few months and just say, okay, now it's done.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. It takes a long vision and commitment to that vision. We see this appetite, I think, amongst a lot of stakeholders in the food chain for greater sustainability, greater transparency, but it always comes back to this idea of who pays. When we speak to our customers and our customers' customers, ultimately this gets to the farm gate. Those farmers are often the people who are left with the bill. So one of the things that we're a big proponent on is how do we make sure that some of that premium, if it's market share or if it's a premium price, makes it back to the farm gate.

                        Maybe you might have some other examples from other industries of how we can create that shared value or create benefits throughout the chain so that we are incentivizing and not disincentivizing often bad practices or not as progressive practices throughout the chains.

Rebecca:       Let me put in a word for regulation at this stage. I'm deeply sympathetic. Getting consumers to pay more for sustainable product is really hard. The only places where it seems to happen reliably are high-end, luxury goods, think Tesla, and certain demographics. Think pointy-headed, middle-aged women from the East Coast. People like me will pay more for sustainable food, but most people, they say they will, but in practice, they won't. So what do we know about that? We do know that people will switch brands. If you can persuade them that this is as good a product with the same benefit at the same cost that they will pay more.

                        At Unilever, for example, they're seeing their purpose-driven brands grow 40% faster than their more conventional brands, so you can see market share gain. And in principle, you could propagate that back down the chain. But the most reliable thing to do is to put in some kind of regulation or tax that ensures that everybody has to pay more and that that can be shared on the ground. I'm thinking, for example, here about -- and you asked for examples from other sectors. Well, let's take solar and wind. This is a classic example.

                        Fossil fuel-generated electricity is cheap, but it is dirty. The estimate suggests that $10 worth of coal-fired power causes about $26 worth of damage to human health and damage to long-term climate. So it looks like it's cheap, but actually, it's really expensive. In those places where governments have been able to put a tax on climate emissions so that if you're selling a product that causes climate change, you have to pay a little bit of a tax, and then either send that tax back to consumers or back into the economy in other ways, you see that benefiting the people who are doing the right thing. So if you have to pay a real price for fossil fuels then solar and wind look pretty cheap. Some jurisdictions, half the world, they're already cheaper than fossil fuels, but if you get the price right, they look cheaper everywhere. We're seeing that happen without long-term harm to the economy, and of course, with the long-term benefit of addressing climate change.

                        I think regulations that enforce doing the right thing are hugely helpful. In thinking about Walmart that is very concerned about education for people who have never gone to college, who have just graduated high school and is very concerned because the statistics suggest if you really don't have any more education that the rest of your life is going to be super, super hard. So Walmart would like to invest more in training and is investing more in training, but everything is easier if you have a government that's investing more in training and is supporting people in going on to a secondary education that fits their needs. I'm a big fan of government regulation to address these kinds of issues. I know that's going to be unpopular with many people listening, but historically, it's super effective. If you can get well-designed legislation, that means that everyone is on the same playing field and the playing field is level. That's super helpful in persuading people to do the right thing.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. I think it depends. If we can get everybody in the room, we can have it well thought through and I think we can do some interesting things. It's been interesting. In our sector, there has been a connection with energy. We've seen some places where there's been an incentive to convert often animal waste to energy in a very efficient way, and that is potentially another income stream for farmers and for producers, which creates the right incentives. I think that's always one of the big questions we have. Which is working better, the carrot or the stick, or is it a balance of the two?

Rebecca:       You nearly always need both, right?

Dr. Lyons:    Certainly. I think that is going to be the way. In your book, Accelerating Energy Innovation, you talked a little bit about agriculture. You talked about how in the 19th Century, there was this entrepreneurial innovation and there was also government investment in R&D. How have you seen that part of government involvement in the private sector play out, being able to look at research and development and incentivize some innovation through that?

Rebecca:       A few years ago, I wrote a book called Accelerating Innovation in Energy: Lessons from Other Sectors. I pulled together a whole group of my fellow economists who study innovation and I said, okay, what do we know about what's really driven innovation? Because there's no way we're going to fix climate change without a massive wave of innovation in many, many industries. There were, I think, ten of us and there's a chapter on biotech and a chapter on chemistry. There's a chapter on agriculture, hugely innovative in the 19th Century; a chapter on the internet, the invention of the computer, what really drove innovation.

                        After we'd written all those chapters and came together and we're trying to draw some conclusions, three things jumped out. The first was the importance of enabling entrepreneurship because it's when you get lots of new firms in an industry that that seems to be really helpful in driving innovation. The second is having strong demand. In many of these industries, it was very interesting. The government acted as the first customer. Really in computers, which are the most well-known example, the first 20 or so computers were bought by the Department of Defense. They were mind-blowingly expensive, but every computer became cheaper. So it was DOD's support that really enabled computing to begin to reach a price at which anyone could afford it, or at least initially, the big firms could afford it. So providing demand, and that's why putting some kind of price on fossil fuels and making fossil fuels expensive and thus generating demand for renewable energies, or for cows, for example, that emit less methane either because their food has been supplemented or they're eating something different, that kind of demand signal really drives innovation.

                        The third is support for fundamental R&D. Individual firms don't have a business case for investing in long-term research, in fundamental breakthroughs, in physics, in biology. Those really have to be funded by the public because their benefits are going to be so widespread, but they are enormous. I once wrote a paper in my early life when I just studied innovation, trying to estimate the rate of return to government spending on R&D. I'm going to be a little bit off with this, but the number I came up with, I think, was an 18% rate of return plus or minus 20%. It's government-funded R&D that gave us the pharmaceutical industry, that gave us modern agriculture, that gave us modern chemicals, that gave us the computing industry. It's absolutely fundamental pursuit of science and truth.

                        It sounds so basic, but as we think about what made the US such an economic powerhouse, one element of that was the universities and the fundamental spending in science that the US government started right after World War II. I'm not sure what I can say that would be stronger, but if we are going to get through this transition -- and I'm sure we will -- more spending on fundamental research can only be helpful. Let's take a concrete example. I think in the long-term, it's fairly clear that if we're going to address climate change, we have to reduce meat consumption. Well, we can't tell people to eat soybean burgers forever even if they taste very good. So one of the most promising means to replace beef is with cell-grown meat, which is biologically identical to beef. That's a fantastic opportunity. It requires a lot of breakthrough science. I'm sure you know more than I do of all the opportunities and the way in which fundamental advances in biology and chemistry would really make a difference to the agricultural system, and my guess, the rate of return, the social rate of return would be off the scale.

Dr. Lyons:    Actually, I think it's interesting that you bring that up because it's a bit like your startups. Certainly, the cell-based meat sector is a startup that is obviously being noticed by the rest of the sector. That actually brings about change within the primary sector. I think that there's a huge amount of work both showing improvements in terms of reducing the environmental impact of meat, milk, and egg production, but also, I think looking through that data and saying this is the true impact. I think sometimes those startups can have an outsized impact not just in terms of their primary production in the market share that those products have, but also the impact on the broader sector.

                        This book, certainly you work with boardrooms, with CEOs, with tremendously talented Harvard future MBAs. But I think that you've also reflected on the impact, maybe not for executives, but really something that I think is so universal here, that climate change is going to be something that needs the impact of so many people. What was the impact that you wanted this book to have, and maybe beyond the book, what you want to do perhaps for the rest of your career?

Rebecca:       Initially, I just hoped a few people would read it and think it was decent. That was my hope. I wrote it because several of my students asked me to. They said, "You know, Rebecca, this course is pretty interesting and I'd love to be able to talk about it to my friends."

                        "I'd love to be able to explain to them how business could make a difference, how individual acts by all of us could really add up to wide scale change." That's really my hope for the book. There are so many thousands of amazing people out there already driving change. My guess is several of them are listening to us right now. Sometimes it can be kind of lonely and there's a temptation to despair. This is a really difficult moment and there are lots of ways in which things could go wrong.

                        I wanted to write a book that reminded people that we have the technology and the resources. We can definitely technologically solve the problem of climate change and feed everyone on the planet. We can certainly do that. This is a political, cultural, and organizational problem, and here's how you could solve it. The book is, I hope, to generate hope. Here is how action by individual firms can add up to really changing things that scale. Yes, I wrote it for CEOs, but a lot of CEOs are busy and stuck in their ways. I guess I wrote it mostly for people on the ground really trying to do this, talking to their friends, working at their individual divisions and at their jobs. Could we do this differently? Why not? That's my hope. So if it reaches people and makes them hopeful and encourages them to keep doing what they're doing then mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.

Dr. Lyons:    Well, I think you're a long way there for sure. Certainly, I have a group of readers within Alltech that enjoyed the book. Might I just ask you one last question, and one that we like to ask all of those who have been on the platform since May all the way through now into December. What makes you optimistic for the future?

Rebecca:       I'm not optimistic and I'm not saying I'm sure things will go fine. I am not. It's not clear they will. I am hopeful. As I said, we have the technology and the resources to address climate change, and give everyone on the planet a decent job, food security, and a place to live. We can afford that. I'm hopeful because humans are really smart. I think we're too smart to let the planet go down in flames. At root, we care about each other. Yes, we're business people, but we're also parents and friends and children.

                        I think you might have seen in my book that wonderful cartoon by Tom Toro where there's a group of ragged children sitting around a fire with the ruins of civilization in the background, and there's a businessman in a ragged suit sitting there. He says, "Well, yes, we did destroy the planet, but for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of shareholder value." Anyone I show that to laughs uneasily. That's why I'm hopeful because we know that we're in this crazy place where we have to change what we're doing and that we must do it. So if that makes me optimistic, that's what makes me optimistic.

Dr. Lyons:    Yeah. I think we'll accept that as optimism. Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us on the ONE Virtual Experience. I've really enjoyed it and I know our viewers will as well.

Rebecca:       Mark, thank you very much. I'm very honored and it was a pleasure to talk. Thank you.

Carol Cone believes that having a profound purpose that employees buy into is integral for businesses to fulfill their full potential. She discusses her work as the CEO of Carol Cone On Purpose, where she helps build partnerships between companies, brands and social issues for deep business and societal impact.

 Tom:                                   I’m Tom Martin, and joining us for this latest conversation in our purpose-driven business series is Carol Cone, founder of the firm Carol Cone On Purpose.

                                    She is regarded the mother of social purpose, working for 25 years to build partnerships between companies, brands and social issues for deep business and societal impact.

                                    Welcome, Carol.

Carol Cone:              Thank you for having me to the show, and I’m thrilled to be talking about my favorite topic.

Tom:                          Well, let me ask you about that. What is a purpose-driven business? Isn’t the purpose to serve the bottom line, the shareholder? Is there something beyond that?

Carol Cone:              Oh, actually, I’m so glad that you asked that, because it was Milton Friedman, in the late ‘70s, who said, “The purpose of the corporation is just to serve the shareholders.” But that — in a world where we have total transparency, and we have so much choice, and we also recognize that we have climate challenges and social challenges and, you know, economic challenges, that — companies today who are going to win in the marketplace, whether they are B-to-C or B-to-B, they stand for something beyond the bottom line that’s based in humanity.

                                    And simply put, the companies today are recognizing, “What’s our core competency, and how can we take that competency and apply it either (to) society or the environment?” And when they do that, they have a profound purpose, a reason for being, that lights up their employees, their customer relationships, their community relationships, their consumer relationships. It really allows them to fulfill their full potential.

Tom:                          The Unilever CEO, Paul Polman, has said that what people think, say and do should be aligned. And that might be obvious, but is this the essence of a business that has worked to develop and express its purpose?

Carol Cone:              Well, let me first say that I had the joyous opportunity to work with Unilever. I got to meet Paul Polman a number of times. And he actually — in all the thousands of encounters he’s had with people, he sent people my way, so he does recognize that I do have this expertise in purpose.

                                    And (with) this alignment of what the company stands for, you can’t just say, “We stand for it.” You have to act. And so, when he said that people should think, say and do and have this alignment, and when you have a purpose that is beyond making a profit, that’s where you truly, again, ignite your stakeholders — not just shareholders, your stakeholders — to truly perform to, you know, the wildest levels beyond their wildest dreams.

Tom:                          Carol, I wonder: How many of us know whether our company stands for something?

Carol Cone:              It’s a great question. And I believe that — you know, I’m a third-generation entrepreneur. And you know, I always — when I started my company — and you were very kind; you mentioned 25 years. I started my company in 1980. (But) it’s still young, and I didn’t know what I stood for, but about three years into it, I recognized that I wanted — I love branding, I love marketing and I love the social challenges of the day.

                                    I grew up in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, and we had the Vietnam War in our face, and we had the Civil Rights movement, and I just felt that companies could take their assets and make them work harder for society. And so, my purpose, (which) I found when I was very young, was to help elevate the purpose of companies and brands, as well as professionals, students and such.

                                    So, a company must understand what it, you know — (you must) stand for something, because you talk about it as that North Star. Like, “Why are we doing what we’re doing?”

Tom:                          Mm-hmm.

Carol Cone:              And, when you do that, and then you add dimensionality to it, it just becomes this ignition for just performance and possibility.

Tom:                          Well, let’s say that we want to build a purpose-driven organization from the ground up. What building blocks, what kinds of tools do we need to make that happen?

Carol Cone:              Well, it’s important — and usually, if you’re going to build up from the ground up, you’re probably a small company or you found the company — I’ll tell you a great story. It’s a very — it’s fascinating. It’s about a company called Charlotte Pipe.

                                    And Charlotte Pipe makes pipes. They make clay pipes and metal pipes for water and for, you know, basically, mostly water municipalities and for people who have farms and things like that. And you know, you think, “How can a company that makes pipes have a purpose?” But, you know, it was about — it was a family-owned firm (that) decided one day to say, “You know what? We’re going to make the best pipes ever in the world. And not only are we going to make them so that they are just the top-quality and all the parts and bits, you know, they integrate with each other and they perform; we’re going to give great warranties, and we’re also going to have great, great policies for our employees. So, our employees not only get a fair wage, and they get, you know, health benefits and such, but they know, at the end of the day, that they can stand behind (us) no matter where they are in the process of making these pipes, because we’re going to make the best pipes in the world.”

And so, sometimes, your purpose can be something as simple as just terrific quality, and then, making sure that your employees — because employees are the number-one stakeholder to support and to build companies that truly over-perform.

So they just did that, and they had these great values, and they live the values, they live their integrity daily, and it was an amazing company, and they made pipes. You know, that’s a lot different than when we think about Unilever, Unilever and Dove.

You know, Dove was basically soap. It was a white bar of soap. It really didn’t have many attributes that differentiated it. But one day, some of the marketers at Dove, they made a major piece of research around the globe. And, they have like, oh, I don’t know, hundreds and hundreds of pages from this research, and they were asking about women and beauty and how they (use) soap, about themselves, (and there) was this one little, little, teeny, tiny fact, and the fact was that it was something like only 4% of women worldwide feel beautiful. And so, some really, really smart person at Unilever said, “You know what? We’re going to take that fact — because we’re selling to women, right? And we want women to feel good.” And they started the campaign for Real Beauty, and it’s been around now for over, oh, like, 15 or 18 years now. And they supported all sorts of ways, in a realistic way, to help women feel confident and good about their selves, and that beauty was on the inside; it wasn’t just on the outside.

And that became one of the first purpose-driven brands at Unilever. And now, Unilever is certainly the gold-standard company that anybody will study to truly understand (purpose-driven businesses). They have brands that have super-human powers, and they have brands that have — that take on qualities that might be one step remote, but their purpose is to make sustainable living commonplace. And they touch 2.5 billion — with a “b” — people a day with their products, whether it’s Knorr soups or whether it’s Dirt Is Good laundry detergent or whether it’s Ben & Jerry’s ice cream or whether it’s Lifebuoy soap.

And each one of those brands — they have about 30 brands that are now purposeful, (and) those brands grow about 70% faster than their non-purpose brands, and they return over 75% of the profit to the company, because they stand for something more than just features and benefits.

Tom:                          I’m guessing that it takes a lot of thought, discussion and debate to work through this process, and there may be some impatience involved in the meantime.

Carol Cone:              Absolutely. Yeah.

Tom:                          How much time, reasonably, should we give ourselves to allow for the development of a clear statement of purpose?

Carol Cone:              Well, first of all, I love that you said “debate,” because a purpose is only as good if it’s authentic to the organization, its values and the people within that organization.

                                    So, we’ve had — we’ve worked with companies to develop their purpose, and we’ve also helped companies evolve their purpose, so we can study them. And it takes anywhere from — to do it well — six months to years. It could be couple of years.            

                                    And what’s really important — because you asked about, like, “What building blocks and tools do you need?” You need to ask some really good questions, and it needs to be not just the C-suite — not just the CEO, the CMO, the chief human resources person, the CFO, etc. It also needs the guy and the gal on the factory floor. And it’s harder to get them, because they may not have computers. 

                                    But, you know, we have worked with a company that has 47,000 people around the globe; they have over 100 different locations. And we did everything, from — we did phone interviews with their entire leadership team around the globe (for) an hour each, and that was 200 (people). So, that was a lot (of) time. But I will tell you, I had set — that company was so authentic, and it had such ethos and soul. I only had — out of a few hundred, because I did most of those calls, I only had five (dodge), five that were really boring.

                                    Now, in addition to that, we went around the globe, and we travelled to eight different locations, from China to Malaysia to Costa Rica and Brazil and the United States and Ireland and such, and we did workshops and focus groups. And so, we have, like, the, you know, the leadership interviews; we had the focus groups. And the focus groups have people from the factory floor.

So, we got conversations going about, you know, “What do we stand for? What’s our core expertise? What’s it like when, on a daily basis, when we’re at our best? What are some of the challenges that (manifest) when we don’t do well? Who do we admire, maybe in our industry or outside of our industry, who truly knows what they stand for and has fabulous cultures and really accelerated sales but who, also, is helping the local community, or who’s got great environmental programs?”

So, there’s more questions than that, but those are some of the core questions you ask. And then you need to debate, and then you need to say, you know, “How, let’s say, boldly, (do) we want to take on the world with our purpose?” Then, we want to take on something that’s more conservative. That’s another part of the tools that we utilize.

We have a process that I developed probably about 25 years ago that, you know, it’s no longer guessing; there’s truly a way that you can be a guide. And so, anybody who’s listening, there are ways to follow so that you’re not just guessing, because you don’t want to guess at this. It’s too important.

Tom:                          I visited your blog, Carol, and I saw that you’ve written that authentic purpose equals thoughtful, real and sustained actions that impact the business internally and externally, while also having that positive impact on society that you talked about earlier. Does this boil down to nurturing a culture of transparency, accountability, honesty and integrity, those kinds of things?

Carol Cone:              Well, when we talk authentic purpose — we did a piece of research. I’ve done about 30 pieces of research over the last 30 years, because I, when I started doing this work, I made the joke that I could have had a conversation about purpose at a table for four or six. And American Express was doing this work early on where they had a promotion where, if you use the American Express card, they would donate a penny or two to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. And that was kind of the first big “cause program.”

So, in the early days, no one was talking about this. Today, because of the internet, because anybody can check off the reputation of the company — you know, what are the customers saying? What are people, you know — why are they getting three stars or zero stars? Do they, you know, like, do they stand behind their products and services?

                                    So, I — this last summer, I got really, really angry, because there was a lot of, can I say, “purpose washing,” “green washing,” “pink washing.” And part of that also came from this research that we did called the B-to-B Purpose Paradox, and it’s on our website, (at) Carol Cone On Purpose. And we asked businesses in the B-to-B realm — they were financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, etc. — and we said, “Do you have a purpose?” And 86% said, “Yes. We have a purpose. We know what we stand for.”

                                    I was like, “What? There’s no way, because B-to-B world trails B-to-C world.” But when we asked deeper questions and peeled back the onion and we asked, “Do you activate — do you have an authentic purpose that you bring into your employees and your innovation and your operations?” Only 24% truly had activated it.

                                    So, getting back to this essay that I wrote last year about authentic purpose, it does boil down to walking the talk, living your values, integrating why you exist. Like, if you’re going to be Unilever and make sustainable living commonplace, what are your sustainability practices internally? What are your sustainability practices with your supply chain? How do you treat the farmers in Madagascar who are harvesting vanilla beans? You know, do you — is there a fair wage, etc.?

                                    So, you need to walk the talk, and yes, you need a culture that is transparent, that has high integrity, and that there’s honesty. And you know what? You’re not going to be perfect. That’s the other thing I really want to share with anybody listening who’s on a purpose journey. It is a journey. You know, Unilever had — they had a wonderful Dove campaign for Real Beauty, but they also had some missteps with Dove, some big, bad missteps. And — but you know what? Most of the time, their integrity is there, so a consumer or even an employee gives them the benefit of the doubt.

Tom:                          I’m going to dig further into that in just a few minutes. But I want to ask you, first: Has this coronavirus pandemic served to underscore the value and even, maybe, the necessity of engaging in those thoughtful, real and sustained actions that you were talking about?

Carol Cone:              Well, first of all, companies — the first thing that companies had to do during COVID is that they had to address the safety of their employees. And thank God that most companies did. Even if they didn’t have the world’s deepest purpose or greatest community relationships, they recognized that they had to, if they let people work from home — and you saw companies with 50,000, 100,000 employees pivot, almost, on a dime to let people work from home. The greater challenges were companies that had to keep people in their plants, and they had to manufacture and, you know, could they get PPE, and could they socially distance and such.

                                    So, COVID accelerated companies that were values-driven. And, I would say it also accelerated decision-making, which was really, really, really interesting because, you know, companies, per se, the larger they get, the slower they get in decision-making; they get more people involved, (and) they get very conservative. And COVID really pushed companies forward quickly.

                                    So, for example, you had AB InBev that, you know, all of a sudden, they took their manufacturing from beer, and they were making hand sanitizer. Same thing with P&G. They had over 200 different NGOs around the globe they are working with, and they immediately pivoted to help them not only survive but then make, again, PPE, hand sanitizer, things like that.

                                    So, COVID has really brought to the fore (the question), “Why does a business exist?” And companies that truly, truly rose to the occasion and helped their employees and then helped the community and then started helping small businesses survive and really, you know, helped all of us, you know, with mental health problems, or donating a lot of food — I mean, you know, there are so many families going hungry, and then (there were) tons and tons and tons of food drops and such.

COVID did, I believe, show the humanity of companies. And I don’t think that companies can go backwards once they’ve done that, and I think the smartest companies will build on that.

Tom:                          Yeah. We thought we knew what a game-changer was before COVID, didn’t we?

Carol Cone:              Right.

Tom:                          So, Carol, in those discussions and the debate that we talked about earlier, is it ever asked, “How do we address the needs of our customers, quality-wise and price-wise, while also remaining nimble enough,” in this ever-changing world that you just talked about, “to sustain our relevance?”

Carol Cone:              I use the word “innovation” because for a company’s customers to be at the top of their game, to have quality — and if you think about Alltech in the ingredients, what — Alltech is research-based, and it’s constantly looking at what are the elements in its products that will help to create natural, appropriate, faster growth of, whether it’s poultry or whether it’s beef or such, in a way that is nutrient-dense that, again, is natural.

And so, that company must focus on innovation. And you’re seeing, today, that purpose-led companies have incubators, that they’re funding innovation incubators. And again, you can go to — I know the Mars company has one. I know that AB InBev, I know that Unilever, P&G, the big — General Mills — the big companies have these incubators on the side, because they’re really looking for that next new idea to keep them relevant and to benefit their customers.

Tom:                          You referenced, earlier, the C-suite and bringing folks from the factory floor into the conversation. And so, I’m wondering: In terms of employee engagement, why is purpose important to everybody, from top to bottom?

Carol Cone:              You know, I would like to say (that it’s) what gets you up in the morning to go to work. Do you get up in the morning (because) “I’m going to make money for XYZ CEO”? Or, you know, do you get up in the morning because you’re going to make the best darn leather boots that anybody’s ever made, and those leather boots are going to be, you know — they’re made of all-natural ingredients, per se, and they give you tremendous support, and they allow you — they don’t have a thread that marks the path, so you’re going to leave no thread behind?

Now, of course, I’m making this up, per se. But the point is (that) having this greater reason for being just allows an individual at any level to — and it’s really funny, when you talk to CFOs, and I’ve seen CFOs that love the purpose of their company. They are just lit, and it’s really, really funny, in addition to the person on the factory floor. And so, it just gives you that energy and that North Star. You’re looking up to the stars to say, “I’m doing something to better my neighborhood, my community, my city, my country or the world.”

And so, to be inside of a purpose driven company — I’ll give you, I’ll give you another great example that’s one of my proudest moments, that, early on, I worked with the company called the Rockport Shoe Company. And their CEO, he came to me and he said, “I really want to build my company on something different.” He didn’t have a lot of money, but he had these really, really unique shoes, and they (had) Nike inners. So, they have, like, these athletic inners, but they had street shoe outers. And nobody has ever done that before. And so, they were ahead of their time; they’re a little bulky-looking, but, you know, for a year — it took me a year to find some gem, some reasons that these shoes were just more than shoes. And the CEO gave me a little clue.

                                    We would go to the trade shows and would have these beautiful pictures of people walking in his shoes, walking in a field, walking down the city street, walking in the neighborhood. And he didn’t, say, want to become the walking shoe company, but he did have these pictures. And so, one day, I realized — I did some research, and I realized (that) there’s no walking shoes for fitness and for health.

And so, long story short, we had a fellow who walked around the country. He talked to kids. He said, “Eat properly, don’t smoke, and walk.” He walked 11,208 miles in every state. We then flew him back to Massachusetts, to the University of Massachusetts. They had a health and fitness facility to study his health, because he was going to be the world’s first (and) longest walking experiment. And when he finished, not only was he wicked healthier, but we had a book, we had a movie, and we had a lot of data that said walking for health and fitness was really good for you.

                                    And we continue to create a walking institute and walking tests and all sorts of walking information. Rockport renamed itself “the walking shoe company.” Walking became the nation’s newest fitness activity. It became a billion-dollar category at retail, and Rockport grew eight times (its size) in four years. They were wildly successful, and then Reebok bought them.

                                    But it was giving — and I’ll tell you, they had this thing about (their company) feeling really different. One day, I was out in the loading dock area, and I happen to, like, listen in to a guy that was taking boxes off of a UPS truck. And the UPS truck (driver) asked this employee — this was, like, a guy that was like, you know, 24 years old — “What’s this company, Rockport? What do you do here?” And this young man, he stopped, he just kind puffed off, and he said, “I work for Rockport. We’re the walking shoe company.”

                                    And, you know, the company not only made walking shoes, but they gave their employees a free pair of shoes; they gave them a walking book, (and) they gave them time to walk during the day. And it just gave that young man and, then, the entire company a reason for being, far beyond just selling a shoe. And it just made me — and that was, that was kicking off my purpose career.

And then, we did Reebok and human rights and Avon and breast cancer and PNC Financial Services and early childhood education, and we reinvented the Aflac duck. You know, the big Aflac duck that says, “Aflac!”

Well, (they) donated $125 million to pediatric cancer and — but the two did not meet. But we knew the kids who went through pediatric cancer had a thousand days of treatments. They were lonely, and they were sick, and they were scared. And so, we invented a social robot that helped those children. It was a companion for children that they could interact with, and they could put emoji cards on it, and the duck would quack with their feelings. So, those kids wouldn’t be alone. And Aflac was reborn in terms of its purpose and its engagement with society. And it helped also grow their sales tens of millions of dollars, because they created something called My Special Aflac Duck, a social work that help kids going through a really hard time with cancer.

So, purpose. And when you find that purpose — and it’s just an extraordinary accelerant to alignment between all your stakeholders and, then, growth.

Tom:                          Let’s stay in the C-suite for just a moment, and if you would, describe for us the traits of that successful leadership team that’s authentic and credible in the way that it models purpose in an organization and creates what you were just talking about: employee buy-in.

Carol Cone:              And you know, I’m going to say that — how do they model it? Because a company that has a purpose must walk the talk.

                                    So, people. If you’re going to sell to a diverse consumer base, you need to have diversity of people working to get better ideas, to get better energy. So, it’s walking the talk, so that when you talk about your value of being innovative or listening to everyone’s ideas, you need to activate them, and you need to model the behaviors, day in and day out. And it’s coaching. It’s mentoring. It’s innovating. And it’s also taking what you stand for down to your supply chain.

So, it could be such as what Alltech does. You know, they have this amazing commitment to Haiti, to the poorest of the poor in Haiti, where they’re sourcing coffee. Because they want to help, you know, individuals, farmers, the coffee farmers, have a better life. And then, they go sell that at retail, and they put the money back into it. It’s cause-related marketing and such.

                                    But they’re these virtuous circles that companies are recognizing that they have to be. And today, especially with the millennials and Gen Z, (they know) that there’s a choice about where you work, and people don’t want to park their values at the door. They want to work for a values-based company that’s not only going to help with their training but also, at the end of the day, when you leave the office or you go home to your family or to, like, you know, the local fact or game or something, you talk about — like, I remember, again, going back to Rockport, (and people would be proud to say), “I work at Rockport. I work at the walking shoe company.” And in it, there’s a pride. You can’t put a dollar amount on that pride.

And companies today, it is now becoming — it used to be just the early adopters, the Ben & Jerry’s and the Body Shops and such, (but) it is now the mainstream that companies recognize that they want to attract the best and brightest.

And the best — I’ll give you another example: Tata Consultancy Services. They’re the world’s largest information technology company. They have more than 50,000 employees. They’re based in India, but they’re all over the world. They are larger than Accenture and IBM. And when they bring in employees, they spend three months going through training and learning about the culture. And then, their first customer — it’s a not-for-profit, and so, they allow their new employees to really feel their integrity and their values and action. It’s extraordinary. And their turning rate is barely anything. Their retention is 87–89%.

Tom:                          Wow!

Carol Cone:              (That’s) unheard of in companies. It’s because they live their values from the very (start), from recruiting to retention, from the highest senior level to the factory. Well, they don’t really have factories, because they are software.

Tom:                          Well, Carol, I made a mental note to return to something that you brought up earlier in our conversation and, also, going back to your blog.

                                    You note there that there’s recent research that finds that 65% of consumers want businesses to take a stand on issues that are important to them, and that rate goes up to 74% among 18-to-39-year-olds. How does a policy of purpose inform how an organization responds to these forces, what it stands for, and does this include making clear what it opposes?

Carol Cone:              This is a — okay, so activism and advocacy is very hard for companies today. It’s really hard, because no matter what side you’re going to pick, you’re always going to have your detractors. So, what — the first thing we say to any of our clients is, “Don’t just jump in” — that you need to look at, “What do you stand for at the core?” And then, you need to decide whether you’re going to be bold and you’re going to stick your neck out, as Nike did with Colin Kaepernick.

                                    But, you know, I knew, when Nike did that — Nike is a “bad boy” company. Now, there are also about one of these days too. But, you know, that, doing what they did with Colin Kaepernick — you know, everybody said, “Oh, they’re losing all this money and their stock price,” etc., etc. Yeah, their stock price took a hit, but then it went, then it went right back up, through the roof, because they walk their talk; they live on their values. And, you know, they’re not perfect; (they’ve) had a lot of issues with women, and now, they’re trying to be much more equitable with women.

                                    But a company has got to look at its core, and it is, it’s a tough decision to make. It truly is, in terms (of) standing out. And I think DE&I — diversity, equity and inclusion — that’s where, you know, companies today, they know they have to act, but they also have to understand. They have to start with their policies internally. And do they have equitable pay? Do they have equitable advancement, you know? And they have to start there, and a lot of companies just are looking at, you know, the terms or the words they use and the way that they advance people, (but) they’ve got to start, really, at home.

                                    So, corporate activism, regarding (that), you know, you’ve got to be really, really careful, and there’s no one roadmap to follow. You know, you also want to look at: do you want to be left behind? So, again, there’s no easy answer to this, but you certainly need to look at your history and how you’ve acted and what your internal policies are before you take a stand at all.

Tom:                          But is any success in recruiting the best new generation of talent going to depend on a company’s willingness to respond to these social, political and environmental dynamics?

Carol Cone:              Well, I think we have to — you don’t have to respond to them all, because if you respond to all things, you will stand for nothing. That’s the first thing.

                                    Climate and the environment, I think it’s fairly indisputable that you’ve got companies today, and their ESG — their environmental, their social and their governance approaches — that, environmentally, they have to cut their carbon footprint. They have to be more environmentally, you know, sensitive. And there’s lots of innovation that comes out of that, which is great.

                                    And we are turning to an electric economy, which is exciting. And, you know, I’m going to give a shout-out to Mary Barra assigned with this podcast, this interview. But Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, they are going to stop making combustion engines by 2035. They’re not going to make them anymore for regular cars and light-duty vehicles — like, oh, my God, they are going to go all-electric. That’s so exciting.

                                    So, you know, I think that companies, they have (questions about) DE&I, (and) you’re going to have to respond. But how will you respond? And the level and the goals that, the goals that you set and how you measure and report back, you know, that’s (just) as important. You don’t have to go from zero to 60 instantly, but you need to make steady progress. The level of your boldness depends on, again, your culture.

                                    I also think that there’s going to be — a lot of my colleagues who are in the C-suite, and they say that there’s going to be this next generation of leadership, the next gen, the Mary Barras, who’s very (much) on the cutting edge. You know, she started out as an engineer at General Motors, you know, (and now she’s) a woman running a car company. How — my God! And she’s fabulous, and she’s really, really great. And Indra Nooyi, who ran Pepsi-Co, and she really helped them. You know, she had a philosophy (of) performance with purpose, and that, you know, (she) decided to make better-for-you drinks and (add) less sugar and salt in the snacks and things like that. And they’re on a wonderful journey too.

                                    So, there’s going to be a new generation of leadership that recognizes that you cannot be successful in a society that’s unhealthy. And so, you will see dramatic changes happening again and again and again.

Tom:                          The Unilever chief, Paul Polman, has said that leaders need to have the courage to show that they’re vulnerable, that they’re willing to ask for help, which would seem to counter the historical notion of leadership, where just the opposite has been expected.

                                    Has the world become more receptive to a more down-to-earth, more accessible servant-leadership style?

Carol Cone:              I love that you talk about servant leadership, because in the earliest days when I started doing this work, there was a guy named Jack Stack. And if anybody knows (or) reads his book, it was about (being an) open book with management and leadership. And it was pretty much about servant leadership.

                                    And there’s a company that I have (on) one of my podcasts called Lineage Logistics. And nobody knows them; they’re about a $3-billion B-to-B. They are cold-storage refrigeration warehouses. And they handle, from field to store, about one-third of the food in the United States and about one-tenth of the food around the globe.

                                    And their leader knew that, you know, “I’ve got people in heavy coats in cold-storage facilities that are wearing boots, and this is not glamorous.” But he recognized that he needed to have a purpose, and their purpose is, basically — the shorthand is to feed the world. It’s also to stop food waste, but to feed the world. And he’s applying — it’s really interesting, when you talk to him, because he is applying, he wants to be the greatest technological cold-storage facility, you know, around the globe. And they have all sorts of innovations, but he treats his employees — he’s got a great CHRL.

                                    And I interviewed him on my show and talked about servant leadership and talked about — if you think about your traditional pyramid, you’ve got the C-suite at the top, and you’ve got all the, you know, the worker bees at the bottom. Servant leadership flips that. It has the workers at the top and it has the C-suite at the bottom. And that’s what Lineage does. They are there to serve their employees, to give them great benefits, to give them opportunities to grow, to give them an understanding that they are helping to feed the world. And, actually, during COVID, what they did — they did this wonderful thing about collaborating with all of their customers. And they created this goal to feed a hundred million meals to people during COVID through Feeding America.

Tom:                          Wow!

Carol Cone:              And, you know — and again, they’re cold storage of food that, you know — they’ve got all these, you know, like, forklifts that are driving around. It is not glamorous, but their people feel (like), “My God, I get up in the morning because I am, I am helping with food waste, and I’m feeding the world.” And, Greg Lehmkuhl, who’s the CEO, he gets that, that their purpose is at their core, (that) it’s the soul of their company, and that he is there to serve him employees.

                                    So, you are spot-on. And I love that Paul Polman, you know, he’s gone on from Unilever, and he’s doing wonderful, really collaborative work with big industry groups. Like, I think that’s he’s got, like, I don’t know, 25 companies in apparel, and they’re trying to totally reinvent the apparel industry — dyes and things like that.

                                    And courage is really important. You’ve got to have courage to do this. But, when you do it, this is how you reinvent: it’s called stakeholder-based capitalism. And it’s truly, you know, taking Milton Friedman and turning him on his head — (it’s) saying it’s not about “when you do all these other things right to your stakeholders, then you make the profits, and then you serve your shareholders,” but you serve all your other constituents.

Tom:                          It sounds like it’s a matter of being comfortable in your own skin and developing a really powerful sense of confidence.

Carol Cone:              It is a powerful sense of confidence. And then, you also need to — the other thing (is) that you can’t go for the short term. So, one of the things that Paul Polman did is that he said, you know, he’s not going to report quarterly earnings, which was shocking. And he basically said, “If you don’t like my — if you don’t like the way I’m reporting, then don’t buy my stock.”

                                    And it’s hard for companies who are public who, you know, you have to give guidance, you have to report quarterly. But this is a game, a purpose game, and the stakeholder-based capitalist approach and strategy — it’s not a “game” game, but I’m using that as, you know, a euphemism — is that you got to have a long view, because innovations — you’ve got to bring the, you know, how you’re going to serve the climate and society. You’ve got to take a longer view. You just can’t — you know, (with) purpose, you can’t flip a switch on purpose. You can’t turn it on and off.

Tom:                          Going back to something else that you raised earlier in our conversation, Carol — and apologies for this cliché — but they say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Do you think it’s possible for a purpose-driven organization to influence the cultures and the behaviors and achieve alignment among the companies within its supply chain?

Carol Cone:              Well, you know who did that incredibly well? Oh boy, you know, take a page from the book of Walmart.

I mean, Walmart decided — and I was at one of these meetings, at, I think, it was business with social responsibility. And they said — and Walmart is doing this in a number of ways. They are saying that you have to report on your environmental footprint, per se, and you’re going to get, you know — there are all there reports you have to do, and based on how you come out, you will get, uh, your position on the shelf. And everybody wants that, you know — “I’d love a position,” etc., etc., etc.

                                    That was a game-changer. That was a game-changer. And so, you’ve got these, we call them, market makers. You’ve got these big organizations who say — like General Motors — “We’re not” — you know, it’s their own product, but “we are not going to sell combustion engines.” Well, think how the downstream is on that. Think about, “Oh, God, we’re going to have to have all these charging stations. We’re going to have to have all these new battery companies.” That’s cool, but think about the other stuff that’s going to be antiquated.

But there’s amazing things that are happening, where companies are really utilizing their — you know, Starbucks. And Starbucks changed the entire coffee farmer industry by, you know, determining that they were going to pay them a fair wage. And then, they communicated the heck out it. Starbucks is my favorite company (in terms of their) views of their employees. Their employees are their number-one stakeholder — one, two, three, four and five. (They’re) just brilliant, brilliant things they do.

Tom:                          When it starts at the top of the chain, at Walmart or Amazon or wherever, does it — do you see it rippling through the supply chain and influencing the policies of those companies that are within the chain?

Carol Cone:              Well, I don’t know about the policy. I think, certainly, it influences the products. And if — indeed, companies that wanted to sell at Walmart, they had to report on their carbon footprint. So, of course, it changed the policies, or they couldn’t sell there, or they got bad position on the shelf.

Tom:                          Back to the pandemic. This has been an overwhelming thing in our lives for more than a year now, and we’re really not out of the woods yet. And some are now saying — in fact, the New York Times has proclaimed on its front page — that remote work is here to stay. So, I’m just wondering: What kinds of challenges does this present to purpose-driven organizations?

Carol Cone:              I think it’s a tremendous opportunity, because (it’s about) standing for something besides just making widgets or being on a Zoom call all day.

For example, there’s virtual volunteering. And a major piece of research just came out of CECP, which (is the) Chief Executive for Corporate Purpose, called Value Volunteering. It’s going to be one of my podcasts; it’s going to air in about a month. And basically, volunteering is helping individuals stay connected to the company, even if it’s just, you know, on a Zoom screen, or we’ll eventually be able to do volunteering in our communities with, you know, with masks and then, ultimately, you know, without masks, in micro volunteering and large volunteering.

                                    So, purpose is going to be that golden thread that ties people to the company, I think, (and it) is more important than ever.

Tom:                          Carol, final question for you: What sort of world exists in the future in which purpose-driven businesses become the norm?

Carol Cone:              Hopefully, it’s not nirvana. Hopefully, it’s not a dream. Because companies will have their — they will be more efficient; they will more human; they will be more environmentally sensitive. They will make wicked-cool innovations that are going to be, you know, responding to social issues and environmental issues. And we will have greater solutions to the problems that confront us on a daily basis. And work will be more joyous. That is for sure.

Tom:                          So, do you think there’s a good chance we could be happier people?

Carol Cone:              I think we will be more fulfilled. I don’t think we’re going to be happy all the time, but I think that being satisfied and having greater fulfillment, I think that that’s going to be a great result from having a lot more purpose in all of our companies, both big and small, B-to-B, B-to-C, local, national and global.

Tom:                          I’ll take it. Carol Cone, founder of the consultancy, Carol Cone ON PURPOSE. Thank you so much, Carol. We appreciate your time.

Carol Cone:              I, it was joyful, it was great. And thank you so much.

Tom:                          I’m Tom Martin, and thank you for listening.

Jim Stengel, host of The CMO Podcast and former CMO of P&G, is passionate about helping businesses and individuals discover and activate the “why” behind their work. Join us as he discusses the importance of purpose for an organization, how this can lead to better financial results and how the food industry's mission became more clearly defined and transparent as a result of the challenges of the past year.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Jim Stengel hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Tom:                          Welcome, Jim.

Jim:                             Tom, thank you. Great to be here on a beautiful day with you in the spring.

Tom:                          Let's just begin with this very simple but important question: What is the importance of purpose?

Jim:                             Well, Tom, I think the importance of purpose is to give people in an organization a North Star — something to bring them together, something that is helping people, impacting people's lives in a way beyond just turning a dollar. And so, for me, it is getting to the fundamental question of: Why are we in business beyond making money? What's our point here? What was the founder’s idea? What is that concept that brings people together, gives them a bit of lifting their step, and brings them to work with new ideas, energy (and) enthusiasm every day? (That’s) such a long-winded way of saying I think it's the “why” behind what businesses do for a living. And the more powerful the “why,” I think, the more powerful the business.

Tom:                          When that policy of purpose, of mission, is established and made clear, how does that help the company then grow?

Jim:                             Well, I think it helps them in a few ways. And by the way, Tom, there’s a lot of data. I’ve been a purpose seller since I was at Procter & Gamble. I’m going on probably a quarter of a century of advocating purpose, testing it, trying it, seeking data about it. And there's a growing database that (shows that) companies that are seen by people, consumers (and) employees as being purpose-driven far exceed their competition in terms of business results, financial results. So, it works. It helps the company grow. And the “why” behind why it works is it attracts better people. It encourages people to bring their best ideas. It kind of causes you to measure different things. It helps you be more customer-centric. It helps you to have more of a service and a generosity mindset. And overall, it just creates a great culture. You know, brands and businesses are grown by people, and great cultures attract great people, and great cultures grow brands. So, it works. Once you're in a purpose-driven organization, it’s tough to leave it, and it’s tough to go to one that is not wired that way.

Tom:                          Are passion and purpose mutually exclusive, or can they complement one another?

Jim:                             Oh, I think they go together. You know, if you’re working for a company that you really believe in and a leader you really believe in and a team you really believe in, you bring a tremendous sense of passion and energy and creativity to your work. And I think they go hand in hand in a purpose-driven company.

                                    You know, it’s tough for me to think about an organization that attracts passionate people but (for whom passion is) not a purpose of the center. And by this, Tom, I don’t mean cause marketing. I don’t mean philanthropy. I don't mean CSR. I mean a genuine passion and desire and interest to leverage the company's assets to make life better for the people they serve.

Tom:                          Is there a particular process? What goes into sorting out and clearly identifying a company's purpose?

Jim:                             Well, I think the answer is usually in the company itself. It’s usually with the people. And if we’re asked by a firm or a leader to help them with that — my firm does a bit of that work. You know, we always come in like anthropologists, and we come in curious. We come in like sociologists. What we want to do is we want to talk to a lot of people. We want to really understand where this company came from and what was the catalyst in starting the business whenever it started. What was the founder’s motivation? What happened in the company — when were its high times? Its low times? And so, we really study the history, and we also talk to a lot of people about why they're in this company — why they joined, what brings them to work, what are their hopes and dreams, when are they at their best, what’s the best day they've had at work. And when you go in and you ask those kinds of questions and you study the history of a company, it does come out.

                                    I mean, we're not wizards. We don't come into a company and send a lightning bolt and their purpose appears in the wall and everything's wonderful. We go in and we help the people in the company discover — or rediscover — what's always been there. And then the tricky part is the next stage, and that is bringing it to life in daily work.

Tom:                          I know that you've defined the key components of purpose, and you've actually created a framework around five areas: employee engagement, offerings, societal contributions, branding, and consumer engagement. And I'd like to look at each of these, beginning with employee engagement. After a year and counting of this life under the pandemic, what are leadership teams encountering in the way of employee engagement?

Jim:                             Well, Tom, I think that framework you just rattled off, which we do live by, we did not create that just by team meeting. We said, “These are the five things we’re going to study.” That came out of a very large database on what sort of activities drive purpose, as consumers see it as important. So, employee offerings and contributions that help society, branding, consumer engagement — those are based on a very large database. So, it's good, quantitative information. So, I guarantee, anyone who is listening, if you put your team together and you think about your status against those five areas, no doubt, you will have ideas to make your company better and stronger.

                                    On employee engagement, which is your pointed question, I am seeing, during the pandemic condition, a tremendous — and I’m talking about a lot of people, a lot of chief marketing officers and CEOs over the last 12 months, and there is no doubt that the way they work with their teams and approach their teams has changed significantly. So, the level of empathy, of listening, of understanding, of caring — I think those have always been there with great leaders, (but) they’re on hyperdrive over the last year. They have been on hyperdrive. And once that happens, you don't go back.

                                    So, the bond I am seeing with teams, among teams, are driven by the leader and how they work with their team over the last 12 months. That is stronger than I've seen in my career, and (that) sounds counterintuitive, because we have been able to touch and shake each other's hands and be around the same table (in the past), but counterintuitively, what's happened is, I think, leaders have gone above and beyond on caring about their people — their mental health, their physical health, their balance in their life. And I think that's one very positive outcome of these very, very difficult times.

Tom:                          And let's expand on that. What sort of actions have occurred as a result of those realizations?

Jim:                             Well, there's all sorts of rituals people have developed on their own, but I think the principle that underlies all of them (is that) they’ve given their teams the flexibility and the freedom to run their lives and to take care of what's most important and to be of service to their customers in all sorts of ways.

                                    You know, I just remember, in the first weeks of the pandemic, talking to the chief innovation officer and chief marketing officer of the beer company, AB InBev. And these were very early times; we were just all kind of figuring out how to get on Zoom together. And he just described how, you know, they just said to their people, “Listen, forget about our products and services right now. Let's just figure out everything we can do with our capabilities and our assets to help people.” So, if that's about making sanitizers in our factories or volunteering or opening up our spaces for whatever is needed in the health community, that's what they did. And at the same time, they started figuring out how they’re going to work together as teams. And the one principle I’ve seen, you know, obviously, (is) flexibility and listening and caring about people. Everyone's making decisions faster.

                                    You know, some rituals I see — teams are having morning quick check-ins, evening quick check-ins (where they ask), “What has to be done today? How did we do today? Do we make decisions fast enough?” So, (there’s) a lot more empowerment, a lot more agility, a lot more speed — and, through that, I'm hearing, a lot more creativity. We’re just finding ways to do things that we’ve never done before, and that feels good.

Tom:                          This pandemic certainly has changed things, hasn’t it?

Jim:                             Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is just maybe — I don’t know about your life, but in my life, I’m not sure there’s been anything that has been more powerful in terms of changing habits, behaviors, rituals (and) focus. I'm hearing so many people who are forcing some milestones in their lives, whether that's stopping a career, changing a career, figuring out what they really want to do with the precious time we all have left on this planet, changing companies because they want to work for a company that has a stronger sense of purpose. I'm hearing all of these things and discussions.

Tom:                          Yeah. It has really reoriented our priorities, I would say.

Jim:                             Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Tom:                          What about new generations entering the workforce? Is there a struggle there, to connect meaningfully with these new generations?

Jim:                             Well, I think it's been very tough to start a job in the pandemic, and I know a lot of young people who have done that. And companies, God bless them, have done their best to bring people into a culture, but I think starting with a company without meeting anyone — I just talked to a woman whose company was acquired by a large financial institution, and they’re now well into integration, and she said, “I've never met these people. And it's extraordinary how well we all feel we trust each other and understand each other without ever having a physical meeting.”

                                    But I do think for someone who's 22, 23, 27, who is starting a new job, it has been a particular challenge. And obviously, work is much more than going someplace to get something done. You get a paycheck, (but) when you're at that age, it's about meeting people. It's about discovering new things, developing yourself. And I think that has been tough in the pandemic. And you know, they're getting by. They're managing. And companies are doing their best. But I think when we see people's confidence (increase) in coming back together again, the first people who will want to be together in some sort of social/office situation will be the people who are in their first 1 to 2 years in a row.

Tom:                          Another of these five key focus points that you’ve identified is “offerings.” What's this about?

Jim:                             Oh, that’s probably a fancy way of saying just the products and services that you offer people from your company. And I think the companies that are purpose-driven think very deeply about, you know, “Are we offering the right level of products and services that emanate from our purpose, that are inspired by our purpose, and that genuinely do help people in our area in a way that delights them, reduces friction, makes your life easier, makes your life more joyful, makes your life richer?” And so, then, there are a lot of companies who get stuck in the current products and services that they're offering, and they get a little bit functional.

                                    You know, I spent a lot of years at Procter & Gamble, and when we were caught on our back foot, it was because we didn't think broadly enough about the products and services we offered our consumers as their lives changed. And I think, when you have a purpose that transcends the category that you're operating in — that appeals to sort of a higher North Star — then your employees come up with interesting products or services that are beyond what you're offering today. And I think that's a sign of a very creative customer-centered, purpose-driven organization.

Tom:                          That takes us right into that next point: societal contributions. What sorts of responsible actions can businesses take to play a role in improving society and the planet beyond the bottom line, and how does that tie into consumer engagement?

Jim:                             Yeah. I think, Tom, if you had done — you know, we do a lot of consumer research. And there's no doubt that this idea that companies should take a proactive role in solving some of the most pressing problems in our society, in our planet — our consumers and, frankly, our employees are expecting that. I don't think you would have seen that nearly as strongly as you do today, you know, 5 or 6 years ago. So, this is one that has gotten a bigger spotlight, where the expectations are higher. And it's a tricky one, right? If your business is, I don't know, hygiene — like Clorox, like Unilever (or), to some extent, Procter and Gamble — what you do for the planet and society ought to somehow be connected to the business you are or the culture you are and the products and services that you offer. And I think you need to stay in a space where you can generally make a difference based on the capabilities in your company. And, of course, there are some areas that transcend that.

                                    I think if you're not seeking to attract a diverse group of employees and you're (not) working on an inclusive culture that welcomes everyone, that welcomes everyone to bring their best ideas to work, then I think you're going to be, you know, you're going to be stuck about attracting the best talent. But when you pick an area that you want to make a difference in and help society, it should be something that you can genuinely affect, or it's going to be seen as greenwashing, and it’s not going to be authentic, and it's not who you are.

                                    And you know, you can probably think about the brands that you feel are taking a stand in the right spaces. You know, Unilever is a company that I competed against for many years. They've been very proactive at saying, “We're going to help people live a more sustainable lifestyle. And since we have an enormous range of products that are in packages that are discarded, that's the space that we think is right for us to play in. And if we do it well, consumers will appreciate it, our business will get healthier and the planet will be better.” I mean, look at General Motors today. They're making statements like, you know, “We're going to electrify everything by 2035.” They had this rallying cry of zero emissions, zero congestion, zero crashes. So, they're saying, “Hey, we're in the transportation movement business, and autos and trucks have been our lifeline. And they will continue to be for some time, but we are going to set a vision to move to 100% electrification, because it's the right thing to do.” And so, that's a terrific societal contribution, which, I think, if they do well, will benefit their business. So, it’s a good example, I think, of being coherent and picking a place to stand that makes sense for your culture and your category.

Tom:                          The fifth key focus point among the five that we've been talking about is branding. And I'm wondering: Is branding an expression of the other four?

Jim:                             Yeah. I think it's where it all comes together, Tom. I mean, when you think about branding, it’s everything that you communicate, right? It's your advertising. It’s your packaging. It's your language. It's your rituals in the company. So, it's everything that sends a message about who you are and what you value. So, I think it all comes together there. But you know, again, if you don’t think about all five of these areas, you will not be sending out a coherent and consistent message to your employees, first, as well as to other stakeholders, which include your customers. So, this is an important one. And I think it's one that, sometimes, we can think about as an afterthought.

                                    One danger in the purpose journey is that everyone is not on the same page, and some companies see purpose as a marketing initiative or a corporate affairs initiative, and (in) that (case), it does not work. In fact, it backfires. When you're on the purpose journey, everyone's in the boat. Everyone has a role. It breaks down silos. Everyone comes together, and that includes everything you do in branding. So, these aren't functional or discipline ideas. These are ideas within our company.

Tom:                          That really underscores the critical nature of effective communication of those ideas, right?

Jim:                             Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And it’s so important, communication, and we all know the companies that do it well and do it creatively and do it with a high level of engagement, but we have to do that inside the company, too. I was working with a company in Canada on the purpose journey, and they revamped, in all ways, how they communicate. They became much better storytellers. They started almost every press release with a story about their purpose. They started company meetings with stories about their purpose. And it palpably changed the feeling in that company and the morale in that company, and it led to just better ideas coming forward, better innovation toward their purpose, which everyone made their own, because they told stories about it. They talked about it in their own words and in their own stories, whether they were in the legal group, the financial group, the operations group, the finance group, the marketing group. Everyone had their own stories, but it was held together by the purpose.

Tom:                          The food industry has always been important to everybody, but it seems as though it's really catapulted to the forefront during COVID, because we're spending more time in our kitchens (and) more of us (are) embracing healthy diets. How has this influenced thinking and decision-making at the leadership level of the food industry?

Jim:                             Well, I think this has been really positive, and I'm not sure they've gotten all the credit they probably should have through these times. I have my own podcast, and I talked to several CMOs of companies over the last year. And one woman — she’s at Kellogg's — you know, she said to me that, through this pandemic experience we've all had, she said, “Our purpose became so much clearer, our focus became so much clearer, and it came to life, especially in the supply chain.” And the supply chain of finding the right ingredients (and) materials in difficult times, getting products to the shelves so people could shop quickly, carefully go home and enjoy meals with their families when we still, to some extent, are shut in.

                                    I talked to the General Mills CMO about these times. I talked to people at Alltech and many others. And I just feel like the food industry stepped up — and their stock prices are pretty good. So, I think it's been appreciated by Wall Street and the investors, but I think they just said, “We’ve always been important. We’re now more important than ever.” And while they're doing this, Tom, I think they were continuing to make their products more — they were more transparent about what's in their products. They’re seeking to make the ingredients better. They’re seeking to help people eat healthier. Kroger's in my hometown, here, in Cincinnati, (and) they've been on a journey, a purpose journey, for the last few years, where they're just trying to help people eat fresh foods more easily and affordably and creatively.

                                    So, I really feel like the food industry has had a — it’s kind of a year of, you know — it tested them, of course. The supply chains were tested with all of us, but I just think they rose up and they were there and they helped us all get through this. And I think they’re stronger companies because of that.

Tom:                          It’s clear that you're a proponent of this, but I'm wondering what exactly makes you optimistic about a purpose-driven world as we move forward.

Jim:                             Because it works, Tom. You know, the companies that are seen by people as being more purpose-driven are doing better than their competition, and they're delivering superior financial results, and that's because people care. And so, you know, I think purpose is the management philosophy of the century. I think it was seen as a little bit, maybe, “fluffy” as it was bandied about 15 to 20 years ago, but I think what's happening is people are now seeing the growing data that (proves that) purpose is what people want. They want you to be purpose-centered. They want to be customer-centric. They want you to attract really great people, and they want you to help them live their lives more sustainably and more happily. So, I think it's here to stay. It's going to get stronger and stronger. And the competitive battleground is going to be the companies that are more long-term focused, that are more committed to this, that execute better, that are more creative in how they execute. So, it's not going to be about, “Are you purpose-driven or not?” It will be about how well that you inculcate that in your culture and how well you execute that for your customers.

Tom:                          Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer of Procter & Gamble, now president and CEO of the Jim Stengel Company in Cincinnati. Thanks, Jim.

Jim:     Thank you, Tom. I enjoyed it.