New Zealand’s food exporters, on whom this country depends for the bulk of its export earnings, may have to contend with fresh opposition from a new quarter. This is the school of “greenies” who preach the need for a revolution in creating food through precision fermentation: growing food in labs from microbes and water.
Leading this school in the United Kingdom is a formidable authority, George Monbiot, who argues that before long
“… most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants but from unicellular life”.
Monbiot and others like him argue it is “indisputable” that the farming revolution of the the 1950’s , with its widespread use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides has waged war on nature.
He has a column in the Guardian and recently wrote that organic, pasture -fed beef and lamb are the “world’s most damaging farm products”.
Intensive monocultural ways of producing food are not only contaminating land and waterways, but are heating up the planet and contributing to a crisis in human health.
While Monbiot may have the most extreme views, others who speak of the need to reduce CO2 emissions and switch to greener energy preach the virtues of “regenerative” farming.
Which, of course, can be uneconomic.
For NZ the lessons are clear: we have to reinforce our techniques of scientific farming and production.
So it was welcome news last week that the giant co-op Fonterra, whose strategy is to be a serious player in the multi-billion dollar global nutrition science and innovation market, has moved another step with the launch of a new wellbeing nutrition brand.
Named Nutiani and launched last week, the brand will offer Fonterra’s business customers product solutions through a combination of products, concepts and services that tap the big co-operative’s intellectual property and science research banks, and its reputation for high-quality, high-value ingredients, like lactoferrin, probiotics and lipids.
Fonterra chief innovation and brand officer, Komal Mistry-Mehta, said the market opportunity for the new brand was significant, with the global markets for physical, mental and inner wellbeing nutrition worth US$66bn (S108bn) and growing at 6% a year, while the medical nutrition market was valued at US$50bn ($82bn) and growing by 5% annually.
The new business-to-business brand, backed by market-ready concepts and services such as market and technical support, consumer insights from Fonterra’s market research and testing, and formulation expertise, will offer customers targeted solutions for their wellbeing and medical nutrition products, said Mistry-Mehta.
Its launch would also open opportunities for Fonterra for strategic partnerships to access new markets and consumers. Fonterra is NZ’s biggest business and the world’s sixth-largest dairy company by revenue.
Products developed under the new brand targeted health and wellbeing areas such as mobility, mental wellbeing, immunity, stress management and muscle health.
“Our health and wellbeing customers are facing growing pressure to accelerate their innovation pipeline to respond to… dynamic consumer demands, yet they face common challenges during new product development and are looking for partners to fill their capability gaps,” said Mistry-Mehta.
“Nutiani answers this need by providing a suite of solutions which help customers tackle the pain points associated with each step of the innovation journey – from identifying the opportunity to validating the final product.”
Target markets will be North America, North Asia, South East Asia and China.
As Point of Order sees it, Fonterra’s announcement is probably one of the most significant it has made in the Hurrell era. Providing it can follow through by expanding sales with the Nutiani brand, it could underpin the future of the dairy industry as a whole.
Point of Order 
Greenes only eat CAKE! plain cake I think?? from Trevor.
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