Doubling food production while halving the footprint

In June 2009 Nutreco organised the fifth Agri Vision conference. This brought together 375 leaders of agribusinesses from 44 countries to hear from 20 top business managers and agricultural scientists during three half-day sessions. The theme of Agri Vision 2009 was the challenge of feeding the world in 2050 with nine billion people and many having higher expectations for animal proteins in their diets. At the same time the food must be produced by a smaller proportion of the population, because of urbanisation, with a narrowing resource base in terms of land and water together with volatile prices and availability of feed raw materials.

The outcome at the Agri Vision conference was strongly positive. Speakers and delegates agreed that with the knowledge and technology in hand and investment in the right areas, geographically for example in Africa and technically for example in sustainable precision farming, it will be possible to sustainably produce the food that will be needed. The potential for feeding the world of 2050 and the opportunity for Nutreco to be a sustainable contributor are described in the Feeding the Future booklet published by Nutreco in February 2010. Inspired by the strongly positive opinions expressed at Agri Vision, Nutreco in this booklet brought together the views of key speakers and many other top business leaders and scientists from all stages of our value chains. They explain the challenges and how the knowledge, skills and technology we have today and will have tomorrow will enable us to feed the world of 2050. They also show it can be done without overexploiting our planet and while maintaining the richness of our biodiversity – doubling food production while halving the footprint.

Preparing and publishing this booklet illustrates how Nutreco at its critical junction in the midpoint of the feed-to-food value chains can engage and influence other stakeholders.

The outcome of Agri Vision additionally provided an important driver for the development of the sustainability process now taking place in Nutreco and endorsed the commitment to embed sustainability in the daily activities and thinking of Nutreco. The first important step was to develop a valid and relevant sustainability policy.

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