Organic Foods Research
After dire diagnosis, yogurt CEO says organic farming offers realistic hope for U.S. food and nutrition (MIT)
Decades of supposed improvements in food production have instead bred waste,
destruction and disease, Stonyfield Farm President and Ce-Yo (the company’s
term) Gary Hirshberg argued in a talk at MIT Sloan on Sept. 28.
Hirshberg spent nearly 30 minutes detailing the familiar ills and consequence
of U.S. farming and nutrition — waste, pesticides, water depletion, destroyed
topsoil, cancer and diabetes. All are the result of an “inflationary, linear,
non-systematic” approach to food production, he said.
Consumption of chemical-filled foods is driving the human race to disaster in
the name of profit, while ignoring the big picture problems and possible
solutions, he argued.
“Here’s the good news,” Hirshberg said. “Enormous business opportunities.
Enormous research opportunities. I’m serious. It’s going to take a lot of work
to fix.”
Hirshberg held up Stonyfield, a New Hampshire organic yogurt manufacturer that
does $330 million in annual sales, as an example of a company succeeding with
a systematic approach to sustainability and waste reduction and a commitment
to organic food.
With a compounded annual growth rate of more than 24 percent over the last 18
years, Stonyfield’s existence mocks suggestions that organic food production
can scale up only so far.
Sustainability and waste reduction steps …
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