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Furnishings & DecorThe brain behind retail chain Woolworths’ Farming for the Future initiative, Kobus Pienaar, is looking to the past for inspiration to solve today’s food needs.
The retailer ventured into agriculture intent on several aims: radically improving soil and plant health; preserving resources like water and soil; and protecting biodiversity.
Trials have shown successes in crop yields and quality, while land, water, pesticide and fertiliser use has been greatly reduced.
Pienaar says while it is preparing for the future, the initiative draws inspiration from a bygone age.
“We have learnt that nature is prepared to give us a certain amount,” he says. “We cannot continually be forcing it to give us more and more.
“That is unsustainable and we eventually find, in conventional farming, that we need to put in more to get out less as the soil gets depleted. We must farm with nature, not against it. We need to farm to provide for ourselves so future generations are able to provide for themselves.”
This does not imply a one-size-fits-all solution.
“Farming for the Future is an attitude and an approach. What works on one farm might not work so well on another,” Pienaar says.
“All our farmer-suppliers have Farming for the Future manuals, but we don’t prescribe to them, for example, that they can’t use sprays. What we want to know is the thinking behind their decision to spray. Why did they spray, at that time, on those crops, in that area? Did they take into account negative effects on the environment, and did the decision prove justified after they had done so?
“Many conventional farmers would not be able to answer such questions.”
Supply from farmers adhering to Woolworths’ strict organic farming principles is not always reliable.
Pienaar says most consumers do not consider “the true cost of food. When food is produced, there is a huge cost to the country’s water resources (agriculture uses more than 80% of available water) and to the environment generally.
“Then, for example, apples are put in cold storage so that they are available all year round to customers. The environmental cost of the energy needed to store those apples at the appropriate temperature is huge.
“But our customers are used to having apples all year round. If Woolworths introduces seasonality again, we will lose those customers.”
Woolworths and other retailers have to import some produce so that they are always on the shelves.
“Imports are a huge problem. Shipping, placing orders, SA’s volatile exchange rate, and then not selling as much as we expected to. We would be delighted to do without importing produce,” Pienaar says.
Part of the solution might be to introduce new varieties of produce that thrive at various times of the year. Woolworths has done this with avocados, and in three years will no longer need to import them.
From June 2013, all Woolworths produce will carry the Farming for the Future logo and labels providing nutritional information.
Pienaar is convinced that scientists, technologists, business people and customers will have to sit down soon to find solutions to the problems of food production.
“We have already spoken to our customers, through surveys and group discussions,” he says. “The most important things they have let us know is that they want food for their kids and they want us to save water. And whatever we do, we must not do so at the cost of jobs.”
Mark Botha, head of WWF SA’s Living Lands project, says the Farming for the Future initiative is “quite amazing”.
“It is an exceptionally progressive move by Woolworths, and WWF SA is hoping to use studies of some of the supply farms to better understand the business case,” he says.
“It is abundantly clear that agriculture in its present form is not viable in the long term.”
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