Innovation Memo: Innovation Will Be Just as Important, and Maybe Even More Important, In An Economically Challenging 2009

The temptation in very bad economic times like the present is to hunker down, cut-back and just stay the course. This is true for all companies in the the food and grocery industry, from small natural and specialty foods manufacturer-marketers and single-store retailers, to global food companies and large retail chains.

The problem with taking that approach only is that it tends to shut down innovation, which is something industry companies of all shapes -- suppliers, marketers, distributors, retailers -- and sizes -- small, medium, large and mega -- need to continue doing in an economic recession. In fact, one could argue that although its much more difficult to do, innovating during a serious economic downturn is perhaps the most important time to do so.

Cutting back, hunkering down, trimming expenses -- these are all essential things to do in this global recession. They are survival mechanisms and strategies. But companies and individuals need to do so in a way that preserves, and even encourages, innovation. It can be done. The first step towards making it happen is to recognize it.

2008 has already ended in parts of the world, and will do so in just a few hours in other parts like the United States. So as the new year, 2009, begins -- a time when we all look to changes --one change we won't be seeing is an improved global economy. No indeed. In fact, we, along with many others, see the current global recession lasting through all of 2009, and likely getting worse before it starts to get better.

This does not mean innovation must come to an end though, or even slow down. Rather it just needs to change, to adapt, as all strategic elements must in a super-sour economy.

To this end, we've put together a list of recent articles and reports regarding innovation. All of the articles look forward to innovation in 2009, in a difficult economic environment. It's must reading for the new year. The list: click on the green titles below:

~Innovating in the Great Disruption
By Scott Anthony

~An Entrepreneur's Look at 2009: The End or A New Beginning?
By David Silverman

~Special Report: Making Innovation Work

~Special Report: Slimming Innovation Pipelines to Fatten Their Returns

Food Retailing Innovation Memo: Innovative Combination Retail Food Market and Urban Farm Set to Open in New Orleans LA USA Neighborhood

New Orleans' Hollygrove market and urban farm is set to open in January, 2009

Educational garden and market hope to regrow Hollygrove neighborhood
By Judy Walker

Food editor, The Times-Picayune - New Orleans
November 10, 2008

Once the site of Guillot's Nursery in New Orleans, LA USA, the Hollygrove Market and Farm is set to start selling local produce in January.

The site of the former Guillot's Nursery will become the Hollygrove Market & Farm, a self-sustaining nonprofit store selling local produce and an education center for urban farming, organizers announced last week.

The Carrollton-Hollygrove Community Development Corp. and New Orleans Food & Farm Network will develop and operate the market on the one-acre site at 8301 Olive St. It is expected to open in January; the first cover crop to build the soil in the teaching garden already is sprouting.

Hollygrove community member Michael Beauchamp lives nearby and is a volunteer who has been with the program about three months.

"I'm a first-time gardener, and I'm loving it," Beauchamp said. "It's a cost savings. There are lower transportation costs. I can eat healthy and probably add years to my life. And I can plant my garden and come here and sell the extra."

The concept sprang from the Carrollton-Hollygrove Community Development Corp., a neighborhood organization formed to encourage rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. The group wanted to address the long-standing lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables in the
Hollygrove-Gert Town-Fountainbleau area.

Paul Baricos, the group's executive director, said they saw the Guillot's property and realized it would be perfect., They partnered with NOFFN, which was looking for a place to train farmers in organic certification, to "grow the growers" to meet the huge demand for local food.

"We'll operate the store," Baricos said, providing community jobs, "and (NOFFN) will train four to six people at a time. We hope to .¤.¤. focus on locally grown foods. But there's not that much grown in New Orleans. We canvassed rural farms within 100 miles, and we will buy from farms in south Louisiana and southern Mississippi. So it will be seasonal."

The market also hopes to sell to chefs, schools and weekend markets, he added.

NOFFN executive director Kris Pottharst said the partnership "is looking at it as not only fresh food but economic development. One purpose is to highlight the neighborhood as a desirable place to live. This will provide one of the sought-after amenities that is mentioned by all neighborhood groups as to how they want to rebuild their neighborhood after the storm."
Pottharst said the lease on the property was effective in September, and includes the 5,000-square-foot main building that will house the market. The second floor will be used for offices, classrooms and neighborhood meeting space.

Demonstration plots will be placed along the outside fence, in direct sight lines of the Carrollton Boosters sports fields across the street. A salvaged hoop house will be used to grow seedlings. Donated fruit trees have been planted. Tulane City Center, the outreach program of the Tulane University architecture department, is creating an outdoor shade space and entrance arbor.

Among those attending Friday's announcement of the program was former NBA player Will Allen, who received a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant as founder of Growing Power Inc. in Milwaukee. Allen has become an international spokesperson for urban farming.

"I'm the son of a sharecropper," Allen said. "And I'm passing on what was passed on to me, in a different sort of way, with a community twist."

Food Innovation Guest Memo: An American Professor's Food Revolution Starts With Rice

International Herald Tribune
June 18, 2008
By William J. Broad

Many a professor dreams of revolution. But Norman Uphoff, working in a leafy corner of the Cornell University campus, is leading an inconspicuous one centered on solving the global food crisis. The secret, he says, is a new way of growing rice.

Rejecting old customs as well as the modern reliance on genetic engineering, Uphoff, 67, an emeritus professor of government and international agriculture with a trim white beard and a tidy office, advocates a management revolt.

Harvests typically double, he says, if farmers plant early, give seedlings more room to grow and stop flooding fields. That cuts water and seed costs while promoting root and leaf growth.

The method, called the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, emphasizes the quality of individual plants over the quantity. It applies a less-is-more ethic to rice cultivation.

In a decade, it has gone from obscure theory to global trend — and encountered fierce resistance from established rice scientists. Yet a million rice farmers have adopted the system, Uphoff says. The rural army, he predicts, will swell to 10 million farmers in the next few years, increasing rice harvests, filling empty bellies and saving untold lives.
Today in Health & Science

"The world has lots and lots of problems," Uphoff said recently while talking of rice intensification and his 38 years at Cornell. "But if we can't solve the problems of peoples' food needs, we can't do anything. This, at least, is within our reach."

That may sound audacious given the depths of the food crisis and the troubles facing rice. Roughly half the world eats the grain as a staple food even as yields have stagnated and prices have soared, nearly tripling in the past year. The price jolt has provoked riots, panicked hoarding and violent protests in poor countries.

But Uphoff has a striking record of accomplishment, as well as a gritty kind of farm-boy tenacity.

He and his method have flourished despite the skepticism of his Cornell peers and the global rice establishment — especially the International Rice Research Institute, which helped start the green revolution of rising grain production and specializes in improving rice genetics.

His telephone rings. It is the World Bank Institute, the educational and training arm of the development bank. The institute is making a DVD to spread the word.

"That's one of the irons in the fire," he tells a visitor, looking pleased before plunging back into his tale.

Uphoff's improbable journey involves a Wisconsin dairy farm, a billionaire philanthropist, the jungles of Madagascar, a Jesuit priest, ranks of eager volunteers and, increasingly, the developing world. He lists top SRI users as India, China, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam among 28 countries on three continents.

In Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, Veerapandi Arumugam, the agriculture minister, recently hailed the system as "revolutionizing" paddy farming while spreading to "a staggering" million acres.

Chan Sarun, Cambodia's agriculture minister, told hundreds of farmers at an agriculture fair in April that SRI's speedy growth promises a harvest of "white gold."

On Cornell's agricultural campus, Uphoff runs a one-man show from an office rich in travel mementos. From Sri Lanka, woven rice stalks adorn a wall, the heads thick with rice grains.

His computers link him to a global network of SRI activists and backers, like Oxfam, the British charity. Uphoff is SRI's global advocate, and his Web site (ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/) serves as the main showcase for its principles and successes.

"It couldn't have happened without the Internet," he says. Outside his door is a sign, "Alfalfa Room," with a large arrow pointing down the hall, seemingly to a pre-electronic age.

Critics dismiss SRI as an illusion.

"The claims are grossly exaggerated," said Achim Dobermann, the head of research at the international rice institute, which is based in the Philippines. Dobermann said fewer farmers use SRI than advertised because old practices often are counted as part of the trend and the method itself is often watered down.

"We don't doubt that good yields can be achieved," he said, but he called the methods too onerous for the real world.

By contrast, a former skeptic sees great potential. Vernon Ruttan, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota and a longtime member of the National Academy of Sciences, once worked for the rice institute and doubted the system's prospects.

Ruttan now calls himself an enthusiastic fan, saying the method is already reshaping the world of rice cultivation. "I doubt it will be as great as the green revolution," he said. "But in some areas it's already having a substantial impact."

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Farm-to-Food Guest Memo: An American in London Wants to Replace Residential Front Lawns With 'Edible Estates'

In his new book, "Edible Estates," Fritz Haeg lays out his scheme to turn residential front lawns into domestic farms. Why not? Water could soon become the new oil, lawns have to be mowed weekly, and the price of food continues to soar, after all. Shouldn't that front yard space, water and labor be producing something edible? Although, if the scheme does catch on, the fresh produce industry might not be too happy. (Photo: Courtesy Megan Quinn.) (Copyright: Megan Quinn.)

The urban farmer: One man's crusade to plough up the inner city
The Independent-UK/Sunday
By Kate Burt
Sunday, 1 June 2008

More pictures

Fritz Haeg isn't perhaps the obvious representative of a revolution in global farming. As an architecture and design academic and practitioner, the American has had his work exhibited at Tate Modern and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and has taught fine art at several US universities. Yet it is last year's community-collaborative project on an inner-city council estate in south London that best showcases his current passion: the urban farm.

Last April, in a discussion about the global food crisis, Gordon Brown announced: "We need to make great changes in the way we organise food production in the next few years." High on the list of viable changes is the idea of inner-city agriculture. Which is the theory behind Haeg's concept, detailed in his new book Edible Estates: it proposes the replacement of the domestic front lawn in cities with "an edible landscape". Last year, to illustrate this point, Haeg was commissioned by the Tate to create a permanent "edible estate" on a triangle of communal grass in front of a housing estate near Elephant and Castle, bordered on two sides by a main road along which London buses thunder every few minutes.

The aim was to engage and involve the local residents – and together they miraculously transformed a patch of grass previously favoured by dogs and drunks into a luscious agri-plot housing apple and plum trees, a "forest" of tomato plants, aubergines, squashes, Brussels sprouts, runner beans, sweet peas, a "salad wing", herbs, edible flowers and 6ft artichoke plants. It is also quite beautiful: "The design was inspired by the ornate, curvy raised flowerbeds you find in front of Buckingham Palace," explains Haeg. Interestingly, although this space is still accessible by passers-by – unlike the traditional allotment, which Haeg feels is outdated – there has been no theft or vandalism. The London project was mirrored in several locations around the US.

"All the projects I do are rooted in the way that an architect thinks and works," says Haeg. "How we live and the spaces we make for ourselves." And right now, he believes, we need to re-evaluate exactly that, and urgently so – particularly in our overcrowded cities.

As part of its "One Planet Living" initiative, the World Wildlife Fund calculated our average personal carbon footprint in Britain. Perplexingly, it found that food production and its transport accounts for our greatest use of carbon – 23 per cent per person – beating personal transport, home energy and even shared services (the running of schools, hospitals, banks and so on). These results, combined with food shortages and escalating costs – the price of apples and eggs has risen by 30 per cent in the past year – mean action must be taken, says Haeg. Ornamental urban space is a luxury we can no longer afford, he believes: we need to be growing food on our lawns, greens, driveways and even public parks.

Haeg is not the only one to think it is time for change. The global Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) strategic alliance estimates that, by 2015, more than half the world's population will be living in urban areas, provoking one of the greatest challenges in the history of agriculture as we try to find a way to keep a lid on food miles and produce enough food for everyone. "Now, more than ever," urges Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, "we need to grow more food closer to where people live." And in this climate, it seems that everyone from town planners to head teachers, TV chefs to agri-entrepreneurs are getting excited about farming food in the big smoke.

But is it realistic to turn over our spare urban soil to the cause – and is there really enough of it to do so? Erik Watson, an urban design director at the town-planning company Turley Associates, strongly believes that inner-city agriculture is the future. As such, he is already advising his clients on ways to incorporate farming into their developments and is particularly excited about the potential for transforming existing space enclosed in the traditionally British city structure, the "perimeter block" (a row of buildings constructed around an enclosed, private square – typically divided into private gardens). "Look at an aerial view of London and you'll see there's an enormous amount of private open space contained within these blocks. It is perfect for this urban agricultural revolution," he says.

Re-apportioning private space might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Later this month Sustain is hosting a conference, called Growing Food for London, where ideas to be aired include the possibilities of using derelict council facilities, social housing land and unused private gardens for commercial agriculture, as well as the planting of fruit and nut trees in parks and along roads, creating community gardens in public parks and replacing ornamental plants with edible crops. It will also look at alternative food production such as mushroom growing, beekeeping and planting edibles in window boxes, as well as ideas for the little-explored area of rearing livestock in urban areas.

While beekeeping is on the rise in British cities – it is estimated that there are 5,000 beehives in London alone – other urban animal-based edibles are rare. Hunting might be the answer here – squirrel meat has already been seized upon as a sustainable, free-range delicacy in rural Cornwall – could it catch on in cities? Might pigeon pie become a Trafalgar Square speciality; has anyone thought of fox cutlets?

Perhaps more realistic is organised urban livestock rearing. "There are issues with planning – noise pollution and so on," says Zeenat Anjani from Sustain, "but you could definitely raise chickens and other small animals. We hope the Growing Food conference will open more people's minds to these sorts of ideas and get the right people in the same room to talk about what they can do."

Many are already talking about it. Inspired by the "victory gardens" of the First and Second World Wars, when civilians were urged to "dig for victory" to survive the food shortages, Jamie Oliver's newest venture is to inspire the residents of inner-city Rochdale to eat like our wartime forebears and grow their own, while Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new River Cottage series challenges five Bristol familes to transform a derelict patch of land into a fruitful smallholding.

In Middlesborough, the Groundwork South Tees trust has begun an urban-farming education programme to teach people how to cultivate herbs, vegetables and fruit even if they do not have a garden, by providing containers for patios, balconies and windowsills. There are also sustainable-food grants available to those who want to educate others how to produce their own food in cities, and how to compost effectively to improve typically poor-quality urban soil. '

If it comes off, perhaps one of the most high-profile initiatives – still at bid stage – is the Feed the Olympics proposal. It is a radical blueprint from several green organisations outlining how 6,000 acres of land in London could be put to work to grow enough food to provide the 14m-odd meals that will be needed during the 60 days of the 2012 Games, instead of importing it. This would involve creating 2,012 new food-growing spaces across the capital, including community gardens, allotments and roof gardens.

Revolutionary? In this country, yes – but we're lagging behind countries such as China, Japan and Cuba, which already have farms integrated into the social, economic and physical structures of their cities; as early as a decade ago Beijing town planners had begun to incorporate agriculture into the urban landscape. The Chinese government also offers courses to aspiring urban farmers and plans to cultivate gardens on nearly 10,000,000sq ft of roof space over the next 10 years.

Similarly, Argentina's Programa de Agricultura Urbana (PAU) was set up to support city-based farmers in the aftermath of the country's financial collapse. And in Cuba, when the US-led trade embargo resulted in severe food shortages, the government responded by investing in urban farms, providing state-owned plots and teaching relevant skills in schools.

But will it work in Britain? Carole Wright, who manages the communal garden created by Haeg in south London, says it already is. "It cost less than £5,000 to create and it is capable of feeding three blocks of flats with 24 households each," she says. "We run family gardening sessions, Sunday sessions, after-school clubs and also container gardening, so residents can grow things on their balconies too. High- density housing is no barrier – you can grow things out of an old baked-bean can. The more people we can get, the more we can produce. It's not about the size of the land – it's about the maintenance." She has had no shortage of regular, enthusiastic volunteers – surprisingly most of whom are children.

Wright was delighted when one girl, a moody teenager who described herself as a "cybergoth", grew her own beetroot. "You'd never have known she was excited about it," says Wright, "but I spotted her one evening with her friends, holding the thing in her hands. 'What are you doing with that?' I asked. 'Well,' she said, 'I grew it – I wanted to show my mates.' She comes down every day now to water her sunflowers."

It's not just about financial and health benefits – Wright has also noticed social benefits. "People who have not spoken for five years are suddenly chatting again, discussing what they've grown. And it brings together people from different cultures too – they lean over the fence and reminisce about the vegetables they grew in their countries as children – okra, bananas, yams, sweet potatoes."

Wright describes one gardener, an elderly widow, who has planted an almond tree as a memorial to her late husband and says he would have loved to see how the space had been transformed. "One guy has even replaced the photo of his family on his mobile phone with a picture of the garden. It's given them so much pride."

The impact of the garden has been enormous, says Wright. People from further and further away are coming along to get involved, learn new skills and socialise. "They see it and it's like a lightbulb and they say, 'We want our own edible estate.' Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?"

The world's first edible high-rise

The potential of city-based farming could be vastly expanded if we extend upwards as well as using ground-level plots.

Of course, one major problem with growing produce on our roofs is the quantities of soil needed, which would add unfeasible amounts of weight. However, hydroponic technology – using nutrient-enriched water instead of soil – could be the solution.

Toronto scientist Gordon Graff has created plans for a 58-floor concept building – the SkyFarm – which would grow crops in the heart of the city and could provide enough food for 35,000 people every day. Crops would be irrigated by water recycled through the building's hydroponic system and, with no soil, many diseases are ruled out – meaning no need for chemical pesticides.

Rumours abound of a similar skyscraper farm being developed in Las Vegas. It is said that the 30-storey structure would be not just about agriculture, but would house pigs too – though some have suggested the vertical pork farm could be a hoax. Punchlines on a postcard, please. KB

Interesting? Click here to explore further (see link at bottom of Ms. Burt's story.

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo (NSFM) Editor's Note: NSFM wrote a piece in September, 2007 about a vertical, mixed-use urban farm and residential complex designed by the Seattle, Washington USA-based firm Mithun. There's also a reproduction of a drawing of the firm's design in the piece. You can read it and view the drawing of the vertical farm/residential complex here.

Food Innovation Guest Memo: Is the Future of 'Meat' in the Laboratory Rather Than on the Ranch?

Graphic by: Scott Wallace/Christian Science Monitor

By Gregory M. Lamb/Staff Writer, Christian Science Monitor
Thursday, May 29, 2008

The human appetite for “meat with feet” has never been great news for animals. But more and more, it’s also being viewed as a detriment to human health and the environment, leading some activists to wonder if a better way to produce meat might be found. One intriguing possibility may be found in the laboratory.

Last month, the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced it was offering $1 million to the first person to make lab-grown chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The taste and texture, PETA said, must be “indistinguishable” from real chicken flesh, and the lab-cultured meat must be “sold commercially … at a competitive price in at least 10 states.”

While PETA appears be in little danger of losing its money, so-called “in vitro” meat may yet be coming to a hamburger or chicken nugget near you, says Jason Matheny, cofounder and director of New Harvest, a nonprofit group forming a network of researchers and spreading information about cultured or in vitro meat.

At meeting in Norway last month sponsored by the In Vitro Meat Consortium, a group of universities and others studying the idea, “the consensus was encouraging that this is a technology that probably could be developed in the five-to-10-year time frame,” says Mr. Matheny, who is also a PhD candidate in public health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Those at the meeting also heard about a promising paper on the economics of creating meat in a lab rather than growing it in a barnyard. The study, which assumes that the process would involve a mix of current and conceivable future technologies, shows that a cultured meat product could be price competitive with conventional meat, Matheny says.

Europe is the hotbed for this kind of research, with government-funded Dutch researchers taking the lead. In that densely populated country, “If you’re a half a kilometer from a pig farm, you’re going to notice,” Matheny says.

But researchers don’t envision creating faux chicken wings or a T-bone steak. “The technology to produce something like that doesn’t exist, nor is it clear when something like that would exist,” Matheny says.

Instead, they are trying to create a lab-grown version of ground meat, the kind found in hamburgers, sausages, and chicken nuggets. Such products account for about half of all meat consumed today, Matheny says.

Roughly 56 million farm animals worldwide are slaughtered for human consumption each year, says a 2006 report from the United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization. Raising livestock, it said, accounts for 18 percent of the human-caused greenhouse gases that cause global warming. That’s a greater share than all forms of transportation combined.

Demand for meat is expected to boom in coming decades, with the number of livestock doubling by 2050, the UN report concludes, as workers in rising economies such as China and India acquire the taste for animal flesh.

Already in the United States, “the present system of producing food animals … is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food,” said a report from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production late last month.

Such warnings have scientists working on a meatmaking process that starts with just a single cell taken painlessly from an animal. The likely candidate, a muscle stem cell, would be placed in a mix of amino acids, sugar, salt, water, and proteins that act as growth factors.

Over time, the cells would divide and produce millions of daughter cells, which then are placed on a scaffold. After the cells attach themselves to thin grooves in the scaffold, they are bathed again in the growth mix while being periodically stretched and contracted. This movement creates tension so that the cells form fibers, as happens when muscles are exercised.

After several weeks, a thin sheet of real muscle tissue develops that can be pulled off the scaffold and processed: stacked, rolled, or ground up. Fat cells for flavor and connective tissue for added texture could be grown along with the muscle or grown separately and added later.

The nutritional value could be precisely controlled as well. “With cultured meat, you could have a hamburger with the fat profile of salmon,” Matheny says, adding that a healthy form of fat could be used instead of the less healthy version that naturally occurs in meat. Bioengineered meat might seem incompatible with vegetarian, vegan (no dairy products or eggs), or organic, low-tech lifestyles.

But cultured meat would be aimed primarily at those not ready to give up the sensory pleasures of meat’s flavor and texture. “We don’t expect the whole world to go vegan overnight, and in vitro meat can provide a way to eat ethically while still providing a meat-fix that people are looking for,” says Lindsay Rajt, a spokeswoman for PETA.

“We’ve been trying to get people to become vegetarians for centuries, and it hasn’t worked very well,” says Elizabeth DeCoux, a vegan and an assistant law professor at Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville who teaches and writes about animal rights. “I think people who love animals and haven’t been able to give up meat-eating are probably going to be a big, big market [for cultured meat].”

More exotic uses might be found for the technology, too, Matheny says, including what he calls the “Jurassic Park scenario.” Meat could be produced from the DNA of extinct animals or endangered species, sparing dwindling stocks that are now hunted for meat.

But “the real market for something like this is the people who like the taste of meat and are buying their KFC or McDonald’s chicken nuggets and want a product that is safer and healthier,” he says.

Whether consumers would reject cultured meat as unappetizing “Frankenfood” remains to be seen, but Matheny says the challenge can be met.

“Bread is a bioengineered product. It doesn’t grow on trees, and we accept it,” he argues. Yogurt is cultured in factories that look like pharmaceutical plants. Ultimately, he says, “consumers accept products that have really pronounced benefits.”

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note to Readers: Is this just a "pie-in-the-sky" idea from Peta? Or does lab-created "meat" have merit? Is there a market for "meat" created in a labortory? How would consumers react? Would it be the next food safety issue like GMO's? Should it even be called "meat?" Any ideas for a good name for fake or lab-created meat?

Feel free to chime in with your responses to these questions and your general opinions on the possibillity and potential that the future of "meat" might just be in the labortory rather than on the ranch, using the comment link below.