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“A Future for New Zealand Food” the 2019 Earle Lecture Presented by Dr Kevin Marshall
Allan Main, FNZIFST
The Earle lecture is a biennial award presented to a distinguished recipient who has made notable contributions to the impact of engineering and technology in New Zealand. It is hosted jointly by the Manawatu Branches of the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Institute of Professional Engineers and honours the contributions of Dick and Mary Earle, well-known to NZIFST, recognising their immense contribution to biotechnology and food technology regionally, nationally and globally. Early in October Dr Kevin Marshall, a long-standing Wellington member of NZIFST and the JC Andrews Awardee in 2006, delivered the 2019 Earle Lecture in Palmerston North on the subject “A Future for New Zealand Food”. In his opening comments, Kevin confessed to having known the Earles for his entire career with his professional and personal paths intertwining with Dick and Mary’s since the 1960’s. Indeed Kevin admitted that his first ever job application as a fresh BE graduate was to Dick and Mary at the Meat Industry Research Institute of New Zealand ... he was declined! A short while later when Kevin enrolled at Massey University for his post-graduate degree it was under the supervision of Prof Dick Earle. Kevin has since experienced a long and distinguished career spanning an extensive cross-section of our key food export industries including dairy, fruit, meat and seafood. Kevin’s assessment of the prognosis for our food future derives from the insights enabled by that that deep knowledge of the New Zealand food industry, leading him to an alternative scenario from zealots who proclaim that our food future is vegan, and all animal farming in New Zealand must stop. Unlike those who proclaim doom unless we frame an animal-free future for Kiwi food, Kevin anticipates our core platform of animal-based food exports will be retained but reframed to a more sustainable model, supplemented by alternative uses of land in a few areas where overintensification of animal farming cannot be sustained even with better control practices. In preface to his lecture, Kevin professed his belief (informed by his personal GP) that there are “no bad foods but there are certainly bad diets” implying that public and individual health responds to managing long-run consumption rather than maligning single foods. Later reflection identified that this philosophical tenet likely embodies a broader Marshall doctrine that oversimplification of issues by distilling them to isolated factoids commends ineffective solutions to problems and causes irrational choices to be made. That position seemed to be reflected in the underpinning logic of Kevin’s analysis of the prognosis for animal-sourced foods in our future that followed. Kevin openly acknowledges that there are immense challenges ahead for our traditional food industries but is sure that these are not and must not be insurmountable. Indeed, in Kevin’s estimation the future for our animal farming food industry continues to be “exciting”.
The Earle Lecture 2019 was presented by Kevin Marshall
Not a popular view - a considered one
Kevin admitted that this alternative view is not popular with the vocal echelons that name-call those professing that animal farming can be performed sustainably as “denialists” and then attack farmers as “social pariahs”. Kevin exemplified this citing the reception given his colleague Fonterra’s Dr Jeremy Hill who was recently on the end of a media roasting after presenting to a proteins conference a similar fact-informed assessment supporting a future, albeit a reframed future, for animal farming in New Zealand. Coincidentally, during this Earle Lecture I was seated with an anonymous local farmer and the relief with which Kevin’s alternative message was received was apparent on his face. At the conclusion of Kevin’s presentation this same farmer professed that this was “the first public meeting on the future of NZ farming I have attended where I have not felt hated”. Kevin’s lecture wove a path through familiar factoids and instead of declaring a bankrupt future for dairy and meat farmers arrived at New Zealand applying technological know-how to navigate a pathway that delivers sustainable animal farming to provide fully sustainable animalderived foods, particularly dairy and meat to premium markets. Kevin’s initial focus was a situation analysis assembling the generally agreed factual context framing future global food needs and requisite sustainability boundaries. This analysis drew on (and cited) a plethora of reports published in recent years generally delivered by multi-disciplinary international assemblies of subject experts. These collective assessments intersect at a consensus requiring substantially
more food (an increase of 70% in food supply by 2050) of higher nutritional quality whilst reducing the net environmental burden currently incurred. Intrinsic to that consensus was an expectation that Western consumers would substantially reduce consumption of animal-derived foods (meat and dairy). However in parallel with that reduction, emerging nations were anticipated to increase consumption of (sustainably produced) animal-based foods, particularly dairy products, in order to provide nutritional sufficiency. Indeed, under the Eat-Lancet scenario for universal nutritional sufficiency, global dairy production is required to double whilst meeting full sustainability standards. Kevin willingly conceded that these expectations undoubtedly present immense challenges for the world but addressing the conundrum is not optional – it must be achieved for the future of our species. It is not the world that is threatened, but the world as we know it, and time is short. However, Kevin’s treatise pointedly observed that the analysis of the global burden of animals-as-food producers is constructed around global average data for environmental impact with wide-ranging local deviations from those averages. At the unsustainable extreme is the practice of growing foods appropriate for human consumption to feed confined animals for inefficient conversion to meat and dairy. Simply to replace current worst performing sources of animal-sourced food with the best-in-world achievements is to contribute a global improvement. Relative to alternative sources of equivalent products, our New Zealand animal farmers operate at the most efficient, least environmentally impactful end of the sustainability spectrum. This reality is enabled by fortuitous natural advantages (eg a temperate climate supporting year-round forage growth allowing continuous free-range grazing) and technology gains enabled by highly educated, collaborative and motivated farmers being fast adopters of emerging science and technology. That same capacity of Kiwi farmers to adopt new technologies will facilitate ready implementation of environmental impact mitigation technologies as they emerge keeping our animal products at the leading edge of sustainable animal production. So rather than a threat to our established animal-based foods farming industry Kevin infers current pressures provide opportunity for a significant number of New Zealand’s farmers who already operate at the upper decile of global environmental efficiency to deliver nutrientdense foods with demand in excess of what can be supplied from our geographic footprint. After all as Kevin observed, at best we can only feed a population of only 50 million (or half of one percent) of the world’s 10 billion people. For the foreseeable future it is assured that world-wide demand for animal protein foods will exceed what can be sustainably produced on our land, even if consumption is limited to a rare luxury for affluent consumers. Our future positioning with animal-derived foods will be to affluent premium niches founded on accountability to its clean-green-sustainable heritage. Critical to that opportunity will be providing robust evidence of sustainability and ensuring authenticity through tools of provenance traceability. And what of the plant-based alternatives? Are they the solution they purport to be?
Not all proteins are created equal
Lately a flood of foods mimicking milk and meat has populated supermarket shelves in New Zealand supermarkets belatedly following the “analogue” trend present in other countries for many years. While these products are positioned as equivalents to traditional animal-derived foods, indeed they even wear their names – “milk”, “cheese”, “chicken”, “burger”– a quick review of their nutritional panels demonstrates that even at the most superficial standard of delivery of macronutrients most of these products fail to provide the nutrients for which these foods have become staples. A label review of protein levels provided by non-dairy products parading in the dairy case as equivalents to regular cows’ milk quickly shows that most provide significantly less crude protein than derives from the traditional product. The data shown in this address considered New Zealand market examples of almond, soy, rice, coconut and oat consumer “milks”; only the soy example approached the crude protein level of commercial cows’ milk. Almond “milk” provided a quarter of the protein content, oat one-eighth and rice and coconut had effectively no protein. Milk is a dietary staple due to its delivery of essential nutrients, notably protein and calcium. But the unsuspecting shopper selecting a nondairy alternative is potentially doing so oblivious to the short-changed nutrition that choice provides. When comparisons are made on the basis of cost per gram of protein, every non-dairy option is more expensive than basic dairy. That deficiency is evident even before attention turns to protein quality, a more opaque matter that is not directly evident to the consumer. As scientifically literate consumers we are the exception in realising that not all proteins are created equal. The reference standard for food protein quality is the digestible indispensible amino acid score (DIAAS). DIAAS data consistently shows that animal-derived proteins have a higher sore than plant-sourced proteins, so requiring higher consumption of plant proteins to provide nutritional equivalence. Applying these standards to the protein delivery of dairy and non-dairy consumer products, nutritional equivalence for the protein provided implies soy beverage has twice the climate impact and oat milk 8 times the impact of true dairy milk. This might be the appropriate time to cite Douglas Adams from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Planet: “All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.” Kevin is eager to ensure that the complexities are not swept under the carpet and ignored. To do so may cause irrational choices, like totally replacing our animal economy with crops and trees with resultant economic and social turmoil. The choices we make need to be informed and evidence-based. Hitherto Kevin suggests that such balance has not been evident in the discussion.
