The food industry is being tested by shifting consumer tastes, new technology and global trade disputes. Those are among the issues on the agenda Monday at The Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum, which includes some of the sector’s key players.
Including the chief executive of Mondelez International Inc., MDLZ -1.00% the president of McDonald’s U.S.A. and leaders from the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration.
Healthier Snacks Growing Faster: Mondelez CEO
The market for healthier snacks currently is growing globally about 6% to 7% annually, Mondelez CEO Dirk van de Put said. That is faster than the 4% to 5% growth among indulgent snacks, which still make up 80% of the market, he added.
Globally, consumers are snacking more, creating opportunities for Mondelez International, said Mr. Van de Put. Today, people are eating 2.5 snacks each day, up from two a day just a few years ago. Busier lifestyles are supporting the trend, he said.
Food makers have to distinguish between trends and behavior, said Mr. Van de Put. While consumers claim they want healthier products, they are still buying indulgent items. “There’s a difference between what people say and what they do,” he said.
Mr. Van de Put also said there is no reason for Mondelez and Kraft Heinz Co. to re-merge. Mondelez International was formed after splitting with the predecessor of the latter firm. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to put that back together,” Mr. Van de Put said. He said Mondelez wants to stay focused on its core snacking categories.
He added that the snack giant is trying to move faster to bring products to market by testing out new items in a few markets and building from there. One downside with the approach is it simply takes longer to scale products up amid the challenge of predicting consumer behavior.
The company has had misses with product development, he said, pointing to a high-fiber biscuit that took three years to create and didn’t do well after lots of people weighed in. “We ended up with a camel designed by committee,” he said.
Milk: Got Competition?
National Milk Producers Federation CEO Jim Mulhern said that plant-based beverages, which have been getting a lot of attention, will continue to grow, but a bigger hit to the dairy industry over time has been bottled water. Decades ago, it wasn’t normal consumer behavior to buy a plastic bottle of water, he said, but that is a commonplace purchase now.
He added that the battle for supermarket shelf space between traditional cow’s milk and almond, soy and other plant-based milk rivals may turn in part on dollars. While plant-based milks make up anywhere from 8% to 13% of the overall market, Mr. Mulhern said the “dirty little secret” of the alternative products is that “they pay for that footprint,” via stocking fees that secure preferred placement in dairy sections.
Jessica Almy, policy director for the Good Food Institute, which promotes plant-based products, said plenty of traditional dairy brands similarly pay for grocery store space.
More Automation Is Coming to Farms
A global population shift from rural areas to cities is making it difficult for farmers to find workers, and pushing them toward automation, said John Stone, a senior vice president at Deere DE -0.23% & Co., which makes farm equipment. “The labor is already gone,” he said. “The machines have to get smarter.” Last fall, Deere started offering a new combine harvester that can analyze grain quality as it comes into the machine, he said.
Deere processes mounds of data from farmers, Mr. Stone said. The company collects that data via a cloud-based platform, analyzes it and pushes it back out to customers so they can use it in their enterprises, he said. One challenge for the company, however, is gaps in broadband coverage in rural areas.
Abundant Robotics Inc. is creating the first combines to harvest tree fruit, an area of agriculture that hasn’t been automated to date and is worth billions, said the company’s CEO, Dan Steere. “It’s never been possible before,” he said.
The debate about the impact automation has on jobs and employment can be contentious. But Mr. Steere said deploying such tech on farms “prevents food costs from rising dramatically.”
Closing a Food Gap
Lower-income communities often have less access to healthy food, and the role that can play in causing obesity and other health issues is the target of research at the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources at the University of Connecticut, said Indrajeet Chaubey, dean of the college.
“There’s no one magic bullet,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the WSJ Global Food Forum. Mr. Chaubey said UConn’s research is focusing on how to alleviate these problems in the local community around Hartford, Conn.
Crop Prices Force Change
Low crop prices this year are pushing farmers to fundamentally change their point of view in order to survive in a tough agriculture economy. “Low commodity prices are causing farmers to think outside of the way that they normally think,” said Sanjeev Krishnan, chief investment officer and managing director of S2G Ventures, which invests in food and agriculture.
Because farming is a high volume market with low profitability, the thinking must change to view business in terms of profitability per acre instead of yield, said Mr. Krishnan.