Andrew Ferrier: Countries should export the Justin Bieber way

New Zealand dairy farmers are more efficient because they stand on their own feet, without relying on government support. Photo / Mark Mitchell

This week more than 2000 dairy leaders and experts from 65 countries are in Auckland to discuss the future of dairying at the IDF World Dairy Summit.

Topics include everything from a new industry standard on measuring carbon emissions to the latest advances in protein fractionation.

So why did I use a chunk of my allotted speaking time with delegates to talk about Justin Bieber?

Teen sensation Justin Bieber can teach the dairy industry a thing or two about exports. He is a consummate exporter. His products - his trademark hairdo, checked shirts and sweet pop tunes - go to just about every country in the world, give or take North Korea, Myanmar and Iran, although I venture there's even a few downloads there.

So I want to know why the world has an open trade in ideas, but not in food?

Ideas feed the mind, but food feeds the stomach, so why can't food be free-flow too?

It is easier to stop food than it is ideas at the border. But feeding the world efficiently is also a powerful idea. Food should be able to travel beyond boundaries drawn on a map by the whims of politics, profits and protectionism.

If the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation is right that world food production needs to double by 2050, then protectionism is an indulgence we can no longer afford.

On November 1, the world population hit 6,852,765,837. By the end of this month, there will be another 5.67 million stomachs to feed on earth, by 2050 another 2.2 billion.

How on earth (literally) can we feed an extra five million people a month - and do it in a sustainable way - both economically and environmentally? The only possible solution is to reform our global production system to make it radically more efficient. By definition, agricultural efficiency is the only way forward for our crowded earth.

Some parts of the world can produce efficiently and with less environmental impact, while other areas do not have adequate resources for food production. And moving food around the world is not as crazy as some people would like to make it sound. In Fonterra's case in selling dairy products all over the world, we know that only 5 per cent of the carbon footprint comes from the freight.

But truly efficient, sustainable growth in dairy will be only a dream as long as trade protection, market distortion and interventionist government policy still rule.

Globally there are still far too many perverse policies that encourage over-production in some areas and perpetuate food deficits in others. A case in point is the glaring disparities in how agriculture is treated in carbon-mitigation programmes.

These disparities threaten to discourage agricultural production in efficient countries where agriculture is included in carbon mitigation programmes, while encouraging production in other, more carbon-intensive countries, where agricultural production is excluded because it is not the leading emitter (when compared to heavy industry).

Several entire continents remain virtual no-go zones because some domestic producers tie the hand of governments and the resulting political responses threaten the integrity of the global trading system and undermine the confidence of producers.

From 2007-2009, we saw a roller coaster of global dairy prices that was very revealing. When prices fell, farmers in the United States and Europe called on their governments to increase support programmes.

By contrast, New Zealand farmers put on a little less fertiliser, and spent a little less on the family as they have done many times before. My job gives me the opportunity to see dairying in many countries, and I believe New Zealand farmers are more resilient because they are more efficient. The reason they are more efficient is because they stand on their own two feet and do not rely on government support.

Those of us who live and breathe dairy, know in our hearts what the challenges are. We live with compromises every day. The days of farmers and governments focusing on protection must end, as the reality is that the need for protection is being replaced by the opportunity of growth. We need to feed the world, and we won't do it by looking inward.

We've had 61 years of Gatt (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), 15 years of the WTO. Now we're nine years into the Doha round.

The reality is that to have any chance of achieving food security in a world of "Peak People", food will need to flow a bit like Justin's songs and ideas.

The greatest opportunity open to the global food industry is multi-food, multi-lateral agreements. That's the only way to start to make more food, more sustainably, more accessible to more people by removing layers of trade barriers, imposed costs and regulatory roadblocks. And history has proved we can't and we won't get there by just adding one bilateral agreement to another - they don't address the real issue - efficiency.

We need nothing less than a global accord on food production for the 200,000 extra people who have joined our planet today.

Andrew Ferrier is chief executive officer of Fonterra, New Zealand's biggest dairy enterprise.