Ray Goldberg – one of the founders of IFAMA – looks back at 30 years of IFAMA. He coined the word 'agribusiness' to enable a systematic study of food as an ecosystem. To broaden the impact, he created IFAMA as an organisation to bridge gaps en get things moving. Now, he argues, the association mustn't get stuck. It needs to move ahead and expand, since food is about so much more than just food.
Goldberg grew up in North Dakota, the son of a grain farmer, who was interested in improving the quality of food. Although Goldberg's expected to go back to his family business after his graduation, his academic superiors encouraged him to stay and become an academic himself.
Agribusiness
Together with John Davis, Goldberg developed the term agribusiness. In agriculture “everybody has to make a living. I thought that in agriculture everybody’s input was somebody’s output.” With the term agribusiness they tried to coin a word that would encompass collaboration and cooperation. “I thought that agriculture and business talked about how we were going to feed the world, provide nutrition and economic development, and improve the environment.”
Agribusiness in Goldberg's vocabulary agribusiness is about creating shared value. It serves both the public interest and private interests. Food is not only about money exchange, it is also about political, ecological and economical questions. "They are all interrelated in agribusiness”, Goldberg says.
Goldberg is one of the three founders of IFAMA, which created together with professors Vernon Schneider and Gail Cramer. IFAMA was born out of the need to create a world wide organization that studies food ras a system that connects agriculture, ecology, health, economy and, of course, political and business decision making.
Goldberg’s message for IFAMA’s future is crystal clear, albeit a trifle critical. IFAMA needs to better integrate agriculture, health, ecology and economics. “I feel that just as we now have business leaders and other kinds of leaders in agribusiness management as well as agriculture economics. I think that we have to broaden our base to get the environmentalists involved, to get the scientists involved and to get the medical community involved in IFAMA. It’s not good enough to think of what we are doing as just a food related system. It’s a health related system. It’s a nutrition system. It’s an economic development system. And it’s an environmental system.”
Agribusiness
Together with John Davis, Goldberg developed the term agribusiness. In agriculture “everybody has to make a living. I thought that in agriculture everybody’s input was somebody’s output.” With the term agribusiness they tried to coin a word that would encompass collaboration and cooperation. “I thought that agriculture and business talked about how we were going to feed the world, provide nutrition and economic development, and improve the environment.”
Agribusiness in Goldberg's vocabulary agribusiness is about creating shared value. It serves both the public interest and private interests. Food is not only about money exchange, it is also about political, ecological and economical questions. "They are all interrelated in agribusiness”, Goldberg says.
It’s not good enough to think of what we are doing as just a food related systemIFAMA
Goldberg is one of the three founders of IFAMA, which created together with professors Vernon Schneider and Gail Cramer. IFAMA was born out of the need to create a world wide organization that studies food ras a system that connects agriculture, ecology, health, economy and, of course, political and business decision making.
Goldberg’s message for IFAMA’s future is crystal clear, albeit a trifle critical. IFAMA needs to better integrate agriculture, health, ecology and economics. “I feel that just as we now have business leaders and other kinds of leaders in agribusiness management as well as agriculture economics. I think that we have to broaden our base to get the environmentalists involved, to get the scientists involved and to get the medical community involved in IFAMA. It’s not good enough to think of what we are doing as just a food related system. It’s a health related system. It’s a nutrition system. It’s an economic development system. And it’s an environmental system.”
Related
Joanna, thx for your answer! So there are quite a few barriers on the road to a improving our world. How to go about them is a simple question, but the answer isn't.
Perhaps a more simple answer will follow on this question: how to organise for answering the barriers question in such a way that society builds up energy to take up the challenge?
From my point of view there are several perspectives whereby we may discuss the integration/networking problems of agribusiness/agri-food chains. They include industrial, resource, cooperative, coordinative, and business barriers.
Joanna, thanks for your comment! What are the main roadblocks on the way to integrating the food chain from your perspective?
It is true that socialist economies did not use the term business. But, economists and politicians of central planning were interested in the food system and used the input-output tables for this purpose, creating long term economic plans and based on them introduced contracting of supplies in agriculture. But they led to a shortage of food, and at the height of the collapse it was rationed. In the 1990s, after the transformation, agribusiness appeared in the name, but not in practice, because the inter-organizational relationships were completely broken. It took a lot of time and they are still being rebuilt in the agribusiness system. It seems quite difficult now to include other spheres like ecology or public health in this regard even if the idea is perfect. So again it would require major public interference in building a new multidisciplinary relations and collaboration.
Perhaps it's a good idea to get together with Ray in a ZOOM-meeting with some of us and talk about it. We'll record and publish the meeting.