Thought for Food

By Marshall Loeb

Executive View

We are entering a resource-oriented era, in which the companies that control resources, or have the capital and technology to develop them, will prosper. Similarly, the nations that possess those resources will dominate--economically and politically.

Some OPEC countries have already made this formula work with their oil. But the U.S. is by far the largest producer of the other most needed resource: food. Clearly, it must use its farm resources both to finance its oil imports and to help feed a hungry world.

Amid the soybean and corn fields of Minnesota, an intellectual businessman (magna cum laude, Amherst '51) is pondering how the U.S. can do well by doing good with its agricultural technology. Thomas Wyman is the 6-ft. 3-in. president of Green Giant Co., and since he took over in 1975, he has aimed at revitalizing that famous but slow growing processor of vegetables; this year its sales will approach $500 million. An outspoken executive, he often rebukes business for high-polluting plants, unsafe products, underfunded pensions, and overseas bribes. Despite such visible failings, he argues, there is far more talent in business than in politics, and therefore business should do much to solve global problems, including malnutrition. This is both the right and the smart thing to do, he reasons, and business should be willing to accept less than its usual profit, since Third World pressures will disrupt Western economies if hunger continues.

Wyman is troubled because nobody is pondering a strategy for food, a means to send America's agricultural resources and technology to the world's hungry peoples in exchange for at least a modest profit. Nobody is bringing together America's farmers, processors, agronomists, international distributors, and producers of fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. The first step, he says, is for these many forces to join "to figure out ways to distribute nourishment in the world. How do you feed 30, 40 or 50 million people hi the Third World so that they can live beyond an average age of, say, 45?"

Production is no problem. The U.S. could raise its food output by 30% or 40% within the next decade, Wyman estimates--if it had a market that would pay. The hang-up is that "getting the food from here to places like India is all out of proportion to the payoff. But the U.S. Government could offer some incentives so that business would find it profitable."

His highest hopes are for public-private linkups between U.S. producers and those developing countries that have the potential to raise more food. Such countries could form joint ventures with consortiums of American companies, which would provide materials and experts.

One model could be the Sudan, which has the rich soil and abundant water to become the breadbasket for all Africa. In partnership with Khartoum, American growers, packers and technicians could teach Sudanese farmers, set up irrigation and distribution networks, and build processing plants. After some initial U.S. and local government subsidies or guarantees the ventures would pay for themselves through exports. Says Wyman: "Neither the developing countries nor we want the U.S. to feed the world. The economics of that are not as interesting as having the world feed itself."

More modest joint ventures are already blooming in developed countries. For example, Europeans raise corn, but only as feed for livestock. Wyman's market researchers tested sweet corn on Europeans--and discovered that they love it every bit as much as people in Peoria do. So Green Giant joined with a cooperative of 7,000 farmers in the South of France to raise and process the stuff. This year the combine will sell almost 1 million cases of Geant Vert corn throughout Europe.

Sure, growing and selling in Europe is considerably easier than in the Third World. But there are those who say that if an American company can induce farmers in France to grow Yankee corn, it can jolly well do anything.

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