Ep 33 | Simone Barg on the industry's roles in agri-sustainability

In Episode 3 of the second season, we talk to Simone Barg, Senior Vice President, Agricultural Solutions of Asia Pacific, BASF, and hear her thoughts on important issues like food security, climate change, and the unique position that Asia is in as one of the biggest region of smallholder farmers. Listen to the end to hear Simone's favourite food, which is a combination of Asia's staple and exotic fruits - definitely a crowd favourite.

Transcript

Duke Hipp: Hi again, everybody. I'm Duke Hipp, host of Asia's Farm to Fork: Five Good Questions Podcast, and we're excited about having another great guest with us today. Today, we have with us Ms. Simone Barg. She's senior Vice president, Agricultural Solutions of Asia Pacific with BASF. 

Hi, Simone.

Simone Barg: Hi, Duke. Great to be here.

Duke Hipp: Great. Thank you for doing this. We've got some good questions for you today. We appreciate you taking time to do it. 

Okay, well, the first question I have for you is not an easy one. Unfortunately, but it's not necessarily good news either. Just in July, I think, the United Nations released their annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World Report, or the SOFI report. And unfortunately, again, we had some bad news come from that report. Unfortunately, as we've had in the last few years, according to the latest data, more than half of the people in the world affected by hunger call Asia home, I think around 55%. 

And as well, our region has a dubious distinction of having more residents who are undernourished and those who are moderately to severely food insecure, around 4 million to 1.1 billion people respectively, than anywhere else in the world. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on steps we should be recommending to regional policymakers to help ensure food systems are more resilient, better able to deliver food security here in Asia.

Simone Barg: Yeah, well, I guess a lot of people would agree with me that we live here in a very complex region of the world. When we really look at this region, it is comprising of various developed countries like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea. It has huge developing countries that's just China and India. And across Southeast Asia, there are like ten developing countries that call Asia their home. And within these we have a huge variety. It's so contrasting. 

I mean, we know there are very populated cities of the world here, and there are areas of non-urban, but also very rural communities. So especially during COVID, we saw the harsh realities of the country's food security, the widening of the income inequality, but also the polarization of the political social landscape has really entered the stage, and that is what we see right now. 

So my hope is that regional policymakers understand that there is no one solution, no one policy that works across such a big region - our region here. The wish that I would have is that the agri industry, the agri ministries and governments and stakeholders work together. It's about innovating to develop technologies, also protect intellectual property, and really be open to explore the existing solutions, but also new ideas and also to partner up to jointly really manage this urgently-needed transformation that is required in agriculture.

Duke Hipp: Thanks for that. It's a great answer. I mean, we think a lot about Asia being unique to the rest of the world in food production, but really even the diversity within Asia too, the common denominator of innovation comes up over and over again in these conversations. So, thank you for that.

Second question, not another easy one, a pivot to another tough area, and that's climate change. A very topical topic as well. Unfortunately, again, in this region, an increased number of droughts, floods, erratic weather, particularly in Southeast Asia, it's a harsh reality for our farmers and what they're seeing, in particular. There is another United Nations annual report, the IPCC, this is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They had a report just issued again recently and earlier this year noting that roughly 22% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions continue to come from agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors.

With food production in particular, are we at the point now where this is really a wake up call? We have to do a better job with managing GGE greenhouse gas emissions on the farm? And is there a role for agricultural technologies to really step up and really enable farmers even more?

Simone Barg: Yeah. We are aware of the many reports and those talk about the agricultural's contribution to the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The beautiful landscape pictures that are going across the world of wet paddy fields, they are always or more often singled out. And the fact is that more than 90% of the world's rice is grown in this region. And with this iconic, flooded, petty landscape emerging as a major source of the potent methane gas, I think there is also a great element to see the essential part of rice, because rice is the region's diet, we just cannot dismiss it. It's important. And the means of the nutrition and also the income of farmers is really prevailing. 

So as an industry, it's actually doing a lot, and we're doing a lot that most people don't know about. So there is the International Rice Research Institute based in the Philippines, and that is collaborating with various industry stakeholders, so including us here at BASF. And we're looking into sustainable cultivation practices of rice. So both on the now very much standard used wet rice seeds and the way they farm and also the directly dry version of using seeds to plant them in a dry setting, and that using less water. It's also a much cheaper way because you need less labor, less input. So that is a way also to show that it's possible to bring in such a crop, which is so essential to nutrition, a way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, because it's shown that it has a better profile when it comes to other rice growing methods. So these are elements that we are addressing and then the innovations in agriculture. 

So it's to develop non-genetically modified, herbicide tolerant and also drought tolerant rice seed straits, because these also help in these changing environments and the conditions that are out there in the open fields because that's where the rice is grown. And just beyond the way rice is grown is the increased use of nitrogen, cyclizers and fertilizers. It's very technical it might sound because it's about the fertilizer and the quality it has, because if the right kind of fertilizers are used, there is a possibility to reduce the high level of nitrogen which is currently applied in the fields. And I think this is really good to store and avoid even the emissions and retain the good quality of the soil. So I think there's quite a number of also crop protection, like the right application of certain herbicides to have less tillage. So, it's like less avoidance of using the soil and treating it so there's less stress to it also to the plant. So that helps to increase the yield, which is important because that way farmers can grow more, they can harvest more on their existing fields, which is something like if you really see it as it from the globe, that we don't have more land to use, to farm. We have to rightly use and find useful and right technologies to really find the best practices to have a sustainable agriculture. And I think with that really bringing together, we can really reduce the amount of carbon emissions by a significant per ton of crop produced. So it's not looking at it singularly, but it's really looking at how are farming practices possible to be further developed by really looking at all the different levers that there are to find ways to tackle exactly those aspects.

Duke Hipp: Thanks for that. Those are all great points. I mean, this is a problem that's obviously worsening and becoming more and more a part of the conversation. So, really exciting developments that you touched on there. Well, I'd like to talk about another again, tough topic, but one that we, I guess if there's one we talk about more than any other on this podcast, it's around food security, really. And that issue generally for Asia. Here in Asia, and you can't talk about food security without talking about where it all begins on the farm, specifically with the smallholder farmers and that experience and what that's really all about here in Asia Pacific. Our region, as you probably know, is home to the smallest sized farms, largest number of smallholders anywhere in the world. So in light of that, and in that context, can you share some of the work BASF is currently undertaking, working on to promote, showcase the important, really critical role that the farmers are playing in our food system?

Simone Barg: Yeah, the good news is there is an increasing awareness of so many aspects of stewardship and it also includes the farm safety. It's about moving away from these stereotype ideas about rural farming and still thinking they are uneducated and impoverished. There's good stewardship for sure and it applies to family owned farmland also in Australia, New Zealand, where they operate machines for broad acre farms or they engage with manual laborers for tending fruits and vegetable plots. So, I think safety in the industrial context as well is something which applies to our farmers. So, safety really needs to be owned by each and everyone and this is what all in the agricultural value chain must repeatedly emphasize. 

So for sure, the world we live in, things need to be faster, better, cheaper, however, all of us also need to include that it needs to be safer when we think about better. So I don't think many outside of the AG industry know how committed CropLife and its member companies really are to supporting good stewardship, to safety on and off the field. So we train advocates for the use of protective personal equipment. So the personal protective equipment (PPE) according to the product label instructions and we need governments, retailers to work together to ensure this PPE is accessible, it's affordable to everyone and that is really also used. 

So we educate, we go into the communities, we work with local cooperative and authorities. And the topics we iterate are such as like, applying common sense of what not to do, how to store products wisely, how to handle and apply responsibly as well as how to adopt an integrated pest management to really enable as much natural control that the nature is taking care of. So it's about to support at the right areas where it is really also possible and needed. When it comes for the latter I would say as this one fact like bacteria with antibiotics, that's how I sometimes explain it to my friends. 

There is this evolutionary selection pressure on pests and diseases to develop resistance to crop protection, also biotech products. And if someone applies the same product again season after season against the same issue, then eventually resistance could be developed. And that is why we also educate a managed approach of pest resistance to plant science products and that is truly important to ensure that the livelihoods can continue and the produce of new innovation by science can continuously be used by having really the right measures in place in the fields to have this sustainable agriculture achieved.

Duke Hipp: Yeah, thank you for that and thanks for raising that sustainability point. The stewardship of the industry and the use of personal protective equipment and integrated pest management, all these different things that I know is so critical, especially in this region. And that really gets to the next question I wanted to touch on - sustainability. You've seen it really become a lot less of a buzzword and more of an expectation, people wanting to know where is our food coming from and how is it produced. And there's a concern I know around dwindling natural resources and healthier, diets and lifestyles. 

So in that context, going back to again thinking about the sustainability realm within food production here in Asia? Is there more we should be doing collectively to help ensure you've touched on the smallholders, to ensure they're practicing good stewardship while producing the food we depend on at the same time?

Simone Barg: Yes, that's right. We have over half a billion farmers in the Asia Pacific region. The stance that we here at BASF is that farming is, no matter how small, how large, farming is fundamental to provide enough healthy and also affordable food for the wonderful and kind of people that we have on this planet. Yet, at the same time, farmland cannot possibly increase further. Actually, on the contrary, it's really decreasing. So farming is really complex. I don't know whether you have seen this hilarious real-life British TV documentary series around Jeremy Clarkson farm. 

This Jeremy who owns the farm in the Cotswolds, there he openly expressed the many challenges, the grief he faced when he was trying to farm and even make his farming well. He's a celebrity located in England who's struggling. And it was like a little bit eye-opening, I guess, for a lot of people, because imagine the challenges for our farmers here in developing Asia, which are not that blessed with such possibilities. So that's why I'm extremely proud of how BASF, how our teams, how CropLife, is advocating for all farmers in the world. 

So we at BASF do this with our campaign, The Biggest Job On Earth, which we've launched efforts, like, a couple of years ago, again, three years ago in China, and this year launching in Australia, New Zealand, also Japan and India. So every aspect around farming is localized. 

So, for example, in China, we extensively participate with academic bodies and we even go into schools to showcase the pride of farmers, to educate how farmers and their fellow do their tasks and help give us the food for our dining tables. In Japan, we are working to break mindsets to the way farming has been traditionally done and are also sharing how new digital farming technologies can help save the labor, help save resources, and also providing the high tech support to achieve better yields. So I could go on and on, and however, I'd like to end by saying that I see what we do in agriculture is one where we must all work together. It's not a single one. This is us, everyone, in whatever capacity, to support agriculture and farming, to work together and really strive to find that right balance for success. Because it's not only about helping the farmers making a living today, it's about having sustainable agriculture for this planet, for all the people, and also to have this alive for future generations. So this is the one thing that keeps me going every day.

Duke Hipp: That's an excellent answer. And these are all tough issues, as you mentioned, whether it's climate change and food security, sustainability, all this mix is quite a daunting challenge across the board. With the last question, which is here, believe it or not, the last question I've got for you. We lighten things up a little bit, so it's just not quite as serious a topic. At the end of the day, all of this gets down to food, right? The food that's being produced. And for our exit question this season, we're asking our guests to give us some insight into the food that they like. So I wanted to ask you, have a little more fun. What's your favorite food unique to the region here in Asia?

Simone Barg: I'm a foodie, so I could have a whole podcast around that myself. If I'd have to pick one, I would go for right combination. And this is about something around rice, something around fruits, and something very specific to this region which is a little bit more exotic to a lot of different areas of the world. And I would go for mango sticky rice, Duke. Yeah, it's a nice combi. And I think if you really have the right way to have the right freshness, the right coconut and the right recipe, and for sure the right varieties around the rice, it's just amazing how that can be a nice treat and really nice way how farming and agriculture really brings such a delicious combination.

Duke Hipp: Yeah. Hard to beat the mango sticky rice, and depending on which country you're in, they claim to have the best mangoes. So it's up for debate.

Simone Barg: Yes, absolutely.

Duke Hipp: Simone, thank you again for participating and look forward to talking again soon.