Cargill: Innovations shaping the future of food and agriculture
27 Feb 2024 | Cargill
Florian Schattenmann, head of R&D and innovation at Cargill, explains why innovation is crucial to overcoming some of the world’s biggest problems, including climate change and food security. In this wide-ranging interview, Schattenmann provides insights on alternative proteins, sustainable animal agriculture, AI systems and pet nutrition.
My name is Louis Gore Langton.
I'm an editor at CNS Media, the publisher of Food Ingredients First and Nutrition Insight.
We're joined today by Florian Schattenman, Chief Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of R&D and innovation at Cargill.
Florian's here today to speak to us about some of the biggest trends driving the food industry.
Welcome, Florian.
Thank you so much, Lewis.
Excited to be here.
The world's growing population demands more food and greater access to nutrition, while the environment crisis means agricultural production must become more sustainable.
How does a global food giant like Cargill begin to address these challenges?
I think it's a great question.
It's kind of what keeps me up at night and also what gets me excited every day.
When, when, when we hear, when I hear the word challenges, I hear the word innovation.
Basically, you've got to think, do things differently than you have done before, right?
And, and so the, the first one that I would say is like you take, you take macro trends and macronutrients like protein.
And, and you look for ways to broaden that portfolio, right?
So how do you, how do we make sure that, that, that, that we get more options on the table and, and, and make things more sustainable?
I want to give you an example of what with new product development and how we can make things more sustainable, and I, I'm going to go to the sweetness side of it.
So, , you know, there's a real trend around, non-caloric natural sweetness, like stevia.
Stevia are are grown in on big fields and, and, and, and, when you extract it, it's sort of like, like you extract tea.
You're going to get a lot of compounds in there that give you that that sweet profile.
Some of them are better tasting than others.
We have now looked at that process, and hey, some of those components of that extract are actually better tasting and more sweet than others.
Two of them called REBM, REBD, so two molecules that are really sweet, 3, 300 times as sweet as sugar.
And, and if you could make them selectively, you would have a better product that, you could make in a more sustainable process.
So we, we used something called, , you know, fermentation.
To make those compounds now specifically.
So now you have something that is, better than sugar, that, that's sweeter than sugar, that is, that is made by a sustainable process.
And, and, and those kind of examples that, that get me really, really excited.
And I think that's a little bit of where innovation is.
Going.
In the past, innovation had to be about making things, cheaper or, or better, or both.
Now you also have to make them more sustainable.
The other, the other thing that we get really involved in is how to make our supply chains more sustainable, right?
We have, , we have a leadership position across the supply chain.
And so, there's a couple of good examples, right?
Regen Ag, where we are working with, with farmers to, to get, to get practices more regeneratively positive.
We committed to 10 million acres in 2020 by 2030, and we're on the way.
We're getting, we're closing in on that.
In acres, so 880,000 so far, and then, and then of course our animal supply chain.
So we have an effort called Beef Up where we work with farmers on carbon sequestration, on grazing techniques, on innovative new approaches, feed and everything.
So, so and that's a that's geared towards taking 30%.
Of the greenhouse gasses down.
So there's no one solution.
There's multiple approaches, but innovation is at the heart of it.
And for the chief technology officer, that's of course an exciting spot to be.
Brilliant, brilliant.
And then we also continue to see a lot of movement in the alternative protein space like plant-based proteins, insect proteins, self cultivated meat.
What are Cargill's key focuses in this area and what sort of challenges are you working to overcome?
Yeah, it's a great question, and I mentioned that broadening protein portfolio already a little bit.
So one big area, of course, is plant protein, right?
And and maybe a step back in all of these, you have to solve for what I call the trifecta.
Number one, you have to have superior taste, right?
Taste that is a It either perfectly mimics meat or it is a very positive culinary experience.
Number 2, you have to get the cost right.
If it's more expensive than than animal protein, long term people, they will try it, but it will not come back long term, right?
And then of course it has to have a positive nutritional profile.
So maybe we'll start with a with a with a with a plant protein side which has been a big, big effort.
We have in Cargill a real supply chain advantage right from the crop through the ingredients through meat processing final distribution packaging, all this.
We have everything under one roof, so we feel very positioned.
To solve a lot of the problems here we're doing this by looking at the the portfolio of ingredients, adding different ingredients to the, to the, to the portfolio, sometimes via collaboration, right?
Some of our cubic collaboration with the company Cubic and their oil portfolio that, you know, that give you a great mouth feel.
At lower calories is just a great example.
And so, so we're working on the ingredient side and helping our customers there.
We're working on the final product side and, and, and, and, and, but we also understand that this is, this is not a luxury item, right?
So you have to really cost the mine and so we're really trying, try to driving cost out and making this as efficient as possible.
We, on the cultivated, we are more engaging, , via strategic investments in some of those companies.
We see a potential, role as a, as a growth media supplier, right?
Those are some of the most expensive parts of that process.
And we are, we are feeding, we are feeding animals today.
Why not feeding cells of animals?
And then Of course on the insect side you mentioned that that's more via the via our animal nutrition business that we have a collaboration there.
So there's a, so I think what I want to leave everyone with here is there's no one solution.
You've got to look broadly and it's a broadening of the portfolio.
I think we still see growth in animal too, by the way.
Brilliant.
And when it comes to animal farming, animal farming is widely regarded as a major contributor to climate change.
Is it possible to balance global demand for animal-based protein with climate change mitigation and how can this be achieved?
Yeah, it's, it's a great question.
And again, it's a challenge which gets us excited here.
So I mentioned before, protein is the most overindexed or the highest, the most highest indexed macronutrient out there.
So we expect over the next 25-30 years at least a 70% increase in protein production.
So there's not going to be one solution that will cover everything, right?
So animal protein is here to stay.
Animal protein, we expect a growth.
The other part that is in the end of the day, the final consumer has the, has the final say.
That's they're at the end of the supply chain, and they will, they will make sure that that their choice, we can't force anybody to eat certain things.
So we, so, so we believe very much in the growth of animal protein, but we also believe that there are still quite some low hanging fruits to make the animal protein supply chain more efficient, right?
I mentioned Beef Up already.
We, we see multiple, we see multiple ways to, to, to, to, get a better sustainability footprint, in this, in this space.
So, the, the, our, our focus is, on, on, on driving sustainability across that entire supply chain.
Right, brilliant.
And then.
Another topic I'd like to ask you about is artificial intelligence, which is increasingly being seen as a real game changer for the industry.
In what ways is Cargill harnessing AI and to what extent do you think these new technologies could change and transform your operations?
It's a great question.
AI is everywhere right now.
I, I, I want to caution a little bit.
This is also at the peak of the, of the hype curve, right?
So whenever some new thing gets a lot of tractions, there's a lot of excitement around it.
And so, but there's no question that especially my field, R&D science will be largely affected by, by artificial intelligence.
So we see a real productivity gain on the front end of the innovation process, right?
The screening, the exploration, AI can help you already find areas where you have a good chance to, to, to find some, some, some unique areas that you can then explore deeper.
When it comes to the back end, to the, to the scaling, it, it may have some productivity advantages, but in the end of the day, a process has to work and you have to demonstrate that really in a pilot plant.
Otherwise, you, you really does, you don't know how it's going to work in the real world as you put a, , you know, you have to build a plant and so on.
So, so we see some really exciting examples.
I'm also going to give you an example of where we use that in, in, in the form of a project, right?
So, for, for we have a project called Galleon that allows us to basically screen the microbiome, the DNA of the microbiome of a chicken flock.
So a farmer can get samples of, of Of chicken poop from their farm, sort of, you know, an average sample, send it to us.
We run an analysis of that DNA microbiome and then we can tell them, you know, how healthy that flock is.
We can then adjust the feed to improve the health of the, of, of the, of the chicken flock over time as we get sort of, you know, better.
Data around different chicken farms we can see like there's maybe in farm A there's a lot of fluctuation in farm B it may be much more stable.
Then we can adjust and already predict what you probably will need and so on.
So there's the model is learning by getting more data from more samples and I think these kind of things are really exciting.
A healthy flock will be more productive.
Be less mortality.
It'll be better for the greenhouse gas footprint and so on.
So it's a really kind of a cool story.
You mentioned also operations.
Obviously, I always like to start with the innovation part, but you mentioned also operations.
We will see a lot more data-driven decision making, right?
Whereas sort of in, in the entire agricultural space, where, where, basically the, the, the, the The system, artificial intelligence system will give you what kind of decisions to make based on weather data, based on market data, based on performance, and so on, right?
And then, you know, the other area where we see a lot of promise is computer vision, where the computer basically figures out certain things and optimizes.
We're, we're in, we're in a in In a natural product business, every plant, every, every animal is slightly different.
We're not like making cars where every screw is exactly standardized, right?
So the computer can now pick up certain things that, that's that, that has a big advantage in maybe automating like a processing plant more on the on the on the meat side or so, right?
So, so those are some of the areas really excited about what's what's happening.
We're going to harness it the right way.
Amazing.
And then my last question is about pet food and nutrition.
We've seen that global consumers are increasingly concerned about their pets, and their pets' nutrition.
What is, Cargill doing to help advance this area of the industry?
So yeah, we see an incredible trend of dehumanization of pets, really, right, and that goes so far that in that there's a strong increase in human grade pet food where basically the pet and the owner can can consume the, the, the same, the, the, the same products.
I think, , so a lot of the things we talked about, apply for human and for pet nutrition.
As a matter of fact, we often from a, an animal health perspective, we, we view Strategically from a market, marketing, from a strategic marketing perspective, we view the pet closer to the human than to pure animal production for consumption in that respect.
So a lot of the things that we talked about about nutrition and sustainability apply just as much, right?
And actually on a, on a really positive note, because, because we're viewing it in a similar vein, a lot of, a lot of what we talked about can have now more scale and therefore the, the, the economy of scale that that goes with it, and that, that potentially gives There's a higher chance of making something adopted because of that economy of scale driving, driving more, more cost effective solutions.
So, so that's, that's kind of how we see it.
Really excited about where the agricultural and the food space is going.
We couldn't be in a more exciting space.
That's all I can say.
Brilliant.
Florian, always fascinating to talk to you and thanks for joining CNS Media.
It was terrific.
Thank you so much, Lewis.
