| FFA Nation

FFA alumnus and president of Elanco Animal Health urges you to help eradicate hunger

06/27/2011 |

FFA alumnus Jeff Simmons is an active advocate of food technology and its role in providing more affordable, efficient and sustainable production of meat, dairy and eggs, a passion that stemmed from his own farm upbringing in New York state.

That passion now extends into his career as president of Elanco, the animal health division of Eli Lilly and Company, and most recently, into his creation of a white paper titled “Making Safe, Affordable, Abundant Food a Global Reality.” Below, Simmons shares his views on food production.

According to the World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Index, we’re already at 1.5 times our Earth’s carrying capacity. And our population is predicted to grow by several billion in the next 40 years.

In the amount of time you spend reading this article, 62 people will die of hunger. World Food Programme reports that every hour, 750 children around the world die from a lack of food. Since 2008, more than 18 million people have died from hunger. That’s like wiping the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Dallas off the map.

Whether you’re an FFA member growing up on a farm like I did, or a concerned environmentalist in a large city, I believe we can all agree on the need for safe, affordable, abundant food. But how do we produce it in a sustainable way? Jason Clay at World Wildlife Fund has said, “To feed 9 billion people and maintain the planet, we must freeze the footprint of food.”

I believe there are two key ingredients to making sustainable production of safe, affordable, abundant food a global reality: technology and choice.

Technology, as defined by the World Health Organization, includes:

Practices – doing it better by the way you do it, whether it’s how you raise the animal or grow the plant.
Products – new, innovative tools the industry is delivering to our food producers daily.
Genetics – improving the genetic code of the plant or animal we’re producing.

Why technology? Technology creates efficiency, which helps keep production costs and ultimately food costs lower, and food affordability is critical to addressing hunger, especially considering nearly half of our global population lives on less than $2 a day. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service recently reported that in the past 60 years, agriculture output has increased 2.5 times, while holding inputs essentially steady.

For example, today one cow produces the same amount of milk it took five cows to produce in 1944, which means we need far fewer cows to meet the global demand for milk. Because of this improved efficiency, modern production of every gallon of milk requires 65 percent less water and 90 percent less land than it did in 1944.

Meanwhile the industry is producing 76 percent less manure for each gallon of milk sold, contributing to a carbon footprint for a gallon of milk that is 63 percent smaller than it was in 1944. And the story is the same for beef and other animal protein production.

That brings us to choice, which is a consumer right. Whether it’s the Chinese consumer that wants to diversify her diet from grains to include animal sourced protein as her affluence grows, or it’s the American consumer who wants to choose locally grown or artisanal products, consumers have the right to a broad variety of food choices. We can’t allow a small fringe to impose their social agenda on the entire food system to limit use of safe production practices or products, which would ultimately decrease consumer choice. Technology helps allow these choices.

The facts align to support a position on which we can all agree: we must commit ourselves to ensuring that a global supply of safe, affordable and abundant food can become a reality in our lifetime. And it starts with you!

What can you do to help eradicate hunger, while also preserving our environment and right to choice?

1. Make it personal.

Until you step out of your “bubble” and see hunger up close and personal, this issue is just a bunch of statistics for someone else to solve. You don’t have to travel to Africa or Brazil, as I did. I guarantee there are hungry people in your backyard. Get involved.

2. Engage.

Your network, your family and friends, food chain influencers you know and interact with. Help expose the myth. The majority of consumers are comfortable with technology use in food production. We can’t be swayed by a fringe group of 1 percent.

3. Support.

Make your voice heard. Stand ready to support the 99 percent of the world’s citizens who want unconstrained choice and a supply of safe, affordable and wholesome food. When faced by fringe groups looking to eliminate choice or ban practices, respectfully ask them to prove their assertions using sound scientific data, which they can share with regulatory bodies.

Farmers and ranchers are the original stewards of our Earth, and I believe no one is better suited than our industry to achieve the goal of sustainably feeding a population of 9 billion.

As FFA members, you are the leaders and visionaries of tomorrow who will be tasked with solutions to this challenge. I encourage you to think about new and different ways to enhance the efficiency of food production.

You are also a powerful voice! Speak out for agriculture and help spread this message.