In this episode of Big Ideas Only we will look at solutions for continuing to feed the world's rising population.
About This Episode
Today, our guest is Lars Horsholt Jensen, Chief Operating Officer at Food & Bio Cluster in Denmark. Food & Bio Cluster is a cluster gathering all the food and bio resources in Denmark into one network, driving to support company innovation. Lars will guide us through innovative ways to create more food and explain why the solution is not to maximize farmland yields.
Your host is Mikkel Svold, CEO of Montanus, who will guide you through this interesting topic.
This podcast is produced by Montanus.
Link up with Lars Horsholt Jensen
Link up with Mikkel Svold
Listed below are the most essential timestamps from the podcast episode to make it easier for you to find the topics that interest you.
00:22 Welcome
01:14 Introducing Lars Horsholt Jensen and Food and Bio Cluster
02:51 Is there enough innovation?
04:26 Are we in the middle of another agricultural revolution?
08:49 Biodiversity challenges
10:19 We are an animal producing country, which is why we have maximized yields
12:09 Meat proteins versus vegetable proteins
13:21 Cropping and fertilizing land
14:34 Technologies for fertilizing land
16:20 The potential of grass
20:02 Increase biodiversity by strip cropping
22:26 What is the business case for using new technology?
25:34 A major solution: Use available resources
29:13 Outro
Recommended
Relevant Links from the Episode
Mikkel Svold (00:22):
Okay. Hello and welcome to Big Ideas Only. This is a podcast brought to you Montanus, which is a company specialized in producing high-quality content for marketing departments, in mostly high-tech companies, engineering companies often, that is.
Mikkel Svold (00:35):
I’m Mikkel Svold. In this and also the next episode, we’re asking the question, how do we actually feed nine, 10, maybe even 11 billion people?
Mikkel Svold (00:45):
Today we’ll focus on farmland and food waste. So, basically we’re going to ask, how do we maximize farmland yields?
Mikkel Svold (00:55):
Also, I know Lars, who sitting in front of me, you’ll be saying maybe it’s not the yields, maybe it’s the crops, basically.
Mikkel Svold (01:02):
We’ll get into that later. Also, we’ll look at how we reduce food waste and maybe secure the food in the places where it’s actually needed, rather than throwing it out.
Mikkel Svold (01:14):
Like I just said, in the studio with me, I have invited Lars Horsholt Jensen, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Food & Bio Cluster in Denmark. Welcome to you, Lars.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (01:24):
Oh, thank you very much, Mikkel.
Mikkel Svold (01:25):
Now, I think just to kind of get the reader… or not the reader, but the listener to know who you are and what Food & Bio Cluster is, can you just take us through, what is your role in the Cluster and what is the Cluster?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (01:42):
Right. I’ll start with the last part because the Cluster is basically a collection, a gathering of the food and bio resource industry in Denmark.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (01:51):
We’re a network. We have 384, I think this morning, members in our association. What we do first and foremost, is we support company innovation. So, it’s innovation that’s the core task of the Cluster organization.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (02:08):
We inspire companies through access to knowledge. We build networks where you can discuss new trends, new ideas, new technologies emerging in the food and bio resource space, and we forge collaborations.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (02:25):
We forge collaborations between entrepreneurs and knowledge institutions, typically universities. We facilitate collaborations between big companies and small companies in the sector, all in order to create new ideas, create new products, create new technologies that deal with the challenges that we’re facing, in terms of what you said, for instance, feeding a huge number of people across the world,
Mikkel Svold (02:51):
Is there enough innovation going on right now, would you think?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (02:53):
Well, I’m a little bit biased in that question because I’m sitting there looking at all the excellent innovation and interesting innovation going on, but the challenges are tremendous.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (03:05):
When we’re looking into the challenge, as you say, to feed people, that’s one major issue. The other major issue is to do that in a way that is sustainable for the planet that we’re living on, all of us, to do that while mitigating the impact on the climate that the food and bio resource sector is a major contributor to.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (03:25):
So, huge challenges, but also huge ideas, I think. I think we are looking into a space that is transforming completely over the next years and has to completely transform over the next years.
Mikkel Svold (03:39):
I read yesterday in, I think it’s called Homo Sapiens or just Sapiens, the book by Noah Harari, I think he’s called. He said basically that, the Industrial Revolution as we know it, it was an industrial revolution, yes, but mainly it was a farming or an agricultural revolution because basically we went from having…
Mikkel Svold (04:06):
I can’t remember the exact numbers, it was like 80% of everyone involved in agriculture, going down to, what today is, I think it’s about 2%. He wrote, there was about 2% of the American population who is directly involved in farming.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (04:22):
It’s approximately the same in Denmark.
Mikkel Svold (04:24):
Yeah.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (04:24):
Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (04:26):
Do you think we are on the brink or even in the middle of yet another, well, agricultural revolution, I guess it’ll be called.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (04:34):
I think we are. We’ll talk about that more later, I think. But what we’re talking about very much is that, in order to mitigate the climate change, in order to create the innovations needed, it’s not just a linear innovation that we’re talking about.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (04:54):
It’s not just more of the same. It’s also completely new ways of working, completely new ways of producing food and feed for the nourishment of people and animals, because we’re both facing a climate crisis, we’re facing environmental crisis and we’re facing a biodiversity crisis at the same time as the population on the earth is growing.
Mikkel Svold (05:19):
Of course, they’re all interconnected.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (05:21):
They are interconnected in so many ways. The solutions come from so many directions. Therefore, it’s very interesting to be here today.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (05:27):
Just to finish up, what I do on a daily basis, is basically overseeing all the different projects that we have ongoing, with innovative companies, with researchers in the Danish context, which is approximately half of our portfolio of projects, but also in an international context.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (05:47):
So, I try to have an overview over the different ideas that are being processed in our organization, and of course, also try to control the finances and the economics of it and all the boring stuff.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (06:00):
But the reason I guess I’m here today is that, I have a broad overview of what we’re working with, both with startups, but also with larger companies and also into research in some of the areas that we are going to talk about today. Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (06:13):
That’s also to say that you don’t have intricate detailed knowledge about every 300-
Lars Horsholt Jensen (06:18):
I’m not a researcher. I don’t know exactly what each one of these 384 members do, but I have a broad overview of innovations and ideas that are emerging out of that area, that community.
Mikkel Svold (06:31):
Now coming back to, I think the first question that I said to you that I would ask, now, we’re already five minutes in, but yeah, here we go.
Mikkel Svold (06:42):
My first thought was, how do we maximize farmland yields, basically to feed all of these people?
Mikkel Svold (06:51):
Now you came into the studio just before and said, “Yeah, it’s not really about that.” So, can you try to explain what you mean? Why is it not about maximizing yields?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (07:03):
Because we’re tremendously good at maximizing yields. It’s what we’ve done. You said the revolution, you were talking about, the Agri revolution is really a testament to that. Is to say that we’ve moved from 60% of the people producing the food for the hundred percent of the people, to 2% of the people that’s producing food.
Mikkel Svold (07:21):
That’s insane though.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (07:21):
That’s insane. Denmark has been on the very forefront of that development with the cooperatives. The Danish, let’s say agricultural revolution, has really been at the forefront of that development.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (07:38):
The reason why I say it’s not really about maximizing yields is because we’re already very, very good at maximizing yields. We’re already using the land that is available to us. 60% of the Danish total area is agricultural land and is being used for agriculture. We need to produce 60% more.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (08:00):
The reason we need to produce 60% more, increase our productivity by 60% is, we won’t have all of that land available to us, in order to mediate both climate, but also our obligations on the water framework directive.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (08:12):
We’re going to have to cut at least 20% of that agricultural land away, and we’re going to meet a global demand for food that’s going to rise by 45%.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (08:21):
So, in total, we’re looking at a productivity increase of approximately 60%, in order to just deliver the share of the global food that we’re delivering today.
Mikkel Svold (08:33):
Now, without getting into super politics stuff, but I know right now there is a lot of stuff going on here in Denmark, about cutting back on farmland. Of course, there are different opinions to that. Let’s not go into that right now.
Mikkel Svold (08:49):
But what I’m thinking is, Denmark has the benefit of having really good soil, but still, it might also still be a problem that we have what, 60% farmland? Which is also one of the most farmed countries in the world.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (09:06):
Yeah, farming in monoculture. So looking from a biodiversity perspective and looking at it in that perspective, it’s really a challenge to get the biodiversity challenge solved in that framework.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (09:20):
But I think most would agree that some of the soil that we do have is actually peat land. It used to be underwater, and now it’s been drained. Now it’s contributing about a third of the total, let’s say emissions, greenhouse gas emissions from Danish agriculture, comes from drained peat lands.
Mikkel Svold (09:41):
About a third?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (09:42):
About a third.
Mikkel Svold (09:43):
Wow.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (09:46):
Yeah, approximately a third comes from that. So really, to re-wet those wetlands, because it’s also not the highest producing of the lands that we have available to us, re-wetting wetlands is a part of the solution for agriculture.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (10:04):
The transformation on what we do on the remaining land is also part of what we do. That speaks also into something we’re going to talk about, I know later, shifting from animal production.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (10:19):
We’re very much an animal producing country. We get our food stuffs from animals, more or less. We’re about beer, we’re about butter, and we’re about bacon, as they usually say outside Denmark. That is to some extent, true. At least, we get our-
Mikkel Svold (10:39):
Good things, in other words.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (10:40):
Yeah, good things, all good things. It’s all good things. It’s just the fact that 80% of the crops that we produce are feed for animals. So really, what we’re doing in the farmland is producing something that feeds the animals, that then in turn is going to feed us. So one of the answers-
Mikkel Svold (10:57):
A lot of I guess, energy that is getting… it’s wasted in that process. Right?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (11:02):
Yeah. We’ve sort of perfected animals, in the sense that we’ve really domesticated them 10,000 years ago. Now we’ve evolved them ourselves, more or less, genetically modified them to be dairy machines or be meat-producing pork machines or egg layers.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (11:25):
So, they’re really, as you say, when we’re talking about maximizing yields, this is what we’ve done. This is what we’ve done for the last 60, 70 years. We’ve maximized yields.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (11:37):
So now the next question is, okay, how do we transform that in a new way? One of the answers is, of course, we need to grow something different in the fields. We need to grow more food for humans, less food for animals.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (11:52):
We not need to grow something in a way… and that’s could for instance, be a lot of talking about the fava beans, the peas, sources of protein that at the same time, can be used as food for people and can be used for as feed for animals.
Mikkel Svold (12:09):
Then I know a lot of people, they’ll sit with the question, but what about meat protein? Is there a difference between meat protein and proteins from vegetables?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (12:18):
Yeah, there is. Some of the amino acid that you need for your nutritional purposes, we also need to take care of that. We’re not arguing that it’s all plants or that everybody needs to go vegan.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (12:32):
We’re saying it’s both. We need to both develop the crops that we do in the fields. We need to grow more food directly for people. We also, at the same time need to define, how do we get the protein needed for our nutritional purposes?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (12:53):
Because one of the things that also happens when you switch to a plant-based diet, is you naturally get more carbohydrates than you get protein because the mixture is simply in, for instance, plant food and plant drinks, naturally just to get more carbohydrates.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (13:09):
That’s not necessarily what you need in a diet, in a Western diet. You need the proteins, but you get a lot of stuff that you don’t necessarily need, to the same extent, as part of that.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (13:21):
So of course, there’s still that we need to work out, when we’re talking about plant-based food. But what we really need to focus on and figure out, in also the way we do cropping is, both these alternative crops, but also building up the fertility of the land again.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (13:39):
Because really, what we’re doing right now is that, we’re sort of creating a carbon debt and a nutritional debt in the soil that we’re working on.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (13:48):
Those are some of the things in some of the innovations we’re looking at and some of the trends we’re looking at, is talking about regenerative agriculture or practices.
Mikkel Svold (13:58):
What does that mean?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (13:59):
That basically means to use the land in a way that reduces the debt and over turn, builds up a surplus of nutrients and of carbon, especially in the soil.
Mikkel Svold (14:12):
Now, I want to try to just dive down. What solutions do we have in that area first? And then also, I want to also afterwards, grab onto, you say we need to produce more food for people. But then are we going to let the animal starve?
Mikkel Svold (14:25):
I mean, what are the implications in that? Because that’s obviously a lot easier said than done. There are a lot of things that need be working.
Mikkel Svold (14:34):
Let’s begin with the fertility of the land. What technologies are available right now?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (14:39):
Well, first of all, there are some farm management practices. There’s ways to do this. So, you can do it with the plant that you choose, that can capture nutrients from the air and then transfer them to the soil as you plow them into the ground.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (14:56):
There are technologies such as pyrolysis, that’s being very much talked about at the moment and huge-
Mikkel Svold (15:04):
What is that for, for someone standing outside?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (15:05):
That is basically burning residues at a high temperature and in low oxygen conditions. So, it’s actually burning stuff, fibers from manure and plant residue. Then you get biochar, which is basically a little brick of carbon, which captures the carbon in there, so that it doesn’t get released into the air and also returns it to the soil in a slow way.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (15:37):
So, over a long period of time, you can build up carbon by returning it to the soil. And then you simply spread it in the agricultural fields, and you return some of the carbon.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (15:47):
So, you both do a capture of carbon and keep it there. And then also slowly build up carbon reserves in the soil. So, that is one of the technologies that people are looking at.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (16:01):
Other things could be, for instance, looking at how we use some of the crops that are high in protein, but not protein that’s accessible to humans. So that’s basically the whole industry on biorefining crops.
Mikkel Svold (16:20):
What does that mean, that it’s not accessible to humans?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (16:23):
For instance, let me give an example, grass, grass from your own back lawn. Grass grows extremely well in Danish conditions in Northern European conditions.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (16:38):
You can mow your lawn several times a week. If you fertilize right, it doesn’t need any pesticides. It can eat as much fertilizer and nutrients as you are willing to give it, more or less, which means there’s no leakage into the aquatic system, not much leakage at least, and much less leakage than from grains and it has a lot of protein in it.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (17:04):
Grass can have, depending on the type, between 18 and 20% protein. A wheat crop has 8% or 9% protein, depending on how much it’s been fertilized and so on.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (17:19):
But the problem is that, that protein in the grass is not acceptable or digestible to monogastrics, people with one stomach, like people, like pigs.
Mikkel Svold (17:32):
Which is also why cows, they can eat it.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (17:35):
Cows can eat it and can process it and can access the proteins. So what we’re talking about biorefining, it’s really separating that protein out in a form that is accessible, because it’s really good to grow in Denmark, even in those lowlands and wetlands that are today, not accessible or not very beneficial in terms of growing wheat crops or those types of crops.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (17:57):
But grass can grow there. You can fertilize it, and it doesn’t leak nutrients into our waterways.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (18:06):
So, working with that, looking at, how do we grow those types of crops, how we utilize those types of crops in a way that can feed both.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (18:16):
In the first instance, when we’re talking about grass protein, it can feed animals, but also in the long term, can be a larger part of the diet of human beings.
Mikkel Svold (18:26):
Wow, that’s fascinating.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (18:27):
So, those types of things. Yeah. You get approximately, in comparison to a feed field of wheat, you get about two and a half times as much protein from a field of grass. So, it’s all about making that accessible to human beings and to monogastrics.
Mikkel Svold (18:47):
I saw a documentary, I think it probably was a National Geographic or something, something the like, Discovery maybe. I don’t know.
Mikkel Svold (18:55):
A documentary on grass, where it was, I don’t know, a six part series or something like that. Basically, the idea was that grass is the most successful crop, I guess, on the entire planet because you’ll see it everywhere.
Mikkel Svold (19:16):
In Greenland, you have plenty of grass. Northern Norway, even on the really barren places, you have grass. You have grass also on a beach, in 35 degrees Celsius.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (19:30):
Everybody knows it. It’s everywhere. It’s really effective, in the sense of growing proteins. So, that’s one of the big things.
Mikkel Svold (19:39):
And survives. It just survives all kinds of conditions.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (19:39):
And surviving under a lot of different conditions. Yeah. So at least from our perspective and looking at that, that has been one of the successful innovations.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (19:48):
We are there today, that it’s being produced, when we’re talking about grass protein in a commercial scale. It is out there. It is being added to feed mixes for animals today. It’s part of the solution that we’re looking into.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (20:02):
Just to mention another thing, just looking at something that might be interesting in the long run, is trying to increase biodiversity by strip cropping, as it’s called.
Mikkel Svold (20:15):
Yeah. You mentioned that briefly to me before we started recording, but I think you probably need to clarify, what does that mean?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (20:21):
Yeah. That’s more of both, again, a regenerative practice. It’s also a biodiversity-focused practice.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (20:31):
So basically saying, in the same field where we today grow one crop and we have huge machines sewing, protecting, fertilizing and harvesting those crops in a monoculture, then instead, the same field could support three or four or five different crops.
Mikkel Svold (20:52):
A monoculture, that means it’s the same-
Lars Horsholt Jensen (20:54):
It’s the same crop for field and field and on and on.
Mikkel Svold (20:57):
Yeah.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (20:57):
Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (20:57):
So, it’d be corn, for instance.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (20:59):
Really, in a Danish context, the idea of strip cropping is interesting because we don’t have that in the Ukraine. They have huge, flat areas for huge machines. It makes a lot of sense to do monoculture there. A long way to the next, let’s say river or waterway.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (21:18):
But in Denmark, if we want to support both the regenerative practice, but also to some extent the biodiversity, it would make a lot of sense to grow different crops.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (21:27):
But then that again, requires a transformation. So, that’s looking at not huge machines, but a fleet of small machines. That’s where the whole robotics industry comes into play.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (21:39):
We have an ongoing project right now, focusing on a fleet of robots doing the same property, carrying the same tools around, but just very small and driving autonomously. So without a chauffeur on board, managing these different strips. Harvesting, fertilizing, weeding with just much smaller machines, but a fleet of autonomous robots, that’s doing the same job as these huge harvesting machines.
Mikkel Svold (22:13):
One thing that I always think about when it comes to this kind of development and this transitional stuff is, it all sounds very good. Yeah, we just need fleets of robots.
Mikkel Svold (22:26):
But I can’t but wonder, the people who need to implement this, they’ll be the farmers. So, they need to have some kind of incentive, other than philanthropy, because you can’t pay with philanthropy. So, they need an economic incentive. Is there a business case in this?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (22:49):
Well, that’s the tricky part. Isn’t it? A lot of the solutions that are out there are competing with something that has been perfected for decades. So, it’s not necessarily in the first instance, a good idea or a beneficial or economically feasible idea.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (23:07):
That’s why, I guess we are there. I guess a lot of the innovation support programs are there to help bridge that gap between something being an idea out there or potential for a technology, and transitioning that into something that is feasible on a larger scale.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (23:27):
It took wind 20 years, maybe 25, 30 years to become a profitable business on its own. You need to have the same perspective with some of these, only the fact that we have to do it in 10 years or 15 years, instead of doing it in long term. So, we’re working with the things that are on the cusp of being feasible.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (23:47):
I think grass protein is emerging that stage, because it has multiple uses and it can be combined. So, the fiber fraction can go into biogas or into cow feed still. The fluid fraction that comes from refining grass can go into biogas again and create energy. You can get a protein result out of it as well, the protein feed out. So, that is starting to emerge as a feasible way of doing business. We’re seeing that.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (24:20):
Of course, stuff like fleets of robots, that is way out in… or not way out, but it’s in the future, because everybody is still looking at how to… as you started asking the question, how do we maximize? How we would do more. That means building bigger machines. That means more fertilizing.
Mikkel Svold (24:40):
Yeah. I also guess, the closer we get to this theoretical limit of what one field can produce, because there will be some kind of theoretical limit, I guess.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (24:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (24:50):
The closer we get, like with everything else, the more resources it cost per increase …
Lars Horsholt Jensen (24:56):
Yeah, per a modification or per increase.
Mikkel Svold (24:59):
Exactly.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (25:00):
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. We need to think about it a little bit differently, in a number of ways. So for instance, we need to make the stepping stone of more plants.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (25:08):
Then, I guess also one of the things we should talk about is, how do we actually utilize the full resource that is being produced? Because we were going to talk also about food waste. Yeah?
Mikkel Svold (25:19):
Yeah. I was just about to say, we did promise the listeners to talk about food waste also, but I just felt this was so interesting, that our time is nearly up already. I think we’ll save the food waste topic for another time, but just briefly, you were saying.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (25:34):
Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to talk about the fact that what we need to also think about and one of the major solutions, is to use up the full resource that we do have available to us.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (25:44):
Because on a global scale, we’re saying approximately… this is contested, but approximately a third of everything produced is wasted. Yeah. So would we have any problems at all, if we were in fact able to utilize that.
Mikkel Svold (26:00):
Imagine if you just lower that to a fourth?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (26:01):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (26:02):
Not even completely.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (26:05):
It’s huge. We’ve been looking at that. On a global scale, I think it’s fair to say that roughly a third of that is lost in primary production, about a third is lost in processing and in retail, and about a third is lost at the consumer. That’s on a global scale.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (26:19):
In Denmark, it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit less in the primary production and a little bit more in retail and at the consumer level.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (26:28):
That’s a place where I think we can do a lot. We’re also seeing a lot of new technologies, new ideas on how to cut down on that particular type of waste.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (26:37):
I think in Denmark we’re talking about is probably 36%, while it’s above 40% in the retail industry combined, that is wasted there.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (26:50):
But we see a lot of new technologies in how to utilize residues, not just for food, but also for feed, for different purposes, materials, energy, those types of utilizations.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (27:03):
But also a lot that looking at, how do we actually solve the issues that cause food waste?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (27:11):
One good example is due date or expiry date. Right now, it is set on a safety basis and on a broad average.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (27:22):
One of our other companies that we’re working with, have a measuring device for fish and meats, saying they can pinpoint the time, exact time… not within a couple of days, but the exact time when something is off, so if a fish is off.
Mikkel Svold (27:37):
Yeah. This is for our own account. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but I think we have a saying at home, that it can last approximately double the amount of what it says on the package. Until that, we will still consider it. I guess there’s some foods, like fish and stuff, where you kind of-
Lars Horsholt Jensen (27:56):
Exactly. Those types of things where you need to have an exact date, because as a consumer, you’re worried, because if it’s bad, then I’m going to get sick. I’m not going to risk that.
Mikkel Svold (28:07):
But sometimes you look at a can of tomatoes or something and you’re like, this can last four years. I’m like, it can probably last four …
Lars Horsholt Jensen (28:18):
It can probably last … Right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (28:20):
I think that’s one of the keys, is also to look at that huge potential there, both for the industry and also for the consumers. Some of it is education and information, but some of it is also technology. Just simply getting better at assessing and understanding, when are things in fact expired? When are they gone bad? When are they just can still be used?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (28:46):
Also, some of the cultural things. What shape does a carrot have, in order for it to be useful in a consumer setting, in a retail setting?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (28:57):
What if it doesn’t have that shape? What do we do with it then? Do we just throw it away or give it to the animals, or do we chop it up and put it in blended vegetables or soup mixes and so on?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (29:07):
So, getting a lot better at doing those types of things, that help us alleviate a lot of the problem as well.
Mikkel Svold (29:13):
I think that also feeds into the talk that we are going to have next, which is about whether we can switch over to some kind of plant-based… or something more plant based, I guess.
Mikkel Svold (29:28):
Also, some of the really cool stuff going on with what’s called reactor foods and or what’s known as, I guess. I’m not sure it’s called that.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (29:35):
It’s a good word.
Mikkel Svold (29:36):
It is. It is. It does sound a little bit-
Lars Horsholt Jensen (29:37):
I know. It sounds future.
Mikkel Svold (29:37):
It does sound radioactive, also.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (29:42):
A little bit. A little bit, yeah.
Mikkel Svold (29:44):
I also think that we should talk about these implications for turning these fields and crops into food for people, rather than food for animals.
Lars Horsholt Jensen (29:51):
Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (29:52):
This is super exciting. Lars Horsholt Jensen, thank you so much for joining me again in this podcast. It’s been really, really interesting.
Mikkel Svold (30:02):
I’m sure that we are going to dig a lot more into reactive food and all the different food and feed and how to utilize land, I guess, in the future of this podcast, because I really think it’s an exciting and it’s also, very super important place. Right?
Lars Horsholt Jensen (30:18):
It is. It is. Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (30:20):
To you, dear listener, if you do like this podcast, just please help us by subscribing. That actually does help us quite a lot because it brings the podcast a little bit further to the top of the search feed. And also of course, sharing it with your friends and family or whoever you find or you think is interested in this kind of topic.
Mikkel Svold (30:39):
You can find the show notes, with links to all the things that we’ve mentioned in this talk. There’s quite a few. So, you can find those links and the show notes on our webpage, which is Montanus.co/BigIdeasOnly. That was CO without the last M.
Mikkel Svold (30:55):
Of course, if you’re interested in building your own knowledge center like this one or having your own podcast, and if you’re a technology company, reach out to us. We can help you build your own content universe. You can find all the contact information that you need, also on Montanus.co. That’s it for now. Thank you so much for listening.