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Food system not sufficiently resilient
The head of a risk management firm says the pandemic has shown that the U.S. food system is not sufficiently resilient and he believes innovation will change that. Chip Lerwick director of Aon in St. Louis, says consumers have been able to get food but the rest of the food system disruptions have been huge and, in some cases, catastrophic. He believes industry will help pay for the needed changes, “When we think about how industry manages risk, they pay money to support systems in their manufacturing and processes to avoid risk, mitigate risk, and, transfer risk.”
And, Lerwick predicts investment bankers will fund new food system technologies.
“There will be new innovations, new entrepreneurs will come out. Funding will get done to bring out new innovation and that could come in the form of how do we address the talent related issues that we’ve seen through pandemic and other things with robotics? That would also help us satisfy some of the immigration issues we have on the production side.”
Lerwick says there WILL be future disruptions and the food industry knows it must be better prepared. Lerwick, who raised cattle in central Missouri as a young man, made his comments in a Danforth Plant Science Center series called Ag Tech Next.
^ Tom Laurita and Chip Lerwick ^
