Q It’s a great honour to meet you, Ms Prins. Thank you for your time. Could we begin with what drives you as a CEO?
A What gets me up in the morning is my belief that we can still make a positive change to this world. I believe that this can be done with vision, collaboration and setting the right priorities at every level in society, and as individuals, communities, cities, industries and governments. In the end, I feel that it is optimism that makes the difference. The satisfaction and joy of being able to transform, together with my colleagues, customers and business partners, by planting the seeds of the new, and realise the resulting changes.
And, of course, this goes hand in hand with challenges and frustration. What also motivates me is the sheer frustration of seeing a huge problem that impacts all of us, knowing there are multiple alternatives that are being ignored by the majority of companies and governments worldwide. I mean the food industry specifically. The frustration is that governments are still subsidising this failed industry, system, process, supply chain – call it what you will – to the tune of trillions, yes, trillions, of dollars a year. And this has been going on for decades. How much longer do we need to see that it has failed? For example, we produce enough food to feed over 10 billion people but cannot manage to feed seven billion healthily. What more proof do we need that the current old system simply doesn’t work?
The frustration is that governments are still subsidising this failed industry, system, process, supply chain – call it what you will – to the tune of trillions, yes, trillions, of dollars a year. And this has been going on for decades. How much longer do we need to see that it has failed?
That is a simple question, but the answer addresses two of the most complex issues that we face today. That is, global warming combined with the catastrophic distribution and availability of food to billions of people; malnutrition, hunger and even starvation, in starker words. We don’t have full answers or solutions to either issue but we can take huge steps in eradicating them both – global warming with the technology we have
