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" I heard it
through the
AgLine"
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December 2, 2011
·
In Russia,
welcome to Collective Farm 2.0
·
EPA questions
effectiveness of GM corn
·
Zapping pests
may protect fruit, veggies
·
PepsiCo plan
to save farmers precious water
·
US teens not eating enough
fruit and veggies
In Russia, welcome to Collective Farm
2.0
(The
Moscow Times) – Don't tell Patrick Ghidirim that
the more than 250,000 hectares of rich black earth that he manages in central Russia
is a free-market version of a mega collective farm.
"No, no, absolutely not," Ghidirim
said in an interview. But, he added after a slight pause, "You have
touched on something very interesting."
Call it Collective Farm 2.0.
Ghidirim — the Moldovan-born,
Princeton- and Harvard-educated managing director of AgroTerra,
a group of regional holding companies — is determined to succeed where
Communist planners failed and make Russia a world leader in corporate farming,
a business where investors get involved in food production on a large scale.
The Soviet collective farm, Ghidirim
said, could be described as the first large-scale attempt by a world superpower
to introduce corporate farming. Direct government management doomed the effort.
Corporate farming, however, will allow Russia to become self-reliant for
its own food supplies and feed a burgeoning world population at the same time, Ghidirim said.
"It's not a case where everybody is doing this and Russia
just has to catch up," he said. "To some extent, Russia is at the forefront of this
development."
Ghidirim, a 38-year-old U.S.
national who oversees more than 1,000 full-time employees, including about 50
in AgroTerra's Moscow offices, sat down with The
Moscow Times to explain why he decided to set up an enterprise with net assets
of $500 million, how he reaps success without paying bribes, and how advice
that he received from legendary investor Warren Buffett guides his vision.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why did you come to Russia, and why have you stayed?
A: I was born in Chisinau, Moldova, and immigrated to the United States when I was about 18.
I moved because I wanted to develop my human potential to the fullest. This is
something that is a constant goal for me in my life. Each day I want to become
a little bit better in order to open up my full potential. The first step on
that road was getting a world-class education in the U.S. The next step was taking
advantage of the professional opportunities for development and growth in the U.S.
When the chance came to go to the U.S., I packed my bags and within a
couple of days was in the States with no more than the determination to become
successful. I didn't have any relatives, I didn't have
anybody in particular waiting for me. But my dad always used to say that all
you need is to be in an environment of opportunity, and then, with hard work,
you will succeed. So I wasn't afraid.
About my decision to move here: I have always thought of
Eastern Europe as a very important part of my life, even though I moved to North America. This is where my roots are, and Russia
is such a big country and I always knew that it would have a very important
part in global history. I was always interested in Russia. Back in the '90s when I was
on Wall Street, I started thinking about Russia, discussing the idea of
becoming involved in the Russian economy. I remember a friend saying, "Oh,
forget about it. It has an economy smaller than Holland." I thought to myself,
"Well, you know, things can't stay that way, so at some point it will
change."
Q: How was AgroTerra created?
A: I moved to Russia in 2006 with [multinational farming
corporation] Bunge, but in mid-2007, as we were busy pushing forward a major
acquisition, the board of directors basically got cold feet and said, "We
want to re-evaluate our growth strategy in Russia. We want to see execution
first. We want to see positive results with what we have here before we
actually push forward."
I was left in Russia
with a totally new strategy, where Russia had become less important
for the company. They offered options to move to another location, to Geneva, New York or Singapore.
By that time, I felt that I spent enough time in the corporate world. The
reason for going to business school was to add general management training and
skills to my deal making and financial analysis expertise. My thinking when
going to business school was that I wanted to end up in private equity in Russia or Eastern Europe.
Both Russia and Eastern Europe are emerging markets where you don't have
a broad pool of managers from which you can pick and choose and put them in
place in the portfolio companies that you acquire.
I was employed at AgroTerra to put
together a team to devise and execute a strategy for creating a large agribusiness
company that would be involved in a number of different parts of the value
chain in Russia — from growing crops to storage and processing. We wanted to
create an efficient agribusiness company that would be a leader both in terms
of profitability and its management standards — something that Russia needs
more of.
If you look at the world of agribusiness, Russia is one of the markets that
will have to supply the additional food necessary to feed the growing
population. Russia
has no choice. It has to be able to fully feed its own population and also
export to supply the growing demands of the world population. To do that, you
obviously have to have an efficient agribusiness sector.
There's no doubt in my mind that Russia must and can feed itself.
Just drive around, and you will see the resources that Russia has. Some of the best soil
on earth, which is black earth, rich in organic matter, is concentrated in just
a few locations around the world. Russia
and Ukraine
represent one of the three largest locations of this soil.
Russia
has a favorable climate; it has an educated work force; it has a fairly good
infrastructure system in place. Again, it's all relative. Of course, things
could be better. But things could also be much worse, with no roads, no railroads
and no electricity at all. So Russia
is in a very good position to feed itself and export. What is necessary,
obviously, is additional capital. But for capital to flow in,
there has to be the infrastructure of a legal system.
Q: What advice would you offer a foreigner who wants to
invest or expand in Russia?
A: You obviously have to gather as much data within the time
frame that you have. In emerging markets and fast-growing markets like Russia, where you don't have a lot of data like
in the U.S.,
looking at the data soon stops making sense. I remember building models with
five years of history and 10-year projections. Well, often it doesn't make any
sense to look at five years of history in Russia because the world is
changing so quickly.
That said, you still have to gather
as much information as possible within the time frame. You have to do your
analysis, your homework, but then I think you have to have a strong bias for
action. If you are, let's say, 70 percent sure that this is the right thing do
to, then you have to start going forward. You
absolutely cannot get stuck in an analysis-paralysis situation. The way you
move forward is to start with small pilots and then adjust as you go. One of
the biggest mistakes I think people can make is trying to make the model
perfect. They spend a lot of time and then by the time they think they've got
it, the market opportunity has moved away, somebody has moved in, or
circumstances have changed in another way.
Here's another thing about Russia. Locals and foreigners alike
can be very short-term in Russia.
To be successful, you have to have a long-term perspective in Russia. You have to have the
stamina, both personal as well as financial, and the support of both your
superiors at work and your family to go through the inevitable ups and downs. But you have to have this stamina.
Q: How do you deal with bribery?
A: This is not something that we do. It was interesting to
hear once that several people decided not to work for us. The reason, I was
told, was, "You are too white. You guys don't pay bribes. You're too
clean. You play too much by the rules." I said to myself,
"We've achieved something here." Very quickly, the word about our
ethics spreads. The question about corruption itself disappears. People don't
ask you for money because they understand that this is not how you do business.
If somebody asks you for a bribe, you have to be able to tell them, "Well,
this is not what we do. If you make our life difficult, we'll just not come to
your region; we will go and invest our money somewhere else in Russia."
This is what we tell people. So far, it's working.
Q: What is your secret to successfully managing people and
business in Russia?
A: People are people everywhere, so I will say a couple of
things that you probably would hear anywhere in the word, and this is my
personal management philosophy. Step No. 1 is you have to align your team
around a set of values. The values that are important to us are openness and
ethics. Based on that, we also value teamwork, a passion for results and
continuous improvement. Step No. 2 is you have to walk the talk. That starts
from the top, and it includes everybody. I constantly emphasize the fact that
we have to live by what we say. We hire people based on our values. We make
daily decisions based on our values. If people are not aligned with our values,
then we part ways.
As for what is different about managing people in Russia,
you have to always expect the unexpected and be flexible. When I say
unexpected, it doesn't necessarily include negative things. There are positive
things happening all the time when, for example, somebody like a government
official or an employee goes the extra mile for no other reason than just to
help and do a good deed. You have to be constantly flexible enough to respond
to that. That's No. 1.
No. 2 — this is my personal passion — is to always look for
a way to put structure into chaos — and the structure has to be flexible. One
of the most difficult things to achieve in this life is to be structured yet
flexible. The problem with most structures is that they ossify as soon as they
are set in place. In Russia,
based on principle No. 1 — expect the unexpected and
be flexible — you have to put a structure in place that is flexible. Yet it
would be wrong to say, "We have to be ready for anything, so let's not
have any structure. Let's just improvise all the time."
In terms of managing people, I think it's super important to
learn the language and the culture as quickly as possible. This is as much for
business purposes, to truly be able to interact with people, as for personal
reasons, to make your stay in Russia
enjoyable. You have to appreciate the richness of the culture. Again, the
better you understand both the culture and the language — and language is a
great conduit of culture — the more you open yourself up to all the positives —
again to the literature, the theater, and what I call the soulfulness, if there
is such a term outside music, of the spirit of the Russian people.
I also would suggest hiring and promoting as many locals as
possible — as soon as possible. Build a company that relies on locals, not on
outsiders. The response I typically hear is, "But there aren't any locals
who can perform to our standards." I say, "Hire people based on your
values and the competence that you expect that you will need." It is very
much possible to find the people, in Moscow and
in Russia
in general, who will match your requirements in terms of your values. Then,
give them the support to develop.
Q: Like training?
A: Training is one example. I think the culture in a new
company is very important. One of the greatest things about Harvard, for
example, is not necessarily the professors. Case studies are also great, with
the CEOs who come and give you the inside story at the end of any case about
what actually happened. But one of the greatest things about Harvard, and Princeton as well, are the peers, my colleagues. I
learned a lot from these highly motivated, intelligent people. Try to do the
same with your team. Create an environment where you hire for excellence,
reward excellence, and set up a true environment of teamwork where people help
each other grow and develop.
Q: Who or what inspires you?
A: I'd say there are two problems in the world. One is that
most of the common sense is not that common. The other is that it's not enough
to know what to do; you must have the discipline to actually do it. That's what
differentiates the top 10 percent from the other 90 percent. It's actually
finding the discipline to do what you know that you have to do. How do you find
that discipline? A lot of it comes from your family. It comes from your role
models. But it's also something that can be fostered by the right environment.
One of the most incredible quotes that I carry with me is
from Warren Buffet. He looked at us at a session at Harvard and said,
"Look, you guys will all be successful at some point — some more, and some
less. Don't worry about that, don't worry about success. Just remember one thing.
You will eventually take on a lot of the characteristics of the people around
you at the place where you end up working. Whether you like it or not, it will
happen. So be very mindful and purposeful choosing the companies where you
work. This is one of the most important choices you can make. Choose a company
and surround yourself with co-workers who you want to become like."
I'll tell you another thing. Any expatriate arriving in the
middle of the winter from New York, Geneva or London
can feel a little downbeat making the trip down Leningradskoye.
You've just left your relatives.
You've left your familiar background life, and here you are
chugging along slowly on Leningradskoye. I've gone
through that multiple times. Then, I arrive at our weekly Monday morning
executive committee meeting, and I look around at my colleagues, at my team,
and I felt so glad and proud. That is the answer to why I keep coming back. Our
executive committee, at this point, is 100 percent Russian. I'm the only
expatriate. I look at these people and see how dedicated they are —
hard-working, intelligent, disciplined — and I feel good. I feel excited about
working for a company surrounded by people who want to be more like me, and I
want to be more like them.
The older you get, the more each minute of your time becomes
truly valuable. As somebody said, there is one single, truly irreplaceable
resource in life that we don't appreciate. This is time, our own time. I want
every moment of my time to matter.
Return to Top
EPA questions effectiveness of
GM corn
(Bloomberg)
– Monsanto Co. (MON) corn that’s genetically engineered to kill insects may be
losing its effectiveness against rootworms in four states, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency said.
Rootworms in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska are suspected
of developing tolerance to the plants’ insecticide, based on documented cases
of severe crop damage and reports from entomologists, the EPA said in a memo
dated Nov. 22 and posted Nov. 30 on a government website. Monsanto’s program
for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is “inadequate,” the EPA said.
“Resistance is suspected in at least some portions of four
states in which ‘unexpected damage’ reports originated,” the EPA said in the
memo, which reviewed damage reports.
The insects, which begin life as root-chewing grubs before
developing into adult beetles, are among the most destructive corn pests,
costing U.S.
farmers about $1 billion a year in damages and chemical pesticides, according
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, introduced its
rootworm-killing corn technology in 2003. The modified corn was planted on more
than 37 million acres this year, Lee Quarles, a spokesman for St. Louis-based
Monsanto, said yesterday. Corn is Monsanto’s largest business, accounting for
41 percent of its $11.8 billion of sales during the fiscal year ended Aug. 31.
University Study
An Iowa
State University
study said in July that some rootworms have evolved resistance to an
insect-killing protein derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a natural insecticide engineered into Monsanto corn.
Entomologists in Illinois
and other Midwestern states are studying possible resistance where the insects
devour roots of Monsanto’s Bt corn.
Monsanto continues to believe there’s no scientific
confirmation of resistance to its Bt corn, Quarles
said by telephone. Still, Monsanto takes the EPA report “seriously” and is
increasing efforts to teach farmers how to respond to unexpected damage in
their fields, he said.
Less than 0.2 percent of the acres planted with Monsanto’s Bt corn were affected by unexpected rootworm damage this
year, Quarles said. Farmers with root damage in their fields should consider
changing practices to “stay ahead of this insect,”
Monsanto said in a statement. That could include rotating corn with soybeans or
using a product such as Monsanto’s SmartStax corn,
which kills rootworms with two types of Bt, the
company said.
SmartStax Corn
The agency said in the memo that using SmartStax
in fields where the bugs have developed resistance to Bt
corn could hasten resistance to SmartStax because SmartStax’s effectiveness is predicated on both types of Bt
working as designed. SmartStax corn produces the
second type of Bt with a gene licensed from Dow
Chemical Co. (DOW)
The EPA tries to deter resistance to Bt
corn by requiring farmers to plant corn that doesn’t produce the pesticide
alongside the modified crop. This creates a so-called refuge of unexposed bugs
that can mate with insects developing resistance, creating a second generation
of bugs that’s susceptible to the toxin.
The EPA’s requirement of a refuge equal to at least 5
percent of a SmartStax crop, compared with 20 percent
for Bt corn, “will be substantially less durable and could ultimately
compromise the second unrelated toxin used to control the pest” if insects are
already resistant to Monsanto’s Bt, the agency said in the memo.
Monsanto Tests
Monsanto should enact a remedial action plan in fields where
resistance to the Bt insecticide is suspected, the EPA
said. That includes having growers use conventional pesticide to kill adult
rootworm beetles late in the season and alternate pest control methods in the
following season.
Monsanto tested rootworms for resistance in Nebraska, Illinois and Iowa and should expand the monitoring to Colorado, Minnesota, South Dakota and western Wisconsin because questions about the
performance of Bt corn extends to all seven states,
the EPA said in the memo.
Return to Top
Zapping pests may protect fruit, veggies
(ScienceDaily) — A new study published in the Journal of
Economic Entomology shows that radiation can be used to effectively sterilize
the light brown apple moth (LBAM), an insect pest found in Australia, New
Zealand, California, Hawaii, Sweden,
and the British Isles.
The light brown apple moth, Epiphyas
postvittana (Walker),
feeds on apples, pears, stonefruits, citrus, grapes,
berries and many other plants. A native of Australia,
it has been found in California
since 2007. The California Department of Food and Agriculture has spent more
than $70 million in CDFA and USDA funds to eradicate the LBAM, and estimates
that failure to eradicate it could cost California
growers over $133 million per year.
Using similar methodologies in two different laboratories,
the authors coordinated radiation biology studies between two geographically
isolated LBAM populations from Australia
and New Zealand.
The results showed that for both populations, an irradiation dose of 250 Gy administered to LBMA pupae induced >95% sterility in
females and >90% sterility in males. These results can be used to initiate a
suppression program against the LBMA where sterile males are released, mate
with wild females, and no offspring are produced. If successful, this technique
can largely eliminate the need for pesticides.
"These results suggest that a sterile insect technique
(SIT) or F1 sterility program can be applied to control an infestation of Epiphyas postvittana, but these
would still be reliant on complementary information such as physical fitness
and modeling of overflooding ratios." according
to the authors. "The challenge now is to identify the dose of radiation
that would provide a balance between insect sterility and field competitiveness."
Return to Top
PepsiCo plan to save farmers precious water
(The
Christian Science Monitor) -- "More Bounce to the
Ounce.” In the 1950s, it was a cola slogan; thanks to a new partnership
with Cambridge University, it could become the catch
phrase of PepsiCo’s i-crop, a web-based program that
helps farmers reduce water waste.
Here’s how it works: Data systems collect information on
local weather conditions, farming activity, and soil moisture from underground
probes and compiles them online. With a few keystrokes, farmers can eliminate
the guessing games about water consumption, resulting in more precise and
environmentally friendly farming.
In October, PepsiCo publicly announced its goal of reducing
carbon emissions and water usage from their largest UK farms by 50 percent in five
years. So far i-crop is testing well: Preliminary
reports from 22 farms in the UK
show farmers have achieved 90 percent efficiency in water usage.
"Farming is in the DNA of our business – we rely on
fresh produce everyday," said Richard Evans, president of PepsiCo UK and Ireland, according to PR Newswire.
"Finding ways to produce more food with less environmental impact is
essential to our future." He added, "i-crop
has the potential to revolutionize the way we farm, enabling our farmers to
save costs and [reduce] water and carbon consumption, while at the same time
improving their yields.”
PepsiCo’s potential to revolutionize water efficiencies in
farming is sizable. Netting approximately $43.3 billion annually and employing
more than a quarter million people, PepsiCo is the second-largest food and
beverage business in the world.
Ever enjoyed Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Lay's, Gatorade,
Tropicana, 7Up, Doritos, Lipton Teas, Quaker Oats, Cheetos,
Ruffles, Aquafina, Tostitos, Sierra Mist, or Fritos?
If the i-crop can deliver as
hoped, those products will soon be made with less water waste than most
competitive grocery items (and who doesn’t want something positive to hold onto
after downing a bag of Cheetos?).
Although the i-crop
is only accessible to UK
farmers, PepsiCo hopes to introduce its technology to farms in India, China,
Mexico, and Australia
by 2012. However, speculation about i-crop’s
availability has raised some eyebrows and provoked the question: Will the i-crop technology, owned
privately by PepsiCo, be withheld from those who most need it?
Brain Pickings editor Maria Popova
argues that owning such coveted technological rights will put PepsiCo in the
middle of an often tense relationship between profiteering and humanitarianism.
“The technology is currently only available to PepsiCo-affiliated
growers, which raises interesting
questions about the relationship between corporate interests and social good in
innovation, as well as bespeaking the disconnect between the value of
open-source software and the fact that the best-funded research initiatives,
most competent scientists, and highest-grade technology tend to be subsidized
by private corporations.”
If, how, and with whom PepsiCo shares i-crop
technology has yet to be determined. In any case, PepsiCo has taken corporate
social responsibility by the horns, hopefully luring other influential
corporations to recognize that being green is achievable.
"Every Generation Refreshes the World," Pespi ads claim. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that
PepsiCo can do so for the next generation’s water supply.
• This article first appeared at Global Envision, a blog
produced by Mercy Corps.
Return to Top
US
teens not eating enough fruit and veggies
(Medical News Today)
– US
teens are eating less than the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables,
according to the latest report from the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) that was published on 25 November.
Based on data from the National Youth Physical Activity and
Nutrition Study, the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) finds
that in 2010 the median consumption of fruit and vegetables among high school
students was 1.2 times per day, which is considerably lower than that
recommended by the Department of Health and Human Services.
In addition, says the CDC, about 1 in 4 teens
eats fruit less often than once a day, and 1 in 3 eats vegetables less often
than once a day.
These results suggest the majority of US teens are not
meeting their current daily fruit and vegetable recommendations, which for
adolescents who do less than 30 minutes of exercise a day are 1.5 cups of fruit
and 2.5 cups of vegetables for girls and 2 cups of fruit and 3 cups of
vegetables for boys. For teens who do more than 30 minutes of exercise a day,
the recommended levels are even higher. (1 cup is equal to about one medium
apple, eight strawberries, 12 baby carrots, or one large tomato).
The CDC urges schools and communities to adopt policies and
environmental approaches that make fruit and vegetables more easily accessible
and available to teens and schoolchildren. Research suggests these have greater
reach and are longer lasting than diet counseling and education that target
individuals.
Examples include farm-to-school initiatives, school gardens,
salad bars in schools, and farmers markets. Implementing such approaches
through schools can increase adolescents' exposure to and familiarity with
fruits and vegetables, says the CDC, referring to evidence that such factors
influence the development of young people's food preferences, which along with
providing greater access, are important influencers of food consumption.
Return to Top
End Transmission