IN re-imagining food for the future, we must focus on understanding and transforming our food production capabilities — a revolution well on its way. The capabilities that are becoming standard for anyone in food production are automation that reframes efficiency; new means of production that reshape our thinking about nutrition; and the smart use of data to record immediate feedback and meet customer needs.

When we surveyed 280 Australian business leaders, we learned something sobering: too many don’t understand the strategic implications of exponentially emerging technologies.

Our recent survey of over 280 Australian business leaders produced some rich insights on a range of issues confronting organisations as they prepare (or fail to prepare) to leverage disruption.

From the early thinking captured in Alan Turing’s 1950 paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ to IBM’s Deep Blue defeating world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997 and Google’s Alpha Go besting Chinese Go champion Kie Je in 2017, there have been exponential shifts in both the adoption and benefits of AI.

In disruptive conditions, the items on a business’ 5-year plan may as well be thrown on a trash heap. The British companies that are engaging with England’s shaky re-opening are learning this better than most. There—as with businesses across the globe—we hope the value of the expedient catalytic action becomes clear.

On April 1st, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gave a speech in which he said, “I don’t think we get back to normal [after this pandemic]. I think we get to a new normal.” But according to the laws of nature, as beautifully articulated by Buzz Hollings’ Adaptive Cycle, “normal” has never existed.

Right now, the confounding, overwhelming experience of disruption is impacting our lives in an immediate way. Right now, we all understand what it’s like to have a tsunami sneak up on us and sweep us off our fee ten masse. But this is our “new normal”, friends. COVID-19 is just currently the most gripping expression of it. But make no mistake: it is a single factor in an entire system of exponentially unfolding disruption.

When Bernie Sanders dropped out of the American Presidential race, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 3.44%. It’s a good reminder to “think conditions”: create teams of watchers and listeners who can monitor the immediate and emergent factors that impact us. Because, friends, these conditions impact us whether we realize it or not.

The news that oil prices were in the negative came as a massive shock to most. But not to the traders organized under the Twitter hashtag EnergyFinTwit (#EFT) who made millions off of the historic event. They’re living proof that somewhere, there’s always someone who predicts the unpredictable, who perceives the wild card.

The Atlantic just published a story about New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden that ponders whether she is “the most effective leader on the planet.” Well, if she is, a good deal of that effectiveness to can attributed to one thing: she works with the human condition.

Trump has long threatened to pull global supply chains from China, but it seems that the COVID-19 pandemic may have strengthened that resolve. This condition is a reminder to all of us: understand what constitutes the network within which you generate value—and never take it for granted.

Disruption, which can be simply put as: any development that creates a new market while destroying or displacing another, tends to challenge any black-and-white thinker. That’s because with disruption, there’s no clean separation between opportunity and risk—it all depends on how you approach it.

Disruption is messy and in its current incarnation is driving greater change at a faster rate than many humans can deal with. New complexities stifle what once appeared simple and give way to uncertainty and confusion until the potential of the future sounds too far removed from the perceived sanctuary and sanctity of the past.

OUR farm sector is MAD. That is, it is in Managed Adaptive Decline. MAD occurs when an organisation adapts bit by bit, in a well-managed way, to declining conditions. Little wonder, given farming’s constant and historic disruption by everything from extreme weather, to changing business models, leaving it unable to guarantee long-term food security, and business security for farmers themselves.

OUR FARMS and farmers, if they are to survive and leverage disruptive change, must develop a new mindset, skill-set, and strategic focus that is open to an alternative food future to that produced through traditional farming.

While many have solutions, criticism and obvious issues, most of the sentiment drives two questions: ‘What the hell is happening to our farmers?’ and, ‘why is it taking so long to get our farmers back on track where they belong?’ I cannot provide a definitive answer to this. But a few things come to mind.