This post is the fourth in the series, Raw Materials and Natural Resources in the Supply Chain, which explores the understudied, and often misunderstood, processes for sourcing natural resources that are used as raw materials by the industries that make the products we buy every day. Previous posts have focused on the dilemma farmers face for how to use their land, challenges with reshoring raw materials supply, and how scientists are working to extract precious metals from toxic wastewater.
For some, the first image that comes to mind when hearing the phrase natural resources is oil. Others picture metals and minerals used by heavy industries and manufacturing plants. The lives of more than 8 billion people rely on other so-called renewable resources that grow on our planet: agricultural crops, fisheries, and timber.
Understanding the level of renewability of an agricultural species helps us understand the dynamic capacity and fragility of our agricultural supply chains.
Consider the apple. One of the two most prominent fruits on the planet, its story starts in a remote valley in the mountains of modern-day Kazakhstan. More than 90% of the world’s apples are believed to have descended from two ancient trees there. In fact, the name of the region’s largest town (Almaty) translates to “fatherland of apples.” And it is from there that scientists believe bears, through their manure, spread the first apple seeds to neighboring regions. Over the next 6,000 years, apples spread around the world. In the 17th century, there were more than 16,000 varieties of apples. Today that number has fallen to 7,500. About 100 of those varieties are grown commercially in the United States—an even smaller number (15) make up 90% of apples sold in grocery stores.
This is the sad reality: reduced diversity, disease, over-consumption, and climate change have now put us at risk of seeing our most important food crops, such as apples, lose their renewability.
The Renewability Cycle
Academic supply chain management research has described how pollution, climate change, lack of recycling, and other unsustainable practices can impact the renewability of natural resources. Pollution caused by human industry can reduce the quality of the air, water, and soil needed by food crops and decrease our ability to renew the resource supply. Similarly, over-fishing and harvesting wild animals for food can decimate a species’ ability to renew itself. Our history is full of stories of consuming wild animals, such as the passenger pigeon, to the point of extinction.
Supply chain managers working in agricultural industries understand that many important crops are not easy to replace.
- Young apple and coffee trees can take 3-5 years to generate their first crops
- Cinnamon trees can take 15-20 years to grow large enough to harvest
- Pine forests need 15-25 years to generate timber
- Some hardwood (oak, maple, chestnut) forests need as many as 50 years to generate timber for industry
Once lost, crops and forests are not easily replaced. Even if the effects of pollution were reversed, the ability to rebound from crop losses takes time. Short- and long-term scarcity may be the outcome if there is an imbalance between supply and demand for renewable resources.
Renewable Resources and Supply Chain Performance
With how complex renewable resources are to manage and transport, supply chain managers must be aware of all six dimensions of supply chain performance—efficiency, effectiveness, resiliency, security, innovation, and sustainability—to use them as raw materials successfully.
Renewable resources are often perishable, making logistics difficult and leading to cost and effectiveness performance issues in the supply chain.
It is true that there are sweeter-tasting pineapples grown in Central America. However, they spoil more quickly in trucks and containers than the ones you buy from the local grocery store. Similarly, bananas (the world’s most in-demand fruit) are gassed with ethylene and nitrogen in warehouses to control the ripening process so they arrive ready to eat in your store. And, since spoiling begins the moment they’re unhooked, most fish must be frozen and pushed through the supply chain from their point of origin.
While being transported through the supply chain, the issue of security arises. It has been reported that farmers in the vanilla fields of Madagascar literally need armed guards to protect their crops as they ripen and become worth a small fortune while still on the vine. Relatedly, since climate dictates where renewable natural resources are grown—and no single market is capable of sourcing its entire supply locally—global trade often takes place in remote locations, leading to potential issues of risk/resiliency. About 70% of the world’s cocoa supply comes from four West African countries (Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon). Port delays, hurricanes, wars, and pandemics at locations can disrupt the flow of food to your grocery store—an important fact to remember when 15% of all food, and over half of the fruit, consumed in the US comes from beyond our borders.
At times scientists have predicted mass starvation due to increased demand. Such predictions ignore the ability of science to innovate and create record crops from new strains of drought-resistant corn, rice, and wheat. Similarly, entrepreneurs have been known to use aquaponics to grow salmon in cities to avoid the complexity of sourcing wild-caught fish from the oceans. Most recently, DNA-related science offers us even more hope for our friend, the apple tree.
After losing its diversity, being domesticated, and spreading to climates where it did not evolve, the apple became vulnerable to disease. However, the wild varieties found in Kazakhstan offer us a sustainable solution. They give us the ability to increase the diversity and robustness of the apple species in laboratories, perhaps even to grow a better apple for the future. The wild apple trees that grow by the thousands in the forests in Kazakhstan are disease resistant and don’t have to be sprayed with chemicals. They’ve developed immunity and defended themselves against pests and climate issues. They add new hope to breeding more disease-resistant varieties that can flourish in the 21st century.
So, consider their origin story the next time you buy apples at your local market or grocery store. Think about the journey they took to get to you. Don’t take your “apple a day” for granted. And thank supply chain managers (and local bears) for spreading these delicious treats from that faraway place in Kazakhstan, where the forests are still filled with apple trees for the world.
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