Don't Interfere: It's a Canon Event
Lately social media has been all over the idea of life’s canon events – things that commonly happen, aren’t the most fun, and that people need to experience for personal character and growth.
A whole bunch of ink has been spilled lately over Bayer’s declaration to lead the regenerative movement in agriculture. Some of the smartest minds and best writers in modern agriculture have taken deep dives and written long reports summarizing where there may be the potential for this to mean something.
It is always easy to write off the efforts of marketing executives based on how unrealistic it is to expect boots-on-the-ground sales people to get behind initiatives clearly driving towards revenue contraction. It’s also fair to say that today, the culture of cosmetic crop input use is deeply entrenched amongst Bayer’s customer base, and that the structure of salespeople’s salaries and bonuses represent a structural barrier to helping increase regenerative practice adoption in their territories.
Developing Heroes
The latest Spider-Man film is about honesty, trust, guilt, and honor. It spawned the trend of calling out ‘canon events’ - cringe-y and inescapable rites of passage - and letting go of judging them as bad.
Just like there are multiple Spider-universes, there are inter-related oligopoly-controlled industries in crop inputs, commodities, and food, who are taking similar steps towards regeneration. The big announcements are early-stage canon events, and a lot have come out of major food and agribusiness brands already.
Think of the announcements like the spider bite that creates the Spiderman in each universe - a transformational event that kickstarts a new way of being. After capturing everyone’s attention, there is no turning back.
Spiderpeople also all lose an aunt or uncle and experience some related guilt. Given the clear revenue contraction related to regenerative practice adoption, crop input companies best be preparing to grieve salespeople layoffs ahead.
One cliché that helps people cope with loss is: certain things have to be removed in order for new things to come into our lives. Crop input salespeople who dig in hardest against change, scoff about woke marketing executives and their silly campaigns, will surely be the first to go… making room for the honest, transparent and supportive conversations that Bayer wants to have happen.
Food Brands’ Regenerative Marketing Experience
For marketing executives at big food brands, grieving starts to happen upon the discovery that transparency and control in upstream ingredient sourcing are lacking or non-existent. While it is absolutely the case that, according to The Future Market by Mike Lee, “Big Food needs to muster the courage to put more things out there that aren’t just a part of some pre-existing food trend,” …are we sure they know how?
The complicated history leading up to today’s available choices for eco-conscious grocery shoppers is well worth a read. Notably, it was consumer research that drove product development by food brands in recent decades.
Today’s consumers have no idea where their food comes from or how farming works, so they don’t know how to ask for what they need. Yet, as with systems change, the economy will still bring it to market via a series of carrots and sticks.
Consumer interest and willingness-to-pay for supply chain sustainability is a fast-growing and resilient trend.
At the same time, because the justice system is intended to assign responsibility to organizations that pollute and poison entities with no way of protecting themselves, the next canon event facing food brands and manufacturers could be a stream of litigations.
Summary
The canon events characterizing the cultural revolution underway in food and commodity agriculture mustn’t be interrupted nor criticized. As much as they may raise eyebrows, each milestone is necessary for global brands transforming into forces for good.
Announcements that may appear virtue-signaling on the surface, truly speak to the honest intentions of good people facing strong pressure and big hurdles to enact institutional change.
Business contraction is a fact of life, and like what we do here in Canada with ‘treaty land acknowledgements’, industry meetings about regenerative agriculture should all begin with a recognition that successful practitioners reduce their crop input purchases by a significant margin.
Working out how to substitute customer feedback with real problem-solving is the hero outcome, and the gold for any business that can make it to the end of the regenerative character rainbow.
The manner in which individuals and corporate entities respond to criticism and legal challenges depends on their character. It speaks volumes when honesty, trust, guilt and honor are identifiable in regenerative marketing initiatives, just like how they’re developed across the Spiderverse.