Ep. 017 - Food Security and Crisis Management with Kyle King
Kyle King
Founder Crisis Lab
Managing Director at Capacity Building International
Show Notes:
In this special episode of the Bites and Bytes Podcast, host Kristin Demoranville is joined by Kyle King, Managing Director of Capacity Building International and founder of Crisis Lab. Unlike our typical episodes focused on food industry experts, this conversation explores broader themes such as food insecurity, crisis management, and food security during global crises.
Kyle shares his extensive experience in emergency services and international security, discussing the impact of global conflicts, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on our food supply chains. Learn how food insecurity leads to mass migration and the innovative ways communities build resilience. Kyle also sheds light on the crucial role technology plays in both the challenges and opportunities of modern farming.
This episode is part one of a special two-part series. Stay tuned for part two on the Crisis Lab Podcast, where Kyle and Kristin will discuss practical steps communities can take to be more resilient in the face of food supply challenges and technological disruptions.
You can listen to Part Two of this series here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/integrating-digital-safety-in-the-food-industry/id1607644712?i=1000662173951
More information about Part Two can be found here:
https://www.crisislab.io/podcasts/crisis-lab/episodes/2148742285
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Episode Key Highlights:
(00:37 - 01:14) Exploring Kyle's Favorite Food
(03:27 - 04:27) Memorable Texas Restaurant Experience
(08:48 - 09:53) Navigating Crisis With Clear Communication
(19:56 - 21:28) Community Food Supply Preparedness
(26:33 - 28:13) Implementing Technology in Agriculture
(36:03 - 37:58) Technology, Labor Shortage, and Vulnerability
(48:20 - 49:44) Building Resilience Through Community Engagement
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Show Notes:
Food waste statistic:
Fires with electric vehicles:
German EV Sales after tax cut removed:
Baltic Sea Infrastructure Incident:
Russian ships off the coast of Florida, USA:
Deep Sea Mining for Minerals for EV batteries:
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Crisis Lab Podcast: https://www.crisislab.io/podcasts/crisis-lab
Crisis Lab: https://www.crisislab.io/
Crisis Lab Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7197166347129139200/
Capacity Building International: https://www.capacitybuildingint.com/
Kyle King LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylek-us/
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Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(00:28) - Exploring Crisis Management in Food Industry
(06:04) - Food Security and Crisis Management
(15:12) - Interconnected Effects on Food Security
(19:42) - Navigating Food Security and Resilience
(23:43) - Agricultural Technology and Food Security
(32:46) - Enhancing Food Security Through Technology
(44:36) - Building Resilience Through Community Action
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0:00:28 - Kristin Demoranville
Welcome to another episode of the Bites and Bytes Podcast, where we explore the intersection of technology, cybersecurity and beyond in the food industry. I'm your host, Kristin Demoranville. In today's episode, we're kicking off part one of a two-part series that takes a different approach from our usual discussions with food industry experts. Our guest is Kyle King. He brings a unique perspective to the show. Unlike our typical guests, who are experts in the food industry, technology and cybersecurity sectors, kyle specializes in emergency and crisis management on an international scale. In this episode, we will discuss large themes such as food insecurity, crisis management, resiliency and keeping food safe for distribution in times of crisis and beyond. This conversation sets the stage for part two, which will air on Kyle's podcast, Crisis Lab Podcast. In that episode, kyle and I will discuss practical steps that communities can take to be more resilient in the face of food supply challenges and technology disruptions.
I hope you enjoy a conversation the face of food supply challenges and technology disruptions. I hope you enjoy a conversation. Let's get started. Kyle, thanks for being here. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast and I'm really excited to hear a lot about your background and things you're working on and how that impacts with technology and cybersecurity and food and all the good things that we love talking about here. I'm just going to jump straight into it. Before your intro, let's talk about your favorite food and your favorite food memory. They do not need to be the same thing.
0:01:50 - Kyle King
Okay, thanks. Well, thanks for having me on the show. I really do appreciate it. I'm happy to be here as well and to discuss what I think is a growing and important topic. I think it's something we've been dealing with for a long time in terms of food security and it's getting a lot more visibility now. But before we dive into that, my favorite food, you know, I would actually have to say and this is going to be a terrible answer, but I'm going to have to default to just sort of a pizza, and the reason is because I've traveled internationally quite a bit and you know the Italians do a pizza in a certain way and if, even inside Italy, you know, if you go to Napoli and other areas, they have different pizza styles and Sicily and everything else like that. But it is one constant right, it is one constant anywhere in the world. You can always find a pizza, you can always have a slice of home. I guess I would say Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it's something you can always rely upon.
0:02:36 - Kristin Demoranville
Is there a favorite topping for your pizza, because I have a lot of guests who have said pizza.
0:02:42 - Kyle King
I would just go straight with the, the pepperoni. But there's also, you know, sort of a diavola which is with the peppers and more, more hot, I guess I would say.
0:02:50 - Kristin Demoranville
And then yeah, just a standard sort of margarita as well, which is sort of what a lot of europeans default to I mean you can't really go wrong with a good margarita pizza, I suppose I mean you could, I mean, but generally speaking it's a safe bet. Is there a particular pizza place that you have in mind that you were thinking of when you said that?
0:03:07 - Kyle King
Well, I mean not really. There's some really good Italian places that I've been to, that you know. When you go in and you just have this giant, they bring out a very thin slice or a very you know thin pizza and just it's tremendous in size. It takes up sort of half the table and it's absolutely fantastic. The only problem is you generally will go into a carb sort of coma after that.
0:03:27 - Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, that's great. And then your favorite food memory.
0:03:30 - Kyle King
Oh, that's a great question. I think you know, for me personally, I mean, I'm originally from Texas and originally from Dallas, and there used to be a restaurant in Dallas that had this just infamously famous hot sauce and Mexican food and it was absolutely fantastic. And when you but when you go there it's sort of like a dive, and you go in and the first thing they do is give you a giant glass of, and pitcher of, iced tea, and then the hot sauce was extremely hot, but the food was fantastic, and so that's something I always think about. I think it's closed now, but unfortunately that was always a good place to go for Mexican food back in the time when I was in the US.
0:04:02 - Kristin Demoranville
So it was just the nostalgia of the place that's the favorite memory.
0:04:05 - Kyle King
Yeah, it's a nostalgia of the place. And then you know there's some for some weird reason and you can sort of let me know if I'm right or wrong. But there's this correlation between going into a place that is rather simple by design but has fantastic food right and then if you go into a place that's sort of extravagant and the food is not great. So, for whatever reason, this place had just the lack of decor and the fantastic food just sort of stuck in my mind.
0:04:28 - Kristin Demoranville
Thanks for that, Kyle. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?
0:04:31 - Kyle King
Thanks, yeah, so my name is Kyle King. I'm the managing director of Capacity Building International. It's one of our small consultancy firms, and we focus on international security, institutional capacity building and with a specific focus on crisis management, planning and resilience, and on the other side of that, we have Crisis Lab . I'm the founder of Crisis Lab , and so that's our online peer-to-peer professional development platform that's fully accredited and that's where we are bringing international experts together to share their experiences, their ideas, and to be able to help us all be better professionals at the end of the day, by expanding our worldview on the topics that we have to deal with every day. So that's sort of what I'm doing today.
In my past, I spent 17 years in the emergency services and the emergency response side of the house, specifically within the US Department of Defense, and during that time I was very fortunate to start working overseas very young, and so then I was deployed into international operations or sort of DOD operations, and so that was where I spent a lot of time in the Balkans during the conflict periods, and then also two and a half years in Afghanistan, took a break for a while, and then ended up working for the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe for two years before the war in Ukraine started, and also during that time before I actually went to Ukraine.
I skipped over this, but I spent seven years as a civil emergency advisor supporting NATO operations, and so that was really construct. Behind all of this is bringing emergency services and crisis management and all these sort of resilience topics into conflict areas to try and create stability. So that's one of the things that has been a key theme throughout my entire career path thus far. So that's a sort of a really quick, sort of complicated overview of how I got here today.
0:06:04 - Kristin Demoranville
Well, I think you made it less complicated, because I'm sitting here going whoa, wait, that's a lot, that's amazing, and the fact that you've gotten to travel the world and help people through crisis is, it's really admirable. So thank you for that work, because we need it. We need more of it as well. Thank you, appreciate that. So can you give me like a little bit of, I guess, day-to-day like how does that work for you? Because people don't sorry, I'm generalizing, forgive me, listeners, but I think, generally speaking, people don't understand what it means to deal with crisis management in these types of situations. So could you give us like a little snapshot, just so people have a little bit more of a picture to go with?
0:06:40 - Kyle King
Sure. So at this point in time, like most of our work is focused on supporting, like US, bilateral efforts with partners overseas, and so we are working with partners in their various, let's say, government departments, agencies and entities that are responsible for various different aspects of resilience and civil security. So that could be in the topic for today, like food security, that could also be in water security, telecommunications, overall crisis management. So we spend a lot of time focused on okay, what is your national response plan, these FEMA-like organizations that are in different countries, how are they planning for disasters? How do they mitigate, recover from them, how do they respond to them? What is their crisis management framework? How is their constitution to the laws, to the various policies they have? How is that word designed and orchestrated? And how do they have, how do they measure, interagency cooperation? So, a real sort of spoiler alert everybody has problems with interagency cooperation, so it's nothing new for anybody, but you know, how do these systems and structures, how are they established, what are the best practices and how can we promote these different sort of best practices across the international community so that we're able to more adeptly respond to a crisis? And also, increasingly, how can we handle more complex crisis because, as the world evolves and we have seen in recent years, you know things are becoming more complex, more interconnected and requires much more of a whole of government approach to addressing these problems than we do today.
So day-to-day it's really about sort of a lot of advising, mentoring, guiding some policy development. It's really about sort of a lot of advising, mentoring, guiding some policy development. It's helping with the planning processes, a lot of discussion on interagency cooperation. We might get into technical details on, say, tabletop exercises or scenario-based discussions and sort of at a practical level, especially if we're doing more community engagement aspects. Recently I was in Latvia. We were discussing how can civil society and nonprofit organizations contribute to community resilience and thereby overall national security. So there's different approaches that we take. We have a sort of a top-down approach, which is policy and legislation, and we have a bottom-up approach which is through crisis level. We call our sort of our in-person labs, where we work with community leaders to understand the changing environment and what they could do locally to have a greater impact with the resources that they have.
0:08:49 - Kristin Demoranville
Thank you for that. That's really enlightening. I think it's so important that people start to understand how these crises are going to be compounded by the amount of extra technology that's around them and the different types of human aspects in these situations, because they're obviously emotionally heightened a lot of times because you're dealing with, you know, displacement and migration and food and water, and that is very emotionally tied into being a human being, because it's something that we need to survive. So I'm sure being level-headed really comes in quite handy at times, but it can certainly help, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, if you're dealing with crisis, you have to keep cool, right. You can't be all stressed out and flailing like an inflatable tube man, which is the same in cybersecurity. We can't be running around like a chicken with their head cut off. We have to be able to cut through the noise, to get to the root of the problem, if you will.
So I completely get that type of aspect and I feel the same way about policy. You have to have a common language in order to get people at the table, because if you're not speaking the same way, then you're speaking in 12 different ways and that's not going to help anything. Part of the reason why I'm such an advocate for different policies and regulations, because they create common ground, and that's what we need to be able to move forward. People are probably like well, why is Kyle on your show, Kristin? What's going on? Well, actually, it's because we're going to talk about food security and as it relates to crisis management and beyond, and I want you to define food insecurity for us, kyle, because I think people have a misunderstanding of what that is and I would love you to give your perspective on that.
0:10:13 - Kyle King
Sure, absolutely. So. One of the things that we orient our work really around a couple of key themes. One is the perspective, because we do work sort of with one foot in the security environment, the other one in the crisis management environment. So we do orient our perspective around what NATO produces in terms of what they view as food security and, in some cases, food insecurity. But I would say, from a more civilian perspective, you know, we're really looking at having resilient food and water resources, you know, which really means ensuring those supplies are safe from disruption or sabotage in the case of security incidents. Or, even more concrete, for the country to be able to provide sufficient supplies available to both civilians and military.
And this is where it switches slightly. And when we talk about food security, because from a military perspective, we're also talking about to be able to provide for the nutritional needs of military forces and avoiding, you know, putting limitations on military operations just due to food and crisis and a crisis in the population that you're working in Now. This has become increasingly important for NATO over the last few years, really since about 2010,. It started to become an issue, but most recently, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we've seen the impact and the sort of dialogue around food security and the importance of food security and how the lack of security can lead to food insecurity over time, especially if you are having conflict in the nation which is considered the world's breadbasket in producing wheat and grain. So this is something that NATO is is focused on. We organize some of our work around these, what they call NATO resilience baselines. Anybody can Google that it's it's out in the public domain, but that considers communications, transportation, water security and secure water supplies, secure food supplies, crisis management, mass casualties, population movement all these things that nations traditionally deal with during a conflict. But it's also taking a step back, looking at what we're doing today.
How are our communities prepared? Because then we start leading into discussions about societal resilience. What is building a more resilient society? What does that mean? What does it take to do that? Well, food security is a component of a resilient society. We need safe and secure supplies of food. We need the ability to have secure supply chains and to be able to prevent any sort of sabotage or attacks on the food systems, the distribution systems that go along with that, and that is a key component. And so when we're not in conflict, for example, we need to be looking at these different thematic areas and then seeing how we can become more robust. How can we plan, how can we get better? Because we know, ultimately, at the end of the day, that there's going to be more crisis. It's increasingly complex, there's going to be more, it's going to be more intertwined into the different aspects that we're dealing with. So it's not just food security, but then, if it's food, it's probably also water, which means that's also gonna be combined with energy security, which is another topic that we look at, and all these systems are gonna be tied together, and so responding to one is generally gonna be responding to all.
An additional sort of final thought that I'll leave you with sort of as a long answer to your question. But is that? You know we also looked at it from the perspective of food insecurity and food insecurity driving things such as migration and mass migration. So, food security you know, if you're looking at sub-Saharan Africa, if you're looking at recent population movements from South America, you know you're seeing that climate changes could potentially lead to food insecurity and then drive migration of mass populations, and this is something that has been trending recently, in the last few years, but we're starting to really see in mass and in numbers and it's something that we haven't really faced before in terms of migration of entire populations because they're not able, to say, grow the food that they need to sustain themselves.
0:13:46 - Kristin Demoranville
That is so impactful to think about. I mean, if you just take it for what you just said, people are literally leaving whole nations because they can't grow food. That is, I mean, that is so intense to think about and so unnecessary. That doesn't seem like a problem we should be having. Right, that should be solvable. That's really. I mean. That really does grab you my thoughts around this, especially since the audience consists of a lot of food protection people and cybersecurity individuals, both in OT and ICS, and systems thinkers and things like that. Could you? You've already mentioned it the Russian-Ukraine conflict but what specifically is impacting food security? Is it just that region or is there other parts of the globe that are really impacted by that?
0:14:29 - Kyle King
Oh yeah, there's multiple places that are impacted by food insecurity. I mean, look across the entire continent of Africa and in many cases you'll find, you know, sub-saharan Africa and others that have just a long tradition of food insecurity, not being able to grow the amount of food that they need to sustain their populations. We, as I mentioned, sort of South America and the mass migration that we're seeing in population movement. That we're seeing, which is the terminology that you know many international organizations use now, is just population movement, not necessarily migration. It's people actually just moving completely out of their country, right? So just it's a population that's just displaced and going somewhere else.
And then you see, obviously, with the Russian going somewhere else, and then you see, obviously with the, the russian invasion of ukraine, then you, you saw production drop sharply in terms of the grain needed to support a giant swath of the globe and from africa to europe. And and in that case you know that was very specific there were many factors that that contributed to that, obviously the, the war and the invasion being one. But if you look at the knock-on effects and the, the connections to that, then you start to see, over time, the impact on the black sea shipping lanes, the ability to move and transport food, just because the the threats, conditions, the mines that were not allowed. There's also other issues in terms of wartime insurance and not being able to ensure commercial freight to be able to to be shipped across the sea because it's a wartime environment. Insurance companies don't want to do that, so it's administrative hurdle. They had to get through to be able across the sea because it's a wartime environment, insurance companies don't want to do that, so it's an administrative hurdle. They had to get through to be able to ship grain.
And then you see okay, if they're going to transport it by road, then what are the connecting nations that border Ukraine? There's Romania, poland and many others. But then you create an imbalance in the ecosystem where those that are producing grain in Poland and other countries would then are challenged, I guess I would say, in terms of selling their own crops, because their market is flooded, because now things are not going to the Black Sea, they're going by border and into Poland, which then causes knock-on effects, right? So then you have sort of political tensions, you have escalations, you have farmers that are blocking the borders on an entryway into Poland from Ukraine and you have all sorts of protests that come from that and that leads into instability over time, as these pressures sort of compound and then spread because of one single action that's been taken.
0:16:32 - Kristin Demoranville
And it would also put a lot of pressure on the farmers of these various other countries that surround the conflict area to produce more. Their yields have to be higher and I would assume that would drive costs, because we're having fertilizer issues and probably seed issues and a bunch of other things. Are you seeing that as well?
0:16:51 - Kyle King
Yes, and so, in this context, not necessarily with the border nations, because, to your point, if there was no other way to move the grain that was being produced out of Ukraine, for example, you would have those demand pressures that are on neighboring countries to produce to sustain the population in the conflict area. In this case it was a bit unique because they were essentially flooding the market, because it was typically going by ship into Africa and in this case, in many ways, for at least a short period of time, it reversed and then flooded into Europe, which then caused a market turbulence in terms of the local producers that were, you know, not able to sell their grain on the market for the prices that they had before, and so that was causing some problems initially. But, to your point exactly is correct is that if you cut off production in one area, then you immediately put demand on the others that are producing, and that causes additional strain and use of resources in those surrounding nations.
0:17:43 - Kristin Demoranville
There's so many factors here that are so interconnected I'm sure we could spend, you know, the entire time here just talking about that, which would not be a waste of time either.
But there's just so many like nuances on nuances here that it really is a struggle For me realizing that the conflict specifically impacting food security in countries that were thousands of miles away was really important, because it shows how interconnected we really are in our systems and how we don't realize that because we take it for granted, because we don't have to think about it right. We go to the grocery store, we pick up our food. We don't see how it got there, we don't see what went into making it safe for us or any of the aspects behind the scenes. We just pick up our loaf of bread and I think we take that for granted a lot, especially, I'll say, in the US, because we don't have to worry the fact that now we have this conflict and I'm sure many other conflicts that are going around the world right now that really are compounding people's ability just to go buy a loaf of bread.
0:18:40 - Kyle King
I think you've emphasized a key point, which is the sort of systems thinking approach to this and how everything is connected. I mean, because food has been something that we you know humanity has been struggling with for forever, right, yeah, and the challenge is, you cannot just rapidly grow food, and so it's not easily replaceable. It takes time, and it needs to be adaptive, and it needs time and space to be able to do that. And so this is where it becomes a real challenge, because if our environment is rapidly changing, you know our food systems don't necessarily have the ability to change as rapidly as that, and so that's where we start to really have some issues, and especially when, you know, in my line of business, we always say all disasters are local, and so if you take that premise and you say, okay, the local community is first and foremost impacted by a disaster earthquake, hurricane, whatever the case is, it's always the community that bears the brunt of that. And so you can extract from what you're talking about what we're discussing right now in terms of these larger geopolitical tensions and war and conflict and food supplies at a global level, but you can push that down to a community level how are our communities really prepared.
You mentioned, like in the US, just going to the store and picking something up, but what are the supply chains behind that? What's the food and safety systems behind that? How does that actually get into the store? And then what are your alternatives as somebody that lives in that community, to be able to have your own secure food supplies? And this is something that is becoming more prominent in our discussions, because we can see you can see the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You can see how they're trying to manage food supplies. You can see the restrictions on the imports and food production and the effect it's having on the communities and, I think, just in the United States specifically, we're very, very lucky in terms of geography and positioning in the United States that we don't necessarily have that issue, but at the same time, if we look at at our communities, we do have massive hurricanes, earthquakes and everything else, and so there's still an adequate reason to be prepared and really to make sure that you, at a community level, have the diverse food supply.
0:20:33 - Kristin Demoranville
You're aware of what is there, you're aware of how to get food when you need it, and it is sort of adaptive and meets the needs of the community well said and I think everybody understands, especially in the US, what the devastation of hurricanes and earthquakes and even fires we can even go that far and how the preparedness of the community is what has made those particular disasters better or worse. A lot of people don't think about food. It's an afterthought. They think about water and power. They don't think about oh, how am I going to eat until you can't eat or there is no food? That's when you start thinking about it and it's really scary to me that, even as a developed country, that we haven't really had that conversation on a community level. I mean, when was the last time you were sitting in your town or city and thought, are they prepared for a famine? I don't think that's something that we even think about. It's not top of mind, if you will, but it's so interconnected to everything else and if one bit of the system fails it could topple over the rest of it. We'll be right back after a short break. Thank you for being here and listening to the show. It would be really awesome if you would like comment and share with your friends, family and coworkers. It really helps others find the show it really does mean a lot too. Thank you. Also, don't forget to check out the new merch store on the website, where you can find aprons, t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts Link is in the show notes. And also, guess what? The Bites and Bytes Podcast is now on TikTok. As a reminder, this episode is part one of a special two-part series. In collaboration with Crisis Lab podcast, we're uncovering the critical issues surrounding food security and how global crises impact our food supply chains. Stay tuned for part two, which will be released on the Crisis Lab podcast, where we'll discuss practical steps you can take to build resilient food systems and the role of cybersecurity in protecting those food systems. That episode will be airing on July 14th 2024. A link will be provided in the show notes.
Now back to my conversation with Kyle. That's something that I really want the listeners to hear is how interconnected we are, and a lot of us who are listening are also cybersecurity and technology. We, by nature, should understand system thinking, because if you affect something on one end of a system, it's going to cause another problem on the other, where you can't just make changes in isolation. You have to go through change management and have a conversation with others, and we everybody knows you don't make changes in production. You do it in a test environment.
That kind of thing is all interconnected. You don't want to mess it up. The same goes for our actual human systems, how we work and how we live in the world. This is why, kyle, I'm really excited for you to be here, because not only are we going to be talking about food security in general, but the fact that it's the systems thinking that's so key and critical to solving some of these problems and also helping people be resilient through these problems, which is ultimately the goal. A cyber attack is eminent at all times, but being resilient, being able to stay resilient through that moment, is what's the most important part, not if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. And saying that, I really want to talk about how the technological advancements in both supply chain, agriculture, everything in that regard how are they helping these threats to food insecurity?
0:23:55 - Kyle King
Well, so, in terms of the use of technology, it's complex, right? Yes, of course, and that's because it's technology. But because there's two different dimensions to this and I see this a lot in our international work and it sort of answers your question and it doesn't but the aspect of technology. So, from a first world perspective, technology is super helpful, right? So, again, diversifying your systems, protecting your systems and also, you know, sort of getting better crop yields and everything else that goes along with that. It enables us to be more efficient and scale in terms of food production and distribution. But you know, and I'm sure, as you know and I don't have the most recent statistic, but you know we lose what 30% or something like that or more, on just food production, just in terms of distribution channels, and so that is even though, with the amount of technology we have, we still can't solve the problem on distribution channels, and so that is a key issue, because everything is perishable, and so that is something that is yet to be resolved. And then the other side of the coin is in much of my international work, when you go to these other countries, and they might be more agrarian, right, and so they have a culture of farming and they have the production capabilities that are living from the land. And then we come in and we say, no, but you need technology, right, you need to buy this software and the subscription model and the GIS mapping and the drones and all that stuff, and just you know cause you'll be better, and so that's that's.
The other aspect we often don't think about is, if a community is fine with what they're doing, do they need the technology and do they need to produce more? You know, is tech technology is, is an enabler, it's, you know, it creates efficiencies and things like that. But is it required in every single community across the globe? No, is it required in in larger populations that have demands and needs? Possibly so it you know, if you're talking about a country of 330 million people, like the United States, and then you go to another country that has 6 million and they're doing fine, what is the role of technology then? When is it too much right? When are you over-engineering? The problem, I guess, in a certain perspective, is what I would say and so that's something that there's a role for technology and it is a key role. I think there's just a time and a place and level of implementation that has to be carefully considered. It's a you know, there's it's one conversation, unfortunately in the US, and then it's a different conversation outside the US.
0:26:08 - Kristin Demoranville
That's right. It really is. That's well said, and I think that technology is supposed to help solve a problem, right? Whether it's you need more yield, or you want to do precision farming, or you want to be more sustainable. You're going to need tech for that. But if it is working for you and there's nothing wrong, then why add to that problem right? Why introduce a new attack vector into your life? If you will, I do think more technology will be introduced to these places, though Over time.
Of course, I do think that there are some things that farmers will gravitate towards once they trust the process of it, like drones, for example, for monitoring pests or various other types of activities, iot, fire sensors and soil erosion sensors. Those kinds of things I could see being added without much fuss. But the problem becomes is how do you teach a farmer to be a cybersecurity expert and information technology expert? They're not going to do that. That's not right. That's not for them to know either, so there needs to be better systems put into place that help them stay resilient without adding more problems to their life. That's something that I often struggle with, especially having conversations with various practitioners and people in the industry is everybody wants to throw tech at it, and I don't always think that's the answer either, kyle. I think that we need to take a long look at the ramifications of throwing tech at certain environments that it doesn't need to be there necessarily, or come up with a better plan of attack, actually have a strategy.
And what does the next 10 years look like? Are we going to need this type of support? Is it common practice? Is it trusted in the area? Is it well documented? Have people done peer reviewed studies on it? Those kinds of things rather than I just want the new shiny and I want to spend so much money when we all know that parts of agriculture are very touch and go in terms of finances. So I think something like the tractors will probably be more technology as a start in some of these places first, since I'm assuming at some point they're going to just not make analog tractors anymore and it will all be some type of computer situation, just like cars of past to present. I think that's going to be interesting, especially since the whole situation with John Deere a couple of years back and how farmers had to hack their own tractors, which I still think is incredible. Thank God they don't have to do that anymore.
0:28:25 - Kyle King
I think that there's just to add to that really quickly. I think so You're absolutely right when you say do you want to introduce new risk? And that should be the first question. And then, how much is enough? Like, is a community producing enough food? Is it fine?
But I think there's another perspective in terms of technology that we have to really give careful consideration to in the long run and you've probably heard this as well, but I mean, nobody wants to be a farmer anymore, right? Generally speaking from the younger generation. So I know that's a broad sort of statement. But there's a labor and workforce requirement that's not getting filled, which is well-documented across the board in most of the labor fields. You know I live in Europe. Try to find a carpenter that can get to your house within six months, you know it's almost impossible or an electrician so that's where it is, it's really. There's a labor force requirement that may necessitate the introduction of technology to continue with production, and so it doesn't sort of fall backwards. I think that's a critical aspect that has to be considered in sort of strategy and planning domain, and so that is something that I think has to be addressed. At the same time and you mentioned it. You know, sort of teaching farmers to code or whatever.
I had a similar discussion, I think it was over a year ago. I was talking to somebody who was a sort of a very well-known food security person and we were having a conversation essentially about the same thing and the same topic came up what do you do with the labor market, with farmers who need to move on with technology? What do they do? And I just posed the question of why are we not integrating farmers from rural areas into cities and saying help us develop a vertical garden program or a vertical farming program? They know how to grow things. It's just they need help with the city environment, right?
So why not blend technology and the knowledge for people who are coming from an agricultural industry and just say, like, change New York into a vertical farming area and then just like, change the entire landscape and dynamic, like, put your initiative into that. And then just sort of, you know, change the entire profile of a city to where food is produced locally, transported locally and then is used locally. Obviously, that's a nice idea and I'm sure it's way more complicated than that, but I think it's just a paradigm of how can we just shift our thinking and to use technology to enable and also keep that knowledge that we gained over the years. Because the other thing that I would be concerned about is where does that knowledge go if we've forgotten that right, if we lost that generation of farmers? Like you know, I can't grow anything, you know, so I'd be lucky if anything survives.
0:30:48 - Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, my houseplants and I have an interesting relationship, for sure, absolutely. The tribal knowledge is so important and I'm sure a lot of people will hear this, especially in OT and ICS security. We all know that the people that have been in those facilities for 30, 40 years are your most critical assets, ultimately, because they're the ones carrying the most knowledge. Same goes true with the generation of farming families that are now dwindling, unfortunately. But you're right, technology will actually make a difference when it comes to that vertical farming. It's all run on IoT.
I think that the greenhouse companies are doing quite well. I know that the indoor ag space is becoming quite large, especially in the US, and it's also solving some other problems, like E coli contamination. Runoff isn't a problem in a greenhouse setting right, because there's no cattle there or any other livestock that could contaminate the said lettuce. It's also, like you said, making it local, so transportation takes less time. There's less. There's just less faff. Right, it's easy to get things around and also, I think it's a skill that can be taught on an intern basis as well. You can have college students working. I mean, it solves some problems, right, it solves a lot of problems. Why aren't we doing this, kyle. We need to start a movement right now.
0:32:02 - Kyle King
I just changed my business to a vertical farming business. There we go.
0:32:05 - Kristin Demoranville
I mean, and they can do it with, like shipping containers, which just basically rot. I think anything you can do with a shipping container is pretty cool Make a house, make a vertical garden, anything like that no-transcript.
0:32:30 - Kyle King
Ok, we're going in, we're diving in on vertical farming and you're going to produce your own food and I'll cut your tuition rates, you know, because you produce all your own food locally, you get them all involved in the production and community sort of resilience piece and then you don't pay for food services like that. Right, it's far more complicated than that, but I think you get. The general idea is like why not just turn your campus into a production facility and then just let the students sort of live off their own organic food and then everything else that goes along with that? Of course you still have to bring in food and everything else, but still, I mean I'm sure it would cut your budget a bit.
0:33:01 - Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, at least for like the fruits and vegetable aspect. But I mean I'm sure they're not going to want to slaughter their own cows and things like that. I mean that could be very detrimental to people, I suppose. But I like that idea because it teaches responsibility and appreciation for the food that you get and you have right it almost it empowers people to care and it's a great skill, right, if you know how to grow carrots and tomatoes, that you can grow this on your balcony in a city, you know, or anywhere else. I used to do that. I mean, I grow herbs inside my house. I suppose that's a farm. That's a bit of vertical farming in itself and since it definitely is biohacking, I guess.
But I think that the younger generations kind of recognize this Kyle. I think that they do see that there needs to be more. But the problem is is that the way our systems are set up, it's not set up to do that just yet, and this could be. I mean, if anybody wants to do this, please let us know. Or if you know if it's happening, please let us know, because I think that that is such a brilliant idea and it empowers people and that empowerment in itself can help with resilience because it's not such a daunting task and doom and gloom it's. This is a positive moment and I think we need more of those types of wins moving forward, especially as we're having, you know, this change in labor force In terms of technology and labor force.
I've had a couple conversations with some people in larger farms do IT and cybersecurity and they were saying that they're hoping that AI will actually come in and help with some of their labor shortage issues because they can offset some of that to AI rather than having to hire different people. And there's restrictions because of language, displacement of people, because obviously we all know that a lot of our crops in the United States, as an example, are not picked by Americans. They are outsourced, but we have this labor shortage now because of other immigration restrictions and things of such, and I don't want to get into the politics of that, obviously, but they are hoping that AI is going to help drive that. Are you seeing that anywhere else in the world that AI is potentially an answer for some of the food insecurity?
0:35:00 - Kyle King
I don't think, at least from as far as what I've seen, people are as forward leaning into AI as maybe the US is and some other sort of maybe Western European nations, I think. On the other hand, though, while we you know, everybody looks to AI as being promising, I think that there's a real issue, you know, especially as we talk about advancing technologies, I mean, and the way that we develop technology, and the hazards that we're not necessarily aware of. And I'll use sort of the Tesla cars and things like that as an example these lithium batteries that seemed great and this just happened in Berlin, germany actually. And so they had a number of tax incentives to purchase all these cars, and as soon as the tax incentives went away, then all the cars just dropped off a cliff and like totally stopped selling and nobody wanted them, and there was a number of reasons for that, and you probably heard about this too in the United States. But if you're in a colder climate, people are getting stuck on their car trying to keep warm and they plug in their electric vehicle and they're just sitting there charging while barely being able to keep up with the heat in the car. So the infrastructure and the systems are not exactly in place to be able to enable a lot of this sort of implementation of technology.
And I would bring it back to food security for sort of two specific things. One is how we develop the technology to be implemented within. You know, if we're talking about like tractors, things like that, from a emergency response perspective, these batteries are really, really problematic. It takes like 30 hours to put them out, as opposed to like, relatively you know, 10 or 20 minutes with a regular battery right and a car fire. So it just takes forever and the water requirements are excessive to do that. It's like a thousand gallons of water for a normal car fire and like 30,000 gallons of water or a lithium battery fire in an electric vehicle. And so you know. Then you're the point being if we're implementing technology as solution, what are the actual long term impacts? Because then we just create a water security problem by creating this new technology. So then there's all sorts of environmental issues and sort of degradation and runoff and whatever happens when you contaminate the environment. That goes along with that. So if that is the case and then I think we agree there's a labor shortage issue and there needs to be something to fill that gap.
I think we have to give some thoughtful consideration around what is the technology that's being used to do that and the vulnerability that we don't yet know, and so I'll use another sort of case in point here is that the more IoT and connectivity that we have, as you've already identified, the more risk that we start to introduce.
Now this may not be because we look at our own domain and we think IoT and we think you know sort of the systems that we have in place. But if you go and you can just Google for the Chinese cargo ship that dropped its anchor in the Baltic Sea this year and then was dragging its anchor across the bottom of the Baltic Sea to try and pull up the major telecommunications Internet connection cable between that connects to Europe and northern Europe, so they're intentionally trying to rip up this underwater sea cable that was a main communication line of internet to Europe, and so if all those systems go offline because of another sort of external national security issue, then all those systems are offline. So we sort of are then vulnerable to sort of outside actors as well, right, not even just from a hacking perspective, but just from a sabotage perspective as well.
0:38:07 - Kristin Demoranville
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Changing and complex world yeah, and I think that's actually something that I think a lot about when it comes around the food industry is intentional sabotage, whether it's a nation state or just someone who's just out for whatever. That's the part that scares me the most, because, ultimately, cybersecurity we deal with is social engineering. That's the part that scares me the most because, ultimately, cybersecurity we deal with is social engineering. That's our primary focus, whether it's done via computer, with ransomware or different viruses or whatever, it's ultimately just social engineering and that's something I think we've lost focus on because we focus too heavily on the technology aspect. We are not focusing on people, process, behavior. That's a misbeat in my opinion, and we really need to start going back to our roots in that regard, where we need to think in the way that an attacker would whether that's I'm going to take an anchor in a simple capacity and drag it on the bottom of the seafloor and pull up this cable.
Let's be real, like that seems like that's something somebody should have done a risk analysis on and the likelihood and the impact of it.
If that would actually happen and I'm not downplaying that situation at all it does seem like something that would have been part of that assessment. And going beyond that with food, that risk factor is how we deal with being resilient If we don't know the risks and the impact potentially that we could be looking at. How do we create a resilience culture, let alone a resilience plan for these types of situations, whether it's somebody comes in and sprays the crops with something they shouldn't or it was a mistake and it ends up being more toxic. Or somebody sprayed the seeds and we didn't know, or somebody did something to the production line that's making your favorite pastry. All these things is really concerning the more we mass produce, the larger we grow, the more I feel like at times, we lose sight of what's the most important part, and I think that at times, we need to go back to that. We need to start thinking the way these people do in order to keep and stay ahead in resilience, or at least stay resilient.
0:40:55 - Kyle King
And there's a lot to unpack from that right, because I mean some of the things we just don't know. I mean the world has changed in the last couple of years. We would have never thought that this would be the case, with somebody dropping an anchor in the Baltic Sea, but that's just where the world is evolving to, is into increasingly complex crisis, and so I don't think that we know sort of what's next. I think we have some ideas and you could think largely worst case scenario. I mean at the time of recording this podcast, I mean there's like there's Russian ships off the coast of Florida who would have ever thought? You know that that was going to be a thing, but you know it is a thing as of today. So now we know about the battery issues, now we know about the connectivity issues and as these things become apparent, then we just need to be able to plan for them and try and deal with them and mitigate them whenever possible.
0:41:38 - Kristin Demoranville
We also need to use a bit of imagination, kyle. I think we have to stop thinking the best in others and goodness of others will prevail. We have to start thinking a little bit differently. It doesn't mean that we're a bad person. It doesn't mean that we're thinking the worst about people, but if you are a risk professional in any regard, whether it's security or beyond you have to start thinking in this way because you're exploitable, you know, and how could that be exploited?
And I think if everyone had that type of mentality, it would really help with risk-based solutions to get to resilience. And you're right, I mean nobody would have thought that. You know they would be off the coast of Florida right now, however, I bet somebody thought of it though, kyle, but they probably were viewed as some crazy conspirators and they were dismissed because that was just outlandish. And they were dismissed because that was just outlandish. Maybe we need to start having more intelligent, logical, outlandish, imaginative conversations to help plan for risk. I mean, we probably do have a plan for like a valiant land, right, like that seems rather outlandish, but I'm sure we have a plan. Maybe we need to have that kind of conversation and with the batteries I've actually, I completely hear you.
The batteries are really scary too, because on a climate aspect and here's my environmental management hat coming on they're actually thinking about starting to harvest these kind of like rocks at the bottom of the ocean. It's going to destroy entire ecosystems if they do it, and it's not going to solve the problem either, because we still have this dependency on these particular minerals. But maybe if we start looking at other types of minerals and different ways to create batteries, maybe that's the kind of the route we need to go, kind of like the sodium ion batteries they've been testing in various countries. Maybe that's something that will be helpful and they'll also hopefully be better for the environment, maybe be cheaper and be easier to charge. I mean those kind of things. I don't know enough about that to be able to comment on it, but I like that we're at least trying different things. Car powered by salt sounds really interesting, for sure.
0:43:28 - Kyle King
Yeah, and it is really interesting and I think that just comes down to sort of what we're talking about with the university level.
If we could get away from the idea that a lot of these discussions around environmental issues and sort of self-sustainability are not, they're no longer sort of like drawn from the hippie era and they're not some sort of conspiracy theory thing. It's just really about community preparedness and community resilience, not even just preparedness, because preparedness gives a connotation of you know, we're afraid of something and we, you know we need to be prepared, but you know just community resilience and self-sustainability. And I think if we can adopt that sort of mindset and you know again using this example of the university and you can sit there and you know grow your own food, repair your own stuff, and you can, you know sort of understand and how to set up solar and build solar and all while you're studying at a university, I think you're just going to be better off as a person, more well-rounded, by the time that you finish your degree and move on. It doesn't mean you have to continue doing it, but I'm pretty sure that most people would retain those skills over their life.
0:44:23 - Kristin Demoranville
Oh for sure. And also they have a higher aptitude for learning, right, because they are learning different types of diverse skills across the board. I think that that would be brilliant, the fact that you could understand how to set up solar or you understand how to grow your own food. It's like back in the day having to take home ec classes, right? Learning how to cook in an early age is important. It serves you as an adult. Most people can cook on some level. They can boil water or they can fry an egg. You know that kind of thing. It's important skills. I wish they taught us more about. You know balancing a checkbook and other things that we were going to need, like doing taxes. That would have been nice.
0:44:56 - Kyle King
Like yeah, those stuff.
0:44:57 - Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, but also I'm sure you remember too, we had like wood shop and metal shop and we learned how to like make a bird feeder and the little box derby cars and things like that. That kind of stuff actually stayed with me. So I'm not afraid to go near that equipment, or I have an understanding of it. I still don't like angles or math, it's okay.
0:45:16 - Kyle King
Who does?
0:45:16 - Kristin Demoranville
But those kinds of skills are super important. You know, going into the workforce, as we're wrapping up Kyle, I kind of we've had like this is a heavy conversation. There's so much to unpack. What can we do as technology professionals, food safety professionals, food defense people, all of these types of roles? What can we do to help? Is there anything we can do?
0:45:37 - Kyle King
Well, so first of all, I think you know, if you want to get oriented around the international sort of environment and discussion on food, food securityo itself has a food and agricultural group that they have and they get national experts from across the alliance to have meetings and discussions. But there's a lot of eu initiatives as well and and I would sort of tune into those as well as the un is obviously publishing a lot, but they're doing that around the idea of sort of food insecurity. But I think there's four sort of things that we look at from an information sharing and sort of a technology perspective when we are looking at food security, and I'll sort of share those with you so that you can have an understanding of how we would view it from a sort of more strategic level. But you know, when we're assessing, you know, food security or evaluating, I guess I would say we're looking at things like what are the data exchange platforms for information sharing and raising awareness about possible risks or dangers, like how is that communicated and how is that communicated across stakeholders in that food security domain? And how do we communicate the dangers to food, to the stability of food and water supplies? Where you know, how is that indicated? How is it detected and how is it communicated? And then we ask questions about is there some kind of early warning system?
Then, if you do find something, and who does it go to? Is it especially if you're in the private sector? Is it only the private sector? Does it go to any public officials in a local level? What about the national level? Does it feed into a larger mechanism to have a complete sort of national picture of food supplies? There's always a question, because the US has one approach and many other nations have a different approach but is your network, is it nationalized, or is it private? Is it completely in the private sector hands?
If so, that requires, let's say, significant regulation. If it's nationally driven, then that's generally mandated by legislation, for example. And then, of course, your stakeholders. I mean, where are your stakeholders and what role do they play, from your suppliers to your distribution centers, to your maintenance and service technicians, and also in your community? Are they a part of your data exchange platform and where is this all integrated together to have that common operational picture that so many people look for?
And there's lots of other things that go into that. You know, we look at response capabilities, we look at training, we look at planning and planning is a big portion of it and also in terms of assessment, because we're looking at risks, we're looking at stakeholders when we're looking at the level of inclusion in terms of planning and across the community itself and across the community itself, and so there's just a lot from these sort of different dimensions that we're looking at. Food security and technology absolutely does play a role in that, especially as we've talked about in terms of changing in the labor market and technology itself and trying to get more efficient. But we do look at fundamentally. At the end of the day, we're looking at can we enable and can we communicate? Can we enable the information exchange? Can we communicate threats and requirements and can we build a common operational picture so that we can plan ahead, which I think is one of the key things that we've been talking about today.
0:48:07 - Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, I think planning ahead is key. The more you can know and more you can strategize, the better off you're going to be, Rather than the oh shit moment something happened and now I have to react. Most people would prefer to be the first and not the latter. In terms of us as professionals, we are attached to this in some way. We're part of this system. Everything you just mentioned, Kyle, we handle data. We are part of some of these systems that are either built or working on for early mornings, part of our private sector, or we're part of government.
Some of us could be working directly with stakeholders, and I think what I love about what you said over this whole episode is I kept thinking in my head that this is such a boil the ocean situation. We keep talking about all these problems and all these things going on and how do we stay resilient? But that's such an overarching goal right, Like that's the biggest goal. But we really need to sit down and just make that cup of tea rather than just keep trying to boil the ocean, because we'll never make it. If we're trying to do that, it's too big, it's too daunting. But, if you said it, best we go back to the community and look at it for a community aspect. That's making your cup of tea because that takes it down from big earth shattering situation to okay I can handle like a hundred miles worth of situation rather than thousands of miles and beyond.
0:49:18 - Kyle King
So thank you for that because that was kind of like the hope moment that really put in perspective for me that if you can break down your thinking, the systems, thinking down to the smallest components, would be that community aspect. Yeah, absolutely, and I completely agree, which is why we continue to say you know, all disasters are local and even all conflict is local. Communities bear the burden. And if you just focus on your community and the next steps to have a more prepared community, then I think you're already on the right track. Community and the next steps to have a more prepared and community, than I think you're already on the right track, exactly.
0:49:44 - Kristin Demoranville
Well, thanks so much for your time, Kyle. We'll have all the information in the show notes and some of the articles that he was mentioning and some of the various topics. Also, there'll be some links to Crisis Lab if you want to learn more about that, which I highly recommend. Anything you want to say before you leave, Kyle?
0:50:00 - Kyle King
No, thank you for the time. Really interesting discussion. I think if you want to learn more about sort of the work that we're doing and the things that we focus on even though it can be very sort of strategic and abstract sometimes you can go to crisislabio. That's where we have our professional development platform and that's where we have lots of people from the international community who are presenting their views on what it means to be resilient, and so if you're a professional who's looking to expand your horizons and to widen your view of things that might be influencing your day-to-day work, then Crisis Lab is the place for you. So if you have any questions or anything else, or if you want to reach out to me in person, you can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm there all the time and happy to answer any questions.
0:50:33 - Kristin Demoranville
Great. Thanks so much, Kyle. Really appreciate you being here.
0:50:36 - Kyle King
My pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.
0:50:47 - Kristin Demoranville
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Bites and Bytes Podcast. A huge thanks to Kyle for joining us and sharing his wisdom and valuable insight. Remember, this episode is part of a two-part series in collaboration with his podcast, Crisis Lab Podcast. That episode will be released on Crisis Lab podcast on July 14th 2024. In that episode, Kyle and I will discuss practical steps that you can take to safeguard your food supply and importance of community level action and how to build resilience. Don't miss it. Remember to check out the new merch store on the website and also follow us on TikTok. Don't forget to like, comment, follow and share this episode. Stay safe, stay curious and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now, you.
