Topics to Be Explored at the World Economic Forum

00:05Welcome to Nasdaq Trade Talks.

00:07I'm Jill Melanrino, global market reporter at Nasdaq.

00:10Joining us for the segment, we have Patrick Mcculloch,

00:12CEO of Produce Pay,

00:13to discuss the topics that will be explored at

00:15the World Economic Forums annual meeting coming up in Davos.

00:18Produce Pay was recently invited by

00:20the World Economic Forum to be one of their newest unicorn innovator start

00:23ups for their work in addressing food and

00:25economic waste caused by inefficiencies throughout the fresh food supply chain.

00:29Pat, it's great to see you as always.

00:30Welcome back to trade talks.

00:31Happy New Year, Jill. Thanks for having me.

00:33You got it. And we know that the annual meeting in Davos is

00:36an important forum for crucial dialogue between public and private sectors,

00:40working to tackle major global issues.

00:42What will be the big topics driving climate and food discussions this year?

00:45Yeah, we're really excited to be invited to Davos and have a seat at the table.

00:50We see climate change and food scarcity as the big ones.

00:54For us, there's two work streams that the Davos event is

00:58focused on a long term strategy for climate

01:00and then achieving cooperation through competition.

01:03And we think both of those are going to be important work streams for

01:07us to get our voice out there on how to help improve the produce industry.

01:10Why are these global challenges so important to solve from an economic view?

01:15Yeah, there's a lot of challenges with produce. And they start with waste.

01:1840% of harvested produce perishes before it's consumed.

01:22That's enough to solve world hunger alone.

01:25It's a really meaty issue.

01:26Price, volatility, opacity, fragmentation of our vertical are part of the problem.

01:32So this is what we hope to address through cooperation,

01:35both in terms of the financial market leaders,

01:37but also the produce and retail market leaders.

01:41Now's more about how industries can work toward achieving cooperation among competition.

01:45What does it look like across the Ag sector, global supply chain?

01:48Yeah, it's quite fragmented.

01:49Quite global and quite large.

01:51So we refer to this as it takes the village,

01:55we can't do this alone, nor can Walmart with their buying power or Amazon.

01:59We really have to come together as an industry and

02:01start to put predictive commerce together.

02:05Let's get better forecasting around

02:07supply with all of the challenges that mother nature brings,

02:10and maybe the right things aren't planted in the right place. Let's get in front of that.

02:14Let's start getting to contractual agreements

02:16that are multi year in basis with fixed pricing.

02:19This will go a long way to solving some of

02:22the imbalance of risk

02:25that the grower wears that the rest of us in the industry don't wear.

02:28And finally, pat with on the horizon for produce pay in 2024 expansion.

02:32So we expect to be in six continents by the end of 2024.

02:36That's important because if we're going to solve

02:37surety of supply issues for retail buyers,

02:40we need to be in every major farming region.

02:42So we're looking at expanding into Asia,

02:44Africa and Australia this year,

02:46which will complete the six for us.

02:48But then obviously bringing more grower solutions so that

02:53we can solve these supply problems for

02:55the benefit of the industry is our number one priority right now.

02:58All right Pat, appreciate the insight.

02:59As always, thanks for joining us on trade talks.

03:01I'm Jill Melandrino, Global marketudeporter at Nasdaq.