June 07

June 2007, World Apple Report Highlights

New Economic Order
A new world economic order is taking shape that will affect the policies of individual governments, multinational organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, and the operations of every firm that operates in world markets. The dominance that the United States, the European Union and Japan once held over power, wealth and ideas is being challenged by rising giants like China, India, Russia and Brazil and by smaller countries like Ireland, Finland, Singapore, Bahrain and Dubai that have developed a global investment perspective. This new economic order will be more turbulent and unpredictable. The firms that survive will be those that recognize the changes and can adapt most rapidly.

Is Sustainability for Real?
For a long time, the concept of "sustainability" was bandied about in elite circles, but was of little consequence to those who chose to ignore it. However, the confluence of energy shortages, recent weather disasters and dire forecasts of the imminent threat of global warming have moved sustainability issues center stage. Because agriculture has a major impact on natural resources such as land and water and on human health and welfare through food, decision makers around the world are in the process of framing policies for sustainability in agriculture. It is vital for agriculture itself to get involved in that process. Otherwise, it could be saddled with unrealistic expectations and uneconomic practices.

Questioning the Normal
Many people in business, government and academe make decisions based in what they consider to be normal. In any population, characteristics are thought to be normally distributed. Most people will cluster around the mean value of any characteristic. In marketing, a normal rule of thumb is that 20 percent of the customers buy 80 percent of the product. Revisionist thinkers are now arguing that these old rules of thumb are no longer reliable. It is often the abnormal event that is the biggest force for change, what Nassim Nicholas Taleb has called the "Black Swan" phenomenon. Because the internet has taken away limitations on the volume of inventory that can be carried, and more choices are available to consumers, the old 80/20 rule is less and less applicable. There is a need to question the normal as it relates to your business.

Special Statistics

Example of a Normal Bell Curve (chart).
Example of the Long Tail (chart).
Average Monthly Price of "Brent" Crude oil at Rotterdam, 2003-07 (chart).
United States: Estimating Per Capita Food Supply Servings for Key Fresh Fruits (table).

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