Bridge Builder

Like so many of us, Donna Rosa discovered her life’s work by accident. “I always tell people that I took the scenic route to get to where I am; it was not planned at all,” she says.

After working in a variety of technical and business roles at food giants such as Van den Bergh Foods (Unilever), Nabisco, and Sunmark (Nestlé), Rosa was working as a business unit director at Givaudan in Dubendorf, Switzerland, when she learned that her former office in Clifton, N.J., would be closing following the purchase of TasteMaker a year earlier.

“They said, ‘Sorry, we don’t have anything for you to come back to,’” she says. “So, I started thinking about what I wanted to do. How can I leverage what I know? Working in ingredients is a very specific niche. You don’t just go out and work for some other company. But I had accumulated a lot of business experience, so I thought to myself, ‘I could die with this in my head, or I could share it with those who most need it.’  I wanted to help entrepreneurs in developing countries, and I eventually found my way into international development.”

Rosa’s work as a consultant led to her first volunteer assignment with the Land O’Lakes Farmer-to-Farmer program in January 2003. In Umtata, South Africa, her work with a smallholder dairy farmer named Irvine revealed big opportunities to leverage value-added food processing. She also came to the uncomfortable realization that the international development community had a limited view of food security, overlooking potential contributions that food science could bring in the areas of food safety, packaging science, product development, and food engineering.

Thus began a 20-year career focus that has taken Rosa from Africa to Central America, the Caribbean to the Middle East. In 2019, Rosa launched EFour Enterprises, where she developed ESchool, an online business coaching methodology for entrepreneurs in developing countries and emerging economies.

This year’s recipient of IFT’s Humanitarian Award for Service to the Science of Food in honor of Elizabeth Fleming Stier recently sat down with Food Technology to discuss her work, the challenges and opportunities facing her clients, and what she’s learned along the way.

It sounds like working with Irvine and his dairy business was a pivotal experience. What did you learn and how have you built on that?

You learn a lot from your first venture out. I needed to help him get his business straight. Like many entrepreneurs, he didn’t want to spend his time doing administrative stuff. I learned a lot of real-world applications of things and how to simplify and make them applicable.

At the same time, I was able to introduce the real-world application of food science and technology. He was making a product called amasi. It’s a fermented milk beverage that’s common in South Africa. And I said, “You need to utilize [and build on] that.” That’s where the food processing went bing, bing, bing in my head. He was making this product, but that’s all he was making. I happened to be on an assignment with another volunteer from Land O’Lakes. He had a technical background in dairy. He did an evaluation, and he said it would be very easy for him to make other fermented products like yogurt. It would be very easy for him to get a used butter churn and take his milk and sell butter.

These two things were value-added products that were only available in the grocery store, which was expensive for many people. So, he had the ability to make a value-added product that he could get better margins on, but still sell at a lower price than the grocery store. It was something that people wanted, and finally, they could afford it.

You say that food science is underrepresented in relief work. Why?

When I started to do other assignments, I noticed USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development] and other [donor] organizations were putting a lot of emphasis on nutrition and agriculture. I don’t mean to minimize that because those are critical. But food science could add value to products and get people out of poverty. They could make more money by processing rather than living in commodity land: Take the mangoes and dry them, make a snack, make a beverage.

And when I talk about processing, I’m talking about basic processing. I’m talking about taking a grain and milling it. I’m talking about drying. I am not talking about frozen pizza, lab-grown meat, anything like that. The [international aid] projects weren’t really supporting the food science piece.

Especially if the objective is to help producers expand their reach.

Yeah. There are constraints to getting food any distance from where it was produced. There are infrastructure problems. There’s a lack of electricity. There are no roads. It’s expensive. But it’s about optimizing processes. Food science—and food engineering—could go from hand winnowing and threshing to small equipment, and then equipment that could make a beverage, squeeze fruit or whatever. Food science can bring products that are nutritionally balanced.

One thing with [IFT’s Food Science for Relief and Development (FSRD) program] that we emphasize is using local ingredients to the extent possible. I had one project where I was working with a bunch of different women’s agricultural groups. And they were all growing rice and cassava. When I asked them why they said, “Well, we know that we can always sell it because everybody eats this.”

And then I would go down the questions: Do people like to have greens? Yes. Would they like to have tomatoes? Yes. Groundnuts? Yes, they would love that. Watermelon? Oh, yes. Well, if you had the seeds, would you be able to grow that? Yeah. Do you know how to grow it? Yeah. So, let’s plant some greens. You’re the only one selling greens, you’re going to make more money, and the nutritional status of everyone is going to improve. And you’re not going to be competing with everybody.

What’s the barrier to getting more food science into the conversation? Is it just that the ag science people, the nutrition people, have a bigger presence? Or are there structural reasons?

I’ve been trying to figure this out. The USAID, the UN [United Nations], the people that create the projects are not including food processing components. They’re helping farmers grow more rice. They have micronutrient initiatives. But they’re not thinking about processing. They’re not thinking about food.

I believe it’s just a lack of awareness of what food science can contribute. And this is where the FSRD comes in. If you understood how much more money a farmer could make if they were processing, if you understood how you can create a nutritious product that’s safer to eat, through food science, you would put this into your projects. And that would create a demand for food scientists that know this stuff. And then we would have I think a more stable food system.

The other possibility is that they’re scared of this word, processing.

Are there lingering perceptions that processing equals industrialization, at the expense of farmers?

Yeah. That’s why I try and define processing. People don’t think of flour really as processed food because it’s a staple, but it’s processed. What I don’t want to see happen is highly processed foods that are calorie dense and low in nutrition. These people need nutrition more than anybody, so we have to keep that in mind. And I have found that when I work in the field, they want nutrition and they don’t want food additives. They want it natural. That’s what they want, and we can still do that.

I was on a project where they were destroying mangoes and the people who were involved didn’t want to use sulfites. And so the University of Nairobi worked with lemon juice and it gave a really nice tang to it, and everybody was happy. And a food scientist knows how to do this. It’s just that sometimes they have to be trained to think like that and not just immediately start to over-engineer.

There are inherent biases that come from Western business experience. How do you overcome that and see things from the client’s perspective?

I never assume I know more than they do. I may be skilled, and I may have some learnings that I can help them with, but I do not understand their situation like they do. And they often have the answers if you just talk to them. I ask a lot of questions and I get a lot of information before I tell them anything because I need to understand their situation.

I had a project in Kenya. I was working with a women’s group. They were doing milling and drying and basic processing. I said I wanted to have a meeting to talk about marketing. It was in Swahili, so it had to be translated. But I asked them, “How would you like to promote your flours?” And then we started talking about developing recipes and being at the market and having a fair where they could show products made with their flours. They came up with all kinds of stuff. I did a little bit of prompting, but they came up with all of it.

At the end of that assignment, they had a little celebration. And one woman gets up and she’s talking and talking in Swahili. And I kept saying to the guy next to me, who spoke the language, “What’s she saying?” And he kept saying, “Wow, wow.” He said, she went on and on about how no one ever asked them what they wanted, what they should do.

It’s a little indicting that isn’t common practice.

All they want is to be included. This is a basic tenet of FSRD—to include and consult with those that you’re trying to help. They know what’s going to work and what isn’t going to work.

Explain more about FSRD. What are you trying to accomplish, and what are some highlights to date?

I wanted to bring awareness of the potential for food science and technology in developing countries. And I had two different audiences: the food industry, which knew little about this because they don’t get involved in it, and then the international development community, the ones that really need to know about this.

We developed the FSRD program underneath [IFT’s] International Division. We’ve had a couple of projects in other countries where we’ve had competitions, particularly in South Africa. We work with NIFST [Nigerian Institute of Food Science and Technology] and SAAFoST [South African Association for Food Science & Technology] and some others.

But the team that was really successful was the case study team. I wanted to create awareness and take real world instances where food science contributed to food security and write them up in a technical and scientific way. And we’ve got about a dozen or maybe 14 cases. We now have a review process. We have a template. We have a strict food science protocol. And I think we’ve managed to raise awareness.

There’s still more to do. And I understand that this is not something that interests a lot of people. But it interests a lot of young people, particularly students and young professionals who come to me all the time and say, “How do I work in this area? How do I utilize my food science background to put it to something good?”

Purpose is a big motivator for Gen Z .

And the reality is, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for them to do that until we create awareness on the second side that I talked about, which is international development. Until they start creating projects that utilize food science, there’s not going to be any. We have to create a demand for these students, and we also have to create curricula that trains them.

We often talk about relief and development in the same breath. But they’re not the same. At one end of the spectrum is immediate, life-saving urgency. On the other is development work that creates long-term opportunities. How are you and FSRD approaching this?

On the humanitarian side, it’s developing foods, it’s food safety, but more therapeutic foods, fortified peanut butter, plumping up things like fortified flours. And in many ways, the humanitarian side is really a logistics issue. How do you get the food into Syria, or Niger?

In my opinion though, the larger opportunity is on the development side because this improves people’s everyday lives. It’s a much larger market. And working on the business side, the way countries get developed is through entrepreneurship. And so, you create a food business, create income. That income pays for the family’s food, but also creates jobs and it allows them to send their children to school, so it’s a whole knock-on effect that develops countries.

What are immediate opportunities for food science to have the most impact?

Number one would be extending the shelf life of food, because when you’re living with fresh commodities that’s all you have. Anyone that grows tomatoes knows this. You have more than you can eat. The market is flooded, so you can’t sell it all. So those tomatoes go bad.

And then they reach what’s called the lean season or the hungry season, which is the time right before the next harvest, where there isn’t a lot of food around because a lot of it went bad. Food science can help take those tomatoes and can them, or dry them, or help store them, clean and at the right temperature, and create a year-round food supply.

The second area where food science can contribute is in food safety. Food safety is a huge problem. The aid community is starting to pay more attention to food safety, but they’re focusing on individuals and home preparation, not on the processor. This stuff has to be taught. You’re not born knowing it. And once they learn it, they’re good.

Food Technology recently published an op-ed about how climate change is going to impact where, when, and how food crops grow. Are we ready to adapt to this?

I don’t think so. We have to be more cognizant of this. There may be crops that we just can’t grow anymore because we don’t have enough water. And there’s work going on in those areas about switching to crops that can adapt better to the environment. But I still think we need to pay more attention to the postharvest waste because the fact is, and this gets repeated a lot, we are growing enough food for everybody. It’s that 30%, 40% is getting wasted. And that amount is exactly the amount that would feed the 800 million people who are hungry. It’s exactly the amount that would take care of it, so I think we need to do a better job and pay more attention. And again, this is where food science can really help.

What’s one lingering myth about food insecurity you want to dispel?

That we’re not producing enough food. I would say once again that we need to pay more attention to waste. We’re producing enough food. It’s not in the right places.ft