Who really rules a market? Who really rules an industry or a society.
We usually answer without thinking too hard: the majority rules! The big consumer rules. The big buyer rules. The retail chain that moves millions rules.
And yet, every time I look closely at how decisions are actually made along the fresh produce value chain, I run into the same uncomfortable surprise: very often the one who decides is not the one who weighs the most, but the one who concedes or agrees the least. The less flexible ones and with the stronger convictions are winning.
I learned to put a name to that intuition by reading a book of Nassim Taleb. In Skin in the Game, he describes what he calls the Minority Rule.
I used it in my book Freshconomics, but, I think, I could’ve probably elaborated a bit more around this topic. I could’ve gone deeper in the implications.
What follows is the story of how this exotic idea explains why almost every soft drink in the United States is kosher, or why almost all of New Zealand’s lamb is halal…
… and explains with almost unsettling precision the famous “certification hell” we suffer in farming. And, above all, why that should change the way we look at sustainability, organics, and the new tsunami of requirements knocking at our door.
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